How do I make this game enjoyable for new players?

[sox7d]

I convinced two of my friends to roll characters on this game with me, one has some SoD experience, the other is new but played WoW and GW2 quite a bit.

How can I make this game appealing through the lackluster early levels?

[Nogdar]

Trust my experience and DONT make them spell-less classes. No rogue, warrior. POSSIBLY Monk but with huge warning signs. I'd avoid hybrids too unless they're hardcore gamers and make it to 9 in no time in the course of a LAN or something. Even though hey, if they're dead set on playing a pure melee, don't stop them but be sure to let them know it's boring as hell compared to a WoW/GW2 warrior/rogue... They need to play something they enjoy it's the most important shit. Your job is to bring them to cool places early on with fun groups. Crushbone or BB after the newbie zone is a plan IMO. Avoid BB if tall races.

Further than that, it's out of your hands really.. :)

[Nogdar]

Ah actually I would add this : Twink them a slight bit (say buy em some 50-100 pps worth weapon and possibly a piece of armor or 2 for the looks); but do not spoil them to make sure it stays challenging. Just not hardcore difficulty of totally untwinked for a newb. Also, getting them quickly in a friendly/lowbie/helpful guild will help them socialize, make friends, enjoy the community which is probably the n°1 asset of p99...

[Cippofra]

One of them a rogue, one of them a monk, you a healer. Will blast through the early levels if you group together. Personally I hate the caster classes. They are detached from the group, boring and really dont benefit from twinking. Being a monk or rogue makes it easy to twink (and this really doesn't make anything easier until you're talking fungi tunic) and will be much more entertaining for them I think.

[Raavak]

The thing is about classic EQ, though, is you have to be sort of a masochist in order to play it. It will be more work than any other mmo. But that's what makes the rewards that much more treasured once obtained.

[Vellatri]

Ask a crafter to tell them what materials are needed for full sets of armor. (banded/studded/silk, etc) Have them buy/gather the materials and give them to the crafter for armor at cost price. Tip the crafter yourself. It's like a rewarding player-made quest that any new players should be able to do. I'd even be willing to do this for you, but I'm a very casual (hard to find) player.

Look up some of the newbie quests in their starting zones, using the wiki. Adds a bit of flavor during the early levels, and some are actually useful.

Vellatri, Knight of the Temple of the Dead

Edit: You could even help them get started with crafting themselves. Anybody can make patchwork armor. My plate-capable shadowknight sported a full set until she saved enough to skill up Blacksmithing for banded. It's better than the cloth you loot off skeletons, and feels more rewarding.

[phobus]

Trust my experience and DONT make them spell-less classes.

Actually, I think that for the right kind of player, this is exactly what they should play. Melees in classic EQ are mostly looking for that next gear upgrade to progress, while casters just wait for the next spell level. It depends on the player and what they're going to enjoy.

If you're planning to twink them a little, I'd suggest getting them items along the lines of classic twink gear. E.g., give the paladin something with about a .3 ratio instead of the usual Sword of Skyfire or Green Jade Broadsword. Upgrading that himself at level 25 will be more rewarding than using the same sword from level 1 to 40 (or whatever).

Aside from that, try not to spend too much time in one spot unless they are really enjoying it. Get out and see all those underpopulated low-level dungeons (Sol A, Upper Guk, Najena, Paw, Nurga, Dalnir, etc. etc.), but don't skip out on Crushbone. Trainer hill and the throne room are just too much fun. Some ideas for out-of-the-ordinary leveling locations can be found here: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=86713

[phobus]

Edit: You could even help them get started with crafting themselves.

Hey now, the thread's title isn't "How to make this game miserable for new players."

;)

[Snagglepuss]

Hahaha Tradeskilling! It makes mine minesweeper look like Modern Warfare 3!

[Vellatri]

Hah! Touche. However, you do have to admit that making your first set of patchwork is kind of fun; there's no grind involved. As you said, it's more rewarding to upgrade your gear yourself.

