Allakhazam Poll: Trouble in the Original PlanesFollow

Hate was just... boring. My guild at the time was very, very conservative about raiding Hate, though; in order to minimize mishaps we stayed in the portal room for HOURS while the pull team brought us things to kill. Then we'd race to Maestro's, etc.

When I did it later for an epic drop for someone's twink, we moved the whole time. That was much, much better.

I took the question to mean "Back in the Day" not the current experience of the zones. I voted for sky. since when has a Hate or Fear raid ever lasted more than one day? Even PoGrowth was only about an eight to ten hour raid. But sky, you could be there for days and trying to keep it all straight with who was keyd for what level was a major major pain. Old Fear breakins were never a problem for me. I always volunteer to solo enter first because I dont want anybody else to mess the raid up. I use same tactic as other ppl, circle the zone in two or three times then head off to keep all the mobs chasing me while the rest of the raid enters, forms up, and tags my train one mob at a time. Some ppl tell me they get dizzy just watching me but its old hat for me.
Now, having said that, Ireblind 1.0 was more than a pain he was unsurmountable even to GM's with insta-death spell. His original code had him spawn more of his underlings every time a person died in that zone, no matter where in the zone, and no matter the method of dying in that zone. Since he was originally spawned random my guild popped him right at the zone in just after we started clearing mobs after the break. He immediately proceded to rack up more and more underlings in addition to passing aggro to every single stinking mob zone wide. We wiped with 25 ppl at first, then came back with 72 ppl and wiped again. What this did was cause the 100 extra underling mobs in addition to every mob originally in the zone to MAINTAIN aggro even after a complete wipe.
When we finally got a GM to come and help us clear mobs they all, 200 or so, swarmed him also. He had the instant click kill thing and they still killed him. This added another 35-45 Ireblind underlings as the ppl who were battle-rezzed got killed again, but he killed a bunch of mobs so we had probably less that 200 still to deal with. On our second attempt, with the GM clicking instant kill as fast as he could, and the clerics doing chain heals on him as fast as they could we finally got the zone wiped 100% clean and had the clerics rezzing ppl and the wizards TL'ing them out of there as soon as they looted corpses. Many Many ppl had several exp loss deaths because the whole CR took about eight hours. At least nobody had any gear loss deaths.
We avoided Fear like the Plague after that for a long while. It was never "Fear, nah lets do something else", it was always "Fear, He77 No, yer on crak, count me out"

Fear is no big thing these days, Technically none of them are since guild lobby, but for those with no cash, Sky remains the worste. Yes Ireblind was GoD with Berserker, but the points are still valid. I had a guild spend a Week (yes one full week of nightly raiding) to get through Sky, and all we could do was log in an alt and wait for the rest of the guild to show up to log in our mains... Then you add in the fact that the keys did not stay with you when you fell off the island, and even harder, if your raid wiped you had to either spend a ton of cash on coffins or figure out how to rekey to get up to the island you just wiped on. That was nightmarish, I have done the fear train with my cleric, allowing the raid to prep up and pick off the mobs one or two at a time from my train until the break in was complete! Think about that... a Cleric... Even DA is only 18 seconds and if you have both up that is only 36 seconds to clear off the train! no that is the cleric running around cause his life depends on it... DA was used at the end for the last couple of mobs... Simple mathmatics, add up how much it cost in coffins (and possibly hiring a Necro) along with the cost of stones, and compare to sending in a break in team without cost to get to the darn zone... XP is an even break when you look at it.

It wasn't about people standing around though. The problem was that the lag on zoning due to the size (it's an outdoor zone with a good view from where you port in) and unique models in the zone at the time (and the fact that it was pushing the display capabilities of many systems) meant that most people were "stuck" for a good 30-45 seconds after zoning in, simply unable to move. You'd see them standing there, they were attackable and they'd certainly agro stuff, but they were still at the loading screen.

This wasn't as much of a problem as time went on, so Fear got easier. People still wiped, but honestly while the break was always the most *exciting* thing, once it was over, it was a pretty boring and simple clear from there on.



If you can't get a wizard to port you to sky, you probably had no business going there back then. Today? Maybe. Back when those were the only planes? You were asking for disaster. How many guilds capable of raiding Sky back then didn't have a wizard?


Oh. Samira. Absolutely agree with you on PoH. My exact impression as well. Boring! We did the same thing the first half dozen times. Sit in that damn room for 3 hours while the pull team cleared the roamers and then statics on the first floor. Then run to Maestro's building and pull to the left room. Then pull maestro and hand if they were up. Then go upstairs and sit at that first corner while pull team pulled the second floor roamers and statics. Then move to that wall (no clue which side it's on), and pull the rest. Then move to whatever nameds were up and kill...

Yeah. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. Don't really miss the old plane at all.


Still not sure I agree on Sky though. It wasn't just about taking 24 or more people (we only did that a few times for example, and it truely was a nightmare!). Due to buggy pathing and corpses falling through islands, we *always* came up a few keys short. Especially on Az isle. You'd come in with 24, have no problems getting all the keys for them off the first island. Then you'd clear the Az's, the static Az, the boss Az, and come up 4 keys short. It was not uncommon for us to end up with only 18 or 20 keys from that island.

