EZ Server

like for real I have it all to my self...and while that is nifty... 

are new bad ass zone that they have spent countless hours on is basically being used by me and a handful of people....

are we the only ones who can handle it?

is it to buggy?

what gives!

I can speak for me and my buddy, the no instance thing kills it completely.  I have 0 interest in dealing with other people's trains or them having to deal with my random AFK's all the time. 

Part of the fun for us on the server has always been we can do our own thing at our own pace in our own zones.  We could chat on occasion if needed, lend a hand or ask for hand, etc.

The sudden change into forced sharing is a huge non-starter for us.

For reference, we are fully T9, 1 UW11, 1 UW8 (maybe9), 4UCv3, maxxed augs, etc.  We haven't set foot in T10.

ohh you dont need aother people for trains in t10...it tends to do that on its own... mobs move about the zone with traps and pathing all over and the fast respawn mean you are constantly having mobs auto aggroing mid fight.


it tends to be just me in the zone OR 58 other toons half of witch are afk and the other half who are actively clearing all of the named mobs....

I am waiting on the revamp for tank mitigation and a possible solution for toons being in the zone but not being in the zone bug....I despise my toons dieing to aoe flurry because they dont have the warriors mitigation stats....I can handle healing but being one rounded is just no fun.  The only other problem I have is with not knowing the outcome of the quest lines on toons with different factions.  I love the idea of having different factions for cloth and mellee and tank classes but what faction does what?!  Pick one and you cant change your faction....something showing the rewar for that quest/faction line so you could tailor your toons would be great....I would too also prefer instances but thats not the big issue for me....I would like guild instances so you and your guildies could fight together and not have to deal with bot_toon_1000 or jack_hole_2000 giving you a bad evening playing.

And now I have my next two toon names...


thank you!

For me.

Instancing

Lack of COH (because alts ALWAYS die)

Alts always die

Trains - RKO out of no where.

Bug with group / raid (because alts always die)

The zone it self.

It just feels force fed for grouping up.

Not knocking it, it's well designed and i bet took a ton of hours to do just doesn't have that EZserver zone feel that i am used to.

Desync issue for me.  To be fair, I had the same problem in T9 when the HG change happened. 

I purchased a new and much beefier PC a couple of weeks ago, but still have the same issue.  Someone said it was related to the MQMap?  Could be.. I dunno, but I can't keep my 18 on line long enough to find out really.   Just don't have the stamina to fight through another new zone bug hunt atm.

pro tip


/maphide npc untargetable
/mapdhide npc ground


make these on a hotkey and/or make a CFG file for the zone...

this will solve 99% of the sync issues

the trains are built into the zone along with the traps..

I have 3.5 UW's and all toons save my newbie wizzy are UC3 and am still suffering with lack of dps to keep up with the spawns.

Zerks die every pull...every time... I am really thinking of dropping my non UW/earring zerk and adding a necro

shit is tough..

any melee toon that is not UW/UC3/ROA1000/SOALV/IG is going to die all the time.

my paladin with uw8/SOA LV using the mace is able to keep me going on my tank most of the time.. my dps melee toons die to random rampage even with pally/cleric AOE heals spamming... I am thinking of SOA my main cleric next just to add some procs...along with casting...

I don't see how the instance thing makes a difference what-so-ever. People seem to be bandwagoning that. The zone is MASSIVE AS SHIT. How exactly are you forced to deal with other people's trains? I have not ONCE seen both orc platforms being camped simultaneously. I have, however, watched as 2-3 groups all fight over the entrance area of the main orc camp. Why not just go up north? That area is actually easier, because once you pull a few, they constantly respawn 2-3 at a time and run across the zone and you can stand in the middle of nowhere killing a stream of a few orcs at a time. They literally train themselves to you (small trains). Also, if both orc camps are ever ever ever taken, which I still haven't seen happen, there are about 30 other places you can go, kill, and work on the several different quest lines.

Until someone actually says something logical about the no-instancing policy, the whole topic is incredibly annoying, especially when Hate already stated the zone is too complex to allow tons of instances to be opened at once. A compromise that COULD be made is allowing 2-3 separate public zones to go between (Sunderock1, Sunderock2, Sunderock3) BUT, BUT BUT BUT BUTTTT that is not even needed at the moment, because nobody is even going there in the first place, for now at least. Also, all that would really do if it got put in, would make people like me take advantage and pop between 1, 2 and 3 and kill all of the Beast of Burdens then log back off, as I've been doing for weeks now, because I need about 60 more tier pieces from that asshole and he only drops 1 per kill.

