In all fairness, WoW raids started off pretty simplistic like that too. And just as WoW raids have evolved, EQ raids evolved away from the 1-tank, 71-healers kinds of fights.



This is true, and it's nice to not spend all night killing trash. Though I'll admit that there's something about the "sped-up" nature of things in WoW that always makes me feel rushed and frenetic when doing anything in WoW. Maybe that's just my fault and really isn't related to the discussion. Maybe I was just more patient in the EQ days, I dunno.



I think what bothers me most about WoW loot isn't the looks...it's the lack of variety in the loot itself. I was just talking about this on another board today, about how it seems like in WoW you basically have a couple primary stats, your "class" stat (AP/Healing/Spell Damage) and that's kinda it on all your loot. Looking back at EQ, there were pieces with all kinds of various, unique effects beyond the stats that made the items desirable even when replacements had come along. But they weren't so good that you felt *required* to go back to old content and get them. They were just nice. (Hai2u, Aten bracer)

You just don't see that in WoW. Some new item gets stuck on a badge vendor that has X more stamina/strength/AP than an item somewhere else, and no one ever really cares to go back to that old place anymore ever. Items that DID have nice effects that might have been unique end up getting nerfed into oblivion for some reason. (Hai2u, Hand of Justice) It's kind of a shame, too, that expansions effectively kill everything that came before, such a big world going to waste.

Yeah, I went off on some tangents there, sorry. =D

Vxed or Ikkinz or something...

EQ raids now are definitely a lot different than back in the day. While some of them are somewhat bland (only the raid mob hits for 10k or something ridiculous like that, and throw in a 10k unresistable AoE that it does every 30 seconds or so)... some of them are interesting to say the least.

Take Vishitmar. Starts off like your standard raid- main tank, rampage tank, everyone heal or DPS. Yay. Then at 90 percent down to death, it starts to randomly spawn eggs throughout this huge room that you are in. When an egg spawns, you have to kill the egg before it hatches. If it does, it spawns some hard hitting mob that can possibly take out your raid. Egg only takes damage via blunt weapons, but all classes have that.

At 75 and 50, 4 small wyvern like mobs spawn. Snareable. Cannot kill these mobs- instead, you just kite them around. Yay. However, if you DPS them at all then they start to summon and hits for a ton. So it becomes more of a "snare quickly, then run them all around and hope they don't aggro your raid" sort of deal.

At 25, Vish's hit points freezes. Randomly a NPC will spawn in the room you are in. If you are hit with a certain emote, you have to find and run to this NPC and say a certain message to it (usually hotkeyed). You only have a certain amount of time to do this, and once someone says the message to the NPC it despawns. Thus if two raiders are going after the same NPC you are wasting time. Saying the message to the NPC allows you to do 1% damage to Vish via your normal raid DPS; therefore, you have to have 25 successful messages to these random spawns. If you do not say your message to a NPC within the allotted time, 4 members of your raid (including yourself) get insta killed.

Also.... throughout the raid, if anyone dies at all during the encounter, then Vish spawns a ghost that hits for more than Vish itself and basically goes around killing everyone for like 20 seconds unless you can mez/kite it. You get a couple deaths in a row, get a couple ghosts that kill a couple raiders, get more ghosts... raid wipe.

Also... periodically, a special NPC spawns. Kill it, and everyone's health and mana goes to 100. Usually have to kill anywhere from 1-4 of these guys throughout the encounter.

The guild I am in got Vish down to like 6 health, our best effort. It is really a hard event, one that requires everyone to be paying attention and doing what they have to do. Definitely not a main tank, dozen healers, and /afk DPS fight...

And that was from an expansion that came out like 4 prior expansions or so. I could go on about some of the newer fights, but I have not raided in the past 3 expansions or so...

