Class Experience Penalties
 

Obviously many players have gotten by fine with the various penalties in, but I hope you'll hear out my reasons for its removal. As someone who doesn't have an extraordinary amount of time to play on the server, I find this penalty to be absolutely crushing. Even at a relatively low level my hybrid alt moves along much slower than any other class I've played, which makes the whole affair feel like its moving at a snail's pace. EverQuest has always been a slower, more difficult game, and I appreciate that, but the game is hard enough as it is without making it take 40% longer to level up.

The original intent of the penalty is to penalize the more powerful classes. However, most people will agree that classic EverQuest is surprisingly balanced. It's ludicrous to suggest that, for example, the Ranger class is more powerful than say a Cleric and yet one has a penalty while the other does not. Unlike other annoying features (no binds, boats) it doesn't add anything of value to the server. You could argue that having to get a bind forces the community to interact, but this penalty is personal only to your character. It certainly doesn't add fun on a personal level, so I question why it's in at all.

If I'm alone in this then fine, I will suck it up or just not play. That's fine. I respect the developer's desire to create a "truly classic" experience. I came here to enjoy that experience and I realize this penalty is part of it. My point is there were some things in classic that didn't make the game better. I doubt very much that anyone would miss class penalties.

A truly classic experience is one that retained all of the best parts of classic, ie: no POK books, and no expansions yet. So the experience you have, and the environment you're in is immersive, nostalgic, and rewarding.

The experience penalty as you've pointed out was introduced to counter-act what they believed to be classes that could do more than one thing, hybrids, or classes with special bonuses. Back when Everquest was the ONLY game available this was important as it was an entirely new concept: "Hey, if you want to play a warrior/cleric combo, that's fine, but we're penalizing you 40% exp for it. At end levels you'll be able to tank raid bosses, rez, buff, and heal pretty well).

However, with the release of every major game in history, this original experience became less original. Coming back to the game now, almost all of us have experience playing other MMO's, and probably a lot of us have done things like end-game raiding in WoW in which almost EVERY class can serve more than one purpose.

So, looking at it now, experience penalties placed on hybrid classes was a feature of 1999 that isn't a feature anymore as the uniqueness of playing a hybrid died with 10 years of new games. As such, I fully support the removal of experience penalties. I think it would be a welcome change.

All in all, what we need to agree on (hopefully) is that while classic everquest is by far and away the best thing that's happened to the MMO community in a long time, we can't be dictators about it and cold-cut everything that wasn't 1999. The developers need to recognize that the BEST parts of 1999 are already captured on this server, they've succeeded in doing that. At this point we're not gaining more players, we're holding strong where we are. If we begun to look at small changes, creature comforts, it would even further increase the experience.

/2 cents.

Stop beating the dead horse.

I've posted a similar thread asking for luclin models to be revisited in the same way, to give us some 'creature comforts' which will only make the game even better.

@ President, do you think any major success in history came by asking once and being told "YES! We'll do that!"

Not a chance. You have to ask a thousand times, dragging yourself back each time, for what you really and truly believe in. If only on the 1000th time do you receive a yes, then you've succeeded.

You won't deter us from continuing to fight for what we believe to be welcome changes, sorry.

Penalties stay. Keep fighting, but they aren't going anywhere.

That's fine. That's 1 "no". I'm prepared to wait for 999 more ;)

Let's keep the thread bolded and active and see if we can't get more chat in here.

Irrelevant and stupid. The decision has been made by the devs and no bitching and moaning is going to change that. All you are going to do is annoy the already hard working and un-paid dev's more by asking 1000 more times.

Trying to equate this to history, to which I assume you mean slavery, women's rights, etc. is straight up retarded.

Why will penalties stay? They were obviously a poorly thought out part of classic, as seen by their removal. Why port over the bad things as well as the good?