I remember sitting on the North Wall of Karnor’s Castle back in 2000 or 2001, doing my best to keep my group healed as a mid-40s druid, and chatting with the other people in my group. Yeah, we did a lot of chatting. I don’t know why people keep calling EQ1 a hardcore game… playing EQ1 was like sitting on a beach chair watching the surf crash, and occasionally rousing oneself off that beach chair to fall upon the surf and really mess it up, then relaxing again as the puller went out to find more surf.
Where was I… oh yeah, North Wall. Anyway, we were chatting about the godlike people in uber guilds. This was back before everything became instanced, and uber guilds often raided in the exact same zones people xp’d in — you could even watch! Instead of having one world for raiders and another for non-raiders, everyone existed together, and you would see ubers riding the same boat you did, conversations would strike up, you’d find they were regular people who just happened to see amazing stuff…
Damn, have to stop falling back into Nostalgia. But I guess this whole post is really about that.
Back to that group on the North Wall. We were chatting about how amazing the raid gear was that you could get in the planes… why, there was even rumors of a warrior with over 5,000 hit points!
We were all astonished. I doubt there was a person in that group with over 1,500 hit points. How could we ever see those numbers?
A couple of years passed, and I was a young rogue eager to join this new raiding guild, Crimson Eternity. They were rude upstarts in the raiding community; they’d been the first to kill Doomshade on our server, beating out the older raiding guilds. They were a family guild that had suddenly found itself raiding — and they were rather good at it.
There may have been three or four rogues in the guild at that time, and naturally, we were all excited about our gear. Everyone was level 60 at that point, Planes of Power not yet having boosted the cap to 65. I remember our hit points. I was just barely at 4000 hit points. The guild leader and lead rogue, Westleey, was over ***6,000*** hit points, but he had a lot of Temple of Veeshan quest armor.
Okay, now take a look at my signature pic at the top of the article. It’s a live signature, I have a program that grabs the stats from EQPlayers every six hours and makes a new signature, so those stats are not more than six hours old.
As of this writing, my ranger is level 47. with 3,443 hit points. How? That new Defiant armor, plus some Secrets of Faydwer crafted jewelry Stargrace made me. People wonder how we can possibly level so fast, playing one day a week. It’s because modern EQ dresses you in raid gear from day 1.
From excellent armor given in the *tutorial*, to the level 20 Crescent Reach quest armor and now this Defiant stuff… you’re practically twinked just by standing around. There is nothing my ranger wears that came from any zone she cannot fight in. In fact, I think almost all of her gear came from the Crescent Reach quests, Stone Hive, or Dulak’s Harbor.
And at 47, I have nearly as many hit points as my rogue did at level 60 with 18 AAs.
I’m not complaining, really. I guess it’s cool being raid geared without raiding. But it sure gives you darn little reason to START raiding though, doesn’t it?
We’re going to kill Nagafen and Vox soon. We’re going to hold our levels at 52, earn some AAs, get everyone up to date with jewelry and Defiant armor, and then we’re going to shake those complacent dragons nobody ever kills these days to the bone. Can you imagine what two-three groups of noobs in armor that would make hardcore level 60 raiders of days past drool, with veteran rewards giving us max resists, will do?
I feel pretty sorry for those dragons.
I certainly feel the same way. Astounded that my 47 cleric has 4.5k mana while my 68 (granted, three years old and HEAVILY out dated now, has never raided etc) has only 5k.
Those dragons are in for a heavy beating.
We’re going to be the ones in for a surprise. We’ll trod confidently into Nagafen’s Lair and discover that his sleeping form looks a bit strange…
Urtog: “I thought ‘e was s’posta be red…why’s he look greener thin I ‘member?”
Tipa: “You always have crap coming out of your mouth, maybe some of it got in your eyes.”
Stargrace: “No…I think he’s right, he definitely looks more green than he used to…”
Urtog: “An’ I’m rilly not ‘memberin’ ‘im havin’ a beefy arm comin’ oot th’ middle his back like that!”
Stargrace: “I see consummate V’s…I think we should leave. Now.”
*The dragon stirs!*
Trogdor: “FOOLS! YOUR DEFIANT GEAR MAY HAVE GOTTEN YOU THIS FAR! BUT YOUR DEFIANT ATTITUDES WILL BE YOUR UTTER BURNINATION!”
Nostalgia the Guild was Burninated into oblivion like so many thatched-roof cottages that day, they were never seen again.
