War LootFollow

Before I rant let me say that we have a 63 cleric, 55 druid, 55 zerker, and many others in the high 40s (3 accounts). I was personally wondering why they stripped gfay on e-marr of all the mobs when they put the army in. Once again the low toons have been nuked to prepare for a new expansion for the high toons. How about a gm event for sub 20s or sub 30s? True noobs can't even do their armor quests until this crappy war is over. And when you ask a gm or petition they say we know and we're working on it. Sounds like a load of crap for noobs and a load of cash for SOE. There are zones I still haven't explored with my 63 cleric and don't know why, other than to fill some wallets, we need another expansion when the only thing for the nooby/lowbie toons is a souped up tutorial that gets you potato sack armor and a weapon that you can't even sell for bread money. Just my unfettered, and probably unpopular, opinion.

Ok

Everybody take a deep breath --

Now take a step back and look at what is going on. Somebody posted earlier about how some of the loot (any of the dedicated captain armor and the elite drops w/ illusions) had roughly the same basic stat structure as say a drop from Tacvi or Citadel of Anguish. Now, knowing this, think of what it takes to get into those zones. For Citadel of Anguish, you have to seek out seven (7) signets throughout all of OoW expansion, this included instanced zones and high end areas like MPG and RS -- the mobs that drops the signets are level 70+, usually higher, and drop no other loot. So basically you have to camp 7 different locations w/ a group (or your 2box) for a chance at 1 drop. Sounds a lot like Vex Thal,Time and Veeshan's Peak, right? Ok, thats the easy part. Now, you must then find a guild that will let you in and is raiding MPG raid trials. These are 6 trials, some harder than others, that require the maximum cooperation of your guild, hopefully with the full 52 allowed in raid. Once you complete the 6 trials, and obtain 7 signets, you get to enter CoA unscathed by the AE. Thats the layout for CoA -- which of course allows the new member to an already flagged guild to be "VISA"'ed.

That is the easier of the two zones to get into...

To get into Tacvi -- you need to sacrifice your first born, and many many many many hours of playtime -- and even more deaths. It is the most ridiculous passageway to the glory-hole ever created, but if you make it there, you see why its the high end content of Everquest.

Ok, so now you get the gist of what is involved for the two highest content zones in the game.

Now, think of this. One can zone into PoK, find a druid, pay them a nominal fee (or 2box) for a port into Ferrot. Upon which tye can immediately begin training (a classic skill of EQ players) for loots that are the backbone structure of our high-end content in game. Now, if Ferrot dosen't suit your fancy, simply walk 100yds and zone into Innothule where the loot is equally as good, but with a different name. Now, combine all this with the fact that the decision on who gets to loot said "trained" corpse is always up in the air, and some who did all the damage aren't getting to get on the corpse, but instead a plooter gets all over it. This is where things get muffled.

Think back in the older days of EQ -- when VP first came out, or was revamped, or when VT was being heavily raided for its high-end gear. Did you ever *ONCE* see an event that offered you VT quality gear, or VP quality gear, or even better Time gear ... The answer is of course, NO. Before OoW or maybe a little after, the developers were either all fired or a revamp of Everquest gameplay was adopted. My guess, its the latter of the two. In the oversize, plush offices of SoE and EQ developers they made a decision that would change the face of our game.

To them, what matters? ...Money !! Now, if you're in a position to make money a game that the population has more than halved, what would YOU do? Manipulate the game environment so that abundant amounts of insanely good equipment drop? That would definetely inspire people to purchase the *NEXT* upgrade, or better yet, pre-sign for ANOTHER year of Everquest. They know what they are doing and they know *MOST* have worked their asses off to get to high end content. Its all a big giant rat-race; only this time, they left the cheese out.

This post is neither a rant, a jealousy post (cause i got lewtz) or one that promotes what happened. I'm just putting all the eggs on the table, unscrambled. If you look at the history of EQ and the way EQ is going now -- flagging yourself to 15000hp / 2500 ac / 25pct sheilding / 25pct strikethrough / cleave 3 / dodge 3 / etc. etc. etc. is a thing of the past. Just hang out in newbie zones and you are guaranteed a piece of the ever-so-elusive (for 5 GD years) pie.


Ps: Since I got loot from the war, I have no misgivings, but I tell you what -- the work and the time I put into getting to Tacvi, and almost to CoA dosen't seem worth the 2-3 years I spent for EQ and its expansions, but ya know what? Who's already got the money in their pocket? ...not me.

/rs Grats SoE on Phat Lewtz !! (this is a hotkey)

-d-

DRo








Edited, Mon Aug 1 01:04:00 2005 by liquidance

Personally Sony and the GM's never think about the lower levels when they make these events. They are killing themselves by only catering to the old players still around Like myself. Instead of the new kids.

I'm sure that this has been said, but I need to put in my 2 cents. I tried the war in Greater Faydark. I know I'm too low (lvl 54) to be tons of help, but I thought I'd try anyway (I'm a Ranger, I love dieing). I got uber buffed in PoK and headed down. Here is my ‘experience’.