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Let me try to briefly explain the Lady Vashj fight. You Start out by tanking her like normal. She will periodically stun/root the tank and run off, then she'll shoot multiple people with her bow (since she is a hunter). She'll also cast a debuff on a random person that will make them do explosions that damage anyone near them. At 70% health, she'll be rooted in the middle of the room and the real fun begins (phase 2).
Once she is rooted, water elementals begin spawning at random spots in the room where you fight and slowly make their way towards her. They cannot be slowed, stopped, or anything, you have to kill them before they reach her or they will buff her (she'll also be casting chain lightning during this entire phase). As these water elementals continue to spawn, some larger Striders will also spawn... if you are in melee range of them, they will fear you, so you need to stay away from them. One person kites them in a circle around the room while everyone else (ranged) kills them. They are on a set timer, so if you don't kill them in time, you'll end up with 2 to deal with. Meanwhile, some Naga (Snakes) also will be spawning on a set timer as well. These also need to be killed ASAP because they do pretty mean damage to tanks. You also don't want more than 1 of these up at a time either. And while you are dealing with the water elementals, the striders, and the Naga, there will also be some "tainted" water elementals that will spawn every so often. W

hen they spawn, they do not move, they just sit in place shooting poison at people. You need to kill them as quickly as you can or they will despawn. Once you kill them, you need to loot a core off of them that you must use to turn off 4 generators (so you'll have to kill a minimum of 4 "tainted" elementals). The kicker is, when you loot the core off of them, you get rooted in place, so you must throw the core to another person, who will then throw it to yet another person standing at the generator so he/she can turn it off. Once all 4 generators are off, phase 3 starts.

In phase 3, Lady Vashj comes back to life (instead of rooted in place), so she must be tanked. Everything that is still alive (Naga, Elementals, etc) still will need to be killed but you'll also have to deal with the Lady who again stuns/roots the tank (and anyone else), who again casts the spell on people that make them explode doing damage to anyone around them, and who shoots her bow at people which owns them in the ass. To top it off, there are bats overhead that come in and begin shitting on the raid. When their shit lands, you must avoid it at all costs or it will kill you. Since Vashj likes to root people, it is not uncommon to get rooted in place, then have a bat shit on you. That, of course, will kill you in a matter of seconds.

So that's the gist of it. Fun fight, to be sure.

Yeah, Vashj/Kael are supposedly two of the most involved fights in WoW Pre-Sunwell.

Too bad they're no longer required and just about every guild in the world is now 5/6 SSC - 3/4 TK and romping around in MH/BT.

Personally I think Vashj is a more difficult fight than Kael.

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Fighting Illidan is just insane, but I really like the fight. It is like the cumulation of everything that you have experienced before all rolled into one giant event.

Phase one - Illidan is tanked by the MT. Every 30-60 seconds he casts parasites on a raid member. That person must move away from the entire raid before the three parasites spawn. All while the person has parasites they are taking damage. After the parasites spawn they must be killed quickly by ranged damaged dealers. If the parasites hit someone they are infected with parasites and they will start the process all over again. No one is immune from getting parasites. If the MT gets parasites all the melee must move away from Illidan until the parasites are dead. During this phase Illidan can do a shear attack that reduces the MT's HP almost in half. It can be blocked. This lasts until Illidan is at 65% HP

Phase two starts at 65%. Illidan can not be targeted but he calls forth two flame elementals. These must be tanked by tanks in full Fire resist gear (you can not change gear while in combat, and you don't come out of combat for the whole encounter). These are "leashed" to the warglaives that Illidan has thrown down. If the tanks move too far from the warglaives the flame elementals will enrage and charge a raid member killing them and become un-tauntable wiping the raid. If that wasn't enough Illidan is tossing fire bombs on the raid and calls eye-beams that cut across where the tanks are tanking the Flame Elementals. These beams do 20K damage and continue to tick fire damage in their wake. Also Illidan will target a person for barrage, who will be hit with 5k damage then another 10k over a few seconds. Most non-tank types have around 10K hp raid buffed. This continues until both flames are dead.

