Haves, Have-nots, and whiney bitches.

[Grumbam]

<deep breath>

So ... I've been using up some of my "Waiting Time" here at work reading the official SOE forums. ( yah yah I know )

It seems there is an abundance of posters these days who style themselves " Casual Players", these players want to have high-end equipment, and access to high-end zones, and see all new content as it comes out .... but they don't want to be in a raiding guild or have to go to raids.

Casual player to me means just that, Casual. You're NOT going to get the uber gear, your NOT going to get to the uber zones, and your NOT going to see the newest content just because you pay to play EQ.

I have pointed out to these folks that the kind of gear and exp available to nonraiding players is perfect to have a challenging time of it in the zones available to the same nonraiding players.

No one wants to hear that.

Mudflation has spoiled these types of players by making available to them the uber zones of expansions past. Now they think because they can fight in ToV/Ssraeshza/Tier 3 PoP that they should somehow be automatically be entitled to also access uper level PoP and GoD zones.

I can't help but wonder if some of the protest about raiding content is tied to the fact that the players who protest can't get accepted into a respectable raiding guild either due to their poor attitude or unspectacular skills/attendance.

I know some REAL casual players ... they don't give a damn less if they ever see the Elemental Planes, Kod'taz, or even SolRos' Tower. They enjoy doing exp groups in unusal places with their regular friends or in their casual guilds, they do long quests like the Coldain Shawls, the Tradeskill Trophys, the Original Epics Etc.

The disgruntled whiney bitches should simmah down neh.

LDoN and Mudflation have made the casual player far more powerful then ever. If you want to play with the gear I play with, in the zones I play in ... Then go ahead and put in your time like I did.

If that's too much for you to handle then you don't deserve it!

[rysingsun1]

many so called "casual players" have put a great deal of time into the game but simply cannot do it in long streaks all at once at the request of their boss ... err i mean guild leader.the gear obtainable by such a player isnt even close to half the gear a full time raider would get though he puts in more than half the time.

whining goes both ways and ive seen plenty on both sides. there are those who want gear they have not worked for and there are those who want to deny gear to those who would work for it. there are those who placing family above guild can play the hours but according to their own schedule not someone else's and yet they cannot advance not because they havent worked for it but because content is locked behind keys that are unobtainable no matter how much time played unless done under the cloak of a paternalistic guild. such people have every right to 'whine' that they are being denied the game that they originally subscribed to which was built around "grouping" with raiding as a supplement rather than a requirement.

most of those that i know who love raiding also hate flagging. if so many people hate flagging then why dont we get rid of it? "no no" say the raiders. "it would mean i sunk all that time for nothing." valid argument. so lets compensate them with a bunch of aa refund or something. "no no thats not good enough! i dont want the aa, what i want is to remain in a different class of uberness than everone else."

[Eriatha Egan]

While it sounds somewhat elitist, I fully agree with you here. If you're not willing to put in the time and effort into the game, then why should you expect to be at the top? Ldon and such as given a lot of power to the casual player. So much, in fact, that it's becoming more and more common for up and coming raiding guilds to practically outright skip content (because anything you give to a casual player is also available to a raider). Remember back in the days when it was almost necessary to do VT in order to be intially successful in the elementals? Now I see guilds not even bothering. Why should they? Everything they need to fill in those caps can pretty much be gotten out of Ldons if you're willing to put in enough time for it.

I agree with Grumbam. EverQuest exists on the basis of the carrot always dangling in front of you. It always has and it always will! If you give super high end access and super uber gear to the casuals, then what left is there to work for and take pride in for the raiders?

[Partha]

Funny, I've never seen a casual who says he wants Time access, or a Raex BP, or anything like that. Most of the ones who post merely state that it sucks that more than half of an expansion is locked behind a raid flag that they can't possibly get due to RL commitments.

Personally, I think progression should be a two way street. Got your Time flag? Great, there's no reason to ever go to Velious again! Already in (insert dumb GoD name with WAY too few vowels here)? Great, locked out of Luclin! Killed RZTW? Then you'll never ever ever need to fuck with Gorenaire!

That would leave content suitable for casuals out of the reach of bored duoing/soloing Time+++, so they can fight against people their own level and gear ratio for spawns, just like the Time+++ did oh so long ago. But you'll never see it thru all the bitter tears and moaning.....from the people who don't need it.

