Some concerns about starting P99

[Swish]

Lots of text walls in this thread, but good to see people are addressing his concerns.

Inflation isn't as nuts on red server. If for example you were to cash grind on Highkeep guards to get the items you wanted, you'd spend less time to achieve the same goal there.

That's one of the great things about red generally. You level quicker even if solo, and there's no waiting in line for camps or having to engage in a war of words if you're camping something and some other guy decides to "lawyer up" to try and take it away from you - one of the blue community's worst things as well as big zerg guilds that will have you waiting months for your first raid pixels.

Sure there's going to be some pvp sometimes but depending on the class you pick, sometimes situationally you'll be in good shape. Just remember you need to work on your resist gear as well as your stat stuff [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] There's guilds like Thunderdome which have new starters, they'd be happy to help.

Best of luck whatever you decide to do - the game is fun either way [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Aeaolena]

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

this guy's in a guild that makes you give back your tradeable items when you leave to join a better guild. just think about that for a second, that's the guy promising you there's no pixel lines on blue.

I'm a chick. And I did leave BDA at one point. I was never asked for my droppables. (/gasp! Wut Vowels? But the Trolls said..)

But these facts are distracting from my interest in joining Red. Can you tell me more about how great Red is? I feel like you are full of truth and honesty, and I am very interested in what you have to say. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Aeaolena]

In all seriousness though, Red might be for you. It wasn't to my taste. I prefer Blue's way of things.

If you do try Red, though.. do it for the PVP. Not because of misleading information about Blue.

(serious).. Xaanka did you ever have a character on Blue? Maybe you should try it out. Sure, the adrenaline rush may be less - but we have a great community here as a whole. I'd hate to think you actually believe the jokes in RnF to the point you are missing out.

[nevilshute]

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

I played Everquest back when the game was new and played through the Planes of Power Expansion before moving on to other games. I have always remembered EQ fondly and recently I came across Project 99 and was pretty excited to dive in and see the old world that I remembered. I say "was excited" because there seem to be a few factors that might make starting undesirable. I was hoping the community could address them.

1. Because there is only one server that has been going for a while the game seems very top heavy and overcrowded. Of course, I only have one toon at level ten right now, but it looks to me as if lower levels almost don't exist and end game raiding is a cluster**** because there are so many people going after it. Raiding is obviously a big part of this game and I don't want to get to level 50+ only to find out that every raid has a Disney World sized waiting line just to get a shot at it.

2. Due to issue number one and most players are either already high level or are power leveling lower level toons, it looks like I will literally be soloing all the way to at least level 50. I don't want to solo my way through these levels and having to do so would kill any desire I have to play. But so far I have been unable to get a group playing around the Blackburrow area.

3. Inflation has gotten out of control and I don't know if I will ever be able to catch up financially. Because there are no real plat sinks everyone has tens of thousands of plat. I saw one player offering 12k for a rez, another offering 10k, one paying 300 for a port, etc... When I played live, 10k was more than enough to MQ the Ancient Cyclops quest much less get a rez. And if I got ten plat to port someone I considered myself lucky. I have no idea what that MQ goes for now. If platinum is really that worthless then I will never catch up to the rest of the game.

Any thoughts from the community are welcome.

1: Now I've only recently made lvl 60 and I will never become a hard core raider so take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm in casual raiding guild (Europa), we have raids scheduled several times a week and we scan for pops and then, when something like a Kunark Dragon or Cazic Thule or whatever pops, we try and get there first. It is very much true that the server is dense with high lvl players that all compete for the same mobs. It's not a very big deal for me as I'm not that concerned about raiding for the most part. I know that my guild does get there first from time to time. And we're just talking about the world/plane bosses. There are plenty of other raid zones that seem to be available for us. I won't speak about the highest tiers of raiding cause I don't have experience with that.