In Phase three the MT resumes tanking Illidan. Parasites resume and now Illidan casts AOE atacks with splash on different areas. This lasts a bit until Illidan changes into demon form (phase 4). Here most use a warlock to tank the demon. During this phase several people are targetted by demons and can not do anything. These must be killed before they reach the affected player or that player will be killed. Also there is an insane AoE that multiplies in damage done based on how close others are standing together.

Phase three and four cycle until Illidan reaches 23%.

Phase five an NPC comes to "help" by placing traps. If you move Illidan into the traps you keep him from enraging. Most raids don't move Illidan but have the healers beef up and heal the tank.

I have left out a lot on this event. There is a ton of stuff going on at all times.

Good run down of Vish, the guild I was in did this event uqite a few times, got everybody their vish items, def my more favorite event, and I still have my vish staff/shield in a pack.

Few corections though,

When you die it's 2 skely mobs that pop, they hit around 2K and VERY fast. If you don't mez them, gl.

Also, at 75% those whirlwind mobs pop, not drakes. They cast a huge knock-back that can send you flying really far away so every off-tank needs Lev. Also, if they die (they have about 100 hp's mind you, so no DS's!) they re-spawn instantly as a huge whirlwind that hits very hard. So you gotta offtank the little ones without hurting them while maintaining aggro. (Go SK taunt spells!)

You guys outa try out Anguish, it's old now but every event in their needs serious strat too!

Exactly why EQ2 grew boring after a while, and I think why the OP made the original post. It was more of a "wow, EQ2 is so simple I can macro myself to 70+" post than a "look at me, I haxxored and got banned!" post.

But Draagun's insights are incredibly accurate. Aside from a few classes who get some unique abilities/spells every now and then, the vast majority of spells as you level are upgrades. So, between 20 and 70, your hotbar essentially looks the same.

Which means combat is essentially the same.
A lot of people have compared EQ2 combat to "whack-a-mole". You essentially press the same buttons over and over again.
Mobs run at super-speed to you when aggroed, so kiting is impossible unless you're a Ranger (who have a snare bow shot). But then, most mobs are tethered and can only go so far before they deaggro, so Rangers are forced to kite in circles. Oh, wow. Sign me up, please. *rolls eyes*.

Add onto that a very limited equipment selection, AAs which tend to pigeonhole you more than offer versatility, and so on, and the game eventually grows stale.

EQ2 was the game that almost was, for me. It had an instant fanbase from EQ1. It had a great background and history to the game, and reasonably good graphics. Some classes were even quite fun (loved my Fae Conjuror, for example).
Shame they couldn't pull it all together.

That's the one thing that really struck me about EQ2. Mobs move incredibly fast, almost like they teleport on top of you. After playing EQ it just felt weird to see. Much in the same way the new physics engine in Quake turned off a lot of the players.

Sarissa Candyangel

Yeah....

For some reason the "Next-gen" MMOs all seemed to want to actually remove a lot of the freedom that games like EverQuest had.

Stuff like "tapping" mechanics for locking out mobs once someone else damaged them, trying to find ways to discourage kiting and whatnot, all those sorts of things. That really bothered me about EQ2. Even though my mains were a Shadowknight and a Cleric, I absolutely loved Bards just because it was a blast trying to find new and inventive ways to accomplish things, and it seemed like developers kept trying to remove that aspect of the games. =(

I don't think I could have macro'd eq1 with my necro. fighting was too complex. I was on the move constantly chasing mobs to keep dots on them and there were too many variables.

I can't speak for the other classes, but my necro in eq 1 was complicated enough that one would actually have to be there to react to things. - For the most part

Nah. Given the desire, you could have easily botted your necro completely afk without too much trouble due to the fact that you can check for any number of situations and react to it accordingly. No character is so complex that it can't be botted to varying degrees of success.