[Shikarii]

that was pretty much the reason i left EQ; i was wayy too casual to bother keeping up with my guild's progression ( time++ ) and sure my BoW and scattered kizrak+skyshrine armour pieces are nice and all; but overall the committment needed to keep going at the rate of my old guild was going meant an end of EQ and progression.

these days i log on now and than ( very seldom, too much RL ) and just goof around. I agree with ya grum on your points; and i feel these days that i myself am only entitled to what i put forth effort towards acheving.
sure, an old hand-me-down is great and all but for the most part i won't b*tchslap my cup of milk off the table if i'm not wearing Raex nor own a Darkblade.

and it's funny...the game doesn't bother me either. it's just fun with no goals set other than just logging on and saying hi to friends.

[Battleblade]

Partha,
I hate to say it, but you sound a lot like those Knights that were pretty happy to see Defensive turned off in Tipt and Ikky - if I can't have something, well good - glad you got screwed.

Before I destroyed a rotator cuff, I skied the 3 diamond trails on most of the East Coast "mountains". This didn't bar me from the bunny slopes. In fact, some of the really long intermediate slopes were a lot of fun (at least on acrobatic skies going backwards half the time).

This is somewhat the way EQ is. You earn your way into the harder content, but that doesn't mean you can't if you wish relax and do easier content. "Uber" players have earned their way into harder and more content. Players that can put in less time don't see as much of the game - that's the way it works. They reserved Vox and Naggy, and as near as I can tell, it's only being farmed now by players trying to sell the Staff of Forbidden Rites for 1M pp. PA would like to thank you for your patronage.

I think the only thing that's ticked me off recently is a few sub-7k HP players whining that this or that part of GoD is too hard. When you look at their Magelo, there's no sign of augments or no sign they've even farmed Ornate molds. Somehow they expect reaching level 65 means they've arrived.

The killer is that on a few servers there are "public" raids. On E'ci, E'ci Public Raiders is one of the top guilds (if it were strictly speaking a guild) on the server. Raiding does not require being in an "uber" guild. It does however require doing more than logging in and /oocing Hey, I logged in - where's my ph4t l3wts??

I saw a level 54 /oocing yesterday in PoK, "So where's the entrance of that PoTime zone? Anyone want to group there?"

There's plenty to do as a casual player. However, you have to make your own fun. Unless your server has public raids, nobody is going to organize the fun for you.

BB

[Brutonius]

I'm not in a raiding guild nor do I have uber equipment, but I wouldn't necesarily consider my self a casual player since I play EQ everyday for many hours. Being in a raiding guild does not appeal to me in anyway. I put alot of time into improving my characters. What happens when I get to the point that I can't improve my gear without joining a raiding guild? Does this mean that even after all the time and effort I've put into progressing my characters I will have reached the end of the game? I certainly hope not. I don't want top of the line gear I just want some kind of upgrades that I can work towards that don't require raiding every night of the week.

If you're not willing to put in the time and effort into the game, then why should you expect to be at the top?

Remember back in the days when it was almost necessary to do VT in order to be intially successful in the elementals? Now I see guilds not even bothering. Why should they? Everything they need to fill in those caps can pretty much be gotten out of Ldons if you're willing to put in enough time for it.

If being in an uber raiding guild isn't your idea of a good time, yet you still do put alot of time and effort into this game, then why should you be left out?

[Mukaz]

This is somewhat the way EQ is. You earn your way into the harder content, but that doesn't mean you can't if you wish relax and do easier content. "Uber" players have earned their way into harder and more content. Players that can put in less time don't see as much of the game - that's the way it works.

That's not exactly correct. I can put in the same time as raiders can but I choose, for a variety of reasons, to do it in smaller chunks. Up through Luclin I had a resonable expectation that, even with my smaller chunks of playtime, I could eventually gain access to "end game content". I could reap the same rewards for the same amount of time devoted to the game, even if it was in 2 hour chunks a day instead of 8.

PoP, and flagging raids, changed that for me and a host of other "casual" players. Now end game progression requires encounters that take more time than I can devote in one sitting because of design decisions made by the developers.

Let me make this real clear for those of you who will read into my remarks...

I don't care if end game content is designed to take 1000 hours to gain access to, I can do that but if I can't do it in 1 -3 hour chunks then for all intents and purposes i'm paying for content I'll never see

The killer is that on a few servers there are "public" raids. On E'ci, E'ci Public Raiders is one of the top guilds (if it were strictly speaking a guild) on the server. Raiding does not require being in an "uber" guild. It does however require doing more than logging in and /oocing Hey, I logged in - where's my ph4t l3wts??