[Galelor]

I would suggest twinking them with the best weapons and fungi tunics. (Also provide them with full spell books when they are near the correct levels.) Twinks are always fun to play, and coming from WoW/SoD they are going to dislike how long it takes to level. This should attempt to alleviate that feeling. Additionally, they will still have goals like epic quest, clickies, other gear slots, leveling, etc.

Additionally:
After playing SoD you are not going to win giving that guy a casting class. Mana regen in old EQ (p99) flat out sucks when you compare the two games. You may have some luck as a shaman with a fungi, but leveling until canni will challenge his will. My suggestion would be to have the guy that played SoD play a Monk.

The guy that played wow might enjoy a shaman, rogue, mage, or enchanter. Shaman have a ton of utility and can canni. Mages have a bit of utility and have the pet tank... The enchanter would be for charming (which is very fun.) The rogue will add a lot of DPS to the group so you can cruse through leveling.

You need to play a cleric, and also have a port bot for them.

[Snagglepuss]

Hah! Touche. However, you do have to admit that making your first set of patchwork is kind of fun; there's no grind involved. As you said, it's more rewarding to upgrade your gear yourself.

I agree 100%. And for some reason my girlfriend loves trade-skilling. (But of course, none of the profitable ones like smithing or JC- only baking, brewing, and sometimes tailoring...) But she is also content to sit and play Mahjong and freecell for hours on end. I'm thinking, "Really? really? of all the video games out there, you like to click little matching blocks?" Ergo, trade-skilling was a match made in heaven.

[sillymonster]

I'd twink them out completely, too. They came to play because you suggested it, and I wager they're of the assumption that you're fairly established on the server. I doubt they came to experience classic EQ to the nines or you would be aware of that.

You can discuss what's rewarding or whatever if you like, but these dudes will enjoy the game more if they can go truck most content they want. That said, twink the hell out of them.

[Elements]

Contrary to what others have said here I wouldnt twink out newbs to make the game more fun. IMO challenge = fun. Being coddled and hand held is the quickest way to walking away from the game. If anything help them by setting up loc macros, getting their sense heading up, showing them where to bank, level, how to con etc. If they are playing a melee maybe toss them some fine steel or 200pp weapon. Jboots for any nonsow toon are amazing since long runs are just boring.

I dont think you can appreciate the game on the same level or get prepared for what awaits at higher levels by being twinked and powering through the newby zones. The game doesnt really need more 40+ and 50+ toons who are completely oblivious to game mechanics and wipe groups because they either bouht their account or powered through the levels where skills should be honed.

Some of the funnest times I have had were at lowbie levels fighting on the brink of death.

[HippoNipple]

I think your choice of classes will far outweigh the decision on whether or not to twink them.

I think the most important things are to:

1) be able to travel quickly
2) be able to dungeon crawl and see fun content along the way
3) have low downtime between fights

wizard/mage/cleric
druid/enchanter/warrior
druid/enchanter/monk

If you don't mind the travel or hybrid penalty there are obviously a lot of choices.

enchanter/any tank/cleric
cleric/rogue/tank
mage/necro/shaman

Just make sure you have some sort of heals and some sort of tanking ability and it should be fun.

I wouldn't underestimate the rage of having to wait 45 minutes for a boat though...

[HippoNipple]

If I had a choice I would probably go:

Shaman/Monk/Druid

ports, haste, slow, good pulling, decent tanking, good dps, druid can fill in a lot of gaps as well

[phobus]

I wouldn't underestimate the rage of having to wait 45 minutes for a boat though...

Impromptu fishing contest! Who can find the most tattered sandals?

[eqravenprince]

I convinced two of my friends to roll characters on this game with me, one has some SoD experience, the other is new but played WoW and GW2 quite a bit.

How can I make this game appealing through the lackluster early levels?

That is a tall task to climb. Certainly load a better UI, like DUXA. Some light twinking would be nice. I would say adventure around, try different zones out. Also, trying out different classes and races, sometimes that's all it takes, find a class or race that is enjoyable. But I just can't imagine finding EQ enjoyable if WoW or GW2 was my first MMO and then tried out EQ after.

