Instead of defending terrible gameplay because it provides a little of what you want could we instead have a good system with good gameplay instead? The system by which EQ characters level up skills is awful.
I get it. You like it from both a story perspective (the character actually has to practice a thing to be good at it) and from a mechanical perspective (it identifies people that put in less time and makes PLing a little less attractive). What it actually translates in to is a requirement for players to go through numerous monotonous tasks (monotonous by MMO standards even) and/or playing in an artificial way to navigate the system.
Back in 1999 when a Ranger got to level 9 it was a big deal. They finally got their first set of spells. Minor Healing, Flame Lick, Skin Like Wood and Glimpse were among that list. Minor Healing is Alteration, Flame Lick is Evocation, Skin Like Wood is Abjuration and Glimpse is Divination. At 15 they would get their first Conjuration spell with Dance of the Fireflies. After traveling back to town, buying and memorizing their new spells (don't forget to train them all as well) and heading back out in the world to take on more orcs they were immediately greeted with
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Your spell fizzles!
Insufficient Mana to cast this spell
Fizzles cost mana and only successfully cast spells have a chance at raising your skill. It was common to see some Ranger at the zone in to Crushbone, mangled from whatever had just happened inside, trying to heal themselves and chain-fizzling before expending their mana bar and having a seat. If you wanted to have Snare on command you had to raise your Alteration up to 40 or 50 from 1. Flame Lick? That's Evocation remember. You desire mastery over Skin Like Wood as well? The decadence! At level 15 that same Ranger is going to eventually try and cast Camouflage and find the task Herculean in nature. They would have had to have skilled up and maintained Divination level after level despite the almost zero benefit of casting their only Divination spell - Glimpse. Glimpse zooms in the screen a little. At 30 when the Ranger gets Stinging Insects and defies God himself by attempting to actually cast the fucking thing they'll find they need Conjuration. The only spell of that type they've gotten previously was Dance of the Fireflies. It summons a little light source. Subsequent castings provide no additional benefit. No, it won't even zoom the screen a little.
To acquire full access to their abilities that Ranger needs to stop everything else they are doing and skill them up. That entails casting as many Skin Like Woods as your mana bar allows and sitting back down. Sitting mana regen for a level 9 Ranger is I believe two. With ten ticks per minute each minute of sitting is 20 mana which is two successful casts of Skin Like Wood. You're going to need to cast Skin Like Wood hundreds of times and attempt to cast it thousands. EverQuest is no longer a game at this point. You can spend some skill points to give yourself a head start, you can wait until Meditate at 15 and you can try and bum Clarity but you still have to cast these spells over and over for hours on end.
Even during Vanilla many improvements would be implemented to address hybrid spellcasting and spellcasting in general. Fizzle calculations, skill up rates and how much skill different skills required to be consistent would all be tinkered with a time or two but problems still remained. Players got better and leveling speeds improved as new expansions were released. Back in 2000 when Kunark released I made an Iksar Shaman that I still have some fondness towards to this day. I ran around at all times with Str, Dex, Agility, Stamina, AC, HP and SoW. Haste and Regeneration saw situational use. I never cast all that shit now. Every single buff I have to maintain is less mana devoted towards sustained murder. The whole game is like that now. Everyone is far more economical in their mana use. Refined play combined with faster leveling guarantees some skills fall behind. The Shaman is never going to cast Spirit Sight enough times to maintain their Divination skill naturally like could happen back in '99. Also, why are you casting that shit? That's mana that could be allocated towards dealing out death or healing/buffing death dealers. The Beastlord trying to cast Invisibility at 43 is really up shit's creek. You come back after you've cast True North a few thousand times.
That's just spell skills! There's still Offense, Defense, weapon skills, and all the shit Monks and Rogues have to worry about. The only way to raise Defense is to be attacked and have that attack miss. That's it. In a group (as Everquest promotes grouping) the casters aren't going to be taking all that many hits. As they get higher level taking any hits at all becomes less and less desirable. Trying to raise defense at 50 or 60 starting from 30ish when the only way to do so is having a light blue or higher con mob miss you is a goddamn nightmare. The best way of doing it is to stand in the Arena and have a Magician pet of the proper level murder you endlessly. The best way of raising weapon skills is to put the same pet on passive and whale on it for hour after hour. You can punish the person that is AFK tossing throwing daggers at a water elemental for unattended gameplay but it isn't their fault the system has made breaking a rule the optimal route. If I sit at the computer and read A Tale of Two Cities while I pitch silverware is it then ok? It is? Fine. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It's not like we haven't paid our dues either. I played a Troll SK with all the exp penalties during Vanilla (max int at creation, fight me nerds) and I carefully raised and maintained all of their skills and I did it on Fennin Ro because I thought playing on the highest population server sounded cool. I did the same with a Ranger on RZ. Skin Like Wood? I cast that. Orcs? I snare that. I don't even know how many different Shaman and Beastlords I have messed around with. I think 11? Each time there's a spot where I have to stop and do a few hundred castings of Inner Fire, True North and Burst of Flame just to function. Spirit Strike is a real goddamn bitch to get going let me tell you. That's just the stuff that I remember doing. Everyone has a huge pile of alts and abandoned characters that they've built over the years. We've all done this shit. Wanting people twenty years later to still do the same fucking zero value busywork button presses they've hundreds of thousands of times previously is a formal declaration that you want to play EverQuest with no one but yourself. It's the year of our lord and savior two-thousand and nineteen. The time and money of a gamer have never been more hotly contested and you want people to press their Minor Healing spell gem five thousand goddamn times to earn the right to cast it without fizzling more than regular.
Go fuck yourself.
