Oaky talking about EQ is reminding me of FFXI, in which you’d have raid bosses for 18 to 64 people taking upwards of an hour for the normal ones. The truly endgame bosses? Some of them take upwards of 6 hours when they’ve been defeated at all (and Square-Enix will up the difficulty on some of 'em when they’re beaten to make repeats less likely).
Yeah, I don’t miss that a single bit. Give me content a guy who has a wife and life can play for an hour or so and feel like I got somewhere.
Oh yeah, the best part? While dying didn’t cause you to lose gear, you DID lose XP equal to 10% of the total required for next level. If that caused you to drop a level, so be it. If that caused you to not be able to equip your raid-level gear, so be it.
I wouldn’t say that they were sadistic so much as they seem ridiculous in retrospect because they were the trailblazers. It gave later MMOs something to improve on.
Yeah, but the fights **Oak **was talking about would go forever, *not including *wipes.
Well, it was fun. You have to understand, back in the day, EQ was the only game in town. I’d never seen anything like it when I joined…what…sometime in the late 90s. WoW came later…and frankly, got mocked loud and long by the EQ crowd because everything was so easy compared to what we were used to dealing with in our raids. WoW was viewed, at least in EQ circles, as a kid’s game. Real men played EQ, dammit. Eventually, WoW won the battle. They did it by maintaining challenging content while smoothing over some of the rougher edges, and making the game much more player friendly.
Now, a decade and change later, I wouldn’t go back to EQ, nor would I tolerate another game that was anything like as harsh as EQ could be. But there is and always will be a soft spot in my heart for that game…as frustrating as it could be. That’s where the original Oakbrow Farwalker was created (the inspiration for the Oak part of my user name here). I still prefer that Druid class to the WoW druid class overall. Wish I could have that character, with those spells, in this game.
Ahh, EQ … the good old days of monk /corpse + Feign Death dragging across the Plane of Fear. Two uber guilds racing to organize and beat each other to the non-instanced raid boss, leapfrogging each other over the minibosses and trash along the way, uber drama, cursing, harsh words and feelings, pleas to a GM to intervene, hoping one your raid would outdamage the other one in the case of a simultaneous pull … anger, frustration, mules camped at the boss spawn for days on end. Nope, don’t miss it at all.
Haven;t seen it mentioned yet (may have missed it), but:
**
Patch 4.0.1 drops tonite.**
Azeroth as we know it will never be the same. New talent system probably means our daily heroics will be kinda…sporty…for the next few days. Plus all the other changes leading up to Cata. Wondering if there will be more world events starting tomorrow…
Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of getting ready this past weekend including making herb farmers *really *happy, handing out glyphs to guildies, and so forth. D:
In between Loremastering and AH’ing like a mofo, I’ve also lost what little sanity I had left and started in on Rivendare runs after getting the Key to the City and finishing out the Keymaster achieve because once it dropped I was standing there and going, Well, I’m here so why not…
I may as well keep it up and see how long it takes (ha.) and at least I’ll be collecting oodles of runecloth for my guildie’s The Insane attempt?
Plus. I finished out the Tirion Fordring chain in Plaguelands – if you didn’t know, he’s shacked up out there living it up as a hermit in the world prior to starting up the Silver Hand and saying hi to Arthas. Good chain, and (without spoilering the chain) reinforces the point that the Scarlet Crusade were asshats even before they went completely batshit insane in Northrend.
Not sure what you mean by higher cost. Frost and Triumph badges are being converted to …whatever the hell they call the new equivalent. I’d expect the relative cost to be similar, just in the new currency, which may be a higher number than under the current currency. But, the badges are being converted at a premium rate…ie, 1 frost is worth 1+ new currency. Unless I’ve misunderstood.
Am sure I’m not spending or converting anything pre-patch. I’ll take my chances with whatever the new system is, and a reasonable conversion rate.
From a downtime perspective, I checked my wow folder. At the moment, I show three “stages” of the patch to 4.0.1—am I correct in assuming (hoping desperately) that I already have the bulk of the download, and tomorrow I should be able to play with minimal delay after getting home from work? If not, I’m tempted to request permission from the office manager (who just happens to be me :D) to bring in my laptop and hook it in to the office connection to get the download going during the afternoon…
The emblems are being converted to points, sure. The thing about points is they’re intended to scale with level. That is, level 70 stuff will be pretty cheap, level 80 stuff will cost about what it costs now (figuring 1 emblem => 11.58 Justice points), and level 85 stuff will cost a hell of a lot of Justice points, with the understanding that you can earn them really quickly at 85. When everything changes tomorrow, heirlooms will be priced as level 85 items, which means they’re going to cost something like 2200 Justice points. In comparison, 40 emblems, which is what most heirlooms cost right now, will only get you 463 Justice points. So heirloom costs are going to be obscene between tomorrow and whenever you can get to level 85 after the expansion hits on December 7.
