New Progression Server confirmed

Apostolos · Mar 2, 2015

Jysin_sl said:
My memory might not be the best, but doesn't Cazic DT?

Hell even discounting that, how is that possible? I'm sorry, but I am completely ignorant of progression server specifics, but is that because defiant still drops or something? He was a 50+ person raid mob at lvl 50 unless I am off my rocker, so how could he be duo'd?

Zaide · Mar 2, 2015

Apostolos_sl said:
Hell even discounting that, how is that possible? I'm sorry, but I am completely ignorant of progression server specifics, but is that because defiant still drops or something? He was a 50+ person raid mob at lvl 50 unless I am off my rocker, so how could he be duo'd?

CT does not DT on prog. He has a 10k Harm Touch sort of spell which acts the same for PC'S though. You can charm Irak Altil who has 32khp and hits for like 150-320. We have a video of Across doing it somewhere.

Zaide · Mar 2, 2015

We've only got 31 seconds because this was the trial version of Fraps but here's how it looks.

Kreugen · Mar 2, 2015

Or you can bring two groups and kill him. Old world progression is an absolute joke. I cannot stress enough how much easier everything is due to all of the changes to the stat system. One grouping VP? Clearing plane of sky at level 50? Killing AOW with 0 deaths within an hour of Velious opening? One shotting every raid mob you face all the way through PoP?

The group game is no better. One group can kill every frog from ghoul lord to executioner area. (That's every blue mob in that half of the dungeon, if you recall) 26 minute respawns are an eternity with the dps you put out now.

The general differences vs classic are - everyone does more dps, tank classes will max mitigate nearly every hit, all spells are more mana efficient, there are no fizzles, no enrage, your spells resist less often, pets are insane, you can partial resist certain spells that used to be all-or-nothing, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

This is mostly because stats have a greater effect and pre-soft capped AC is higher across the board. The whole stat system was revamped for TSS, which features an entire new level 1+ game where everything hits MUCH MUCH harder than classic, but drops much better gear as well. The game is now tuned for shit that triple hits for like 400 by level 40. The idea being to smooth out the retarded jump that occurs in Gates of Discord where suddenly zone trash hits like Plane of Time bosses.

So anyway, when you are asking for "five years for each expansion!", bear in mind the game you will be playing. A game where there are HUNDREDS of people who can easily kill Nagafen, and thousands who can camp the Ghoul Lord.

A game where you will literally be sitting in one room waiting 25 minutes for the next round of mobs to spawn because that's the only thing that isn't camped.

You know what you should be asking for? A server that starts at PoP, for people who won't want to be bored to fucking death by a trivial joke of a game. Because I seriously doubt they are going to re-tune the entire game to make it into something worth playing.

Vaclav · Mar 2, 2015

Kreu - I keep hoping they'll throw an "aura" effect on the entire server to nerf characters appropriately and keep nudging for it - but it's not gotten any real player support thusfar unfortunately.

Seems a simple enough fix for SOE/DB to throw at it, besides calculating the numbers too - but if people don't want it, won't happen.

Jysin · Mar 2, 2015

Kreugen_sl said:
Or you can bring two groups and kill him. Old world progression is an absolute joke. I cannot stress enough how much easier everything is due to all of the changes to the stat system. One grouping VP? Clearing plane of sky at level 50? Killing AOW with 0 deaths within an hour of Velious opening? One shotting every raid mob you face all the way through PoP?

The group game is no better. One group can kill every frog from ghoul lord to executioner area. (That's every blue mob in that half of the dungeon, if you recall) 26 minute respawns are an eternity with the dps you put out now.

The general differences vs classic are - everyone does more dps, tank classes will max mitigate nearly every hit, all spells are more mana efficient, there are no fizzles, no enrage, your spells resist less often, pets are insane, you can partial resist certain spells that used to be all-or-nothing, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

This is mostly because stats have a greater effect and pre-soft capped AC is higher across the board. The whole stat system was revamped for TSS, which features an entire new level 1+ game where everything hits MUCH MUCH harder than classic, but drops much better gear as well. The game is now tuned for shit that triple hits for like 400 by level 40. The idea being to smooth out the retarded jump that occurs in Gates of Discord where suddenly zone trash hits like Plane of Time bosses.

So anyway, when you are asking for "five years for each expansion!", bear in mind the game you will be playing. A game where there are HUNDREDS of people who can easily kill Nagafen, and thousands who can camp the Ghoul Lord.

A game where you will literally be sitting in one room waiting 25 minutes for the next round of mobs to spawn because that's the only thing that isn't camped.

You know what you should be asking for? A server that starts at PoP, for people who won't want to be bored to fucking death by a trivial joke of a game. Because I seriously doubt they are going to re-tune the entire game to make it into something worth playing.

That's depressing.. to say the least.

Kreugen · Mar 2, 2015

Best way I can think of to illustrate how big the difference is:

Classic: With full velious armor and defensive disc active, the AOW could (and often would) literally one-round a tank.

