What's YOUR preferred new race-class combo for next xpac?!Follow

One of the most insightful posts I have ever read.^

If I could be a gnome with any starting city other than Ak or CR... (different things are key to different players) --instead I don't play them.

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Led me to the question of: Didn't EQII go all/all with classes? (once they sorted out the "start as something and class specialize some levels later thing"). I didn't play EQII early enough, nor long enough to have any sense of race balance or even remember if I could all/all character create.

It would be a faulty barometer I concede (different models than EQ for one, and the alternative models you set for your own viewing. For example I liked most of the "new" model settings in EQII to the point there is races I would never have played if only original models were available, but there was at least a few (ogres iirc) of the new models that I felt the same way about), but the game has somewhat of the same playerbase and shares much lore.

Maybe someone can weigh in on the EQII stab at this...

Also, the Vox server was launched after pretty much all the changes to penalties, xp rates, regen and such. It has a medium-decent population to my knowlege --what's the race/class census there I wonder?

Ok. So 5-20%. Still, at least you actually got something for it (even if not always well balanced).



Pretty sure that was 40%, but honestly it's large enough either way to be nasty as hell. And if it was just the penalty, that would have been bad enough. Hybrids also got half sized mana pools for the same int/wis stat. Spells shared with the parent class which had some kind of numerical damage/healing result, that result was 90% of the parent class. So Greater Heal heals 300 points for a cleric, but 270 when cast by a paladin, for example. Add in the exp split effect on groups making folks not want you, and you had some serious gimpage.

The flip side is that most (all?) hybrid spells back then were the same as the parent class, we just got them later. Which meant that the "casting level" was very low relative to the hybrids level. Hybrids rarely fizzled, and rarely got partial successes on their spells. I distinctly remember wondering at all these people complaining about root not sticking, or only lasting like 1 tick. Ok. That didn't come close to evening things out.



One of my old old old guildmates was a Troll SK. For him, it was RP. And hey, he did eventually end out on one of the top guilds on the server, so in the long run, it doesn't matter I guess. But yeah. Back then it was painful as hell.

It was 40. Troll SK had the worst penalty in the game at 70% (40% hybrid, 10% Slam, 20% regen). I remember it because of what happened on Luclin release. The method that they used to "do away" with the penalties was to add a bonus equal to what the old penalty was (so troll SK got 170% per kill whereas the norm was 100%). When the AA system was launched, that bonus also applied to AA xp so hybrids were getting their former penalty as an AA bonus. Doesn't sound bad now but way back then, getting 40% more AA xp was freakin' HUGE. I sat in the basement of Karnors and the Crypt in Sebilis with a Paladin friend and soaked up AAxp like you would not believe (Slay Undead was ridiculously powerful) with my little 5% bonus (rogue).



Naw, the worst part of leveling back then were the hell levels. For the newer folks, hell levels occurred every five levels starting at level 30 and each hell level was worse than the previous one. This was due to a math error in the original xp tables that made those levels MUCH larger than the ones before and after. So if level 29 took 500,000 xp to get through, level 30 would take a million. But then level 31 would take 450,000 to get through. Level 34 would take 750,000 to get through but 35 would take 2 million (but 36 would take 600,000) and so on. (Made up numbers but the effect is true) The level after a hell level was often called a "half level" because it went by SO quick after you had gotten through the hell level. Also keep in mind that you were only getting like 100xp per kill or something really low like that. So it took LOTS of time to get through these levels. Plus, with all the downtime, you had time to chat up a storm with your groupmates (and yes, you were grouping or you weren't leveling at all). That's why people went so nuts over KEI. 3 hour base duration, RIDICULOUS mana regen at low levels. Up to around level 20, with KEI, you could not go OOM. It wasn't possible. Your spells didn't cost enough.

Yenwangweh talked about Lower Guk. Back then, you could take your newbie rogue at level 1 to LGuk and snag a mask of deception because from dead side zone in to Archmage/Lord, not a single mob would be left standing. That's how many groups were actively hunting there. Nothing lived longer than a couple of seconds before being pulled. The same could be said for Sol B, where newbie warriors would camp out to pick up a Fleshripper or Painbringer. Back then, I hate how crowded everything was. Boy I wish we'd get crowds like that now.

Well on Vallon, Pandemonium would just take over the entire dungeon, no? Had a friend who started on Vallon and played there for a good bit. Told me once that PDM (or maybe the guild that preceded it?) would take over Cazic Thule and farm the bejeezus out of the AoF (Rubicite BP) until everyone and their alts had one then they'd move on to another zone and do the same thing. He told me a story about one epic battle in Sol B in the tunnel leading to (and around the room of) Efreeti Lord Djarn after the guild had monopolized the spawn so much that they had most of the Golden Efreeti Boots on the server. There were so many people fighting in there that the zone crashed multiple times.

Might've been BS though. He used to go on rants about "this carebear crap" and "...back on Vallon....".

IIRC 51-59 were all "hell levels" with 59 being notoriously the worst of the bunch.

I still have a vague memory of dinging 60 back then and what persists is the sense of complete relief.

51, 54 and 59 were hell levels according to SOE.