Heirlooms are being inflated bigtime this patch – over 2k JP, which is equal to almost 200 frost/triumph emblems. They’re bringing the cost in line with point earnings at 85, even though we can’t get to 85 yet
Really? Ouch. I did not know that. Last I saw was that heirloom stuff would not work over 80, so would be priced as it is now, relatively speaking.
I’m kinda hoping the conversion will let me go at least 4/5 T10 tomorrow. I’ve got 50 someodd frosties, maybe 150 triumph to convert. Maybe enough to go 5/5, or close to it. Of course, I have no doubt that if I do buy the pants, the Sanctified Bloodmage pants will drop in the first VoA 25 I run after the purchase…
Well, my paladin ran a random heroic tonight, which got her to … 59 Frosts. One shy of a new pair of gloves But, I guess with tomorrow’s conversion, she has enough Frosts and Triumphs combined to grab the gloves.
My lvl 67 nelf hunter was in Nagrand, doing stuff leading up to the final “rescue Corki” chain, and ended up sort of accidentally murdering a tauren hunter. He somehow managed to release Corki from his cage (not sure how he did that), and killed Corki, which flagged him for PvP. I pretty much ignored that and attacked a nearby ogre. While I was fighting the ogre, this tauren ran past me, and as soon as the ogre went down my pet went after the tauren without my even telling him to, while the tauren was in combat with another ogre. The tauren died quickly. I should have clicked on his corpse and done a /sorry emote.
EQ wasn’t a game for masochists. Yes, the punishments were tough, that’s what punishments are supposed to be… punishments. They make the highs that much sweeter.
Believe it or not, some people enjoyed the days when everyone wasn’t a winner by virtue of having a pulse.
You know the gloves and pants drop in VoA, right? The 10 man version has Bloodmage, and I’m told the 25 man has Sanctified Bloodmage. Well, and stuff for other classes, too…and Paladin stuff seems to drop way more often than mage stuff does.
Has anybody got a link to some sample Mage and Druid specs incorporating the talent changes in 4.0.1?
I dunno what I’m going to do. I’ve been Arcane forever. Leveled 1-80 that way, other than dabbling in a Frost dual spec for grins. From what I’ve read, it sounds like Fire may be best, with Frost a close second, and good old Arc coming in third. Think Frost gets permapet, with freeze ability and some other nifty pvp tricks. Fire gets Pyroblast! (Yes, Pyroblast!–according to WoW Insider’s Arcane Brilliance column, they added the ! permanently.) Plus other nifty stuff. I’m sorting leaning towards trying Fire as a primary spec, but not sure what to fill in with after i spend 31 points in fire. Thinking of a Frost dual spec for PVP, also have the same concerns for what to do above 31 points…
My druid (the nightelf version of Oakbrow, btw) will be balance as his primary spec. I like the whole Boomkin thing. Would probably mix that with Resto after 31 in Balance. For his dual spec—Tank or Healer? I know resto is losing our Tree form as we know it, and I hate that. Don’t see myself liking a cat druid spec. I do sorta miss tanking. Haven’t done it seriously since EQ2. How hard is it likely to be to tank heroics at least as a bear?
Shield Breaker Quest: Not sure what I’m being asked to do - just keep hurling the shield breaker at the target till the target’s health is gone? When do I hurl (throw)? When the green diamonds are turning, or the yellow? It says throw a shield breaker then follow right away with another?
The green triangles mean the target’s shield is at full strength, yellow means partially damaged, red means almost gone, none is all the way down with his bare ass hanging out. I think that quest wants you to knock his shield down, then sting him in the bare ass. And then do it again.
Unfortunately, Quasi, even players with normal cognitive ability have problems getting used to the jousting. It can be complicated and frustrating until you know what you’re doing.
But, I guess with tomorrow’s conversion, she has enough Frosts and Triumphs combined to grab the gloves.