Movement and spatial recognition would be the real stumbling blocks there. You need to be able to move to successfully play a necro, usually at least. There are always situational exceptions, of course.

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Knowledge without reason is useless.

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Those things aren't that difficult to overcome. There are, and have been, ample plugins and scripts available to do just that assuming that you don't have the inclination to write your own.

It probably is possible, for a layman(like myself), it would probably be impractical. Eq2, I had a button mashing macro and a place to hunt in 5 minutes.

In eq1 my necromancer took a lot of movement and a lot of variables. Did my slow get resisted? Did my fear get resisted? Did the stupid mob path into adds? Did it disappear into a wall?

For example, some mobs would head off toward adds and you could back your pet off to "control" where the mob would go... I dunno, I remember running and FDing a lot at some of the camps I was at.

If dark or fear fails and you don't react to it, chances are you were going to die.

Soloing with my necromancer in EQ1 was an art.

I would think macroing with a class like mage would be a lot easier. I didn't play a mage, but wasn't it basically a nuke race vs. pet health?

art? setting up mq to ae kite in pov was an art.

Or Charm soloing in Halls of Honor, that was fun when pops were reset and everything repoped. lol

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made millions with a FFXI fishing bot that a guildie had made.

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Macroquest...I was sadly in the dark when it came to this until some one /cough fin showed me how to use it when we went back for one last run on stromm. We just used it to jump around and kill alot of named in Omens etc since each of us 2-3 boxed. I'm not even sure of its capabilities. It was some of the funnest times jumping in RC (?) and trying to 2-3 man some of those bitch ass named.

I always enjoyed EQ raiding for one reason or another but as mentioned earlier, OoW raiding really picked up the strat part coupled with DoN. I was guilded with roks (old old lanys guy, small world). I raided up to plane of blood and walked away for good.

VG actually had a great raid zone (after they fixed the lag). Once they fixed some damage stacking bugs and some exploits there was only 4 or so of us guilds that could kill the end dragon when I left a few months back. 9 months after release there is very few guilds that have killed him so they did a good job at putting alot of raid mobs in the zone but still keeping some very challenging fights.

AoC....made the mistake of racing to the raid content and some of it looked really cool BUT they like completely redid the fights 2 times in like 2 weeks and I threw in the towel when I realized my first impressions of the game were incorrect.

ToV in eq may not be realistic in todays world but it was still one of the greatest raid zones set up in any MMO to this day. Aside from that, I would give WOW credit for Naxx being just fucking bad ass. Relatively short clear times with pretty hard clears, alot of named and some great unique challenges. Granted the consumable farming was retarded but it really did separate the top 1% of the server from the rest.

Anyone comment on todays top end raiding in EQ?

I recently joined a guild that just completed TSS expansion, and is now working on TBS expansion (the one right before this current one). I have been on a couple of their raids and the encounters are varied, but nothing that makes you say "omg that was awesome!"

However, I have spoken/heard from people in the upper echelon guilds that have completed the new expansion, including a return against Kerafym (Sleeper). They have all agreed that some of these encounters are the most difficult, well thought out encounters in Everquest. They have given very high praise to developers for that. Especially the Meldrath encounter in his mansion.

Then again, the 15th expansion is coming out in ... October? I wonder when you just run out of ideas, no matter how exciting and challenging the encounter is...

The one thing I really wish they would do is have some encounters utilize all the classes in order to be successful. A bard would have to sing appropriate songs... a magician would have to, I don't know, summon something and hand it to a npc... an enchanter would have to mez and then blur a mob... a necromancer would have to kite something... yeah these are dumb suggestions, but the point is- right now most raids are just DPS raids. Would be nice to see a raid utilize class abilities instead of just get a few warriors, lots of clerics, a slower and lots of rogues/berserkers/wizards for maximum efficiency.

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Did they ever make Berserkers worth a damn?

Bezerkers are ridiculous DPS pure and simple. Limited utility but if you want to make shit dead fast the class is nice.