Bazaar ***** Cry BabiesFollow

As a NEWCOMER to EQ (yes folks, spankin' new, played only a few weeks) I would offer the following observations.

This entire thread highlights something...

Does anyone play anymore? Sure, there are tons of toons running around, but the lowbs are always begging for buffs or getting powerleveled (really highbs in disguise with no patience for the low end of the game anymore), while the highbs sit around trying to look cool in their newly-purchased bazaar gear (they look like clowns, mostly--I'm going to turn the color off on my monitor because it hurts my eyes). I don't know what else highbs do during the 80 hours per week they play EQ--I suppose they create endless lines of alt characters for "fun", but none of them appear to be having actual fun!

In fact, the one thing highbs AREN'T doing is having fun. That is obvious to anyone (except the highbs who are in denial about it). This is evidenced by the endless ********* moaning and arguing in POK and other populated zones--and forums like this. I doubt very much that everyone is so disagreeable in real life, but put them behind an avatar and all hell breaks loose. My goodness, whatever happened to common courtesy?

C'mon people, think it might be time for a break? Give your addiction a rest for a few days (if you can), and explore real life instead of the new GoD zones, and then come back to this thread, read it again, and tell me it's not completely absurd. This obsession over items, the bazaar, plat duping, and virtual economies...it's not healthy.

Then go back to EQ (because you won't be able to give it up), start a level 1 character, and play the game as it was meant to be played. Forget about the bazaar, forget about twinking, actually PLAY (if you even remember how). I've had great fun questing for newb armor, making my own food, tailoring my own clothes--clear to level 30. Have hardly bought anything. It just takes something that is in very short supply these days: patience.

And noone can tell me that level 30 is less fun than level 50, so spare me that retort. In fact, I suspect 50 is much LESS fun, unless you have some unresolved issues that make you obsess over your level, and a deep need to always be "uber" compared to other players. Besides, being a lowb is fun because the "old world" zones are mostly empty--deemed boring, I suppose, by the experienced players, and that's nice. More peace and quiet for those of us who just enjoying PLAYING A GAME.

I wish I had discovered EQ a few years ago, before it began to unravel. I get the sense that it must've been tremendous--just look at all the people who cannot leave it, even though they no longer derive any fun from EQ and it causes them to behave in harmful ways. Oh, wait...I believe that's a clinical definition of addiction? There's that word again. There seems to be a lot of joking about "the addiction" on these boards, but it you take a step back, you'll see that it really isn't that funny. How long can you leave your toon camped without logging in? Do you feel compelled? Think about it. Do something bold...delete your main...just delete it and move on. Can you do it? I'll bet real money (not that fakey plat, haha) you can't...

And now I'm sure that people will respond, telling me what a moron I am, questioning my parentage, angry because they are the exception "I'm not like that at all!", or dissecting one sentence from my post and flaming me for no reason other than to make themselves feel better. Or the best one of all: telling me that I don't "understand the high end of the game". As if this were something we should all aspire to! After reading these forums for the first time today, and seeing the generally mean tone and negative comments, I'm absolutely sure that I DON'T want to see the high end of this game. Not if this crowd is any indication of the people I have to play with when I get there. I'll play to 50 (old world level max is good enough for me) then hang it up forever, fun's over, time to move on...

And if I did know the high end of the game extremely well, I think I'd be ashamed to admit it, branded an obvious EQ addict when you consider all the hours, days, weeks, months, years living in a GAME...and this is a good thing?

Ah well, long post, but if I've reached one highb, caused one person to think, "Hmmm...maybe I should be just a bit nicer", or "Maybe I should sit down and play with my kids instead of EQ tonight", then it was worth every letter.

Signed,
Guillimen the old, surly necromancer

PS> Here's my suggestion to "fix" the game: Sony should host some "classic" servers without the expansion packs. Imagine an old-world only server, or an old-world + kunark server. Apply patches and bug fixes, but forget about the expansion features. Allow one-way transfers off these servers for the regular fee, but nothing in reverse. This way, people like me who want to PLAY and are actually new to the game can do so without getting in the way of experienced players. And perhaps we can share some of the wonder that many of you must've felt years ago when EQ was new. This is what they should've done with Stromm.

Are you kidding me? post 50 game is 10-20 times more fun than the sub 50 game! Do you think people Power level to avoid all the fun or to get quickly to the fun part?
At lvl 30 you have only just touched on the class defineing aspects of your class, can raid <if you can find a 30's raiding guild> 3-5 zones for 10 mobs tops.
There is a good reason to trawl your way to lvl 50 the old fasioned way and most of <if not all> of the posters on this forum have done it but do it again and again no thanks i'll bone chip/Cb belt/pad to 16 PC to 25 HHk to 30 in a week and then settle down to playing with good gear and sound idea of how to play by reading this and other forums.

