Good point--that reminds me, at least on Xegony Chardok was almost never an XP site in era that I remember. I think Chardok got revamped at some point as well and before that it wasn't a great zone. People used to go in there for specific reasons, and usually if they wiped getting back in was a nightmare. I remember several times being paid a good amount of plat as a Necro to hoof it out to Chardok and corpse summon groups that died deep in and couldn't get their corpses back, and they were usually the only group in zone when this would occur.
Charming was less common for sure, some game changes since then have made charming safer, but the bigger issue I think ties into the thing Kirun was saying as to why people used to do XP groups in Dreadlands. Toleerance for risk was much lower in old EQ, the player base in general was much worse due to lack of tribal knowledge and etc, and old corpse runs with a group of bads was a nightmare scenario so a lot of groups avoided situations that could lead to that. At least in the Necro community when I started being active on the Necro forums and later the in game Necro channel when they introduced the universal chat system, most of the good gamer types were charming heavily, but a lot of the masses were not.
It was absolutely rare, and not just on Veeshan. That said, there were a few Enchanters that would charm. In fact, the kobolds in Velks is what started my original main group of friends to start charming, because they just worked so well as pets with the ridiculous hp pool and would CH themselves. And by PoP, we were charming all the time. I remember I realized Askr the Lost in BoT had an insane hp pool and we'd charm him and do the tower lords. I think that was actually with Ravvenn when she was not yet in FoH lol. I also charmed on my Bard if I was in a strong seb group, until my mana pool was empty.
I don't think I ever saw a group at castle experiencing in original at any expansion. Closest to it was occasionally a I'd be in a really strong drolg's group that'd pull a couple extra from there. Having enchanters that charmed was also not that common, but was definitely a thing that happened enough that it wasn't rare.
Yeah, other than statics, people never fucking did castle in a PUG in Velk's. At least, not in era. Once PoP hit and people overgeared it maybe, but not during SoV.
Yup, exp groups almost never went to Chardok on Emarr. Occasionally your group would do the entrance if Seb was camped to absolute shit, but that's about as deep as most groups were willing to delve. Pathing, pulling, etc. was a nightmare for PUGs back in era and the ZEM wasn't all that hot then.
There was a 6-boxer that practically lived in the chardok pit camp on emarr, forget his name, but he was there for years, probably up to pop. And yea, most of the charm enchanters I grouped with were guildies. For the most part, the chanter was that guy you just had to put up with in your group, because the net gain of clarity, haste and the need to break a camp outweighed the negative of otherwise being a useless lump in the group. Every now and then I'd meet a wild enchanter that wasn't useless, though.
The chanter was somebody we put up with until they implemented /melody and Bards started providing 100x better ADPS/regen, etc. Prior to melody, basically nobody played bards. Pretty much every bard that made it past level 35 was in a raiding guild, that's how rare they were. I'll take an afk bard 1000x over an afk enchanter.
Yeah i dont think ive seen anybody up there either tbh, i dont think anything beyond people at the entrance, or frenzy was a thing back then lol
Oh, come on dude. Your zaide hate leads to silly hyperbole. VS seems like one you shouldn't wipe on and plenty can be mitigated but raids can be wiped, especially if the trainer is warping. You really think no one could wipe a raid in txevu if you were leading?
