EQ TLP - Oakwynd (Evolving Ruleset Progression Server)

Rajaah

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They literally consulted with the officers/leadership of the "top" vaniki guild. They only started talking about how impossible things were after signing off on the list as being okay and looking good.

Bind Rush was indeed the top Vaniki guild, no quotes about it. They dominated while they were actually whole and competing. By the 55 era basically half of them had quit so they slowed down a bit, and then at 60 half of the remainder quit so any competition was long over with. Burnout was very real and I think people never got over being pissed-off about the un-clear unlock system, which is understandable because it wasted a ton of people's time.

The main person talking about how "impossible" things were was probably me. I think a couple others were as well? I recognized that Cragbeast Queen wouldn't be killable, nor would Sendaii or Deathknell. Next thing I know I've got all these people taking it out of context, bragging about downing other achievement mobs and going "guess it's not impossible AFTER ALL EH". Well, the specific mobs I said couldn't be killed in-era...weren't killed in-era. By anybody.

And their target list came from a bunch of sources and general dart board throwing, not just specific people who then turned around and said they were impossible. That'd be kind of idiotic.
 
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Rajaah

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None of the guilds on Vaniki are good at the game. Just because they failed at something doesn't mean it was "impossible"

I'm looking forward to your strat on taking down Cragbeast Queen at 55 with her incredible regen rate and 54 people since the devs inexplicably decided at the last minute that you couldn't do it in OW. I think Rusty gave that one the most/best tries and got it to like...95% or something?

Seriously, I'm all ears. Yes, bringing a ton of clerics and doing a full-on rez rush might have eventually won by attrition, like the Zek kill of the Sleeper. And even that I'm not sure of, because the Sleeper had broken regen at the time and CBQ most definitely had all the regen. Admittedly BR had slowed way down by then and was missing a lot of core people, but even at full strength we probably would have gotten totally whipped by CBQ.

I challenge veterans like yourselves to the fuck box achievement.

if you 2 box, then you must pick the least synergetic combo possible. Cleric Druid, mage rogue, warrior warrior. Who will pull off the most useless duo

Every TLP I consider doing a same-class duo to see how it goes, and usually end up not bothering. Considering it again this year, but not going with a terrible mix. Either Double Necro or Double Shaman. Double Mage if I'm feeling lazy by then, since it's pretty OP but also very boring. Double Shaman is the most likely just because it's something I haven't done before. Probably play one like a normal Shaman (main heal, buffs, debuffs) and have the other just straight DPS / backup heal. Gonna need some crank
 

DickTrickle

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As Rajaah mentioned, it should be at least remotely reasonable. Doing some multi-hour thousand rez sleeper kill is not reasonable.
 

Zaide

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I'm looking forward to your strat on taking down Cragbeast Queen at 55 with her incredible regen rate and 54 people since the devs inexplicably decided at the last minute that you couldn't do it in OW. I think Rusty gave that one the most/best tries and got it to like...95% or something?

Seriously, I'm all ears. Yes, bringing a ton of clerics and doing a full-on rez rush might have eventually won by attrition, like the Zek kill of the Sleeper. And even that I'm not sure of, because the Sleeper had broken regen at the time and CBQ most definitely had all the regen. Admittedly BR had slowed way down by then and was missing a lot of core people, but even at full strength we probably would have gotten totally whipped by CBQ.



Every TLP I consider doing a same-class duo to see how it goes, and usually end up not bothering. Considering it again this year, but not going with a terrible mix. Either Double Necro or Double Shaman. Double Mage if I'm feeling lazy by then, since it's pretty OP but also very boring. Double Shaman is the most likely just because it's something I haven't done before. Probably play one like a normal Shaman (main heal, buffs, debuffs) and have the other just straight DPS / backup heal. Gonna need some crank
CBQ was killed on Vaniki already.
 

Mrniceguy

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Hit us up with your Cragbeast Queen strat, brother.

I've already said too much in the other thread about it.