2: I started one year ago and have played one char to 60 (necro) and another to 40 (shammy) and I've found there to be plenty of life and grouping from lvl 1-20 and beyond, honestly. Sure you will probbably be grouping with more players that already have another, higher lvl character than with other fresh new players like yourself, but that shoudn't be a detractor in and of itself.

3: I don't think it's that big a deal with inflation tbh. People are plenty generous and will help you out during the first few lvls in my experience. Sure, you will struggle at lvl 1-40 to get above 5k from looting Spider Silk and Bone Chips (even then, there are leveling guides about getting a bit of coin while getting leveled). But then again, would you expect to be able to twink your new lvl 1 char with 5k items? Once you get higher lvls you will begin to loot vendor stuff that sells for a decent amount and if you get lucky you will loot a money item at one stage or another.

As a solo class Seafury Island is decent for grinding a 500pp-1k pr hour once you're 50+ (if you are a solo class), but at that lvl you can also join exp groups in places like KC and HS where money items drop.

Point is, I don't think it's very detrimental to the gaming experience that there are hundreds of items being sold in EC for hundreds of thousands of plat on a daily basis. Nor that porters are getting 30-40pp for a port... many, many porters will gladly port you for way less if you are new and have little funds.

Also, someone paying 10k for a rez is exceptional if you ask me... so not something to measure things by. Usually I see people offering upwards of 500pp for a rez if it's in a really shitty place like OOT or somewhere like that.

[arsenalpow]

Qeynos is awesome. You can do blackburrow and the gnoll fang quest up to level 20. It's my preferred starting area even if it is a barren wasteland.

[Champion_Standing]

I think 10k is still more than enough to MQ your ancient cyclops quest bud

[Monty405]

I'll add my experiences.


Leveling:
I joined P99 this winter so I have been here for ten months so far. My main is a rogue which is the worst solo class there is. Despite having to group to even tie my own shoelaces I have managed to make it all the way to level 58 where I am currently. This is with a full time job and family to attend to.

My advice to help find groups on blue is to recognize where the popular leveling brackets are. A previous post has this laid out except for an error with City of Mist which is really level 40 to 50.

Also join a 'Leveling Guild'. There are a few guilds with pre-raiding level characters who hang out and using the global /gu chat can help you not only find groups but form long term partnerships with other players.

Consider looking for static groups. These are groups of players that normally group together at a certain time of the day on a regular schedule.

Economy:
The 12k for a rez is certainly an outlier which was posted on these forums (and mocked heavily). The general rule of thumb for tipping for ports is 1pp per level (CR's for free). Sure, there are some porters who are in it for greed but most enjoy the game within a game of offering porting services and are happy to help (please do tip though!). For rezzes I general tip about the same, provided the cleric dosnt have to travel. I have had clerics reject my trade offer out of kindness several times. Jboots can sell for 6-7k pp on average.

A lot of low to mid-range items are dirt cheap. If you are newbie zone level be sure to collect stacks of bonechips as they sell fluidly at 10pp per stack (necros and the like are always buying in bulk). That should help with spell money ect.

Raiding
Of all concerns, raiding is the most valid. It is to be expected due to how long this server has been up. It is better since velious came out but is still a gong show.

Overall, this is the best server to play on for classic EQ. Loading into Kelethin the very first time I logged in and saw 30-40 some people made me feel like I traveled back in time to 2000 (when I joined EQ).

[Wired Aces]

Wow, tons of information in this thread and that is awesome. I read some of it, but I need to get ready and get to work before I can read the rest. But the first thing I would say is thanks to everyone (even the Red promoters :P) for all of the incredibly useful information. I didn't remember that Qeynos was so far out of the way of ports, which explains the lack of grouping around there.

I definitely will be at least trying Red in the near future, if for no other reason than it being OK to multi-box with the regular server. I also play Eve Online where multi-boxing is big and if I'm only running one client of a game I don't feel full. Though honestly I'm a bit skeptical of the horror stories I've read of people getting plowed over by twinks getting healed by out of range toons while trying to level. But I will at least see for myself.

