I hold these truths to be self evident...Follow

In my ten years of playing this game, I have learned:

1) There are so many quests to do at every level that you don't really need to ever grind...

2) There are so many peeps looking to play in a group...you never have to play alone...

3) If you are grinding, you are doing so by choice...

4) If you are grinding, you have lost the essence of Everquest...and in many cases you may never have had that essence.

5) No matter the how many toons you make, delete, and remake...they are a representation of your real character, you cannot escape this. Your subconscious will always win out.

i.e. if you are a good friend to others and a delight to be around in real life...you will be the same in-game.

This means the opposite is also true, so stop telling us that it is you "roll play" to be an ***.
We all know:
1) if you are an *** in-game, then you are an *** in real-life. (to the extent that your Mother will allow you to get away with it..before grounding you to the basement ...with internet unplugged)

I have always enjoyed the game, I get a kick out of helping people accomplish things in game... it is almost as good as helping someone in real life.

Sadly, the help requests over the years have changed from the typical
"how would you recommend doing this?" or
"have you ever done this? Is this the right way?"
To which my response was some version of my experience along with an offer to help them.

to /shout hey anyone pl-ing out there
or /tell powerlevel me dude!!!

It seems like I have never seen so many people wanting to skip the integral enjoyment of the game ...to get to the ...GAME!

If I hadn't been playing since 2003 and raised a dozen or so toons from 1 to 70 and 4 main toons to 90, I would think that this game doesn't start until level 95 and it must end at level 100.

Lol my new favorite message in general is "wtb wm gc", usually within a couple minutes followed buy, "wts wm gc"

I decided to follow up on this one day:
As I was snaring a Noc to keep him in place for the final beat-down my sk was handing out I sent a tell to the player advertising "wtb wm gc pst"

me: what is a wm gc?
otherguy (some version of grrm's kingslayer): game card...
me: ok, wm?
otherguy: yeah, how much?
me: no...what is wm?
otherguy: WAL MART...GAME CARD HOW MUCH YOU WANT!!!
me: wow! ok, what is normal for them?

By this time I have cycled a couple more nocs, an ukun and ...
otherguy: SO...HOW MUCH FOR THE GC?
me: I don't have any, sorry?
otherguy: ICANTF#@%%INGBELIEVEYOUWASTEDMYTIME!!!
me: yeah me either

Now my named Ikaav has popped and I am trying not to die too quickly when...
otherguy: IFOUNDYOU!!!TRAINTIME!!!

I am just about finished playing with Mrs. Ikaav so...
me: whats up with you?
otherguy: YOU MESSED WITH THE WRONG DUDE! DUDE!
me: what is up?
no answer, so I keep cycling these pops for another ten minutes before I have to stop my battle against the evil forces of Discord for the night. I generally like to camp at the zone entrance, and on my way there I see this corpse about ten steps out of the tunnels that lead from the Void
to Old Bloodfields...I can't help laughing as I send a tell to otherguy...

me: you ok? I can drag you to a safe place and rez you with my shammy...
I wait a minute or so and then...
otherguy: F%$& OFF
me: sure, but what level are you?
otherguy: 95, why?
me: what killed you, all these things are light blue to me at 90.
otherguy: IJUSTNEEDAF$#@@@WMGCSOICANLEVELYOUF*&^TARD!!
me: Wow!

Anyway...it seems no matter the changes in the game...some things stay the same.

I guess I'll do some more grind tomorrow ;-)

Edited, Jan 3rd 2013 8:48pm by alwayslost

Hey Always. Courtin dinged 91 last night. Been working through the Sod tasks with the help of random players and now my new guild. Aude still exists but only shaman left as a player.

As for number two even my 51 mage can get the occasional group, but it is a challenge.

Grats Jon!!



Well said MissJ ;-)

I wanted to just comment on a few things:

Viable XP methods are not what I choose to make the game about...if this were the case I would be burnt out on this game a month after every expansion were released.

