Yesterday I wrote about why I like the instancing in EverQuest. I think Daybreak did a nice job of meeting the average player’s needs quite well. After yesterday’s post went up, Daybreak announced some changes to the instancing system as it pertains to raiding and zones which contain popular raid monsters.
Let’s take a look at the patch notes.
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At launch, as now, there is only one Lord Nagafen and only one Lady Vox. If you defeated them, you also had to compete with a server full of people who wanted to defeat them, too. That’s a pretty big accomplishment.
So, in the spirit of making raid content more available while still allowing for competition and accomplishment, here’s what we have planned for an update in July:
- Nagafen’s Lair, Permafrost Keep, the Hole, and Kedge Keep are now load-balancing zones. This will let more people have access to these zones for XP and non-raid items (WTB GEBs, PST).
- We now have a way to prevent raid targets from spawning in extra load-balanced zones. We have done this with Lord Nagafen, Lady Vox, Master Yael, and Phinigel Autropos so they will only ever spawn in the base version of their zones.
- All raid targets (dragons, Phinigel, Yael, and gods) now spawn more often than they used to, but have a much larger variance in their spawn times so they’ll be more difficult to predict.
- We’ve made the raid bosses more difficult, so that they will require coordination of more adventurers to tackle them successfully. Healing and support should once again be very important in these encounters.
- Speaking of Hate and Fear, while we didn’t implement load balancing, we did reduce the respawn time of all non-raid targets by two thirds. Any mini-bosses that didn’t have persistent timers (such as the Fear golems) now have them and have additional variance in their respawn times. This means that they won’t necessarily be spawned when the server first comes up.
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Now before I begin, I’m not a raider in EverQuest. I don’t enjoy the toxic community currently dominating that space. I don’t plan to raid. I’d participate in invite, but do not consider raiding necessary to enjoy EQ. So really none of this affects me except the part where I can now get more gear easily from the non-raid encounters.
That said, for the people who DO like to raid in EQ, but aren’t apart of the 1% doesn’t this have much of the opposite effect? I have a few questions that just do not make sense.
- What stops Raid Guild X from filling all spots in the raid zone, forcing everyone else out of it and never able to enter?
- Doesn’t increasing raid variance make it more difficult for casual players to have a chance at participating since those players aren’t regularly camping mobs for 12 hours a day?
- If the targets spawn quicker, doesn’t that mean the rich just get richer?
I’m curious if Daybreak really thought this one through. All this will end up doing is creating a competition for the 1% to sit around in the base instance of the raid zones. But hey, I’ll be in /pick 2!
Ya, it doesn’t seem to fix the problem to me either. But at this point I am not worried about it and hey at least we can go after some of the high level targets in the zone now the same as in the rest of the game without those being locked out too (not sure if there’s anything worth going after other than raid targets in those zones never got that high in EQ).
Either way it won’t worry me even about that for awhile as I am just meandering along, still only 16, exploring the world, etc. Mostly right now trying to find a non-camped zone to solo level in since I have to go afk at random times a lot. I think I found one for my current level in Dags Cauldron but we’ll see.
As an ex very serious raider I feel they basically couldn’t have done anything else without it being a 3 monther, which it might end up being anyway due to how easy leveling is. You simply can’t have a billion instances of the raid loot, or nobody will raid.
Putting my ex, very serious raiding hat on, we would just have one guys character camp that zone forever and the whole guild would run there the minute it spawned. No casuals would ever organize that fast.
@Baa Baa Black Sheep: Putting MY various serious raiding hat on, I wouldn’t let you. If we REALLY wanted those kills we would all sit there until it spawned and 2 box two raids simultaneously at multiple locations. That’s what the guilds on Ragefire will do to compete with each other.
Well sure but that would have to be another very serious raiding guild. We would be fighting for who could muster enough first. The casuals would still be a non factor.
Oh I totally agree. I do not believe casuals will ever get raid kills. I’m fine with that. I play 1-2 hours a night on week nights, and a bit more on weekends. I will NEVER get to kill the contested raids or current expansion raids.
What I think people often confuse here is the definition of casual. If someone plays 10 hours a day but can’t get into (or doesn’t want to) join the one or MAYBE two guilds who dominate the raid spawns… does that make them casual? No, but it makes them fall into that area where life sucks for them and there’s currently nothing they can do about it.
But that’s the life of raiding pre-instancing like WoW. Raiding was never meant to be an everyone activity. I loved DAoC’s big boss kills because, unlike EQ, every raid (pre-toa on Percival Mid) was about inviting anyone on who wanted to go; guilds did not matter.
“You simply can’t have a billion instances of the raid loot, or nobody will raid.”
I disagree with this.
Krono has completely changed the reason for raiding and yet the developers are pretending this is anything like classic – it isn’t.
In my era of EQ, actual classic, you raided until you and your guild geared up, and you moved on. There was no legal RMT reason to keep farming raid loot, and now there is. Hydra armies’ subs are being paid for by the very people they are denying access to content. It’s a disaster disguised as business as usual.
I believe that in this day and age, because of the current setup of the game and cash shop, raid bosses should be instanced and have individual lockouts. In that scenario far more people would raid, but the current raiders would all quit because their primary motivation – epeen – would be removed.
It is what it is. I’m having a good time, and don’t expect a solution better than what they’ve given us because it would require resources to code.
Off topic:
Somehow I miss Graev’s contribution.
The parts he did where he shares his take on console/pc non mmorpg games that he played recently.
Yeah, me too! Graev has been really busy doing some other things. I hope he’ll be back to posting some day soon.