Everquest - Phinigel server

A little Ragefire update. We pulled an all hands on deck raidforce Sunday with dps alts in tow. Massive force of two raids took nearly two hours to take Aaryonar down! We also took out a dozen or so other minors in NToV. Darkwind doing whatever it takes to get shit down, despite DBG with their thumbs up their ass not patching out this broken regen or populating loot in ST.

Phinigel is just a far better product from just about every possible angle. The only mistake they have really made with phinny is that the xp rate is about 35% too slow still and the expac unlock timer is about a month and a half too fast. I think they severely under-estimate how many people would be willing to make second accounts that are fully paid for to level alts with fast xp and also under-estimate just how dramatic the population drop off is post velious. Velious and Luclin have atleast 6 months of content available, I think they went with the fast lockout because they thought people were sick of classic and kunark and had data that showed a sub drop-off on lockjaw from the long classic unlock timer.

I hope they are smart enough to revisit the phinny unlocks in velious. 4 months of velious and then 6 months of Luclin would be ideal for the servers current pace of xp.

In PoP I don't know, we had 4 months of PoP on fippy and it felt just about right or maybe a little bit long since everyone was pretty much fully kitted from Time by the end. However on Fippy we split raid time basically every week and heavily leaned on alts to do it. If they MoTM here then split raids might be out of the question and then the flow of gear slows again and you could do 4 - 5months without running out of items.

They have already announced they are working on Luclin MoTM tuning right now. No idea if that will still carry over into PoP.

Kinda pissed me off that ANY dev time is being spent on Luclin while Velious is already nearly two full weeks open and still broken.

lost_sl said:

.. Lockjaw and ragefire are a waste of time, you should just sell while it's worth something and join phinigel, your server will be passed expansion wise and the masses crying on phinigel will most likely get things fixed faster. It's ridiculous that this is how things have become, but it's obvious.

Click to expand...

Honestly, my reasons for staying is we get a shitload more loot as top raid guild with the faster respawns. I would give that up for Phinny community, but what I can't give up is my enjoyment of 6 boxing. I work odd hours and having the ability to go farm my own WW dragons for +6 stat necks, my own armor drops / gems, etc without needing to compete is pretty nice. Hell, I enjoyed the same in classic farming my own planes armor and kunark working my own epics and loot camps. Luclin will be nice running my own AA group not relying on flaky classes coming and going.

I am a boxer at heart now.

Jysin_sl said:

Kinda pissed me off that ANY dev time is being spent on Luclin while Velious is already nearly two full weeks open and still broken.

Click to expand...

It's all working perfectly on Test now, it's just waiting for the patch to hit. And from what the TLP rep is saying, expect MotM in PoP. He thinks there's even a chance GoD will, although he's not sure.

I honestly thought the entire point of MoTM, at least initially, was to offset the mage armies of RF/LJ. Those servers were 100% contested open world, so yea MoTM was a necessary evil to thwart box armies just mowing through everything. Once you hit late PoP (PoTime) and expacs forward, everything is instanced anyways. Not quite sure I see the point of MoTM all the way into PoP. Another argument for the buffs were for out of era focus effects on items making raid forces stronger. Well by Luclin, the world naturally had focus effects in era and there are tons more focus items in PoP.

I just shudder at the thought of the chore of back-flagging a guild in PoP with MoTM buffed mobs. Rathe Council anyone?

Jysin_sl said:

I just shudder at the thought of the chore of back-flagging a guild in PoP with MoTM buffed mobs. Rathe Council anyone?

Click to expand...

MotM doesn't necessarily do anything additional you do realize, right?

It's what the "doesn't spawn in picks" is tied to - that's the part that's guaranteed to continue. Mark of the Old Ways for pets for example goes away in LoY (or was it LDoN? Was recently clarified on EQLive recently).

MotM4 (Luclin) is still being hammered out for specifics, but the TLP rep is apparently going to bat with a suggestion that sounds reasonable if they listen to him.

MotM5 (PoP) could literally be nothing but a "doesn't spawn in /pick" buff.

Shouldn't need to backflag unless you lose a good chunk of your guild.

In other news, I know nobody cares but I got motivated again to play after taking a break, went back to juggs even with the shit xp and got a level, picked up torpor last night for 15k.

Can't wait for velious.

Vaclav_sl said:

MotM doesn't necessarily do anything additional you do realize, right?

It's what the "doesn't spawn in picks" is tied to - that's the part that's guaranteed to continue. Mark of the Old Ways for pets for example goes away in LoY (or was it LDoN? Was recently clarified on EQLive recently).

MotM4 (Luclin) is still being hammered out for specifics, but the TLP rep is apparently going to bat with a suggestion that sounds reasonable if they listen to him.

MotM5 (PoP) could literally be nothing but a "doesn't spawn in /pick" buff.