[SamwiseRed]

bard, druid, mage

dunno sounds fun

[Cippofra]

Full out twinking is a good idea too imo. Everyone likes to talk about how challenging EQ was because in WoW you can level quickly by questing. Everyone seems to think that time consuming equals challenging. There are no encounters in velious era EQ that could even match some of the basic encounters in WoW (I know people are going to cry endlessly about this. So I'll go ahead and admit I've never done trakanon or VP). EQ was difficult simply because everything took forever. Giving a monk a fungi tunic doesnt mean they get to skip everything. It just means they dont have to spend hours on corpse retrievals, and instead of killing the exact same light blue con mob 10,000 times it means they can just get by with killing the same yellow con mob 100 times.

I enjoy playing here because I played in the days when this all new and revolutionary. I enjoy it because if I die, lose my character, lose my account, or take years to level 60 it's all the same kind of entertainment for me.

[ManticSquee]

I would have to agree with twinking them if you want them to stick around. Having come from more modern games, they might be expecting a lot more in the way of speed and convenience than EQ has to offer. Twinking will help take some of the early level sting out of it. Playing together + twinking I believe they might enjoy it more. Those that have played before have more motivation to push through early levels from scratch because of the memories it brings back.

[eqravenprince]

Everyone seems to think that time consuming equals challenging.

If you want a game that is challenging no matter how much time you put into it, you can always go play Ghost and Goblins on the Nintendo. Most games however, if you spend enough time, they become much easier and not challenging based on your definition. To me, time consuming does equal challenging. Besides, EQ's challenge does not just come from how time consuming it is.

[Slave]

Coming from modern games, they are pretty much lost children in the Industrial Age. Everything has been done for them. Where's the next quest? Oh, I'll just follow this yellow line. Basically, they are used to the games playing them.

The only way that inexperienced players like this can come full circle and learn to love actual gameplay, mechanics, the guts and brains of games, is if they are wholly exceptional gamers in their own right, which you will have nothing to do with.

The odds are greatly against that.

If you follow even the best of these ideas, they will have literally zero impact on whether or not your friends will continue to play EverQuest or not. It is only a path to self-doubt and recrimination.

[sox7d]

Full out twinking is a good idea too imo. Everyone likes to talk about how challenging EQ was because in WoW you can level quickly by questing. Everyone seems to think that time consuming equals challenging. There are no encounters in velious era EQ that could even match some of the basic encounters in WoW (I know people are going to cry endlessly about this. So I'll go ahead and admit I've never done trakanon or VP). EQ was difficult simply because everything took forever. Giving a monk a fungi tunic doesnt mean they get to skip everything. It just means they dont have to spend hours on corpse retrievals, and instead of killing the exact same light blue con mob 10,000 times it means they can just get by with killing the same yellow con mob 100 times.

I enjoy playing here because I played in the days when this all new and revolutionary. I enjoy it because if I die, lose my character, lose my account, or take years to level 60 it's all the same kind of entertainment for me.


Oh boy, this discussion again. I'll bite.

WoW can be compared to EQ if you:
-Remove maps
-Remove quest prompts/quest instructions
-Make every mob "elite"
-Make travel player dependent
-Make economics non-automated
-Make Deaths more penalizing
-Make magic less accessible
-Make tradeskills fallible



Btw, thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'm going to be rolling a paladin, the semi-experienced player is going to be a barb rogue, we don't know about the third newbie yet, though.

[Datheth]

It is extremely difficult to make an older game fun for someone who has never played it. For most of us the joy of playing on p99 is to relive the adventures of our younger years. Playing here brings back memories of simpler times allowing us to relate to the game on a different level. People who have started with the newer generation of games can not relate to the game as we do. They judge the game off graphics and the slow pace game play vs the "go go go" game play of WoW, GW2, Star Wars and other current mmos. Also, in Everquest everything you wanted took a great deal of hard work and time while newer mmos like to give handouts and make everything simpler. I would like to see a new player brought into the game but dont go the way of twinking the hell out of them. Help them with along the way but make sure they are learning to play the game as they should to avoid headaches for groups at higher levels.

