Sounds like a serious case of pebcak Terrial.

Its challenging, but not the way it was. And there was a long time that it was not. My statement stands. And yes, I still play live....AND I tried Cata (wife wanted to be a Kung Fu Panda). No change there, still complete shit.

And to be fair, a lot of the "end gamers" people talk about here got their gear/epics/access back when things WERE more difficult...so I can see them being somewhat unsympathetic when people complain that content is "too hard/slow/etc" when it was harder, slower, etceteraer when they first did it.

I think, Un, you are missing the point. The game now is easier than when many of us began, NOT harder. Hunter toned some things down for a while, as he said, to play around with some options.....then got busy with other things and never changed it back. Or to appease people who complained about the difficulty. However you want to look at it, the game now is easier than when a lot of this content released....even after these recent tweaks/corrections.

Oh, and one thing to Hunter: regarding the PoAir "DD" thing....someone before mentioned keeping the DD/DT, but put it on the adds. I have another idea, perhaps, to keep a challenge without the zerg element: perhaps every minute or 10 seconds an add stays alive, the boss gets an attack/dps buff, making them stronger and nastier if you dont take out the adds. Something that stacks and stays, making it impossible for people to AFK fight Air.

And another to the people commenting on Shadow and his fear. There are ways to handle the fear/root thing. Think about it a while and it'll come to you.

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination "end game". I just recently stepped into T5 (I'm pacing myself, Sgt Hulka). I thought I might weigh in a little.

I'm against some types of content, as I have stated before (DT's or similar in particular, since I dont see the "elegance" of it, I guess....it just seems like a cheap mechanic to me, and did before I ever played here). Please do not confuse that with me wanting things to be easier or faster.

I've played EQ for a long time (late 98 and then into launch). I LOVE the game, though its lost a lot of its appeal for me on the live servers. Why? Because SOE seems to want to pander to people who want things faster or easier (hereafter referred to as "WoWhiners"). They actually added mercenaries to the game to compensate for the population dropping. They believe the pop declined because their game was harder and more complex than that Blizzard monstrosity....but EVERY EQ player I've spoken to who did anything of substance in EQ said they left because SOE "bastardized" or WoWified the game....they made it easier, faster....just....well, less. Less challenge, less involvement, less FUN.

I've played a lot of MMO's over the last few years, trying to find SOMETHING that has that old fire. It doesnt exist. Every new MMO out (with the possible exception of Vanguard....but thats another story) is following the WoW formula: if you dumb it down to double digit IQ, they will pay". And almost universally they have failed. Why? Because they arent original. Because if someone wants a game that panders to the mentally challenged or the "so casual we cant do anything for more than an hour at a time" crowd,  Blizzard produces a decent one. Because almost universally after a few weeks you've pretty much been there, done that in the entire game (SWTOR anyone? WAR?).

The resistance you get from these "end game" guys and the old timers is mostly because we do NOT want to see this game take that path, just to appeal to the WoWhiners who show up, bored to tears with their cardboard cookie cutter crapfest of a game, play here because its "free", then piss whine and moan because the game doesnt hand everything to them on a silver freaking platter like that Blizzard POS does. And forgive me....but I cannot help but find the ridiculous in that: the game you are playing bores you to tears, so much that you try to find something else, and the first thing you do when you land is try your all to make that game a carbon copy of the game you left from boredom. This is what happened to one of the best launched games I have EVER seen, RIFT.

If I have painted this in an unfair light, I wont apologize. I stand by my statements here. But to soften things, I will say that if you want things easy, you dont want EZ. There are plenty of games out there, many FTP, that may better accommodate your expectations and play style.

I dont do much in public. Instances are cheaper than the cost of dealing with the potential asshattery of others.

Turning off crusaders and going to the heal reduced lag for me a lot.

I guess I just dont see how UC isnt accessible by all players. Someone with a 2.0 can do charms to lvl 25...and a 3.0 group can do shadow (not that they'd stay 3.0 for long, since this is also the 3.5 zone). UC isnt needed for HoH....hell, it isnt needed for T3. Farming charms isnt that hard. A guildie did all of his UC on 3 characters 2 boxing, because his system couldnt take more than 2 open clients at a time. When he started he was running 3.0's and T2 armor. He 2 boxed a warrior and pally through Shadow with 3.0's and T2 armor AND got the charm upgrades he needed to UC. And most of this was done before weapon augs went live. Slow? Compared to some, yes....but its very doable.

Again, I dont see where UC is prohibitive. Anyone can get UC.

I honestly dont think the UC is all that hard to obtain. Time consuming? Yes! Definitely! Mind numbingly boring? Without a doubt! Worth the effort? Beyond question.

But difficult? No.

And BTW....thank you Hunter. Even when we dont agree on an issue I gotta respect how you handle issues here. Thanks for the attention.

No, same hps. Its kind of overkill when you have a bracer mob spawning adds, doing AE root every 60 seconds or less, and doing a knockback.....then adding a 585K DT on top of it. Was it your intention for this Hunter? Because TBH even with DI doing Burning Prince is dicey with a group of 4.0 chars. Or were you wanting to force T4 to be multi group content?

Just not sure where you wanted to head with this. I understand adding spells back in to the mobs, and even agree with it....but DT was a stupid copout mechanic live, and I like it just as little here. While I can see it on key mobs for added challenge, adding it to every boss in a zone seems as if it were unintentional, because it makes very little sense.

No updates in the traditional sense are needed here.....just the updated spell file and the custom zone files. You can find both to the left on this page under EZ Server Downloads. If you havent loaded these files it should take care of the issue. If it does not....may want to try loading the "missing files" for UF that many clients out there seem to lack. You can find those here:

http://tinyurl.com/eqmissing

BUMPED!!! People need this now, it seems.

Ok, a few people were asking about how to make boxing less laggy. Check this post: http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=543.0

More on boxing tomorrow.

Dont thinbk Return Home functions here.....never has for me, anyway, on three different clients (Titanium, SoD, UF).