Do you still play LIVE? [poll]

[Monty405]

I have been away from EQ since GoD. Out of curiosity I booted up my old account info and logged into gfay where a character was parked. I then proceeded to nuke an orc pawn and received a piece of defiant armor with ridiculous stats for a lvl 3 npc to be holding. I didn't even need to walk to its corpse to loot it - talk about lazy mode.

I soon logged off and went back to P99.

[absol]

I still play live from time to time, got a beastlord up to 75. But honestly, I tend to play my lower level chars more and stick to old world zones. Its more of a nostalgia kick for me that anything else.

I wish there was an xp slider that controlled the rate at which you get xp. Leveling is ridiculously fast now. Took my 40 ranger to CoM, left after an hour or so at 43 and I wasn't even trying. You just outlevel zones long before you settle into them. You can avoid unsing the overpowered defiant armor that drops randomly from mobs, but you can't avoid the fast xp. Not unless you kill youself and lose xp... which I have done on more than one occasion.

Its funny. I was killing beetles at lvl 3 back in the day. I'm still killing beetles at 75, only this time they have a ton of hp and hit harder than old world dragons. But as much as I rag on EQ, its still the only MMO I've tried that I've tended to go back to. None of the others have that same 'stickiness'.

[Monty405]

Originally Posted by absol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I still play live from time to time, got a beastlord up to 75. But honestly, I tend to play my lower level chars more and stick to old world zones. Its more of a nostalgia kick for me that anything else.

I wish there was an xp slider that controlled the rate at which you get xp. Leveling is ridiculously fast now. Took my 40 ranger to CoM, left after an hour or so at 43 and I wasn't even trying. You just outlevel zones long before you settle into them. You can avoid unsing the overpowered defiant armor that drops randomly from mobs, but you can't avoid the fast xp. Not unless you kill youself and lose xp... which I have done on more than one occasion.

Its funny. I was killing beetles at lvl 3 back in the day. I'm still killing beetles at 75, only this time they have a ton of hp and hit harder than old world dragons. But as much as I rag on EQ, its still the only MMO I've tried that I've tended to go back to. None of the others have that same 'stickiness'.

Are most of the classic zones still the same? At what point can you go back to old raid zones such as ToV and just clean house solo?

[absol]

Originally Posted by Monty405 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Are most of the classic zones still the same? At what point can you go back to old raid zones such as ToV and just clean house solo?

Most old world bosses die 1 min after they pop. I don't know who's doing it, but people must have them timed and on lockdown because I've very rarely seen them up. Maybe I've just been unlucky. This is on the FV server where pretty much everything is tradable so there's a market for the loot still, particularly as old world gear has no level requirements so its good for twinks. Or maybe its fuelling the secondary market so real life cash is involved. I dunno.

Last week was different. I was running through Kael to get something for an alt, and Vindi was up. Never seen that before. I killed him and his 2 protectors, fight took about 10 mins. He dropped the bp.

Kael was empty, nobody else here but me so I made my way to Tormax's room. He wasn't up, but I was just goofing around anyway, so I started killing stuff in the room. I turned around and all of a sudden there was someone sitting on the throne, who definitely wasn't there when I came in. Dude came out of nowhere. I said hi and tried to strike up a conversation being friendly and all but the guy just ignored me. Undeterred, and realising just my presence here was messing with his plans, I kept on talking. After 10 mins I thanked him for being such a good listener and left.

[Charlievox]

Originally Posted by absol [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Most old world bosses die 1 min after they pop. I don't know who's doing it, but people must have them timed and on lockdown because I've very rarely seen them up. Maybe I've just been unlucky. This is on the FV server where pretty much everything is tradable so there's a market for the loot still, particularly as old world gear has no level requirements so its good for twinks. Or maybe its fuelling the secondary market so real life cash is involved. I dunno.

Last week was different. I was running through Kael to get something for an alt, and Vindi was up. Never seen that before. I killed him and his 2 protectors, fight took about 10 mins. He dropped the bp.

Kael was empty, nobody else here but me so I made my way to Tormax's room. He wasn't up, but I was just goofing around anyway, so I started killing stuff in the room. I turned around and all of a sudden there was someone sitting on the throne, who definitely wasn't there when I came in. Dude came out of nowhere. I said hi and tried to strike up a conversation being friendly and all but the guy just ignored me. Undeterred, and realising just my presence here was messing with his plans, I kept on talking. After 10 mins I thanked him for being such a good listener and left.

By the time I left Live, it was infested with bots permacamping a lot of the old world bosses. They ran on timers. They would pop in just before a spawn, kill and loot and pop out again. Always parked right on top of the spawn point so even if you were there first, you couldn't pull agro.

[Monty405]

Why would they be so committed to killing old npcs that drop completely outdated loot? Also, why would Sony / DBG not monitor this

[Charlievox]

Because you could RMT for Raid level gear that was not level restricted and twink out your newbies. Or just buy a few million plats for the price of a three month subscription.
Sony would only do something if enough players complained. But since hardly anyone was going to these places anymore, there were few complaints.
And if your bot is running 25 different accounts you hardly ever see the same bot twice.
You have to remember, these were big time Korean and Japanese operations with hundreds of accounts. So what if a few of them get banned now and then.

[absol]

Originally Posted by Charlievox [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

By the time I left Live, it was infested with bots permacamping a lot of the old world bosses. They ran on timers. They would pop in just before a spawn, kill and loot and pop out again. Always parked right on top of the spawn point so even if you were there first, you couldn't pull agro.

Ah, that explains it then. You would think that SOE would have taken steps to kerb this behaviour by changing the spawn times. I suppose it was very low on their list of priorities.

[Villide]

Originally Posted by Monty405 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Are most of the classic zones still the same? At what point can you go back to old raid zones such as ToV and just clean house solo?

A few months back, I rolled a Paladin on FV to work through some classic dungeons. Way back when, I was a casual mostly-soloer and reroller (only got one character to level 50) so figured I'd grab a merc, gear up and see the more difficult parts of the zones I'd missed the first time around.

It was pretty fun, and a bit nostalgiac - but of course, not overly challenging. Spent a fair amount of time in Befallen, Unrest, Highpass, Guk, Najena, Gulf of Gunthak, ToFS, CoM. Just started to spend time in the Hole before I came back to try Red 99.

Those old zones are dead empty. I'd see someone occasionally pop into zone, but it was really rare.

The gear and the mercs made it relatively unchallenging. Not sure how that would translate to places like ToV or the Planes though.

[Charlievox]

Originally Posted by Villide [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

A few months back, I rolled a Paladin on FV to work through some classic dungeons. Way back when, I was a casual mostly-soloer and reroller (only got one character to level 50) so figured I'd grab a merc, gear up and see the more difficult parts of the zones I'd missed the first time around.

It was pretty fun, and a bit nostalgiac - but of course, not overly challenging. Spent a fair amount of time in Befallen, Unrest, Highpass, Guk, Najena, Gulf of Gunthak, ToFS, CoM. Just started to spend time in the Hole before I came back to try Red 99.

Those old zones are dead empty. I'd see someone occasionally pop into zone, but it was really rare.

The gear and the mercs made it relatively unchallenging. Not sure how that would translate to places like ToV or the Planes though.

I had a level 80+ Mage, i could grab a level 80 merc cleric for pet heals and solo in the planes all day.