Join them! EverQuest Ragefire server is the game I’m dedicated to right now, and although it’s enormously fun (I have 80+ hours in it already) it’s not without its faults. One of the biggest issues facing Ragefire is how overpowered casters are compared to melee classes. Whether or not it’s fixable ends up being a moot point, and instead of complaining about it all the time I decided to just join in on the fun.
I made a Gnome Magician last week, and have loved every minute of playing him. Yeah, it’s broken. I think my pet can take on most even con mobs all by itself, and yellow mobs require little more than one nuke from me. I toss in two if I want to down them quickly. Â I’m able to go into Unrest and solo 2 yellows at once, or control the ENTIRE yard all by myself (blues and whites) raking in insane amounts of experience and loot.
While the Mage is so much fun, I still love my Bard. I want my Bard to be my main character. My Bard is the class I see myself playing in groups, going on raids with, etc. The Bard is support, and support is where I find I’m most talented and have the most fun.
My Mage will be my farming character. I’ll earn money on the Mage, camp items that can be soloed, and this will allow me to have a character I can play when my friends aren’t on or I can’t find a group on my bard. Sadly, the latter happens often as most people prefer to invite casters since their DPS is worth more than the support of a bard in this version of EQ.
Even playing an OP class in a very different version of Norrath, I still find myself rushing home every day to get in at least an hour or two of EverQuest. You can join us in our casual friends/family style guild by visiting our forums.
As a pally, I’ve had a blast duoing with my wife who is a druid. It is slower going than getting into a fully group, but it has been fun just running around doing our own thing. We camped the orc trainer and both got shiny brass shields and then we ran over to Steamfont to get a mino axe.
I try to ignore the advantage casters have, but I admit I have been kind of irritated by it, especially the mages and necros. It seems like they can pull several mobs of equal or higher con at once and down them all much quick than even the two of us could.
It is so easy for them to KS as well doing all that damage. I’ve even had instances where I think they were not doing it on purpose, just not paying as close attention to what their pet was doing as they should. It is kind of a bummer to walk into an area where 5 or 6 characters of your level could all be getting great XP, except to see 1 mage who is only a level or two above you camping the whole area.
When we were camping the trainer, we had a same level magician come up and start killing orcs. He cleared the whole hill about 3x as fast as we could have done it and then sat down next to us. I was scared that he would steal our camp before we could get our shields. I said, “What are you doing?” He smartly says, “Playing a video game.” So, I tried to be polite and said, “This is our camp, would you like to join our group?” He said nothing, but got up and walked off a few seconds later.
The reality is if he did not want to join our group and push came to shove he could have taken over the whole camp, forced us to move and there would have been nothing we could have done about it. Luckily, so far it has not happened.
@Balthazar: I know that feeling all too well. I’ve had mages and wizards come up into my camp and I have that fear come over me knowing that this one person could take the mob from our entire group. You have to take that approach of being super nice, unaccusatory, etc., because at any moment you could set them off and they’d screw you over.
We have a group of a Bard, Cleric, Shadow Knight, and Necro that we play regularly. We camped the back room in the Unrest mansion and were a little slow going (all being 13-16). I went in with my Mage at level 14 and soloed the entire experience with ease. :-0
We are both 10 right now. I hoping classic stays around for 6 months like they said as I it might actually give me a chance to get into my mid 30s or maybe even into my 40s before Kunark. I really only have 1 or 2 nights a week where I can spend a good 2-3 hour session leveling, usually on weekends, and some weekends are busier than others and I don’t get any significant playtime in.
I’m the same. Most nights I have 1-2 hours tops a few nights a week. Weekends I might pull 3-4. I want classic to last 6 months so that I can get my character to 50. If I can get multiple characters, that’s even better.
Casters were always overpowered compared to melees in the early days. It might be worse now if they powered up spells or something. If you remember back though casters stayed on top for quite a while. Eventually though the pets can’t tank as well as warriors. The dps evens out between casters and melees and a caster’s future will depend on how well he has treated his fellow players that happen to be melees.
Gotta laugh this does sound like a throw-back server to the very early days of EQ when some classes were really imbalanced and the massive nerfs came in that wreaked havoc.