As far as in era the guilds on Vaniki had a really flawed approach. Toons can be leveled to max level in hours, people should be prepping multiple toons on different accounts so you can stack the best classes. Bring 36 Rogue/Zerkers with good Piercing weapons and proper support classes to CBQ then talk about how it's "impossible"
 
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Rajaah

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CBQ was killed on Vaniki already.

Was it in-era? I don't remember anyone doing it in-era, but maybe it was at the tail end when I wasn't in the game much due to BR's population dropoff. Tell us more about how it went down.

As far as in era the guilds on Vaniki had a really flawed approach. Toons can be leveled to max level in hours, people should be prepping multiple toons on different accounts so you can stack the best classes. Bring 36 Rogue/Zerkers with good Piercing weapons and proper support classes to CBQ then talk about how it's "impossible"

I don't think anyone was going that hard in terms of class-eugenics. People were playing what they wanted for the most part. But yeah, bringing a stacked rogue/zerker roster with the right weapons would go a long way in some of these encounters. Not being able to box yet (at all) at 55 totally gimped people's rosters. With those restrictions lifted I wouldn't have minded boxing 3-6 rogues and going nuts and I'm sure a few others would have looked into pulling something like that off too. Without boxing or said class eugenics, fielding DPS crews wasn't working out too well. The overall server population on Vaniki was never conducive to having optimal setups or numbers. If it had as many people as Yelinak, that'd be a different story. I've never seen attrition set in as fast and hard as Vaniki though. It absolutely blitzed a lot of guilds. I thought BR was fine until one raid I noticed we had like 10% fewer people on than the previous raid, then the next raid another 10% fewer, and so on. I started wondering if it was possible for a raid force to shrink down to zero. Vaniki started with thunder and just crumbled populationwise.

I like the idea of theorycrafting for a general optimal raid, especially OoW era with epics. It's been months since I even played, but off the top of my head I'm thinking about the destruction you could cause with, like... 35 rogues/zerkers/monks, 7 shamans to pair with them. Remaining 12 spots split between warriors/knights/clerics. Maybe 3 War, 1 Pal for ramp, 2 SK for offtank/kiting, 6 Clerics. That doesn't leave any room for Bards though, and there are other classes that have a place under those circumstances like Beastlord and Ranger. Might need to drop 6 of the earlier people (5 DPS and one shaman). A lot of this depends on what era you're playing too. In later eras you'd want 35 necros/zerkers. Heavily stacking the same classes in post-105 expansions also results in alliance procs firing like crazy too. Like I would think a ton of zerkers on a raid force would absolutely maul, but most guilds only have like 4 of them in that era.
 

Needless

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I’ll always love to read the most sweaty EQ shit, specially on niche shit like vaniki lol
 

Mrniceguy

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I don't think anyone was going that hard in terms of class-eugenics. People were playing what they wanted for the most part.

Yeah and for a server like Vaniki you really need people to be ready to stack classes, be down with funneling gear and running the most gear profitable instances multiple times on different accounts. Without doing those thing you can never really know what was possible
 

Lambourne

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I was in the CBQ kill. it was a side project for our main guild on Aradune. We did it with de-levelled characters while the server was at TBS and level 65 cap. Guess you could say it wasn't in-era since we had gear and veteran AAs from beyond GoD but doing it in era was never a requirement of the server rules, only the level you do it at matters. Original plan was to use mage fire pets to avoid the AoE but on a trial run we found that melees with heal clickies could do well also. CBQ kill itself was really smooth, most of the effort went into the preparation. It took a substantial effort from a few hardcore players to gear a tank running various raids and DoD/TSS/TBS missions (which aren't exactly easy as they're all deep red at 65), others that geared up support and DPS, help powerlevel others etc. For the actual kill, most of the raid was in defiant with some that had better gear like mage epic, DoN weapons, various augs etc. You can zone in with level 65 buffs on you as well, just can't have any higher level characters in the raid. AAs stop working when you delevel under their required level, so autogrant was sufficient for most.
 
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Creslin

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Servers that make the game easier do much better than ones that make it harder. Mischief was the easiest server ever and did the best ever

It’s also one major reason classic launch beats anything else in popularity. By the time you get to even tss launch the group and raid game have taken a major step up in difficulty and time commitment to raid and stay caught up starts to rise rapidly. Doing a class balance pass to and just straight buffing melee and tanks in those level ranges and keeping caster resist changes from vaniki would probably help but they would need to relax key requirements and attunements.

