Returning from 2004
by paul on Mar.31, 2011, under Leveling
2004 would have been… Gates/Omens time, I guess, when a lot of people left; EQ2 started, WoW started – and SOE leadership had been a disaster, with GoD so hated by normal players. Â New since then:
- mercs: tank or healer; dps caster and dps melee added later. Â For when you can’t get a group.
- Defiant gear. Â Global drop from anything, the 59-70 Elaborate Defiant set is roughly Time/GoD raid gear equivalent. Â It is usually very cheap in the Bazaar. Â You may also have a/claim item called “Gift of Legacies Lost”, which is a couple of Defiant items including a weapon – I wouldn’t bother claiming it until 55+, though.
- ooc regen: 30 seconds after you come out of combat, regen hp/mana rate increases, so that you would regen to full in 3 minutes.
- potions: for healing, regen, haste, etc.
- tribute: donate unwanted gear to tribute masters for some useful buffs.
- Hot Zones: to bring players together, they have revised drops, especially augments, and an experience boost.
- new leveling path in TSS, default starting zone for all characters is now Crescent Reach. Â All zones give boosted exp.
- revised AA exp – characters under 2,500 AAs get a boost that scales down from zero AAs. Â Starts at around 3x normal (may be more now that the limit was raised).
- Guild Lobby is open to all; buffs don’t count down there, so it’s where people go to hang out and get buffs, as well as just rez.
- Many keyed zones (like Sebilis, Howling Stones, Plane of Fire) now have a level requirement to enter. Â You can still get the keys/flags if you want in earlier, but they aren’t required.
That should do for a rough outline; lots of big game changes there. Â In short, leveling is a lot faster; populations at low levels are thin as a consequence of this, but high level populations are roughly the same density as they were in 2005, after the mergers.
3 Comments for this entry
1 Trackback or Pingback for this entry
-
What to Do and When - (N)EverQuest Scrolls
January 7th, 2010 on 8:15 am[…] you left when EQ2/WoW was launched, then please read Returning from 2004 – it covers the big […]
July 9th, 2010 on 11:51 pm
I quit in 2004 shortly after WoW opened mostly due the large raid requirements to do ANYTHING – especially as Monk. Enchanter had no problems getting grouped – but Monk sure seemed to be the odd-man out at the time. Now computer so old it can’t even load game. Brings back memories of the SOL release that blew Win 95 users off (at least we won that battle after 6 months- SOE offered full reimbursement of all games/expansions but required account deletion. I dont know of a single person that took the deal – we were just satisfied to get them to admit they had screwedup bigtime).
July 10th, 2010 on 12:47 am
ARGH!!! Just found out my bazaar banker got deletezed. Thats just rude.
“In addition, your old character(s) have been deleted and are not available if the character(s) were less than level 10 and had not been played during the 6-month period prior to the EverQuest server mergers.”
July 10th, 2010 on 12:53 am
Petition, and be polite; there’s a good chance they can dig it back out for you.