We have a pretty good public raiding group on my server. They're actually working on taking down RZtW. I've gotten my MB kill with them. You know what the problem is though? The raids still take more time than I can play in one sitting, on most occasions, and I know for a fact I'm not the only person playing the game with this problem. Again, its not that we can't find 4 hours to play, we can't find 4 hours to play all at once or at the right time.

There's plenty to do as a casual player. However, you have to make your own fun. Unless your server has public raids, nobody is going to organize the fun for you.

There is far less to do as a lvl 65 casual than many raiders care to admit. With every AA point I gain my power level relative to the content I'm doing increases. Unless I can find a way to play 4-6 hours a day and do the raids and GoD trials I need to progress to more challenging content then I will soon be at the point where hard LDoNs are trivial but I can't access the content that I would find challenging.

Not every casual player want the game handed to them on a silver platter. Most of us want what raiders want. A challenge. The opportunity to progress. Encounters that yield meaningful rewards. To do things that give us a sense of accomplishment.

And right now SOE's answer to those wants is......resellable augments.

[Groovdog]

Originally Posted by Grumbam If you want to play with the [I

gear[/I] I play with, in the zones I play in ... Then go ahead and put in your time like I did.

If that's too much for you to handle then you don't deserve it!

My 2cp, crawl back into your hole.

People like you willl ensure that this game croaks because a wide portion of it cant progress which as everyone knows is how people evaluate their playing experience (other than the social piece). Dont progress, dont like, dont pay. Simple enough?

Since I cant raid now due to current play times (never get more than 2hrs straight except Sat/Sun mornings) I should see all the content beyond BoT withheld to some degree? I can do GoD because I am geared for it but people who are not (those very same casuals) will struggle in it.

But guess what, I bet if I could string my 30hrs+ a week into 7pm-1am EST 6 nights a week then I could be SO UBAH JUST LIKE YOU. As far as lacking skill, I am currently 6boxing because my playtimes suck. I know 6 (well actually more than that with alts) classes intimately and can handle the complications created by running a full grp by myself. When I have raided in the recent past I am bored senseless because there is not much going on outside of certain defined roles (I am usually MA/MT because only lower guilds will let a non-hardcore participant into their raids).

I do believe that raiders should have relative superiority but that the gap has widended too far to the point of making 1.5 expansions (1/2 of PoP and GoD) all but inaccessable to the majority on non-hardcore (my defintion) non-raiders. That means 50-75% (my estimate) of the people cant see 80%+ of the post 65 content. I call bullshit on that one.

And yeah check out that magelo with that ubah LDoN equipment, 293 LDoN wins and counting on my chanter (warrior has like 240 or something) or about 3 months equivalent of hardcore raiding for 3 pieces, some augs, and some banked pts, how ubah is that!

GD

For the record : I am speaking for others as my guys are time flagged for the most part and am working GoD trials but I know the "wall" because my pally sits right at it (ornate/LDoN/some GoD no EP flags, i.e. screwed). Try that for a day and realize how little there is left to do in the game to progress in a meaningful way.

/rant off

[Vigdis SangCaru]

When someone overgeneralizes, as was done in the initial post and several others in this thread, they inevitably come off sounding like an asshole. I'll add snobbish to the title as well, although I doubt anyone is bothered by the term.

I was in a small guild for three years. These people were my best friends. Hell, I dated one of them and I met him through the game. We knew everyone elses real life name, telephone numbers, children, favorite colors, etc. When someone's epic mob spawned we'd call anyone who wasn't online up and they'd hop on to help. The guild had around 15 people in it. The only way to get into the guild was a full vote by everyone in the guild and once you were in, you were a complete equal, access to the web page admin, ezboard admin, officer, equal loot decision-say. We had no leader other than the one SOE demanded we technically have. This guild maxxed out in the Halls of Testing. Maybe we could have done more, certainly we could have when later expansions like POP were released and AAs flowed. But if I wanted to progress I had to leave.

And I left. And, yay!, I progressed. In fact, I progressed right into no longer feeling like playing. Why? Because the people I raid with are more like co-workers than friends. We do our jobs, people like to say its a "family" raiding guild, but really we do our job, get our loot, and log off. It's the most impersonal gaming experience I've ever had and, frankly, I'm probably in the friendliest and nicest of the high end guilds on my server.