Curious to see whether they will chose the nerf route once again (furthering the nostalgia!) or will they try doing something different.
@Gringar: They lowered the mana cost and increase the damage of spells. 😉 Pets also gained enormous buffs brought over from Live making them take less damage than tanks.
I really liked the DAoC caster mechanic. Where any damage, any CC (or attempt), or even a truly malignant lingering stare would interrupt casting. None of this cast while getting your face bashed in shenanigans.
Casters in DAoC knew how to RUN 😛 We made a fancier name for it called kiting, and if you were really on the ball you were pre-kiting. And PvP. Oh my. So very squishy, but oh so fun to have that much cannon inside your glass.
What I loved about Bards in EQ was how much their awesomeness varied based on the player in control of them. I played with some really bad bards, and plenty of mediocre ones. But I can still remember the name of the best bard I ever saw or played with over a decade later. S/he was named Flyairpig, and was just an amazingly skilled player. That bard played 3 roles at least in our group by charming a mob for use as a tank, pulling and mezzing additional mobs for chain pulling, and of course using other songs to buff the group.
I only remember mages being slightly overpowered in early EQ. It was the Druids kiting everything that was most noticeable. Necros weren’t even noticed because fear kiting didn’t become big until later.
I have a question for you guys. I’m seriously considering getting into EQ Ragefire just on the basis that I want an MMO to play. I never played the original EQ but I played DAOC for years…and years… and years. I also played most of the new age MMOs and hated how “collect 5 whocares” they are. I love PVP but it’s not a deal breaker. WOuld it be worth getting into since I never played before? I’m looking to be convinced! GO!!!!
@danzig I love the memory of EQ but there would just be too many trade offs for somebody like you who never played it. Not to mention it was never, even slightly, about pvp. Did you consider trying daoc again?
Danzig: This is a tough one. EQ has no PvP. Did you like DAOC’s PVE? If so, EQ can be fun. It’s $15 for a month. My best argument? There is NOTHING else worth playing. At all. Not even close.
DAOC’s PVE was OK. I do miss the forming of groups to kill mobs and spending time between pulls BSing with friends and stuff. I didn’t care to rejoin DAOC namely because I don’t have the same group of people to PVP with. IDK I’m kinda just looking for something new. Keen hit it on the head. There’s not even remotely another MMO worth playing right now. Until Camelot Unchained comes out, It’s either EQ or nothing I suppose.
Truth be told, if DAOC did a new server (progression or not), I’d probably go back for the nostalgia factor as well as other things. Basically I want an MMO where i’m not so far behind that I have to do everything myself. Especially in an MMO that encourages grouping. Not these silly newfangled solo multiplayer games (he says in his old man voice)
Several of us would go back if DAoC did a progression server. 🙂 I know I’d pop in.
Without the nostalgia of the past I am not sure EQ really has the pull for new players. I have tried project 1999 many times and it has never been able to pull me. I can drop in a UO server anytime and be fine, mostly because I have a history with that game.
Ragefire is 100x more fun for newcomers than P99 would ever be, though. P99 is for nostalgia far more than Ragefire, but man I am having a blast.
well maybe I just need to hook up with the K&G guys. They can teach me a thing or two and I can stop worrying about how awful the character models look 😛
Reason why I quit DAoC was botting,can barely tolerate it in Pve games like EQ but fighting an enemy who has a buffbot sitting in the PK in Emain or Odin’s Gate got old real fast and when my guild broke up i Quit.
So a prog DAoC with no buffbotting would be nice.
Too bad Uthgard is still down but will hopefully be back..soon..
As for EQ,still fun running around the old world….
Keep thinking of trying this game again but I keep getting flashbacks of this which summed up my first time around on EQ many moons ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKDkvy9sKuY
@Phoxx: Not quite the same experience, sadly. It’s much easier now. You don’t lose your stuff when you die, and exp loss has been toned down significantly. If either of those are keeping you from playing, give it a try!
Haha that video was awesome. I wish it was still like that.
Nothing changes. I remember the EQ meme “Level a caster, twink a melee” from when I started back at the turn of the century.
Except now it’s like… “Level a caster, be a god forever.”