First, thanks very much on the comments so far, it's very appreciated!

Second, I wanted to address a comment;

You are right and wrong at the same time, it's my fault, I should have clarified. When I quit playing live the overhaste cap was 30%, so I went with that in mind. There is only 1 haste song (lvl 54) which gives more than 30% haste, and the way I intended it to work was that bard haste would now stack with other spell haste, all the way to the overcap; so a player (100% haste) with dragon item haste (41% haste) and chanter epic haste (61% haste), and bard song haste (45% haste) would hit the 230%haste cap. The difference in dps from 200% to 230% haste should be about 15%.

Keep the comments coming, and thanks for the input :)

I agree the solo penalty can not be this severe but I do like the idea of grossly encouraging grouping

Too much aggro love for the warriors. I agree there should be some, but triple hate plus multiple 500AC debuffs are gonna make aggro control completely trivial. Since its a key mechanic and one of the few things that make boss fights 'hard', I think you are jacking it too much.

Like a lot of the rest, though.

Forcing people to group like this is just strange to me. Grouping takes tons of time in this game IMO where you can solo casually.

I see where your thought process is going and I understand trying to make the game more social but honestly the downfall for games like wow not being social enough for me is because their idea of class balance is to make everyone the same and giving everyone items/tools to make things quicker (mounts, innkeepers etc) .

The social aspects from EQ come from classes with clearly defined roles and others that can fill in multiple roles without specializing in one area. This is what facilities grouping and cooperation where as penalizing people for not doing so is just bad design from my point of view. This is like a just add friends label on the box because that's the only way you are getting anything done.

Stupid work, can't post responses as soon as I see I have a reply.

I guess I was thinking of the spell dmg focus song when I remembered 10-15%. I apologize to those who remember those sorts of things. Apparently my age is getting to me. Since 30% is apparently what v3 was, then always hitting the 125% cap makes more sense, and isn't a balance issue.

As to the question "why force grouping", I see it as the opposite of most emu servers. Most servers are ok with, and sometimes promote, boxing up to 6 characters. While you still can group up with others, it promotes playing solo. P1999 is kind of the median, where it strives for the classic balance of solo and group. This would be the other side, where grouping is promoted above soloing. I think the exp penalty may be too steep, but its still an interesting idea.

Some of your suggestions are exceptionally well done. Kudos.

I would play this in a heartbeat. I especially like the beneficial-detrimental aspect of druids.

Sounds cool! Hope you code it. You'd still need to address the raid cockblock situation though, imho.

tldr

No, a game meant to be fun, and staring at a book is not.