So grats me, I've progressed. And I've left behind everything that I think makes EQ a great game. So I guess that gives me the right to sneer and be elitist myself, eh? Even though I don't consider raiding to be more difficult with 54 or 72 people than I did with 18. In fact, I probably had to work harder and be more on top of my game with 18 because there was no one else to cover my ass when I fucked up.

Quit pigion-holing people and you'll realize it's not as black and white as you'd like to have it. There are a lot of people who put in long hours in this game and deserve the loot they have and deserve to see higher end content too. No, they won't be killing elemental GoDs, but maybe exping in POE shouldn't be limited to those that put their progress priorities above their friendships. (Oh, and if you are in Qvic and never had to compromise like I did, congratulations to you - I think you are in the serious minority).

[xwraithx]

The main tank in our guild has 600 wins in LDoN. He has maxxed out all his augs, and he max buffs up to 10+. He's got maxxed aa, 800 of them (not kidding here).
I'd say that's a good amount of time invested.

And we are pre-elemental, pre-ssra, just because we have at most 18 people log on per day. We don't want to disband or go join a raiding guild. What's left for people like us to do?

Sure, we can do GoD, but Tipt is the point that we get stopped at. Lots of us are actually flagged for vxed and tipt. But the loot there just doesn't let you progress further than that.

What can we do then? No numbers to raid, so disband guild and join a raiding guild? Do another 600 LDoNs for 'fun'? Randomly recruit strangers and make the guild into a raiding guild, something that we have no desire to do?

There comes a time when you can get the best you can get as a 'casual' player, and there is no more real progression. Unless you do the uber raid thing of course. Which sucks, because it feels like EQ forces you to do that in order to progress.

[Tooby]

however..
Im not sure this is a new phenomenon, but with mudflation it seems to me that for a very very long part of the game (as a casual) the zones you can enter (unkeyed) - even with a guild of say 30 - vill have very few drops that surpass what you can already get in the bazaar.

I did start the VT key - I am the proud owner of seven shards and a orb from the Va'Dyn - I would love to get there the honest way but i sincerly doubt i ever will. Firstly because it took me 4 months to get this far, and secondly as most of my casual playing friends have even further to go. In addition when you cutting edge players broke in there - you got the cutting edge gear for your efforts - once i do Ill get mediocre gear that will serve as a stepping stone into elementals into time into god.... I thiink theres a differenence.

Also these long winded key quests seem to be a pretty new thing. The old expansions have one or two zones like VP, Sleepers Tomb, VT.. most zones are open and there a worthwie (at the progression of that expansion) targets to go after. Half of PoP seem to be closed and similarly the greater chunk of GoD is pretty unaccessible if you are not already at least elemental.

Basically I wonder why you feel so strongly against opening up zones that are 3 expansions old. You 9-11k unbuffed raiders really cant need them for much beyond nostalgia any more, but for a casual player they are areas which would be fun to explore. And as someone said, with LDON (and mudflation) they are hardly even needed for progression any more. Eventually no-one will go there or they will have to get revamped.

(note that none of these questions are rethorical Im guessing here)

Bah I ramble on.. make of it what oyu will

[Haass]

It seems there is an abundance of posters these days who style themselves " Casual Players", these players want to have high-end equipment, and access to high-end zones, and see all new content as it comes out .... but they don't want to be in a raiding guild or have to go to raids.

I'm real busy right now, so gimme a couple of days and I'll come back and rip this up one side and down the other. You're so wrong it's not even funny.

[Groovdog]

Tooby (amongst others) says far more politely exactly how most casuals (defined non raiders, or maybe all non raiders + non-hardcore raiders) view the world.

If you dont like my rants then you should at least listen to his more politely put case because the argument is similar for all people who are reaching the effective soft-cap of the game. This is where xwraith's comments come into play.

If you would like I can put up my pally magelo and let you find a way to upgrade him that doesnt require more than the time+ grp I can field myself (and these arent twinks, but rather casters with 6000+ unbuffed mana, etc.). Oh I guess I could do more LDoNs to finish my augs and my gear replacement but I have basically the best money can buy. That is limited progression.

GD

and yeah you hit my pet peeve DEAD ON

[Mokor Leadheaad]

no i'm just tired of cannon fodder who happen to show up for enough raids to win a loot get rewarded because of who they assoiate with.

i spent the first 4 years dealing with assholes and cockholsters to get loot, and i am done with it.

if that make anyone unhappy that i want to progress past the ldon/ornate celling without a gaggle of random other dicks then tough cookies.