Visions of Grandeur (making dad-servers great again!)

Nah, gear has the traditional stats on this server.

You do start of with a custom charm which has a ds and a few stat boosts.

I never tried NL but the mobs and gear on this server seem fine. A friend and I did almost everything up through PoP tier 2 with 4 characters (didn't down Emp Ssra, AoW, VT, Xygoz 2.0). We added a fifth at some point after the box limit went up and did everything up to Rathe Council with 5 and we were into Plane of Time with 6. We lost interest when Plane of Time had a 5 day lockout but I think that has been fixed.

I would suggest just make sure you have a character that can slow in your group.

Fierlen said:

I never tried NL but the mobs and gear on this server seem fine. A friend and I did almost everything up through PoP tier 2 with 4 characters (didn't down Emp Ssra, AoW, VT, Xygoz 2.0). We added a fifth at some point after the box limit went up and did everything up to Rathe Council with 5 and we were into Plane of Time with 6. We lost interest when Plane of Time had a 5 day lockout but I think that has been fixed.

I would suggest just make sure you have a character that can slow in your group.

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Lol, thanks sharing your experience with the tuning. I clearly need to get better!

Are there extended Race/Class combinations?

Froglok/Iksar/Vah'Shir?

Ruby BP/Cowl of Shadows?

Shitty human vision?

mkopec said:

Me too. I hit 65, tried to do some PoP stuff, did the first tier unlocks the PoJ trial thing, got into second tier and it was a big jump. And not having a shaman to slow is tearing a new asshole in my tank. Tried to do velious raids but could not do it with my 4 box, so there really is nothing for me left to do except maybe grind a few thousand AAs and hope it gets better, or level up a shammie.

It was a good run though. Good server that is nice to run through and remember all those old places. I think for a boxing server like this, more balance passes should be done on the raid stuff so a 4-5 box could pull it off. Because who actually groups on these boxing servers? How would that even work? My 4 box with your 4 box? Pick your 3 and I pick my 3? And awkwardly group together?

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I think the entire ability to handle content on NL like this is related to their implementation of Evasion. I didn't realize how powerful evasion was on NL and even with a cleric AND shaman box, Vulak was tearing a hole in my warrior's face. Fast forward to evasion build, I was able to tank Vulak with a druid *BARELY* healing.

I'm not exactly sure what they did, but it also lasts for 10ish minutes and has a 10 minute reset, so you can basically tank anything indefinitely with minimal healing, as long as your endurance doesn't run out.

I'd love to compare notes with some 65 VOG players on difficulty at high end. I don't have any specific affinity to NL, but I've had the impression that its tuning has made AA's easier and has opened more high end content for people to 2-3 box once geared/AA'd. If the difference between the two could be streamlined and Control is willing to aid in transfers, we could actually bring this decent sized community together in a single place.

Control said:

I started setting VoG up as soon as NL was turned off, so I guess that was before he released the db, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. But once I'd started it, I didn't want to risk having that happen again, so here we are, for better or worse Nothing against SirJames at all, he's kept his server going as well as I have, but I don't even trust that EQ Live will be around much longer, so I enjoy having VoG as an archive, if nothing else. If people can play and have a good time with it, all the better.

I would guess that the character db isn't all that different, or at least not irreconcilably so. I could go dig around in the old NL dump to see if I could import characters, but there's not really a point so long as SJ is happy maintaining NL. If that ever changes, I could try to sort it out though.

However, if anyone from NL is interested in transferring their toons over, I can probably do it manually on a case-by-case basis.

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Afaik James has been MIA for awhile now. I know Nisea still logs in every once in a while and checks discord, but outside of that there seems to be no new development happening.

I 3-boxed a warrior/shaman/bard on VoG and once I was geared and AA'd I could do pretty much all content through Velious and some of Luclin. I can't say for certain that I could have done Vulak/AoW with that trio though. I was able to Lord Seru, Cursed Cycle and the first three or four named in VT. If I had replaced the bard with a cleric I would have been able to do more such as all the VP 2.0 named except Xygoz, Vulak, AoW and few more Ssra named.

Unless things have changed, I do believe that Control stated that raids are pretty much intended for one full group and his server does a pretty decent job of doing that. If you have a well-rounded 4-box, you can do pretty much all raids up until PoP with that.

Your milage will definitely vary based on your set-up. If you have slow and some healing you are good to go. Play a paladin/wizard/druid combo and you will definitely be limited in what you can do.

I'm not sure if this is the information Deruvian was looking for but I hope it helps.

