The question I have, is why you are playing Classic. Im playing (and enjoying) the look and feel of the game from 15 years ago. I'll likely be done once I have a couple of chars at 60 and the end game remains off book and the chance of epic is non existed (which did NOT happen on Live).

No Raid Encounters is Not Classic. It needs a bodge, just like they just bodged AE.

I agree with you OP. It's too bad the GMs don't share this same vision.

I sorta agree, the rarity is probably unnecessary to the degree we have it here.

But lets not exaggerate...not sure what epics you are talking about, but many were very much off-limits for a very long time for majority of players on live. You couldn't just casually get your epic for many classes, that was the point of them really.

The Cleric Epic was just stupid. Beyond stupid really.

I don't really recall ever class, I'm sure some were equally retarded as Cleric. But the bulk involved minor Planar or other bosses, bosses you could expect to kill outside of the hardcore Raid Guilds. The problem with P99 is that the hardcore people (remember a TINY fraction of the population) are using those drops as cash cows.

It's not even the fact that people have more time, it's just they race to the top by abusing classic mechanics and classic knowledge, then there are bottlenecks since we have so many high levels AND everyone is trying to be efficient by just logging in for the good parts. In kunark, one guy permacamped tranix for like 2 months, he probably only had to play for 2 hours a day. The end game for classic eq a) isn't very good even in its best incarnation and b) isn't designed to accommodate 65% of a server that regularly gets 1200-1500 people on it. I like the fact some shit is hella rare, even if it's others that have it.

The entire appeal for classic EverQuest for a good portion of players is precisely what you want changed. When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner, to the point where you see sub-par players running around with the same high-end items you have, they lose value and meaning.

Granted a lot of us have grown up and don't have the same obscene amounts of time to commit to playing a video game any more, personally I came here knowing that much. Knowing that I likely wouldn't ever get to partake in any regular raiding schedule. And I was okay with that. Because this IS what classic EverQuest was, and if I wanted a different game, I could go to any number of different games that garner to that play style.

The raiding system didn't change because it didn't work, it changed because it didn't work to make as large a profit as these AAA-title game companies wanted to make. It came down to making content easy enough for even the worst player to keep their subscription fees rolling in. Fortunately, P99 is not for profit and won't ever have to conform to that market strategy.

That's the thing though.

High end loot in Classic WoW is not a pinata because it is significantly harder to actually get than in EQ. Classic WoW raid encounters are immensely more complex than Classic EQ raid encounters.

The biggest difference, perhaps the one you are referring to, is how mid-range gear in WoW is much easier to come by. But again that't nothing to do with complexity of encounter (which in WoW is generally more involved and difficult) but with stupid rareity which - and lets remember this - turns out not to have served the purpose it was intended to.

Rareity in WoW was created because the Game Designers believed that lacking rareity would kill the game. We know today, from countless of examples, that it is not true and if anything, the exact opposite. Rareity kills the game.

Exactly. I'm not here to own all the pixels. I'm here to fight for all the pixels. If I wanted to own all the pixels I could spin my own server or play some other emulated game like DAOC or WoW.

If some turbonerd wants to spend ∞ time camping something, awesome. I'll camp the shit out of stuff like my enchanter epic, and not stress the rest. Some times I like to go outside. Some people don't. Let them have more pixels than me. It's okay.

You know who else thought this way?

It's not about having more pixels. Its about what you say when you say your "here to fight for all the pixels". What if you don't ever get to do that. That's the point.

You want your chanter Epic, good luck. I hope you get it, IIRC its the most trivial Epic in the game. Now go get the Cleric Epic which requires you to camp a spawn for up to 12 days. Not hours. Days.

Oh and when it pops you need 20+ other players to turn up and engage before someone else gets their 20+ other players there.