I went to The Deep on Everquest's Teek server, and it was an amazing role playing experience

[@varietyvoid]

I'm the idiot who paid to ask a question about the 4th perk to give us a 2nd merc. I'm still pissed that they laughed and were like "lul play with others". Solid video!

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Wow, we have a celebrity in the comments! Thanks for the question. I think they would benefit A LOT from having to go level 1-70 right now on Yelinak without getting power leveled. Just go naturally find groups & do it.

[@varietyvoid]

@@Aethplayseverquest If only; but hey EQ has an ABUNDANCE of extra players just LFG'ing and waiting to group up with us, right...??? Right????

[@everquestfootpad6975]

So right on. I enjoy your content a lot.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Thanks!

[@ravanta]

5:04 And those are *temp* positions!

[@Aethplayseverquest]

💀

[@mikeb9486]

The panel was painful to watch. They don't want to allow classes like berserker to be allowed at launch so it can be played as it was in the early 2000s, but the Tower gear gave even knights FT during Kunark, which is unheard of.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

The logic is a bit all over the place indeed lol

[@DaxtAttack]

Hype for teek was real.... but the tower gear made me quit early. I saw the game as a raiding experience where you tried to get the best loot. Tower made you have better stats than BIS and loot was irrelevant. No thrill in winning an upgrade, its free from the tower! Fk that.

[@TheUberAlec]

On an accelerated release server having the AA experience rate at what it's currently at, is ludicrous. They need to greatly increase it so people, myself included, don't feel the need to give Aplus kronos just to keep up.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

absolutely

[@IntelligentIdiot4U]

they want you having to buy krono to get AOE PL'ed, they'll just never openly admit it

[@JukeboxJack777]

Here’s how DB could solve this gracefully: 1) blast communications to the server that on X days they will start enforcing. A grace period gives those that were cheating a chance to stop. 2) Train and give access to some actual GMs to go out in the game and enforce. This is not dev work - you could pay cheap, and I bet some players would even volunteer / do it for free or next to nothing. 3) enforce. get the GMs out there in the zones seeing what you’re seeing. Start with a warning if you want, then move up to ban. Some may be cynical and say this wouldn’t work, but if DB just showed they had some spine to enforce in ANY way, it would at least mitigate it.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Oh ya I agree with that entirely. The first step is crucial, as right now their TOS is so spottily enforced it might as well not be there at all. The whole “anti-cheat” work they mentioned devs were working on this year does indeed seem to have been a huge waste of time.

[@JukeboxJack777]

A huge thing I think DB is missing is they don’t HAVE to staff full time, W-2 employees to take care of this. So many games out there have a player/self-admin mechanism. Have a reasonable vetting process to ensure it doesn’t get abused, and you could probably find OG players that would volunteer to GM or just need a perk / light pay to do it.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Didn't guides used to do a lot of CS like you're describing, but they took it away? I heard someone mention that was it was because it looked too much like it would run afoul of the unpaid internship laws in California, but I don't know remember well enough what the guides actually did or know enough about the CA law to have much of an opinion about if that's plausible or not.

[@beastlybear5563]