Sounds more difficult than NL. If you farm some solid gear and max AA for the xpac you are working on, you can definitely kill Vulak etc with your own 3 box team. As Deruvian said though, this is based around having a permanent Evasive Discipline running on your tanks. Without it, the entire tuning would change drastically needing far greater healing. The one thing NL has going for it is the tune from Classic - Luclin. (PoP could use some tweaks). You aren't going to walk all the content your first run through without help if you don't have the gear. There's definitely a healthy progression community, but once you have gear and AA you can damn near do anything yourself with your 3 box team aside from some PoP encounters. (ie: RZ, Coirnav, Rathe, PoTime Phase 4+)

If Control is willing to accept you guys (aka your characters) in some form or fashion, I would be happy to share it with him. I would also be happy to let him take over the server as well. Sorry guys, I just don't have time to manage the server. I know if I log in and say hi people will msg me, which will make me feel guilty, which will make me spend time I dont have fixing things .

I'm all for any reasonable plan for handing the server over to someone else as well, just pm me here and we can chat.

Control said:

Thanks for the offer, I know that manning the server can take a bit of time and attention. I haven't exactly been the most attentive while I was sorting out my move either, but things are finally stable again (fingers crossed). I'll pm you, I'm sure we can work it out. I'd be happy to import the characters and/or keep NL running.

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I checked the populations over the weekend and it was over 100 players on combining the servers. Of course those are a bunch of boxed accounts, but I really think something like this would make the server much more enjoyable. I find servers like this thrive with a population around that amount rather than logging in to 3 or 4 people off boxing doing their own thing.

The tuning curve on NL is really well done. I'm not even sure how intentional it was, but the balance and time/reward etc is spot on. You'll definitely struggle with content if you try to come in way under geared, but with the Fabled Kunark gear that drops in VP, you can kit out a 3 box that can handle Velious in a few days. Kills in Velious + take longer, so gearing beyond there takes a bit longer, but the progression is really casual.

I was working through Luclin with my boxes when I quit, but there was very much a feeling that if you geared up/AA'd appropriately, you could take on any raid content you wanted. Kills were starting to take a while in Luclin, and adding a friend to help would have definitely sped things up/been useful, but it definitely wasn't mandatory.

I also just feel really powerful on my toons throughout the leveling process. Almost all mobs have -300 resist all through all expansions with very low AC, and with the amped up power on items, you hit very hard, rarely miss, and get hit for very little.

There's also the caster focus aug, which was done a little ham-handed, but it makes casters feel super powerful as well. GOD spells were left in and my wizard usually crit for 17,000-20,000 per shot with very fast casting. Haven't played with the mage one yet, but pets also get a huge ramp in power from the aug as well.

I agree 100% with Daly that bringing the populations back together would make.a huge difference on retention of players and quality of life. EQ has always been a social game and you need a critical mass of players to build a community/attract others.

One thing I really like with NL over VoG are the "progression" aspects. It's fun having "goals" in each X-Pac.

With that said, a server merge would be cool, as long as most of NLs ruleset is kept in place.

I liked the progression stuff overall, but I thought EOV and the planar requirements were a little annoying. Most of the other requirements are things you more or less would have done anyway; those ones took forever and took you real far afield of what you would otherwise be doing. Especially considering island 7 is all kinds of bugged and you usually need a GM to get you up there.

Deruvian said:

I liked the progression stuff overall, but I thought EOV and the planar requirements were a little annoying. Most of the other requirements are things you more or less would have done anyway; those ones took forever and took you real far afield of what you would otherwise be doing. Especially considering island 7 is all kinds of bugged and you usually need a GM to get you up there.

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Island 7 was such a pain in the ass doing on my own. Sirran bugged out on me like 4 times and the whole process took way too long in relation to the rest of the flags. I always made sure to get that flag for people when they needed help just to make sure they didn't get discouraged with it. Also, didn't really enjoy the POP flagging, but that may be more subjective. Think at least removing the 1st tier of flags would have made for a more optimal experience for getting guildies flagged to elementals. Of course, none of that really mattered if your only goal was Time though.

Yeah, sky took me like 5 hours, I got zero loot, and then Sirran wouldn't spawn. A GM ended up making me the key, so I help people with it whenever I can.

Deruvian said:

Yeah, sky took me like 5 hours, I got zero loot, and then Sirran wouldn't spawn. A GM ended up making me the key, so I help people with it whenever I can.

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Yup that's pretty much the issue or he just flat out was kos as soon as he spawned. Ended up having to spawn him on the 1st and 2nd island multiple times to do the key quests for the later island keys.

You can hand in the keys even while he's aggroed and then just kill him.

Or, do what I have done since the server opened... run off island 1. You don't zone into FP like usual, you just land on the bottom of the zone in Sky. Run directly under EoV with a pet class and pet pull (need MQ2 to target EoV). Just chain send pet until it's agro... bring pet back want wait for EoV to path down to you. Kill = win.

So yea, Sky has been buggy as f. Always.