[Xer0]

As a person new to the server (highest is lv20), who did not play EQ Pre-Velious, i feel the most important thing you can do is not necessarily twink them (though having a decent weapon makes the game mroe enjoyable in my personal opinion), but to offer them guidance. It is extremely difficult to locate the banks, trainers, spell merchants, or even entire cities/zones with the absence of an ingame map. And being told to "check the wiki" is often frustrating because.. at least in my case, about 33% of the time the game crashes when I try to resume full screen and i have to restart my computer to fix the issue.

It is not necessary to be 100% twinked to have fun.. I started an sk on the server first, was a human.. I lost that acct info so now I play a dark elf. Someone had given me a couple pieces of flayed skin armor and a halfway decent weapon and I was happy as can be, and while WoW was not ym FIRST MMO (Late velious-early luclin era EQ was, in fact), I still found myself having a great desire to continue playing. Though it definitely helped, that I had encountered a few generous people that gave me an item or two as well as a not insubstantial stack of platinum (100 or so plat and a sword of skyfire and I was pretty well set)

Other than being a knowledge resource, and a couple items and a few plat for skills/spells, I would say the most important thing you can do is play WITH them, and I see you already have a handle on that.. Playing a paladin you will also be able to tank for them and that is good. I would recommend druid for your undecided friend as they cover almost all bases.. nukes, dots, heals, buffs, ports.. Pet classes are also a solid choice (magic and necromancer, depending on what he wants, more wizard-like capabilities or, as I was drawn to, the dark art of necromancy.. diseasing and draining the life of enemies and raising the dead)

Also, make sure they are 100% Aware that the game is far more challenging than other MMO's they may have played. It is not simply more time consuming as some have stated.. sure the time consumption is a big part of it.. requires a lot more careful planning and patience than modern MMO's, but it goes well beyond that.. Even decked out in full jarsath scale by level 15 as a shadowknight, I found myself still constantly wary of even con mobs.. The downtime between them is not worth the extra bit of EXP, but that's just my 2cp

Edit-- also I'd like to include that you may awnt to give them the option of enabling luclin graphics.. I know most people ont he server disagree with me when I say they look 150% better than the classic graphics, and they have a right to their opinion, but to someone who does not have a positive, nostalgiac feeling associated with blocky, unrealistic graphics, they might be more inclined to play if they felt they looked "cool"

[SwordNboard]

Its almost 2013. Quit playing in full screen. :D

[davedeck42]

Oh boy, this discussion again. I'll bite.

WoW can be compared to EQ if you:
-Remove maps
-Remove quest prompts/quest instructions
-Make every mob "elite"
-Make travel player dependent
-Make economics non-automated
-Make Deaths more penalizing
-Make magic less accessible
-Make tradeskills fallible



Btw, thanks for all the suggestions guys. I'm going to be rolling a paladin, the semi-experienced player is going to be a barb rogue, we don't know about the third newbie yet, though.

shaman

[Xer0]

Its almost 2013. Quit playing in full screen. :D

It's almost 2013, quit playing with crappy classic graphics

oh wait, you personally prefe rthem? Well I prefer full screen. the game is more immersive that way :P

[Anesthia]

I think Slave pretty much nailed it. If you want to try to convey the feeling of being hit by the nostalgia train, you might want to consider assuming the role of Dungeon Master, i.e. take over the role of facilitating the experience (a la WoW's UI to a certain degree). Map out a progression path that hits up quests, items, and places of interest. Give them a guided tour of the places you go.

[Slave]

I think Slave pretty much nailed it. If you want to try to convey the feeling of being hit by the nostalgia train, you might want to consider assuming the role of Dungeon Master, i.e. take over the role of facilitating the experience (a la WoW's UI to a certain degree). Map out a progression path that hits up quests, items, and places of interest. Give them a guided tour of the places you go.

Actually I went wicked negative on this one just from personal experience. lol

But obviously Anesthia's suggestion here is the way to go if you want your buddies to have a good time. It won't really be EQ, but it'll be... something. Maybe something more.