As for not wanting to be known as an expert ... why shouldn't i want be known as an expert in my chosen hobby,like soccer fans are <american> football fans are, baseball fans are and any other fans i am proud to know about my hobby and to hold my own in a debate about it.

The only way to make the PP problem go away is to make all non tradeskill made, equipable items no drop and that is not going to happen.

from one very happy Highb who is not flaming you because i want to look better, i am flaming you because you are wrong, simple as that.

No Devilwind, 30 didn't seem terribly hard, and everything I've read suggests that necromancers have a bit of an advantage soloing--hence my class selection (although in retrospect, I might've chosen something besides human, that was a bit of a mistake). It's not exactly easy, but there is so much information on the Internet--maps, leveling guides, tradeskill guides--I mean, if you take the time to learn about the game, there's nothing to figure out at low levels, it's all been done before. Like a game of chess, the fun is in the nuance, the permutations, the association with others. And frankly, I don't understand why someone would be suspicious of me being an 'actual' newb.

An hour or two every night for several weeks has been more than sufficient to reach 30. Is that fast? I didn't think so until reading your post. I saw a berzerker on my server Wednesday that was already 45! How in the world do they do that? More importantly, WHY do they do that? Are they so bored with the low game that they just want to skip the entire thing? Or do they just want the pride (not really pride when you examine it) of having the highest level new class on their server? Well, that's rhetorical, the answer is clearly YES.

Really it has been great fun, but it distresses me to see what the end game looks like--not fun, imho. That is the tone of my remarks yesterday.

And does it really take so much knowledge of the game to make lion steaks? Haha, didn't think so. EQ traders told me exactly where to find the ingredients--CHEAP ingredients, at that, if you don't mind doing some legwork and killing a bunch of lions and bears. (Sure lasts longer than those darn rations, haha.) It's not like I'm making this ornate stuff you guys keep droning on about--I don't even know what that is.

But again, this is my point. I take some extra time, kill lions, make food. Do a quest, get a staff/helmet/etc. I don't go to the bazaar looking for stuff, I haven't needed it! Why waste what little plat I have on stuff that I don't need?

But goodness me, I had several people tell me in-game, when they saw me camping king snakes for a quest, "Why are you wasting your time on that? Just go to the bazaar and buy better stuff." This was their great tip for the newb--assuming that I was in some sort of hurry--a sure way to keep every newb completely broke and obsessed with their equipment.

Take a step back, you'll see that I'm not off topic. The problem is not these plat selling outfits, the problem is the obsession with gear that so many players seem to have. Too many players want to get more plat to buy more gear. Even when they have good gear, I suspect they go the bazaar several times a week just to see if they can find even better gear for a good price. Then they end up with a bunch of old gear that they have to sell, and repeat this entire thing over again...until what? Do they ever stop? Doubt it. In response, I'm sure the game designers have to make the higher level monsters even harder to beat in order to balance the obscene 'uberness' (getting real tired of that word) of the player community.

It's not EQs fault, it just tracks the rampant materialism of our culture (but that's another discussion). I'm sure it's been said before, but the game is called everQUEST. This little phoney economy is nothing more than a way to circumvent the design of the game by having high level toons offer stuff to low level toons--appeal to the natural tendency of people who want better stuff than their neighbors, to be more powerful than the next guy, to be 'uber' at level 4.

It makes me laugh, it really does. But let's leave it at this: you have your game, I have mine. They are not the same game. In my mode plat selling does not matter. The bazaar does not matter. And imho, if more people chose to play this way, the economic problems would go away. (Except for those faithful few who will always be obsessed, no matter what.) Thankfully, the world of EQ is large enough to serve both styles of play.

OK, lunch break over. Can't believe I wasted it on a dead thread... ;-)

Hehe. We're mostly just nitpicking now, but what the heck?




No. There aren't any "sets" of armor equivalent to Ornate. There are individual pieces that are. Huge difference...

The closest "sets" of armor to Ornate are the Velious armors, with Kael probably being preferred. Um... There's a pretty big jump from that stuff to Ornate. Yes. You can get bits and pieces in SoL and PoP zones, and maybe even some that you could one group. But you're going to be running all over the place.

Actually, I'll place a disclaimer that I don't actually know if there is an armor set in VT. I haven't been there yet. I've never heard of one. However, I'm fairly confident that if you can one group VT, then you're already in elemental or better anyway, so the point is moot.