I do think they should keep key requirements at launch but figure out a time to just drop them. Maybe 3 weeks in to any expansion remove all key/flags.
 

Elderan

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IMO next server rules should be

- Mangler ruleset
- All keying / flagging requirements are removed

No it wont be as good as a mischief style server, but it will be better than Yelinak and allows for a Mischief style server the following year.
 

Tuco

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Servers that make the game easier do much better than ones that make it harder. Mischief was the easiest server ever and did the best ever

It’s also one major reason classic launch beats anything else in popularity.
This is the truth. Most EQ TLP players want a candy corn carnival version of EQ and still manage to whale so hard it makes absolute bank for DPG.

Live EQ raiding is also in an embarrassing state. I think every raiding force worth anything will kill all the encounters the first night they unlock.
 

Rael

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Vaniki topped out at about 500 players and dropped pretty quick to where it averages 150 a day now 8 months in. Yelinak has not been a good server yet still averages 1400 daily 8 months in.

Where are you getting these numbers from?
 

Zaide

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This is the truth. Most EQ TLP players want a candy corn carnival version of EQ and still manage to whale so hard it makes absolute bank for DPG.

Live EQ raiding is also in an embarrassing state. I think every raiding force worth anything will kill all the encounters the first night they unlock.
Looks like about 20 guilds beat the latest raid tier on day 1. 36 guilds total on the leaderboard (at a glance). I'm glad to see live still has this many raiding guilds at least!

 
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DickTrickle

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I was in the CBQ kill. it was a side project for our main guild on Aradune. We did it with de-levelled characters while the server was at TBS and level 65 cap. Guess you could say it wasn't in-era since we had gear and veteran AAs from beyond GoD but doing it in era was never a requirement of the server rules, only the level you do it at matters. Original plan was to use mage fire pets to avoid the AoE but on a trial run we found that melees with heal clickies could do well also. CBQ kill itself was really smooth, most of the effort went into the preparation. It took a substantial effort from a few hardcore players to gear a tank running various raids and DoD/TSS/TBS missions (which aren't exactly easy as they're all deep red at 65), others that geared up support and DPS, help powerlevel others etc. For the actual kill, most of the raid was in defiant with some that had better gear like mage epic, DoN weapons, various augs etc. You can zone in with level 65 buffs on you as well, just can't have any higher level characters in the raid. AAs stop working when you delevel under their required level, so autogrant was sufficient for most.
Those are some big differences available later on, particularly the veteran AAs and buffs.

Still, it definitely says a lot about your guild that you guys did it as a side project. That's a lot of dedication that I think would be hard to obtain as a primary guild, let alone as a side thing (though maybe it helps still having your "own" character at home while doing what the raid needs on Vaniki).


Good job.
 
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Lambourne

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Those are some big differences available later on, particularly the veteran AAs and buffs.

Still, it definitely says a lot about your guild that you guys did it as a side project. That's a lot of dedication that I think would be hard to obtain as a primary guild, let alone as a side thing (though maybe it helps still having your "own" character at home while doing what the raid needs on Vaniki).


Good job.


Having the main server definitely helped and it was done during late TSS/TBS on Aradune so there wasn't a whole bunch of group content left to do there, so people could spend time on Vaniki and not feel like they were falling behind on their mains. It was also mostly done for the benefit of the main server. The /claim reward you get from the CBQ kill achievement is really good, it's a bag of raid currency that you can use to buy nearly a full set of visible raid armour on an expansion that uses raid currency. It's great for boxes or to catch up quickly in the future. It's almost like being handed a bag of kronos except you can use them to buy no drop raid gear from a current expansion.

To be clear, I wasn't involved in planning any of it, I just did my part as a regular member. The guild's leadership is made up of a lot of former Darkwind players and a bunch that had gone most of the way to live on earlier TLPs, so there's decades worth of EQ experience there.
 
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