I went in, got all my armor done for tank and accessories for toons that I cared about.  In the time it took me to get all the faction and token drops for tank, I collected 5 essences.  There are many small things going on in the zone, and some larger ones.  For me, the absence of essences in the current state makes it a place that I will be avoiding.  At least until my next round of cloth toon is ready to come into the zone and melt shit.  I think the difficulty level is fine, the absence of instancing just makes people have to communicate with each other.  They also need to be aware of who is spawning which bosses, so they are not boss poaching on accident, or heaven forbid on purpose.

I imagine some of those movies where teenagers date vampires are decently written, its just not my cup of tea.

I stayed back after beta because it involved massive scripting, complex quests, pathing fun, and the like. Couple that with an enormous size of the actual zone and then throwing 1k continually respawning mobs into it, and you got a recipe for lag, instability, and if you want a real world equivalent, it'd be like slamming 4 vicodins and trying to play whack-a-mole at a Chuck E Cheese. Survival =/= overcoming via any measure of skill.

I've always been a mq2 minimalist, driving more than 6 with an enc/dru in tow was something i simply never did. Just the mere thought of reconfiguring spell casters and macros and such makes playing solitare or freecell while listening to mp3 lists seem enticing.

"I strongly enjoyed the traps' said no one ever. It brings death and rebuffing to those on the back end of the mq2 daisy-chain when you are newer to a zone, it becomes an unreliable, slow, boring, and monotonous method of triggering necessary things for someone w/ power beyond the level of that zone. So it's game over for the newbies and underwhelming and distasteful for those above it.  Traps wouldnt be that big of a deal though, except for the lack of COH.

As you've probably noticed, I didnt give a rats about COH until now. Thats because it's not terribly important unless you:

1. ) need 18 toons
2. ) need to move them /sticked constantly
3. ) anything that spawns randomly is going to make you stop everything and re-rez half of them.

/shrug. For me its an either/or thing when it comes to coh/traps. both just struck me and kinda a flip of the middle finger. personal opinion. ;)

For the record, yeah i SOA'd 6 toons, UWXI'd 6 toons, then got 1/2 way thru the second group on SOAs before i realized 'wait a minute.. I literally would rather play ps4 or freecell or ding dong ditch flaming bags of poo on the neighbor's doorstep than actually try to go beyond 6-7 toons.

There was two chairs. One involved having 20 toons online at all times. The other chair involved making 6 gods of war. I sat in the 2nd chair, and the next tier required the former. And when they pass out the trophy in tier 18 for the person who managed to sit in their chair the longest, it won't be me, but i certainly have enjoyed my time on EZ. Its a totally different server than it was even 2 years ago, and 99.5% of it is unmeasurably for the better.

Just not t10. Didnt end up my cup of tea. /shrug. Tried multiple times to get into it. Realized quickly it was going to involve me sitting in my chair for longer stretches than my life was going to allow. Doing things  i considered unfun like mq2 wizardry, getting ROA 1ks on toons i hardly ever needed to log on before, etc.

Anyone who knows me knows I got 95% of the joy on this server out of helping others through choke points and giving people new to the server whirlwind tours. This server is unlike any other, with its design to help others while also helping yourselves. It's the antithesis of p99, another server i spent a lot of time on. In fact, the reason I always have come back to EZ is it combined my love of the grind of p99 with the scripting magic and encounters of Stormhaven. It has been and will continue to be the best of both worlds.

Of course, just like anything everquest-related, there always comes a time where you just don't have the time you used to to play, and I'm currently in one of those sequences. 

Just luck of the draw. T10 was designed to be a massive content stumbling block to keep us busy. It accomplishes that. Its just not a vampire movie that lines up with what i'm looking for/able to do currently :)

This is a big fear of mine too....to know what spawns a boss you have to be in the zone and know the spawns.  I went in a few weeks ago running around the zone and saw Beast of Burden...I /ooc "did someone spawn this?" over and over. no one replied. after several minutes i killed it. I don't like to learn a zone that would run me the risk of getting the rep of being a ks'er...I prefer just to be the server asshole....but maybe this is more designed for the newer EZ players as i havent seen many of the old heads online much at all lately. :'(

Beast is a random spawn upon 9pm game-time, he just simply has a chance to spawn as the nightly undead / vampires pop all over the zone. All of the other bosses are deliberately triggered by killing a bunch of junk. The common bosses are Sharpclaw, Lord Venombite, and Orc Thundermaker. I actually did get 2 new bosses to spawn the other night which was pretty cool. Little J'aughn (bandit) and some Gnoll leader whose name I forgot. Darkpaw something.