I sat there for 25mins sending out LFGs and no one responded from the 75+ peeps that were there. It seems this lvl 70 raid/"social gathering" had lots of attitude to spare. I listen to tells going out, mostly complaints of course, about a waiting list of whiners that wanted the next 45% haste belt. There was lots of threats and lots bragging/show-boating going on every minute (ie tons of links of drop gear that might or might not have just won or ninja looted).

As I wandered around, and got frustrated, I headed back to the PoK book to try a few more times for a group. Still no luck. Just then some loser ran by and trained the 30 mobs chasing him onto all us unsuspecting peeps waiting by the PoK book for groups. Now I know why he did it. He was eliminating the competition from taking what little chance he had of getting anything and he wanted to setup a possible ninja loot session where some other peep (or NPCs) do most of the killing for him. Needles to say the 11 of us that died in 3 seconds flat, found out his name and sent him lots of informative tells. I never did get a group and it took 45mins to get a REZ from PoK, as the clerics had hear about dieing upon zone-in and none were too keen on going into this zone.

I’ll never attend a War or similar Sony event again, unless I’m in a guild. For those wondering, I took a year off and when I came back my old guild disbanded. I’ve not joined another yet.

There is WAY TOO much time wasted in this game trying to get peeps to group up. I see tells going out for peeps that want to group, but none respond. What are they waiting for?

This game is geared towards grouping as you get into the higher levels. Now the upper levels don't want anything to do with you until you have almost Time Gear and 400AAs. There is this huge hole in the game. I thought these wars would provide a good opportunity to allow us mid levels to kill some good mobs for some good loot. I remember years ago having lots of events (Halloween for instance) that were open to all levels.

Bring them back and drop level appropriate loot. Put in a level restriction to keep high ends peeps out (port levels 60+ to PoK when a 50s raid is on). This could be easily done. Lets have Easter events, Christmas events, Labor Day events, New Year’s events etc etc.

This game is wearing thin. I don’t know how much longer I’ll enjoy it. The second it stops, I’ll give it up. It will be a good opportunity to rediscover what my wife is for.

What war?

Oh yea,

If your defending ninja looters, thiefs, disreputable players, those that take it upon them selves to ruin the game for the mass's.

Please be kind enough to post your mains name and server so we can appropriately add you to the respected ignore lists.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

P.S.: Like you actually think anyone would believe the fake name you came up with let alone fake server you lying piece of halfling fecal matter.

wasn't exactly hard.

problem with these events wasnt that they were geared towards 70, it's that anyone with over 100 resists and FD could solo anything.

How are we supposed to know what the loot was?

Was it announced in-game? Was it listed by devs? Is there a page on Allakhazam listing it all? I think not. Plus the event mentioned apparently lasted less than a day (a weekday, at that), with no announcement of when it would start (and misleading clues in game, at that).

I happen to have been interested in this topic, and actually did some searching for this information over the weekend. I found a few posts about what the elves in the Faydark dropped, but almost nothing about the ones in Rathe or Feerrott, other than a comment that those battles probably didn't even occur on my server. So in the end I was unable to even answer the poll.


Edited, Mon Aug 1 16:53:23 2005 by Sylphan

yep! I won't even deny it's a cheap tactic.

everyone using it makes it impossible to kill any of the war mobs any other way 75% of the time.


100 resist levels were enough to get me to resist 75% of the spells. and if you're only training them somewhere, you have to kinda suck to get hit by 3-5 mobs casting spells.


I did. except, on my warrior.

my point wasn't that exploiting made it easy. my point was that because of the amazing preponderance of exploiters, it was impossible for raiding guilds to do it legitly, too.

GG reading comprehension!

redxrum wrote:



Amen good sir.

Edited, Mon Aug 1 20:10:49 2005 by cookieblz

I liked the idea of the event. Watching the two armies go at it was a sight to see. Also the feeling of zoning into the oldest zones in the game where I no longer saw any mobs, including city guards as a challenge and fearing for my life to run halfway across it was nice. I loved the insane helpless feeling it left you with. This is the same reason I've loved working on Uqua. It takes you out of your comfort bubble of 'oh if I fd it will just go away'. No, if you FD it will probably keep coming and kill you while you lie there, that is, if you're lucky enough to get an fd to stay on through the 30 casters that follow every captain. 2 complaints. One was the shortlived events and bugs, and the second was the fact that you could damage a captain once, drag him into an opposing army, let them kill him then reap the loots. That was an exploit I believe but went thoroughly unchecked and, of course, unreported throughout the event that I witnessed. The loot? Tunat level for a one group event? Hell yeah. I'm sorry, but look at MPG trials. Those are equal to or better than Time equipment pieces. One group. Now it's a year later, and GoD is the expansion in the place to get put on one group mob loot tables. This lets casuals and people who aren't currently at 1200 aa's with 70 maxed out see some good loot that is equivalent to stuff they wouldn't see at all in the game. This is the type of thing I'd look for in the next expansion, and to be honest I like it. A character geared in some MPG group trial stuff and stuff like what was dropping in the war with DoN augs and RSS augs is going to compete with someone in mostly qvic gear with some Time pieces. I say great. But would really like to see the whining about the discrepancy between raider and non raider stop. Really, when you can get what you can these days with one group, it's not an issue of it not being available. It's an issue of people not taking advantage of what is available. I'd say this was a pretty fun and rewarding event overall. I personally had fun taking the night off of raiding Time to pull captains.