And the Trogdor burns into the NIIIIIIIIIIGHT
To be honest — I like that the mudflation makes it possible to 2-group or 3-group what used to be true raid encounters. I’ve never particularly enjoyed raids (and especially don’t have the time for them) – -it’s much easier to organize 12 people then 24 or 48, and makes it feasible to get the runs done in a timely manner.
So, while it IS odd to see the low level gear in comparison to what was once a big deal to get (I had a Dark Ember in the bank that isn’t being used because a Defiant drop was better), it’s not particularly upsetting to me. Nor is it surprising, as I remember watching it happen with every expansion (and WoW’s BC expansion practically defined mudflation!)
I can’t wait to kill me some dragons!
I fully agree with Loredena… I was never much of a raider. Too much time to get things set, too many people trying to do their own thing, and everything else that came with them.
No matter what, I’d try anything with this group of folks. (well, except maybe going to The Hole with Star…)
TGINF!!! (Thank Goodness It’s Nostalgia Friday!) Cya tonight all!
Well, we *are* going to the Hole sometime 🙂
You should realize, that killing the dragons *is* a raid, and you will need to prepare. We’ve seen time and again that our better gear is not an automatic *I WIN* button. These dragons will strip your buffs and fear you into monsters who will thump you.
The Hole is *also* a raid once you get deep enough. In fact, almost every regular zone we explore is also partly a raid zone. There wasn’t a hard division between group content and raid content in old EQ, and there could be a time when we’re exploring Old Sebilis or Karnor’s Castle or Kedge Keep and come upon something that spits us in the eye, and we decide we want to spit back.
Though once we get past level limited mobs like the old dragons, usually the bosses are killed casually by higher level people. So we might never get the chance. And we will never be a raid guild, but we might well be a guild that raids on rare occasions.
Gnewton is just going the ‘fast’ way… It’s Nostalgia ritual. Initiation, whatever. I want to see if a gnome falls into The Hole and Nostalgia is around to hear him, will he still make a splat.
I guess I should clarify a little 🙂
I went on a couple extremely unprepared raids which took a couple HOURS to get moving. It was awful. However, the idea of raiding and crawling as a group is definitely interesting to me and I find myself drawn to the “big kill”. I love taking down named and all that goes into it.
I also know that this group will be prepared for whatever we try and I’m thoroughly excited about the future. Like I said before… I’ll follow Nostalgia wherever it decides to tread!
/em looks around for his gnomish fast-deploying parachute for when he follows Star’s “directions”…
Crawling as two groups is fun, whether in ‘used to be raid content’ or not. I was in a casual guild, not a raiding one. Serr (Cleric) has her epic; we also got epics for a druid, a beastlord, and a necro that I can remember (not sure the pally ever finished hers). But, we did all of them when they were no longer considered ‘traditional raid-required’, and we did all the fights with 2 groups; one in most cases. The Vox raid actually drove me batty, and that was the closest thing to a true raid we did – I think we started with 3 groups, and I was raid leader while boxing the main tank and main healer – (Gorenaire was way easier, since we didn’t have to spend time clearing a room first). We crawled Chardok to get what I needed; we crawled Sky for the necro’s drop; I’ve done the DB drop into the Hole and then crawled it with a single group. Back in the day those really were raids, but not by the time I went in. Doing Vox and Naggy is probably the closest we’ll get to what I remember those old-school raids being like, because it will be a rare night we’ll have even 3 full groups on without boxing.
As you say — if you’re going up against end-game bosses, even if they are 10 expansions-ago end-game, resists matter. I think resists are a ton easier to get now though, and even two years ago they were manageable for those guilds working a couple expansions back (as we are likely to be).
Strangely, I think that all this new uber-gear is going to make doing the older raid type encounters more inviting. For a lot of these older encounters it will no longer be about getting the gear that drops but about the experience. We’ll all be able to just sit back and enjoy the ride so to speak.
I’m looking forward to trying Naggy and Vox, and I’d like to take Trak down, we never managed that the first time since he was never home.
It’s just a difference in the way we’re using the word hardcore I think… when I think of hardcore it’s defined by the old EQ experience. The way that a group is required for most quests, and for truly worthwhile quests many more people are needed. The way that zones are designed to be punishingly difficult for a solo player. The corpse runs and the lack of nightvision. And the lack of a quest system that’s designed so that you don’t need copious notes to keep track of what every item in your bank is for.
It’s just a point of view… when I played EQ I would have to play for hours to feel like I accomplished something, and to get into a good group you’d sometimes need hours. Once in the group and grinding it is a social game, because it has to be to hold interest.
I love that world but what I really loved about it was the community and my friends and later my guild. Seeing content and raiding was the icing on the cake.