Things OT Can't Teach You
 

And why you should level in dungeons instead of complaining about bards.

1.) When pulling casters you should run around a corner so they chase you all the way to your camp.

2.) Push.

3.) A wipe means losing your camp, and probably at least 1 or 2 key role members.

4.) Groups are harder to come by if people know (and they will) that you don't know what you're doing.

5.) How to keep more than 2 mobs at a time on lockdown.

6.) The vital importance of snare.

7.) Pathing quirks.

8.) When it's safe to heal/buff the puller.

9.) Aggro mitigation.

10.) Dots are horribly mana inefficient in a group.

11.) Pet awareness.

12.) Spatial awareness.

13.) How to break a camp and how to keep a camp broken.

14.) There's more exp to be had in less time virtually everywhere else. Same goes for loot.

15.) Dungeons are fun.

I'm probably missing a lot more.

I don't really have problems with bards who are being polite and reasonable. Yea, conventional full groups should probably be in a dungeon. OT and the other outdoor zones do have some tremendous advantages for certain people:

1. Enchanter/Shaman charm duo with single pulls, no caster mobs, and plenty of room to maneuver so my brother can learn the mechanics of charm duoing in a safe environment. Shamans can actually charm animals in this level range, and there aren't many good places outside of OT in this level range to do that.

2. Fear kiting

3. Greater flexibility in group composition: You don't need to wait around for the perfect classes, you can usually make do with what you've got while LFM

4. Virtually zero risk. A wipe and long recovery murders your xp.

5. Before the proliferation of bards, there were endless pulls that you didn't have to break.

6. Casual players can more easily drop in and out of groups without obsessing over ending the party or calling in a replacement from far away.

That said, there are so many awesome dungeons in this level range that I think it would be a shame to grind it away in Overthere... I certainly don't. But then, I don't expect everyone to have the same preferences as me.

And regarding all this rhetoric about a dungeon being a learning experience that teaches everyone what to do, it goes both ways. If you're going to demand this kind of shit from other people, maybe you should stop swarming from 1-50+ and learn to be a bard?

I agree with this too. The main thing is, you can always tell who spent 20 levels in OT and who hasn't, and it affects groups in the high end dungeons, where everyone winds up at some point.

It's important to remember that 90% of the Bard population is composed of:

1) EC mules
2) People who only made a Bard to power-level
3) People who just want to AE kite. They will quickly lose interest and quit their Bards when OT greens out around level 50.

Then you have the other 10%, who actually picked a Bard for a real reason. These guys groups for the most part and AE kite rarely. The large majority of this 10% are pretty good at their class. Either way, kinda shitty to judge them on the basis of the other 90% above.

I'm not going to say I disagree with you, but the bard at least has a reason to be in OT: massive XP. Most other classes don't.

Also true solo aoe kiting is actually moderately tricky (of course I never figured out how to strafe, so maybe that's just me). I did circle kiting and even a tiny error over the 5-10 minute kite would mean death.

This is why I dislike low HP kiting. I tried it once and it was so trivially boring.

I agree with you entirely that these are skills required in the high level dungeon scene of end-game EQ. There are two points I'd like to make with regards to this list and more importantly, how we got here in the first place:

1) Most players here are either on their alts second alt or played through multiple expansions on live. With about 1-2 sessions in dungeons, you can gain the basic experience to navigate a dungeon proficiently*.

2) There is a certain irony in mentioning the lack of experience of OT players when you consider that the issue is brought forward by bard AE kites/bard AE PL. You can put forward your theories why there are so many bards doing it but the fact remains that both the recipient of the PL as well as the bard are also not getting the same dungeon experience. Maybe they also feel thet don't need it (see #1).

Either way, different strats are utilized for outdoor zones than indoor dungeons and none are any less viable. I was the Shaman in some extremely effective zerker tank duos that would not have been possible in a full group dungeon crawl.

Every zone is a viable zone and is as effective as you make it. Zone disruption is indiscriminate and harms those legitimately trying to xp (regardless of your style).

*pullers, inexperienced cc and pet classes should probably spend some more time in dungeons as they stand to gain the most.

Classic everquest has always been about outdoor exping for most of the playerbase that doesn't have a regular tight group. Exp penalty on death and difficulty of CRs in classic EQ pretty much pushed people into these zones. Ease of forming groups, soloability for most all classes (single pulls), easy escape from mobs with jboots/sow. Easy access to buffs or rezzes due to people passing thru. For 90% of people the exp/hr just tends to be higher in these outdoor "poor exp" zones. I love dungeon crawling but if I know i don't have a solid 3+ hour time frame or get lucky with a group already looking for another, I know I'll get better exp just killing boring crap in an outdoor zone.

/thread

Yeah because a Necro would never want to fear kite there, and druids wouldn't want to quad there, neither would a wizard. A monk would definitely has no business fear kiting there either, and obviously we can't have shamans, enchanters, mages soloing in OT. You definitely wouldn't want like half the classes in the game to have a relatively safe and easy zone to get solo exp in.