I constantly read this,same comment post after post. I find it not to be true, but as everyone knows game experiences vary by player...says so on the box.
I do make an effort to make groups. I never have worried about several things...XP...the "Perfect group" the perfect levels in the group...the list could go on but it doesn't have to as I am sure you get the point ;-).

Again, I am sorry Dyadem, GREAT xp has never been my goal.

I can seriously say and mean it...because Xp has never been my goal. I keep the game fresh by doing quests, killing mobs, grouping with peeps, tradeskilling...when it gets stale and I can't take the grind I take a short break do a little research, move a different direction for awhile...

I do admit that for me, the grind always at least felt necessary because I wanted to squeeze every penny out of my subscription. Now that pressure is gone.

I agree with you. Yes there are quests to do at every level at the game. Most of these quests are not worth doing simply for the exp.

I personally use the quest lines from the tutorial/Crescent Reach/Blightfire/ Goru'kar Mesa/Blackfeather Roost to level up all my new toons to 60. Usually by the time I've finished Blightfire I've leveled too much for the Hive to be of any use, so I just skip that one, because I don't like it anyway. This gets done in just a couple of sessions of playing. Leveling is easy. AA's? There's the grind, and I can't give you any quest lines that will be useful for grinding out aa. But there you have an easy quest line that will take you from 1 to 60 with ease. It's not just the quest rewards, but the killings you have to do to finish the quests. Hell, the Hero's journey book will walk you through it now. I had trouble getting groups. Then I left the defunct guild I was in that had 4 or 5 people in it (mostly boxes that made their own groups), and joined a populated guild. All the groups I wanted and more, at multiple levels. It really can happen.

Old world quest lines, though? Yeah. They're fun, and the old devs had some hilariously humorous eggs hidden in them. But they weren't very rewarding other than the sense of accomplishment.

Umm...I can't remember very well. It's been a long, long time...But I remember some well-done Monty Python references in the old Qeynos quests, back when Blackburrow was always camped, and the bandit camps in West Karana were fought over, and the level cap was 55 (to give you an idea of how long it's been since I did those quests. But it was true back then, that doing quests was something to relieve the ennui of leveling up. Then again, there wasn't a quest progression line, either, so finding quests was more of an easter egg hunt in itself.

Would be a nice contribution for someone to lay out a lengthly levelling path (like 1-80 at least) with ONLY quests which provide sufficient XP between the quest completion and the necessary kills, along with occasionally some worthy piece of gear. IF such is really possible. I'm "hearing" it may be but not seeing real specifics...

For laffs I made a new toon on a new (to me) server I've never played on before and decided to start in Crescent Reach. That's kinda new for me cuz being "ole school" I always start new toons in their native noobie zone. I checked out most of the noobie quests in CR and, frankly, most are horribly dated in terms of rewards. There is one nice easy quest that provides a nice 8/20 dmg/dly non-melee hammer which is well worth the effort. But the others provide a single-shot mediocre potion or armor so lousy that I'd be embarassed to wear the pieces even on a server where I have no plat or other resources!

The sad thing is whatever meager resources Sony still invests in EQ are primarily devoted to developing the NEXT expansion (understandably, since its sale yields a nice in-flow of dinero) rather than spend any development time at all upgrading and improving existing features such as quest lines that are developed and "ready to go" but almost never performed anymore because the rewards are so lousy by current standards.

Like I was just thinking EVERY epic could be made attractive to pursue by adding to all of them some kind of decent mana-free clicky, such as a nuke, dot, debuff, overhaste, etc. The clicky could be "managed" (in terms of game impact) by adjusting the clicky recast time. But who wouldn't do the epic quest for, say, a 5000pt mana-free instant nuke, even if it recycled say every 10 minutes? Or a 5000hp instant heal? Neither would be game-breaking but both would justify spending a few hours on non-xp gameplay.

Edited, Jan 14th 2013 10:30am by Sippin