Progression: Tank in Kunark gear (thus half the HP/AC & pathetic stats) didn't die even with defensive disc off.

This remains true even in GOD, where Tunat was originally untankable for his first 20% (near constant 7500 quad hits vs 15khp) and required goofiness like exploiting the fact that he's rooted.

Hell, what was the first boss we even wiped to on our first attempt? It took a LONG time (2 years?) of Vulak before the raid content was anything more than a joke of a steamroll. The only thing that made it enjoyable was the bullshit chatter. (Damdor was a lot of things, but he was certainly entertaining)

If you want classic EQ, it already exists with P99. The only way you'll see that in official EQ is if the new company puts a halt to further expansions and leaves enough of a maintenance crew to put something together. OR they successfully pitch that putting resources to it will be worth the return (but it still means taking people off of expansion dev - Elidroth want to weigh in?)

BTW, did this round of progression catch all the way up yet?

Crone · Mar 2, 2015

^^^ Agree completely. People asking for a Limited Progression server don't realize the game they are walking into. It's not P99 true to form. Or EQ Mac. It's going to be boring as stuff is steam rolled if new expansions don't open up quickly, and KEEP opening up.

Edit: Btw Kreugen, despite your comments, we gotta play again. Me you and Core.

Kreugen · Mar 2, 2015

I burned out on both "halves" of the game the last time. (stuff I did already vs stuff that was new to me) The early parts are too trivial, and too much "been there, done that." It's like playing a game on easy after beating it on nightmare. I enjoyed the hanging out and bsing, but I also spent a lot of the time looking for other shit to do while I "played" eq. So I told myself I'd enjoy it if I took a break and came back to do the stuff I'd never seen before. But then that means grinding AA, and grinding AA means boxing, and boxing means camping gear for boxes, and it just snowballs into WAY too much time sitting in some zone by myself running 4+ characters and that was a goddamn frustrating chore. It only worked out initially when I was just borrowing other people's dead chars but then their gear started to get out of date and there I was with maxed out AA camping gear to keep up alts so I could continue to keep up with AA and just... ugh. It was unsustainable.

If I didn't care about making parse, or keeping up AA, or doing much of anything outside of raiding.. maybe it'd work. Lots of people were playing that way.

Thing is, I'm not in a dead WoW guild anymore. And I like these guys. I also like sleep.

For me, at this point, EQ doesn't even start until TSS. Because I've done everything else, and the game is tuned for TSS and beyond. But I burned myself out before we got there last time with all those fucking chars I was trying to run. Camping group gear for alts is 1000x more time consuming than raiding.

Apostolos · Mar 2, 2015

I agree with you there. The best is when you can get a full group or two of people who just always play and help each other out with gear and groups. Every time I try and get back into a standard server its about impossible to get that kind of support when you are lvl 65-90. Then combine that with how so many zones require X number of real players and disallow mercs and it starts to snowball into a huge barrier to entry of anyone trying to come back and catch up. Personally I think prestiege items and AA's should not be limited until a the most the last 3 expansions if not just the last 2 of whatever is out. That to me is why a progression server is appealing: the hope that I can actually find other people to group up with if I want to get back up to speed. (also.. ya sleep is good)

Big Phoenix · Mar 2, 2015

telling you, progression is like p99 without GMs doing anything to police shithead behavior.

Vaclav · Mar 2, 2015

Big Phoenix_sl said:
telling you, progression is like p99 without GMs doing anything to police shithead behavior.

Which is why some people are lobbying to get fixes in place that makes the shithead behavior avoidable or pointless.

Rangoth · Mar 2, 2015

All well said. They did gimp the game, everything pre-TSS is mostly just nostalgic which you can get by making a character one any server and starting at level 65 or whatever just go own all your favorite old zones.

That being said I would still play a progression server because the pathetic in my still does like EQ and it would be fun to sort of pick up where I quit and see new zones and raids. Kreugen said it though, you end boxing or mercing just to keep up, though with all the benefits and changes it no where near as hard as it was back in the day, but still a painful grind at times.

The main thing that prevents me from coming back, and I guess this makes me a pussy on this board, is that no old content is instanced. Love the game and all that but I really don't care to fight over the handful of raid bosses pre-pop at my age and with my limited time. Especially when they are such a huge joke like they are. All meaningful content(or damn near all) post-GoD is instanced and you never hear people complain, just like you don't in WoW, AND there are still have's and have not's proving that there can exist a challenge....or at least hurdle of some kind that isn't who has more and stays up later/rises earlier. Don't want to beat a dead horse down but I literally just can't do that kind of camping and racing anymore, it's neither possible for me(if I wanted to) nor entertaining in the least.