thank you for your continued efforts to showcase the problems this game has with large boxers and automated boxers. I use the term boxer loosely because we all know they are not playing all those characters on separate machines. I don't really have an issue with people wanting to pay to level but at the same time, I don't understand why people would want to pay someone else to play the game for them. If you don't like the game, why play at all? if that's what people want to do though, then whatever. What bothers me the most is the zone monopolization in order to offer these PL services. So many top end zones are used to do this and most of them don't care if you get trained if you're in their way of their business. that's exactly what it is too, a business within a business. Not all of them are in The Deep anymore either. they are in Velks and Chardok as well and are in many of the available picks for the zone. this leaves only a few open to actual players. If they are not going to enforce the rules on these PLers, then they need to offer more picks. It often gets very frustrating for my group to find available places to play. I suppose I am somewhat lucky in that I have a group of friends that I've been gaming with for many years. I probably wouldn't play EQ anymore if I didn't have them. even in my guild, when I hide alts on most days, the list of online players is cut by half or more. sometimes I'm not even sure people these days like playing with other people. honestly though, if they release mercs into the early game, I am probably done with EQ. it would only worsen the issue. the number one thing I think that they need to do in order to make the game more enjoyable is to offer more picks or even better, separate the PLers into their own locked picks. heck, charge them something to do it too. the fact that they let this go on at the expense of other real players is crazy.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Definitely agree they should look again at the pick thresholds or ability to spawn a pick on demand! Having a fixed group like you describe is really the only way to play these days if you don’t box. And if you only play in, say, 30-60 min increments that kinda only leaves boxing 🤷‍♂️

[@jazzaellore9333]

especialy when the seller of those services train pull a grp to insure he has all the zone for himself )

[@bodega87]

It always baffles me that you go after things whilst always being in guilds that are among the most aggressive hackers. every single time

[@joeblow7735]

HEY LOOK! There's Zaide! ;)

[@joeblow7735]

I love you Zaide ;)

[@Aethplayseverquest]

❤

[@achromatic1]

I check their job postings from time to time and they pay poverty wages to the devs too. I saw a junior dev role once at $45k/yr based in San Diego. I can't tell if that's a sign of how marginally profitable their business model is (unlikely), or of rampant executive level greed. This is the main reason why you'll never see a merc rework for lower levels. They simply don't get the resources they need to run this game properly.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Wow that’s really low for a dev job. They only publish financials at the studio level, but they’ve only been just barely profitable lately.

[@achromatic1]

@@Aethplayseverquest I stand corrected. It's def is extremely low for someone working in CA. EDIT: There's actually one posted right now: Job Description Position Title: Associate Software Engineer Studio/Department: Darkpaw Games/Live Development Employee Type: Full Time, Regular Location: San Diego, CA/Remote (Daybreak Approved Remote Locations (CA, WA, TX, NY)) Salary Range: $40,000 - $60,000, pay may vary on location.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Even the high end seems like it wouldn’t be that great for entry level in SD.

[@icemage21k]

i put all wts pl on ignore, but lately same character manage to use diff names in channels so when i ignore i actually remove real name from list

[@Aethplayseverquest]

That spam is pretty bad lol

[@Mattymo7]

The amount of cheaters i've seen in luclin is insane. I guess they were deep in chardok and the hole before so i rarely saw them...

[@Aethplayseverquest]

It does seem to be increasing through time.

[@richardwallis9374]

Having fun in Greg’s end.not greatest rate but it’s fine.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Ya I've been in there a bit too. Taking a while to AA my characters.

[@Flea_ip]

4:51 -- zero. Zero probability. They've clearly shown that they care more about the sub numbers and the revenue than cleaning up their player experience. This is what EQ is now, and why I'm done with the TLP scene. BotterQuest is here to stay.

[@blborges]

I don't play everquest, but in wow WTS would be Want to Sell

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Yes, right on! Turns out no one was LFG, just a bunch of power level teams selling spots for about $17/hr

[@blborges]

@@Aethplayseverquest Yerp, just like wow, no player groups, just boosters everywhere lmao

[@Aethplayseverquest]

💯

[@nickshulz8551]

Lol only his belly

[@stus2159]

SAVAGE

[@sgtxstayxgrind5854]

tormax doesnt have this problem.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Oh ya good point 😂

[@xjackson2910]

ok ngl your right the community has turned to shit as of recent years with the power leveling and boxes. but there is still 0 chance that having 2 mercs is a good idea or having early mercs. in reality the only correct answer that wont happen is cleaning up the very obvious bot farms.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Mercs would work fine from like OOW. SOD is way too late to be useful. They should look into getting rid of truebox from launch, though. Everyone who really wants to 6 box (or more) is already circumventing the spirit of that rule.