Bosses I still have not seen spawn since beta: Ro'kki (bandit), Vaxxol (sarnak), Den Mother (orc), Warboss Zug (orc)

Little J'aughn I saw spawn after killing countless bandit mini's, somewhere around 10, as well as about 60 bandits.
Darkpaw I have literally 0 clue, but I'm guessing it was tied to Gnoll mini's as I killed quite a few of those that day, but we're talking hours and hours to get these 2 to spawn and I'm still not even 100% sure on the cause.

I'm guessing Vaxxol is tied to Sarnak Mini's, because I've wiped out the Sarnak base time and time again, even during night time. I've killed tons of both live and dead Sarnaks, but the mini's just don't seem to spawn. I've said this a bunch, but killing Sarnaks just seems to spawn Orc triggers and mini's all over the zone, which lead to absolutely nothing. I've killed more Orc Lieutenants than Gnoll / Bandit / Sarnak combined, and nothing has ever spawned from it.

I have to assume the 4 bosses I mentioned are either bugged, or tied to a spawner that is too hard to reach by a few groups grinding the zone for an entire day. I really don't have enough care left to try and grind 1 specific spot for an entire day just to ATTEMPT to figure this crap out.

I think the zone is puzzling enough, but as I said before, if these triggers can't be reached accidentally just from roaming around the zone and slaughtering at random, no one will ever spawn these bosses to reverse engineer the spawning method and say "ok wtf did I just do, let's try that again"

TLDR: Make boss spawns easier, reduce plat they drop, they're only awarding 1 tier piece per kill anyways, no matter how many people are in the zone, and that's the only thing people really care about.

The weapon skins are just for show, but thankfully the Orc weapons can be equipped by everyone, regardless of faction, and they have the highest HP of the weapons, which is the only thing that matters to deal with the difficulty of the zone. Most of my melee are well over 4 mil HP now just from the accessories, t10 weapon skin, roa 1000, and buffs / halloween pets. The SoA crew are all above 5 mil HP. The only deaths I had from rampage at this point were the zerkers and bards. So I swapped all 5 of those to use IG pets and haven't had really any rampage deaths since. The upcoming damage / stonewall adjustments will make rampage a lighter burden to deal with, but until then, I strongly suggest running full IG on your melee, unless they have ult weapon + soa, in which case MoF is fine. My group 1 is all running SoA + UW + MoF, aside from the bard who still eats dirt occasionally even with IG + SoA protecting her. I'm just far too lazy to turn off twist between pulls, so bards are always first to get rampage swings from every mob in the pack.

And lastly, the unlocked chests are such crap they may as well not exist. With the addition of locked chests having the 100% essence taken away, there is literally 0 reason to ever clear to an unlocked chest just to loot 10,000 plat and 0 items.

I cant figure how anything spawns...I have never spawned the  thunderdude and have only seen him when other people are camping the orcs.... I have zero luck getting him to spawn on my own...


almost done with my 3rd 750 and still only have boots on 1 toon lol../sigh ahh well ..all in good time

For me its simple, needing a raid put it out of reach. Sure I could join up with someone who was in there, but I would just be leaching off someone who could handle it on their own. I don't have the time or inclination to work up a second and third group just so I can try out T10. On top of that my over the phone connection has trouble with my 6, only holding up on good days.

He mostly spawns from killing at the far north Orc camp. After you clear out the area and respawns start heading across the zone, you'll see multiple stormbringers start to file in. After you kill a few, he'll spawn down south. He is spawnable via the south camp, but it literally would take hours of you killing the only stormbringer in the whole camp over and over.

I have a new fantastic camp I found last night with no trains and no traps with plenty of orcs to kill... including jugs and the strombringer so maybe my luck will change.


the casters and healers are able to sand on a ledge over the top of the fight and out of any spawn agro range and 3 or 4 zerk mobs spawn in the huts nearby.. then a few orc guards and the next pull is the stormbringer and a few buddies... all very manageable and i can even go back on the ledge and afk with no aggro... nice for when you have to like...pee..or something...

my main mistake for t10 has been just sitting on the orc highway of death and trying to zerg it .....

anyway .... much better now:)

Woot!  See you in...9000 kills :)

9000killsx30seconds/kill =270,0000 seconds of non stop dps = 4500 mins=75 hours 6.25 days non stop

75hoursXmylife=25 days to kill 9000 orcs

This zone is pretty much why I quit EZ.  The server seemed to be going towards requiring 2-3 groups when I only had 1, and now it seems you have to ROA, SOA, UW, UC3 max every toon to be viable in the end game zone.  That's dedication I simply do not have.  Hope you guys are having fun, though. :)

Yeah I am seeing a lot of people who seem to have stopped playing....I havent even seen Fugitive in a long time.....or maybe he's on when i am not /shrug.....

