Some concerns about starting P99

[Crawdad]

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) There are always groups to find 1-60 on Blue, as long as you know what's popular. As others have said, the Qeynos area tend to be sparsely populated as it's isolated in Classic EQ. Elsewhere though, you wont have to look very hard to find someone else.

2) The only reason to solo 1-50 is because you want to. There are plenty of people all leveling, all over the place. What time zone are you in? The majority of Blue seems to be EST, and you'll see the population shoot up to ~1300 normally at around 7pm EST. I would say, if you're concerned about population, Blue99 hits ~1400 max, Red99 ~300 max.

3) I don't think this is an accurate reflection of in-game. You're citing posts you've seen on the forums, but in-game its much more sane. Rez's are normally 100-200p or free. Most people pay ~25p for a regular port. A full jboot MQ is 7.5k. If anything, prices for non-"Best in Slot" items are incredibly cheap, making it very easy to gear up.

These forums are potentially a place to go to for help/questions/bugs/good info, but also have a lot of rabble to them. A major selling point (to me) about p99 and EQ in general is that every step of the journey is fun. Don't focus too much about what people gripe about on the forums, just enjoy the process of getting there in-game [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Swish]

...and don't be shy about starting a fight. I think too many avoid pvp at all costs, get no experience of it and when a fight happens they panic, gate, die, or quit.

Practice practice practice.

[slappytwotoes]

As far as grouping.. Imma come at you from the opposite approach. I LOVE to solo lowbies, specially twinked to the gills. Its a break from the very social grouping and raiding I do most of the time. (Blue)

Every play session I turn down grouping offers left and right. Most people 5-60 are all about grouping. If you visit any of the popular zones mentioned earlier, its full of groups. Go where the good XP is and you'll never lack for leveling partners.

[Colgate]

make it happen

[Swish]

Rumored to be coming with PvP teams (item loot).

[Wired Aces]

Just to be sure - On live you didn't lose XP when you got killed in PvP. Is that the case on Red? Also, what's the level difference that you can engage? Is it 4?

[Swish]

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

Just to be sure - On live you didn't lose XP when you got killed in PvP. Is that the case on Red? Also, what's the level difference that you can engage? Is it 4?

Yes correct on both counts. No XP loss on pvp death and a 4 level range (used to be 8).

[Pipip]

I would say, just try it (either server). It's not like you have to pay a subscription. If you don't like it, you didn't lose anything

[thufir]

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.

"Nah" is my response to most of this.

I have been a low level player on this server (p99 blue) for years, super casual. My highest level character is 52. I started here 2-3 years ago.

The sub-50 scene is very active. The population tends to funnel into a few zones because people are always there - tautological I know, but it's a self-reinforcing cycle. Blackburrow isn't on this path. If you started a character in gfay and went to Crushbone, your view of the low level game would be quickly altered.

Other zones of high popularity for the sub-50 crowd include Unrest, Mistmoore, and City of Mist. Those zones are almost always packed with people and the problem is finding a spot in a group, not finding a group per se', since those zones are generally overcamped. Guk (both upper and lower) gets an honorable mention here, has a fair population but not too crowded, and is one of my personal favorite zones since you can be killing frogs basically from high single digits to 50+. Outdoors there's East Commons, Oasis of Marr, Highpass, and the Overthere; usually Warsliks has people fighting there as well.

You can still find people in other zones, depending on time of day and sheer randomness. My cleric actually found randoms to pug with in Kerra Isle on Saturday...

Inflation isn't that bad, either. Low level items have been farmed to death so you can get decent weapons for cheap, if not great ones. Generally, you don't have to pay 12k for a rez; 50p-100p is more normal. Ports ~30p, depending.

Raiding is pretty crowded sure, but the other side effect of that is that it's easy to get into a raiding guild and hit *some* targets.

That jboots MQ (ring of ancients) goes for about 7k on blue, btw. (You can just camp it yourself, too. I did! Frequently nobody bothers with the sro one because it's FTE.)

So yeah, don't worry so much about what you laid out in your original post. =)

[ridiculousmoose]

^^This guy gets it. People min/max the shit out of everything on here, especially exp, so they all go to the same high exp bonus zones.