[@xjackson2910]

I can agree with the omens of war comment it just can't show up before planes of power

[@HammerJammer81]

Aeth, this is the 50th server that the same thing happens on. Think its time to just move on

[@Aethplayseverquest]

LOL, ya so I guess you don't want to take my bet? :)

[@lummergnu]

Never a time to just love on, but proper banning these krono sellers is the way to go

[@HammerJammer81]

@@Aethplayseverquest haha

[@IonBlaze1]

(luclin8) wts PL 40-60, fast AA lol

[@Aethplayseverquest]

LOL We just found another set of free range enchanters this afternoon & got another 20 AAs before they logged off.

[@EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE850]

LOLLLLLLLL

[@nickshulz8551]

No his eq hands can't never rich his merk so rest have to suffer

[@Aethplayseverquest]

💀

[@joselase6894]

No. Just no. Everquest is already easy mode, and now you want it even more. Everquest is starting to inch closer towards EMU servers. Make the game even more segregated on TLP's. Give bot armies more too. It's laziness.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Some good EMU servers already exist if you want the traditional, slow experience. Devs have been moving away from that, and it’s a good change.

[@joselase6894]

@@Aethplayseverquest No, it's not. EMU's existing if you want an actual Everquest experience has to be the bolds form of stupidity ever displayed for the internet to read. Next up: Start your character at max level, all the time, with the best gear. All the time. With any ability you want, as a hybrid on your character.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

What are you talking about? P99, Quarm etc are great platforms and projects, and they fill the traditional server / release cycle amazingly well

[@joselase6894]

@@Aethplayseverquest People who are interesting in Time-locked progressions desire nostalgia. But, it is becoming more and more bastardized, catering to laziness and instant-gratification, instead of it's original intent. This is why TLP servers never last, and on to the next one. This is why so many are rooting for other franchises. P99 is garbage, and most do not want to suffer through downloading different variations of Everquest for emulation.

[@IntelligentIdiot4U]

its not about how "easy" it is.. EQ is easy, but the ridiculous levels of tedious shit you have to do makes it nearly impossible to play as an adult with a full time job and family i have people in my guild that dont work on disability or whatever, and just play all day.. and they sound like you, "game is already too easy, they should make XP slower and drops more rare! They should making keying harder, etc" because they have 16 hours a day to throw at the game and it gives them an advantage over people who can't play it anymore like they're a teenager on summer vacation

[@charlesmartel3995]

The EQ devs are out of touch. They don't even play EQ. The studio head is out of her depth as well.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Oh I think they play some, but just not really TLPs (or especially not after initial launches). Live EQ is basically a huge retirement home, so they don't have a lot of insight on the bottlenecks for the TLP player base.

[@aeonstar293]

The deep has been an AoE spot since Luclin came out back in the day. Plenty of deep groups are just regular AoE groups. I dont see a problem with any of this tbh.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

It's gotten a lot worse since they nerfed the enchanter stun recast times. And then even worse after they nerfed the 30 target max stuns at a time. There aren't "regular AoE groups" now (or at least I haven't seen one since Luclin launched on Teek), only Big PL.

[@Mattymo7]

theres no problem with regular aoe groups IMO. But these massive bot groups are ruining the game.

[@joeblow7735]

WAY back in the day when Luclin did drop. I had a Enchanter and yes....we AE'd everything we could. It was great exp and I maxed my AAs so fast. I was in the click I guess you could say. Anyway LOTS of folks thanked us but a few hated us. Those haters simply went to another area to level. I do admit this, not one person in the 'click' were botting. Some folks were running 2 machines (true box) but not 1 person back then in my click was botting.

[@Aethplayseverquest]

Absolutely. Even with the change on the recast of enchanter stuns, I did it a bit. You'd just need a few oog enchanters, but now it's like only feasible for Big PL.