I have fought my way into t10 ...


is Tough..

But I dont see this as any reason to stop...

if you are allowing this to stop you from playing this is not the primary cause...

you have other things going on....

t10 is not a bad zone.... you have to struggle at first...but you are rewarded... this is how its works...

bugs will be worked out in time..


not an attack on anyone in any way but saying /I quit becaue of t10\ is only a partial truth

Only thing I really want is:

1. Zoning in bug fixed (if I zone in with only one group at least one toon is going to grey out)

2. Tank mitigation nerf.

something that is not high priority but would be nice:

Allow guilds the ability to instance t10 so you dont have to worry with grouing with folks you dont know and help understand what spawned "x" mob.

Agree with the guild instance thing. Can eliminate repop or make the cost 9999999999 plat if thats the issue.

besides the guild instance.  since its built already, I wouldn't even mind if this zone got beefed up and used as the optional more hardcore zone that was talked about. keep it public.   just make a new t10 for tiered progression.

Couldn't say it better myself. Honestly I question the motives of those who say otherwise, as I've never seen them in the [OPEN] public zone to begin with.

Look, whether your believe it or not, plenty of folks have stopped playing, quite a few due to the no instancing of T10.  It's sill to have the mechanic available for the first 9 progression zones, not counting the pre zones, and suddenly stop it at the last one.

That would be like watching 20 years worth of the Simpsons to have the new season come out with different characters.

So as with the whole information sharing stuff, people like to tell others how to play, seems many have decided to vote with their time and no longer play.

Adding instancing back in would encourage more people to play while doing nothing to hinder those who want to continue playing in a public zone.  Let's take a quick poll, how many of the self proclaimed public zone lovers do all their other tasks in public?

I'll wait......



Exactly.

Honestly I think only a handful of people have spent any time in this zone... like..5 maybe

the rest is just speculation.

the longer I spend in the zone the more I like it..


its new and scary......it will be ok..

The greying out thing has been almost 90% locked down after a debug and trial/error session with myself and Hurty for over an hour. I shared this with Akkadius, who then shared with EQEmu Coders, and the general (shared!) consensus is that the server is zoning too fast for the client.

In English: Server is "done zoning" before client truly is, which accounts for this "half-life" state of being in zone but greyed out. I'll follow back up with Akkadius on when a remedy for this may be in place. The fix for this issue would literally fix ALL zoning issues in ALL zones on MOST connection types.

(Additionally: After casting COH numerous times from numerous characters/npcs on Hurty's characters in T10, it did not affect it or 'bring the character back'. A half alive character stayed half alive.)

---

As for the people that 'quit' playing because no instancing, even though only really four people have been HEAVILY vocal, leads me to believe they are likely quitting because of other issues (time, life, lack of afk loots). I just can't understand lack of instancing and DAYS of playtime spent to suddenly "well....fts, I'm out!".

---

Multiple publics may be possible, not sure how to keep additional ones open but I'm sure Akkadius has some magic. Will consider it. Given the complaints about traps, damage, and AOE...not sure instances are going to magically fix it all unless warping/mad-lulz-hax involved. ::shrug::


-Hate

Ditto, I enjoy that it makes you actively play.  You can't just zone in and mindlessly faceroll content.  If you miss a heal, overpull, get double trapped on pull, etc...you are toast.  Welcome to endgame ;)

I may be crazy but the /maphide npc ground and /maphide npc untargetable really seems to help...

I can roll 11 toons (the 12 toon makes me kinda noticeably more laggy(..and its my second zerk who spends more time dead than alive in this zone anyway))


Casters are amazing in this zone.. they are outside of the AOE rampage and the dps from them is noticeable an amazing.(wizzy crits over 24.6mil AOE/UC2) Its not more damage than my UWmelee but it is nice burst.   

I have all 4 wizzard spells now and i feel the step up in power... I wish i had a necro and I may make one to fill that spot the zerk is leaving open.


anyway... its a challenge zone and if you rush you die... take your time...small pulls...be careful....

Well I have changed my groups so much i dont plan on doing it again(in reference to a casters playground).  Right now I am working on SoA for the last 2 members of my main group (bard and zerker) and then plan to go back in and try it after that...although a change to the tank mitigation might be a god send and make it so I dont have to SoA the second group....but dont know if that is a set in stone nerf or something Hate has just been pondering on.