Spiroc could really really suck if you didn't know how to kill and in what order. Just fighting wrong could cause huge problems. And that's maybe one of the reasons I think Sky is so much worse. You could make simple mistakes that didn't just wipe you (or wipe you at all), but could ***** up your whole reason for being there. A great example is Spiroc island. If you came there to farm wingblades for example (obviously this is later for epics, but not that much later), you absolutely had to avoid killing the guardian. So you had to be *very* careful when clearing the trash spirocs, or you'd agro him, and your raid would be forced to camp to clear agro (and hope you could get your people back on without re-agroing him). Simply having your group a tiny bit too far to one side could make this really really hard.


Dunno. I voted based on the pure pain of the planes. Sure Fear breaks sucked when they went wrong, but there really wasn't anything intellectual about them. There was no real thinking involved. Simple rules and tactics would allow a successful fear break. Once in fear (and hate) there really wasn't any penalty to your hunting based on what you did. You could kill mobs in any order. You didn't have to worry about making sure to kill them in the right order, and at the right pace, and plan for X mob spawning at such and such time and if you did it wrong, the day and a half you'd spent on the raid would be for nothing. That was painful IMO.


Did you ever raid Sky before they added the ability to transfer group leadership? That one change made a world of difference in terms of planning the keying stuff. All it took for someone to be out of the raid permanently was for the wrong person to click to the next island prematurely. Adding people to a raid in progress was virtually impossible due to the inability to get them into a group. Wizards took a huge hit because they often had to eat deaths to be able to port people back up while leaving a corpse for rezzing them back to the correct island (couldn't just drop off because your keys would poof). The worse that happened in a fear raid was that you died, and had to clear tons of tough mobs to CR. There were some strategies in PoSky that you literally had to think 3 or 4 islands ahead of time and do the correct things in order to use them (like some of the old bind sight tricks to add people to a raid in progress).


Heh. Then part of my particular hatred for sky stems from the fact that I never lead a fear raid. But over time, just due to osmosis from doing so many sky raids, I ended up being one of the senior folks leading our sky raids. It was pure brain pain to manage. Again. I can't compare to leading a fear raid, but I personally think it was much more taxing. You either succeeded at the fear break or not. If you succeeded, the rest of the raid was cake. A Sky raid could easily go 2 or 3 days, and you had to constantly be thinking about exactly how to handle every single mob, it's drops, who should loot based on what groups people were in and who could be easily shuffled around for coffining, etc. And that was before having to consider what order to kill mobs in just in terms of clearing the island successfully. There's simply nothing nearly that complex about clearing hate or fear IMO.

Looks like most folks are voting in this poll as to the "old days". Today however, the main thing that irks me is not being able to duo/trio an epic 1.0 that concerns a DT mob.

fear breakin sucked, hate wall aggro was awful, but there was nothing that could ruin your day more than hitting an island

Yeah. That could suck. Fortunately, I never did that either. After awhile, you just learn the safe spots to jump from and make sure everyone uses them.

Pfft, that wasn't a problem. You just had to make sure you weren't the first one over the edge and that you jumped off the exact same spot as someone else that had made it (at least that's how I always did it).

I took a raid of 36 people to island seven of sky once I consider that to be toughest raid ive ever lead.

Fear break was a very tough thing when averagre raid level was below 55 but I would rather lead ten fear breaks then one sky clearing.

ACK I was the 666 person to vote, and I voted PoFear Break in..... I think I am going to go hide in my closet now :(

In theory, any character with decent resists and the ability to clear agro can break Fear. The mobs aren't really that tough individually. It's only when they swarm that it's a problem (which typically happens on "break" due to mob pathing near the portal, and social agro ranges in the zone). I'm pretty sure that if I could figure out a way to get my paladin to a zonewall somewhere and shed agro, I could solo break the zone as well. Anyone can. The mobs just aren't that tough...

I guess - due to the number of times we wiped, we got pretty good at fear. That was really a challenge, I voted for the PoSky island jumping - that was a pain, no matter how many times you did that zone, you couldn't get past that part - couldn't get any better at it - it just sucked. Well - ok, so you knew exactly what to do, and when, but die, summon, rez - what a time sink :(

We got fear down fairly well.. Run west, like said above - Kamakazie run - go west. Camp a cleric or two, necros FD, and you could usually res up ok.

Think the biggest problem with fear was, too many actually expected to live through breaking in. I guess that was the "overcoming the fear" part of dying? lol

Dunno, we always managed to break in fine, if people listened - ran west, cleric or 5 camped, and everyone else, just tried to keep the cleric's clear. As long as a monk, SK, or Necro could FD and let everyone else know when it was clear, it was pretty doable.

But yea, the 2nd worst corpse run ever for me was in Fear. I guess I shone that day tho - used DA, ran in, and managed to channel a rez on one of the dead clerics before I died - it managed to get us back in there.

The worst corpse run I ever had --- blackburrow, 3 days after starting EQ, lol - man, that was a nightmare - so many trains.... and I was in so deep.

Edited, Mon Jun 27 11:21:04 2005 by Kaeaelin