Long story short, you guys have shown me that me earlier excitement to get back into EQ was justified and my concerns have pretty much been taken care of. Again, thanks for the amazing response.

[Kekephee]

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

Take 5 minutes and read the blue rants and flames forums. Raids, and many spawns do have Disney World sized waiting lines for them. The blue server is overcrowded and the end game raiding scene is more than a clusterfuck.

Rants and Flames is a lie. Don't ever read any of it thinking it's real. It's all a big game where we all pretend to hate each other and to be monsters and Red players come in and lie about how overcrowded our raid scene is and our guilds are because RnF is a game and so they can get people to switch servers.

Consider playing on the red server, where there are no welfare lines for raid mobs and rare spawns. Even if you don't give a single shit about Everquest PVP, there's plenty of other people on red who share your mentality to play with.

Red is an option. The population is significantly lower- we like to joke that it's impossibly low and you'll be playing EQ single-player, but that's an exaggeration. However, it IS lower, and since you did explicitly say that you're concerned about finding people to group with, well, that is worth mentioning.

You won't be soloing to 50, though, on either server. There's always plenty of groups in most of the zones on Blue, and people on Red are voracious group-seekers because of the exp bonus.

[maskedmelon]

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

If you do try Red, though.. do it for the PVP.

There are plenty of other reasons to roll red too ^^ I did it a few months ago against my better judgement because I had read that gameplay was more classic and I was very pleasantly surprised to find mountains of truth to that ^^ For example, on red there is no item recharging. That is not a classic mechanic, but makes for much more classic gameplay. Item recharging was very uncommon on live in classic, but on blue it is common practice, to the point that gameplay is radically altered. The activated effect on Soul Fire is also restricted to paladins on red. On blue, you have level 60 be romances and every other class walking around with one in their bag for free ch clicks.

The economy on red is also less mature and less polarized. On blue, you can get some really high end items for very cheap, but the price gap to the next step up is ridiculous. On red, there is a much more even spread with items being generally less expensive, so it is easier to farm enough coin to gear yourself out. The economy on red is less liquid though and it can take more time to find what you want to buy, or to sell your stuff ^^

Even though red has a great xp bonus (which didn't really appeal to me until I realized it allowed me to experience more of the game ^^), gameplay itself is generally much more relaxed/slower since new characters are not geared to the teeth ^^ There is almost always someone in your party who can use any item that drops during hour leveling career.

Red is a pvp server though, so approaching it with an open mind is a must and if you refuse to view pvp as anything but overt aggression, you probably will not have a good time. I never had much interest in pvp and only ever played one game pvp before coming to red. I had a poor opinion of pvp and allowed it to dissuade me from trying red for years. It's all about perspective though. Sure there are people who want to ruin your day, but they are very few and far between (and equally if not more present on blue). Most people are just ought for some good ol' competition and expect to be attacked as much as they attack ^^ You don't lose anything (except coin which is avoided by banking regularly or buying gems) and can generally learn something from it. Groups/Guilds/relationships are generally tighter knit too because of their importance in pvp. On blue if some jerk steals your camp, or trains, or scams or something else all you can do is petition and wait and hope you receive a favorable ruling. On red, you can rally your guild or group or whomever to avenge the injustice ^^ the important thing though is to view it all a good ol' competition and don't get offended if you are killed. It will happen, so don't sweat it ^^ strike up a convo with them, ask for pointers, ask if they mind of you to about your business or if they are looking for more of a fight ^^ and remain polite. Don't be an ass, or you will end up with the wildly negative view of red than some of the posters here have.

Last, you can play on red and blue at the same time, so if you are lfg on blue, maybe log in to red and check things out. Give both a try ^^

If you do roll red, /who all Thunderdome and get an invite ^^ They'll help you get started.