Click to expand...

We were specifically discussing MoTM "buffed" mobs, in reference to them being scaled up in power. I know if you right click and inspect MoTM on Velious mobs it is flat 40% reduction in spells and whatnot. (Whatever the actual % is). I am sure no one minds preventing the spawn in additional pickzones, but scaling mob difficulty in a zone flag extensive xpac will just be outright tedious.

Rhuma_sl said:

Shouldn't need to backflag unless you lose a good chunk of your guild...

Click to expand...

I did forget they changed to some allowance. What was it, 85% rule?

Jysin_sl said:

We were specifically discussing MoTM "buffed" mobs, in reference to them being scaled up in power. I know if you right click and inspect MoTM on Velious mobs it is flat 40% reduction in spells and whatnot. (Whatever the actual % is). I am sure no one minds preventing the spawn in additional pickzones, but scaling mob difficulty in a zone flag extensive xpac will just be outright tedious.

Click to expand...

I was the first one to mention MotM in PoP that I saw - and I wasn't meaning it that way. =/

It's possible it might have SOME scaling, but if it is, TLP rep wants it very slight.

Let's not pretend anyone is going to revisit anything in pop once they get to elemental planes. It's a one and done kind of thing. So ro tower to a minor degree depending on how many monks and beasts you have or you can just tell them to use fiery staff from fire.

Rhuma_sl said:

Let's not pretend anyone is going to revisit anything in pop once they get to elemental planes. It's a one and done kind of thing. So ro tower to a minor degree depending on how many monks and beasts you have or you can just tell them to use fiery staff from fire.

Click to expand...

I'd imagine there'd be a pass or 2 at backflagging, but it'll be very minimal for sure.

I finally got over the extent to which they left Lockjaw and Ragefire in the dust with Phinny release. I rolled a wizard, now 34, and boy is it a useless class at this point. Biggest problems with leveling are the ridiculous concentration of people in a few zones (Unrest, Lower Guk and City of Mist) making things even more repetitive than they need to be. It reminds me of the old Kunark LOIO->OT->DL exp highway that you just couldn't skip. Pick zones make this possible, obviously, and the uselessness of soloing or really anything less than a full group makes it worse. Half the reason I made the wizard was that I've never quad kited, but doing so feels stupidly inefficient.

At least the server seems healthy. It is, indeed, a better product than LJ/RF.

Jysin_sl said:

I did forget they changed to some allowance. What was it, 85% rule?

Click to expand...

85% rule AND there are pieces that drop in time now that full flag you for the entire expansion. Once you get your initial raid force through to Time and start clearing it is really cake to keep people flagged and get new people flagged using those drops, unless you somehow lost like 30% of your raid force in a single week I can't see how you would have to go back and back flag ever.

And yes all loot is basically shit once you are in time, even the elemental god loot is largely shit compared to time. One reason I dislike the expansion is it really funnels you into that one zone and makes everything else irrelevant. With few exceptions Time makes every item you ever got from any zone, in PoP or before, obsolete.

That is really the first time in EQ that any zone had so much loot in such a high volume that you found yourself replacing every item on your character WoW style, it was a major and imo bad shift in the game.

Gugabuba_sl said:

I finally got over the extent to which they left Lockjaw and Ragefire in the dust with Phinny release. I rolled a wizard, now 34, and boy is it a useless class at this point. Biggest problems with leveling are the ridiculous concentration of people in a few zones (Unrest, Lower Guk and City of Mist) making things even more repetitive than they need to be. It reminds me of the old Kunark LOIO->OT->DL exp highway that you just couldn't skip. Pick zones make this possible, obviously, and the uselessness of soloing or really anything less than a full group makes it worse. Half the reason I made the wizard was that I've never quad kited, but doing so feels stupidly inefficient.

At least the server seems healthy. It is, indeed, a better product than LJ/RF.

Click to expand...

It's both good and bad, good because finding a group and traveling to what you find out later is an empty zone sucks. Bad cause it gets boring. They should do some rotating hotzones in the 1-50 range both to increase the xp rate a bit for people catching up and to get people to go between different zones. A hotzone CT instead of Unrest, hotzone KC, hotzone DN or SG when velious hits.

Great idea for players, bad idea for their cash shop xp pots. I expect more xp nerfs in all future tlp servers, they have made a fortune selling xp pots on phinigel. It's very rare I group with anyone without chugging a pot.

I can see using pots at release of expansion on your main, but even now on a low level toon I don't see a reason really. I mean we have what.. about 2 months before the next expansion? There really is not that big of a need to use xp pots now at all..plenty of time to get a twink up to 60 before then (or hell maybe even a 3rd character) At worst just get them up to lvl 40 so they can start grouping with the 60's. I am saving mine for the AA grind that I admit I am still leery of.