Group vs. Solo

[Orruar]

Nice job bumping a 2 year old post. Pet xp has changed since then.

[Troy]

Just got out of lvl 45, took about 7 hours solo. How long does it take in a group?

[Arclanz]

Agree with the op. Too many people being PL'd here with clarity,DS,regen,HP buffs. Oh, sorry, I meant "soloing."

[Tecmos Deception]

Nm. Thread necro zomg.

[filthyphil]

I rolled a necro simply because it is all I ever played on live. I see more necros than anything on p99 and it makes me a bit sore, until I see twinks 4 levels higher than me dead at my camp. I've created a paladin alt to play when I got bored of kiting, and he has been level 8 for about a week & a half now because he can't get a group and soloing is not at all an option. On my main (now 34) I've found the best exp was soloing, it could only be beat by a group maintaining constant pulls with little to no downtime.

[Cippofra]

One of the things I like most about p99 is the ability to play one of my favorite games casually. No goals to work torwards, no frustration when I die. I dont have the time or ping to group as a monk. So I solo. Back when I made a mage we were under the 1 damage system. Now soloing as a mage is not an option. So I play the only real melee solo class (dont really consider bards melee). I absolutely agree eq is a game all about grouping, from level 5 to the end. But soloing should still be an option. Reward people for grouping, but punishing people for soloing is just a really bad idea

[Tecmos Deception]

Pretty sure a mage who gets 1/2 xp for every kill is still going to level faster than a solo monk, short of that monk being incredibly twinked. Well at least once you're up in the 45+ range.

[Estu]

Soloing a mage is absolutely an option. Just reclaim your pet once the monster is running and you'll get full EXP.

[Splorf22]

I think the problem here is that people expect EQ to be like Starcraft: log in, put up LFG, warp to well-balanced XP group within 5 minutes. Obviously you can start right away if you are solo.

Its not hard to find xp groups. My monk was in a great Nurga/Droga group last night. If you are L35, for example, you can do /who all 30 40 to find out where people are and /who all 30 40 lfg to find other people lfg. Head to the hot zones, and don't be afraid to form groups or play with 'nonstandard' class mixes. Sure it may not be optimal xp, but some xp is better than no xp and its fun to try and make something a little unorthodox work. For example, I did a warrior/enchanter 2-man group that worked ok once.

P.S. wow what a thread necro

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think the problem here is that people expect EQ to be like Starcraft: log in, put up LFG, warp to well-balanced XP group within 5 minutes. Obviously you can start right away if you are solo.

Its not hard to find xp groups. My monk was in a great Nurga/Droga group last night. If you are L35, for example, you can do /who all 30 40 to find out where people are and /who all 30 40 lfg to find other people lfg. Head to the hot zones, and don't be afraid to form groups or play with 'nonstandard' class mixes. Sure it may not be optimal xp, but some xp is better than no xp and its fun to try and make something a little unorthodox work. For example, I did a warrior/enchanter 2-man group that worked ok once.

P.S. wow what a thread necro

I agree somewhat. This is mostly how I approach the game.

But I'll admit that I think it would be better with a new group experience system more similar to what it's on the live progression server. The first time i was exposed to this sort of experience system was when I was paying Shadowbane. So I was interested in it before they added it to the progression server. Basically, the experience you get for killing something is the same whether you're solo or group. So if you get 100 experience for a kill while soloing you'll get 100 for the same kill while in a group. However, since you can have up to 6 people, you can potentially earn up to 6x experience. The good thing is that no matter who you invite, they'll be able to add something and thus speed up the process. The system doesn't discriminate. The only problem is that it heavily favors groupers and makes soloers feel left out. It can also lead to PLing if not done right. I don't know exactly how they resolved all of hte probems on the live progression server. I myself still haven't considered all of the potential problems with it. But I"m sure with enough thought and foresight it could be very functional.

I'm fine with the experience penalties. I play a lot hybrids.

People have to realize that p1999 is top heavy. It has been top heavy for a while. There're still lots of new players, but you have to keep in mind that it's made worse because p1999 only has 300-1000 players at any single moment, while live had 1500-2500. For these reasons and potentially others, this causes a lot of players to select solo-classes because they can't find groups. And this is even more pronounced now than it might have been in the classic era because people have more knowledge about the game. It leads to hybrid groups.

I played a ranger during live. Created a couple. One in 1999 and one in 2001. I never looked at my experience bar. Played a stupid length of time and was still low level but never cared because it was truly amazing. I joined lots of different groups and soloed some too. Generally, soloing is effective because you don't have to group with dumb and deal with their problems and you keep more money/items/etc. But soloing gets boring pretty quick because it's so exact and there's a lack of communication. In a group there's a lot more surprises and more talking going on. Makes it a lot more interesting. However, sometimes the group wastes tons of time forming or reforming or making up for lost time because someone did something real real stupid.

I don't have a class on p1999 that's over 24. The vast majority aren't over 17. In total, I've probably played for a couple dozen days (or a bit more) on /played since I arrived here in late 2009. I'm not playing right now and haven't for almost a year. I love the -low- levels in EQ. Corpse runs are quick. I like to help the new players. I like being around the cities and doing the low level quests and learning the lore. I have group-based and solo-based alts. If I can't find a group on one or another I'll log on the soloer. There're always things to do. Twinking isn't something I did. I wanted to see the world from a new player perspective and group like that. And btw the results of all of it were that there're a surprising number of low level quests to do. I found that a lot of new players didn't know about them. I think that this kind of hurts things somewhat. But you have to keep in mind that classic eq, while it had a lot of quests, many of them were limited by spawn rates and/or congestion and/or other factors. If you were the only one doing it it could be very useful. And then there was probably the biggest problem that finding information for quest meant using allahkazam or asking in chat or being hte luckiest player alive. Generally, quests in classic eq aren't the intuitive sort... the items you need can be in all sorts of crazy out of the way places. With this in mind, the experience/item rewards are often too low.

Classic EQ is a beautiful game. I was just in the EQ1 and EQ2 forums and I have to say that those games are a total wreck. They're mudflated profit-driven disasters. I feel so much sorrow for them. I played on live until early 2010 so I'm not speaking from ignorance. Lots of players still play them and like them, but from my perspective they're intolerable. The tricks that the company plays, the sloppiness, the feel of everything, is dirty. Classic EQ is not a perfect game by any means. If I could remake it I'd change a lot. But there're a lot of things I do like. And classic EQ was a different game because it lacked all the instances and changes made to the game later on. Most of those changes were a response to the top-heaviness, but some were also a response to WoW and the easy-mode crowd of players. The game just evolved in a direction that doesn't interest me.

I'd say that the mudflation in old(er) games is the biggest turn off for me. I mean, if EQ2 had a progression server, I'd be a #%!! of a lot more interested. But they're not interested in making something like that. And with all the changes they've made to the game, I doubt they could do any kind of rollback.

I'll also admit there's some mudflation even in p1999. Kunark added some. Velious will too. But the distance between expansions is so great in classic and p1999 moves so slowly it's less severe. And there's the additional factor that without 10+ expansions, the old zones are still useful and you don't outlevel as fast.

In the end, the non-profit nature of p1999 is I think its most awesome feature.