I agree that all the zones have always been afk friendly, Some us like to farm at our own pace and have real life things to do and don't want to end up dead when we come back to farm again, I mean currently the non instance thing isn't an issue but it will be a bottle neck eventually, I am sure by then hate will have come up with possible solutions, one could be multiple public zones, aka pub1, pub2, pub3 etc, then at least it wouldn't be one chaotic over farmed area where everyone needs the same mobs but has to constantly fight for them, I understand the idea of traps it is neat and all but it would be nice if they were static...so some of us that aren't constantly glued to the game can leave do whatever we need to and come back and not be in nexus or qrg. I played around in t10 with a uw11 hander and shield and tanking up to 10 mobs wasn't terrible, but the constant random spawned traps even if your not even moving is an issue. I understand it being hard and not wanting to face roll the instance, but was about the biggest thing that deterred me from wanting to progess. That and the fact we finally got slow back working in the game at t8 so why the hell is it immune again in t10  :-X *glares*

Wait, am I supposed to be slowing in t8?

Multiple mobs to reduce damage, bosses to reduce damage, your not required to slow anything it just optional and helps. If you have a shaman use lingering sloth ^-^

Glad you can just sit non-stop behind the computer to farm without taking breaks or doing other things, congrats....rest of us the roaming traps is a major issue, the zone mechanics are dealable, but the fact you can't afk at all when you can in every single other zone progession in the game is an instant aythena says NUPE, and I am ready for t10 just not interested in a zone that forces me to constantly have to paying attention to the game, I go for a drink and come back 1 minute later and my toons are in nexus Yeah no thank you. That one of the reasons I liked this game so much, was the fact I could play at my leisure doing the day when I could, and afk when I needed to. T10 pretty much removes that completely, I know hate is busy and I know the zone knew, so their absolutely no reason any of us should be flamed or discredited for not playing till things are resolved, I've already posted two things I saw after spending an effort trying out t10, I was their for about 8hrs, 3 of those getting all my alts the proper quest >.0, but I whiped came back in about 3 or 4 times and just decided to leave the game at that point, not interested in farming another UW when the content I can handle, doesn't work for the same gameplay style been playing here for almost 4 years now. Removing reward items in general from play is a pretty bad slap in the face, I know its a dead horse far as enough people have complained about it, but even if we don't have instances, I don't see any feasable reason why hate would feel the need to remove COH clickies from the zone...Considering how large the zone is, and given the fact it takes more then a 6 group to handle, is an even BIGGER reason to need or want coh available, not to mention the fact of the one shot rampages and just about every other thing in the zone, would honestly push anyone that doesn't have reward items by this tier to want to consider donating for them. I understood why TOFS had coh disabled along with fastest travels, due to the floor to floor nature and progression, but why a standard tier progession zone? Why now after 11 zones of progression did you suddenly feel the need to remove reward items, just some explaination would be great on this, and also could you consider maybe working on bard/rogue trap detection/disable aa's and functions if its a zone that based on traps, this would be nice ^-^.

Wait a minute, stop complaining, everyone loves the zone, those of us that don't are just being silly and stopping playing had nothing to do with T10  ;)

In fairness, with the Tunnel Event you kinda had to plan your afk-ness in t9. So that could be considered the start of a trend. TOFS was kinda funky with the need to run into the nook left of the zone in on floor 4 for an actual safespot, and Tserrina spawning in the logical safespot on floor 7 was always a beautiful troll i enjoyed.

But TOFS was more finding the safe spot than actual issues when needing to afk.

There is no reason you can't afk in t10.  If you know where to stand and don't happen to have terrible luck of someone else popping a trap, and wiping; then having that trap pack walk over your afk spot.  (unbelievably rare possibility of that happening).  Traps do not go off on a timer.  They are step based, so if you (or your toons) take a step it will possibly generate a trap pack.  If you are not moving, you are not going to get killed.  There are places in the zone where the mobs move naturally, an example being from orc south to orc north.  That being said, it is nearly impossible to get wiped while afk unless someone is deliberately trying to kill you or you went to sleep on the train tracks.

Guess I have bad luck because I am literally no wheres near mobs afk from the game and come back and In nexus every time?

No, it's just that the people who actually figured out how to stay alive there afk are really, really lucky.

 :o

<shrug> I guess if going afk is your biggest obstacle to playing in a zone, the difficulty of  the content will be irrelevant.  And to your point dim, yes, there are about 10 different places I am confident I can park my team and come back to them still alive after working 8hrs.  Then again, maybe I'm just super lucky.  The long and the short of it is, I am not usually afk for longer than running to fridge to grab a beer and take a leak.