[Fael]

a fun part of the low levels is saving up money for each piece of leather, banded, etc. Its all a huge carrot. I'd say give them a piece of banded, some leather, and a fine steel weapon. That will get them over the brutal parity at low levels, and get them winning solo melee fights against whites and blues. Then let them save their money to upgrade. This ofcourse assumes you will be leveling with them and helping guide.

[Reapin]

All there is to do is grind then take what measly plat you have scrapped together to deal with the plat whores in EC. And when you do get high enough you will never get a decent camp because these same loot whores are camping 24/7 to get their 6th FBSS or whatever else there is to get.


Granted many of the better quests were introduced later (Morgalanth Tal`Raeloen for example) But perhaps they should be implemented to give new players something to do and strive for.

In 1999 there were no people with 5 million plat in the bank, farming every mob and destroying the economy.

There should be a plat limit a player can have (500k seems reasonable). And no 2 lore items can be on the same account on the server. These changes with the newbie quests added would make the server closer to 1999 than the abomination it is now.

[webrunner5]

You are wasting your time. If they have NEVER played EQ, P1999 will be about as fun as a sharp stick in the eye for them. :eek: If they have no gear and no clue how this game works it will be NO fun. If you twink them it will not be fun either in the long run. Nothing to look forward to. Lose lose either way. Give it up Dawg.

[Reapin]

You are wasting your time. If they have NEVER played EQ, P1999 will be about as fun as a sharp stick in the eye for them. :eek: If they have no gear and no clue how this game works it will be NO fun. If you twink them it will not be fun either in the long run. Nothing to look forward to. Lose lose either way. Give it up Dawg.

Asking for quests is not twinking. Lore no drop items for newbies to strive for is a good thing. People down below need something to strive for other than hording plat to deal with losers with no lives who horde everything in the game.

This project is a failure IMO. It is just a place where people who have been banned from the live servers or their mommies and daddies refuse to pay for an account for their loser ass to come and get the only sense of empowerment they have had in their lives at the expense of those who are looking for a true nostalgic experience.

Places like the Hidden foresrt server suck because they hand you everything with no challenge. There is a happy medium...unless the objective is to keep the server load down to a certain level I see no reason why a friendlier environment for newbies is a bad thing.

[fullmetalcoxman]

Asking for quests is not twinking. Lore no drop items for newbies to strive for is a good thing. People down below need something to strive for other than hording plat to deal with losers with no lives who horde everything in the game.

This project is a failure IMO. It is just a place where people who have been banned from the live servers or their mommies and daddies refuse to pay for an account for their loser ass to come and get the only sense of empowerment they have had in their lives at the expense of those who are looking for a true nostalgic experience.

Places like the Hidden foresrt server suck because they hand you everything with no challenge. There is a happy medium...unless the objective is to keep the server load down to a certain level I see no reason why a friendlier environment for newbies is a bad thing.

So leave. I promise no one is going to miss you. Go make your own server if you think this one is so bad.

Oh, and thanks for digging up this 6 month old thread.

[SCB]

I propose that you don't aim for any great gear at all and just naked it up. When Mesh then Bronze are great gear drops, you're getting upgrades all the time, and the "carrot on the stick" is always there. Kunark dungeons especially are amazing for low-mid-range upgrades (crescent armor, Giant drops, etc), and you can always feel like you're improving. Sol Ro quests are one of my favorite thing about EQ period.

One of the biggest charms for me when I started playing was that this game is beatable using absolutely terrible gear. Sure rocking full cobalt looks awesome and is really fun, but I've seen the hardest mobs in Seb tanked in Crafted and it's totally doable. Questing for and really, truly earning your own gear is a unique experience that EQ offers that no other MMO can compete with.

Edit: Couldn't disagree more with Reaper above. If what you're after is to experience the server and the content, you're perfectly fine doing this with 0 starting capital. Get out there with friends, explore, and find out just how rewarding that FBR, PGT, and BBK really can be.

Edit 2: I got suckered hard by that necro. Dayum.

[Reapin]

Well I play a rogue, always have. Casters are gay.