It's funny logging on Live servers, even now today everything not instanced is farmed and killed within...I'd say 15 minutes, of spawn. Most are instantly but some like Phinny(12 hour timer if memory serves), actually stay alive for 10-15 minutes before someone runs in. Shit it's not even just MQ(multi-quest not hack MQ) or "neat clicky" items(hi VT) that are farmed. Everything is, even that Tawro/Radir crap in UP...it's actually kind of funny.

Vaclav · Mar 2, 2015

Rangoth: A few of us, Frenzic and I from here, if not more - are lobbying specifically for instancing (while still leaving the instances up) to curb that bullshit.

Crone · Mar 2, 2015

Vaclav_sl said:
Rangoth: A few of us, Frenzic and I from here, if not more - are lobbying specifically for instancing (while still leaving the instances up) to curb that bullshit.

Instancing while still leaving the current difficulty in? Do you really want every single dude boxing mages and getting Naggy loot? or any classic boss loot? I guess I'm a dick, because it was part of the fun beating people to content, but also getting the loot that no one else was going to get, because we had already killed it.

I realize the flip side of that which you are trying to avoid. All the bullshit, etc, wasn't really that fun either, but being a unique snowflake with bad ass gear I feel would be greatly diminished if it was all instanced.

What if instead, they actually just have some customer service reps that give a shit, and are consistent with their enforcement? I guess Daybreak just layed all of them off though so I guess this isn't happening either.

Vaclav · Mar 2, 2015

Yea, Crone I pitched an idea of consistent GM enforcement - and Roshen's answer was "I don't anticipate we'll have any option that requires a team of server GMs to manage players, guilds, and contested raid targets, spawns, and guild/raid rotations." - so it's not realistic.

And keep in mind, they can have high player numbers and long timers on the lockouts for instancing if they do it - so that "boxer" better be Sam the Man, because otherwise they're not going to have enough boxes to do the instance every week or two.

Also on the "too much loot" thought - with the accelerated timeline the Progression servers are on - I did the math over on the official forums - assuming a 1 week lockout and 5 raiding guilds (remember, it's being pushed to have reasonably high lockouts to keep it as a guild thing, not something for boxers to abuse) there would still be about the same number of drops in a 3 month Classic Progression than uninstanced versions of the same spawn would've had in Classic on a normal server over the ~54 weeks between launch and Kunark. [assuming no zone crashes which would of course accelerate things]

The drops per era on Progression were stunted incredibly low, to be honest, because of the rapidity of expansions.

Zaide · Mar 2, 2015

Vaclav_sl said:
The drops per era on Progression were stunted incredibly low, to be honest, because of the rapidity of expansions.

Remember for the most part it took months to get those raid mobs down. Killing VP mobs during Kunark, or even Gore took a while. On TLP it took like 3 days. Also respawns are half the time of classic.

TheRashyman · Mar 2, 2015

I miss old man Kreugen, not down for more Efreeti camping and sleepless nights?

I actually wouldn't mind instancing if it was just for raid targets, but part of the fun in EQ is meeting people and grouping together. There are guys I still game with be it League, FPS, or whatever that I would have never met if EQ had been like WoW and a complete instance/solofest to max level. Yes there is the whole raiding and being max, but I met many people who I continued to play with and chose a guild on because I leveled with them hours on end before anything else. To me this is one thing games lack today and I wish a company would find a way to make it relevant.

Vic

Vaclav · Mar 2, 2015

Zaide_sl said:
Remember for the most part it took months to get those raid mobs down. Killing VP mobs during Kunark, or even Gore took a while. On TLP it took like 3 days. Also respawns are half the time of classic.

Depends on which server - in most cases once they weren't bugged most content fell relatively quickly. Regardless 4 weeks lost learning on a 12 month original server is equivalent to losing a week on a Progression server at 3 months. It's really not that drastically different (barring bugged content issues)

And killing VP in 3 days would have everything to do with a bugged charm mob being abused that's already on the "fix list", FYI. Six manning VP without the pet is not going to happen. (Heck, if you had bad luck with see invis it might not happen anyhow)

[Also, original servers had a bad tendency to crash and they respawned all raid mobs immediately on server respawn for the first until a good ways through Luclin - it wasn't uncommon for 4-5 kills to happen in a week even without people abusing crashing zones to respawn raid mobs (it might have been PoP it got fixed even, I forget - I know Ssra was the most common place intentionally crashing a zone was done for respawns though) - that probably counterbalances any time lost to old servers "learning" or "waiting for bugs to be fixed"]

There's a mythology as if people knew exactly where every CoF that dropped went - which is complete bunk - so many dropped that people lost track quickly, even on servers with only one guild monopolizing a spawn people would still often lose track.

Zaide · Mar 2, 2015

Maybe I'm just thinking of specific examples but I recall AoW dying a handful of times before SoL, Trak took like two or three months by the LoS archive I believe. Whereas these were dying day one on TLP. I think EoE and co did VP with 13 people btw. Not sure the charm glitches were a big deal in VP.

New Progression Server confirmed

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