Getting in on the ground floorFollow

I've been playing EverQuest for a little over a year now and I have a limited amount of time to play. I cannot play every day but I do play more than once a week.

Being relatively new to the EverQuest community, I have enjoyed my time playing EQ but have always had a general feeling of sort of "being behind". I'm not one of those types that has to be "the best" or have "the most", but the disparity between twinked and untwinked characters is quite extreme and, quite frankly, can sometimes be very annoying.

For example, recently I was playing with my 30 SK. Among my characters, this one happens to have the best gear. (A few months ago I was grouped with a shaman whom I enjoyed playing with. He decided he wasn't going to play his SK anymore, went and logged him in, and gave me the gear he had purchased for him. It's mainly some sort of crustacean armor and stuff like that.) Anyhow, I coudln't find anyone group with for a LDoN or anything else, so while passing through PoK I announced in /ooc that I was LFG. A 39 wizard and a 33 necro joined up with me and suggested that we go to Dawnshroud Peaks.

The necromancer took charge and started pulling mobs that were all red to me. I managed to survive the first 5 or 6 pulls but really needed a rest, so I made a group tell to that effect. Around that time a cleric joined. I was told by the necro to resummon my pet (which had died a short time earlier), have it attack and just sit there. If I joined in the fun I would be "wasting the cleric's mana". His pet would MT. Now, I ask you, given the wimpy nature of a SK pet, how would that be any fun at all? I understand that maybe I wasn't as "uber" as everyone else, but c'mon. I politely excused myself and camped.

Now for the question I have about EQ2.

I'm grateful to all the people who have invested so much time and effort into beta testing the game so that the rest of us will have a better product upon release. (I am asking in advance to forgive my general ignorance about how such things work, as I do not have much experience in MMORPGs.) I imagine that beta testers are rewarded for their work by getting to keep some things that they accumulated during the beta period, such as experience levels, items, whatever, etc. Is my assumption correct?

If it is, is any effort generally made to keep some servers free of these characters? I'd really like to, for once, start out on the ground floor, the same as everyone else, instead of having to deal with people who somehow or other outclass you from day one.

I'm kind of excited to get in on the ground floor myself. One of the main things about FFXI that has often bugged me is the attitudes of many players who are of a higher level. I didn't start playing until the game had already been out for over a year in Japan, and six months in North America. So, I have always felt a bit "behind" as it were.

I'm looking forward to being just one of many faceless newbies, learning together.^^

shadowrealm; Rec/Required Level. Of course, they're late(er) editions so a lot of the earlier stuff can be twinked out freely.

I haven't had a problem with need 2 healers/group to be successful, either. Two tanks can work quite well, as can the simple inclusion of an Enchanter or two. When every fight is a solo fight, a single healer can easily do it with zero downtime.

Not to mention SOE has always stated they wanted the Tradesmen (and women) to be more of a dedicated lifestyle. I'm thinking that SOE does not want every character to have a tradeskill, I'm seriously thinking they want us to have tradesmen (and women) to be a rare few in the population, which is fine by me also.. competition is good, but total deflation of the value of an item due to it being an item that everyone can make so I'm all for it... granted I'll be shelling out some good coin for gear but hey, at least I'll be able to generate that coin. And yeah I still plan on dabbling in Tradeskills, but I don't plan on being one of the price setting tradesfolk.

Just mah two coppers worth

I'm also looking forward to getting in on the ground floor. I left EQ for a bit and came back, and I felt just as BrianNYC felt. I was, in essence, behind the curve.

It's the same with FFXI. I feel behind the curve since I can't play as much or as productively as many of my friends. I have one friend who passed me with three characters... O_O

Anyway... I opted to buy EQ2 at release simply because the number of friends you can make is astronomical. Everyone doesn't know anyone, and there are no clicks or anything like that. Usually the friends you make when a game goes live you'll remember for the rest of your life.

That said, I can't wait to meet new people in game. (^_^)b

In EQ2, tradeskills have levels and subclasses (with completion quests) just like combat-classes do. There are nine seperate tradeskill subclasses once you are at Level 20 as an artisan (tradeskiller). It is impossible for your one character to make all of the armor, weapons, jewelry, spells/combat-skills, etc for personal use -- you will be forced to buy or trade for them with other players. With a four-character limit per account, you just simply will not be able to do it all once you get beyond the low-level game (sub20).

Let me say it another way:
EQ2 has five starting archetypes: figher, scout, mage, priest, and artisan. You get to choose one of the first four and everyone gets the fifth. Artisan breaks down into three classes at level 10 and into nine total subclasses at level 20, so you will *NOT* be able to make all of your own items for yourself and guilds will not be able to have a jack-of-all-tradeskills character/player to handle all their needs.

Tradeskills in EQ2 are designed to take just as much effort and attention and time to get to level 50 as cleric or berserker would, unlike the way they work in EQ1. As a L70 player with all available tradeskills maxed in EQ1, and a EQ2 beta player, I promise you that being an artisan in EQ2 will be much more fun and rewarding to those persons who enjoy that sort of thing. Those who just want to hustle and make themselves better gear to kill faster to get to combat-level 50 will find the system tedious and irritating and extremely frustrating.... and will shell out lots of cash to artisans to get that upgraded gear, which will allow the artisan to buy the dropped items needed to continue crafting.

I played EQ1 for a bit over a year around three years ago (left not long after Kunark went live) and recently returned to it after playing Diablo 2 and then DAoC, and now am messing around with EQ again.

I'll certainly echo the 'mature game' theory of why the original poster isn't having the kind of gaming experience he was hoping to have because I'm in the exact same boat now. I play on Stromm and it's typical to see more level 70s LFG than level 1-20s. If you don't choose to play a class that can solo, you're not going to enjoy yourself. DAoC had pretty much reached this point as well, but I don't think the impact upon the players was >as< great because of level restrictions on certain items as well as their item decay system in which items that were significantly more powerful than their user's level degraded into uselessness very quickly. I had mixed feelings about that 'feature', but I see the need for it.

I know one thing I saw in my time playing EQ1 all those years ago was that it was possible to create a character that could level well and be a master artisian in multiple fields- in short, a character that was just about totally self-sufficient whether hunting or crafting. I'm glad to see that won't be the case in EQ2; having a great deal of interdependence among players is, IMHO, crucial to an appealling game. That was one (of all too few things) that DAoC got right- let's hope SOE learned a few things from what DAoC did right and, more importantly, from what they did wrong.