Yes. But a guild having "everything it needs", does not mean that every character will have every slot upgraded in the current raid level before moving on. Pretty much no one does that. You'll have a guild full of people screaming at you and leaving if you do that. On average, when moving through content, each character can expect maybe 2 or 3 drops from an area before the guild moves on. That's just the way it is. It is increasingly common for raid players to suppliment their drops by buying gear in the bazaar to fill in slots they are lacking in.

Have you looked at armor lately? I do. Every once in awhile. just to see what's out there for sale. I can't recall seeing anything for sale that was better then what I have for a loooong time. Ornate molds are the only thing that's consistently for sale anywhere that would allow me to upgrade major armor slots (head, arms, hands, chest, legs, feet).

Um... It's alot harder and you have to be alot luckier to get those single slot upgrades that you *can* get from single group work in some zones. It's again about time. For the most part, I raid to get gear and I group to get exp. It's very rare that the two combine. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten some nice items in single groups in Veksar and the new PoH. But that's about it. And I think I can list off maybe 3 items that I currently wear that were obtained that way. The vast majority of my gear was obtained during full raids.



As to the time issue. It's not just raw time, but what your time is being spent doing. I already spend X amount of my game time raiding. I suppose I could spend the remaining Y amount of time doing LDoNs, or specifically hunting in zones where gear I need drops. However, it's also important to gain levels and AA points. When am I going to do that? LDoN exp absolutely sucks post 60 (probably post 50, but I'm not sure). Getting a blue and a half per hour isn't exactly stellar by anyone's measure. I'm not going to do that for 30 hours to get a single drop.

First I will state that at no point did I disagree with you. My point about the level adding to fun is that you might have been drawn to playing the game for a certain aspect.

If you wanted to play an enchanter so you could make magical jewlery for your friends, you have to be at least level 8. Is there something wrong with focusing to getting to 8 as fast as possible? Maybe then you slow down.

If your playing a gnome so you can tinker fireworks cause you like throwing little parties in the game, you need to get to level 16 at least, so whats wrong with having that as a goal.

I like making potions, I think its great fun to make little potions and give them to people as my shaman. That was a goal for me. I had to reach 25 to do that.



Most likely this task was not done alone: they are likely part of a large guild (raiding guild most likely), and who knows the benefits of playing berserkers (good chance someone in the guild maybe even beta tested zerkers) and they felt it would be in the guilds best intrest to powerlevel this character, probably having people alternate playing the character until this point. They like raiding in the planes - you need a certain level to do that, is getting to that point to do what they feel is fun wrong?


Ah, now for you to contradict yourself:




Ok, so your theory is to actually Play the gameI'm supposed go out and read every strategy guide that tells me step by step how to do things? Right?

Thats what you did! You played a Necro because something told you they were good soloists. Why didn't you just "experiment" and find out if a mage was good, maybe a warrior can do it, monk?



Well, if its such a horrible thing to go out and buy the best gear in the bazaar and powerlevel, why is it ok to go out and find out what all the recipies are make the specific items you want?

Why didn't you just go to the various merchants and buy the books that give you the recipies, and write them in a note book or open a notepad and save them all, thats what I did when I started playing.

Your still powerleveling, just a different aspect of the game.

And I'm sure with all the maps you have you've never stumbled into an area you were just to low level to go to..



Yes but your supposed to quest in the GAME not quest through thousands of web pages finding all the quests you can do and the recipies you can make and maps you can download or print out. Your supposed to find that out yourself.



Can you do the same thing? Can you go back and delete your main character - delete all of your maps, delete all of your notes, and go back and play a brand spaking new character - try a Gnome Warrior or an Euridite Shadowknight - make that new character and without any guideance play him.

No Web pages
No Notes
No Maps

I bet you can't do it either

Back to my new - untwinked Beserker :D

Prices have come down to where things are almost affordable... now all I need is some Plat!!


How do you search for a ***** in the bazaar? and what is going rate??

The target of Tehom's comment was not asking about the low-mid end game or raiding questions or whatever. The target of Tehom's comments was actively mocking someone else's guild for "only" being in BoT. Seems to me that when you mock someone for being lower than you, you open yourself up for the same from people higher up the ladder. Kind of like when some sophmore thinks he's the big man for pushing around a freshman until the senior comes along and asks WTF his problem is for thinking that's cool.

You need to keep my comments in context, please.

Edited, Sun Feb 15 16:04:38 2004 by Jophiel