Would EQ be more fun if they made it hard again?

[Wakanda]

Possibly sounds like click-bait, but it's not.

Like what if they tuned the mobs to be more challenging, so instead of your group chain pulling an entire dungeon, your group struggled to handle one camp, like the good ol' days?

I'm really referring more to the raid scene than anything though. As a kid there was nothing more terrifying than zoning into the Plane of Fear or Plane of Hate. You could actually die instantly and may not be able to get your corpse back, perhaps ever.

The first time I got invited to raid on P99 it was Plane of Fear. Green server back when the server was still fairly new. I remember being so nervous and opening a beer to calm my nerves as we met up outside the portal. There wasn't enough people for us to do the raid, we only had like 15 people, I kept hoping more people would show up, but it was looking more and more like they were going to have to call it.

And then I got confused because they said to zone in? With 15 people? Are you insane? I don't want to lose my corpse, I just joined this guild a few hours ago. Against my better judgment, I zone in anyways, and am confused with how I'm full mana 99% of the time (as a Cleric), and how easily we're clearing the zone. And also how plentiful loot was.

Anyone who played back in the day knows that you normally raided the Planes with dozens upon dozens of players. I remember having close to 100 players at times, and having to stare at the ground to keep my computer from crashing. Despite having this many players we still regularly wiped and had hellacious corpse recoveries.

And yes, loot felt dramatically more rare. Perhaps this was because I was competing with 8 other dudes in the raid, since again, there was way more players in a raid? But honestly I feel like the drop rates were just way lower. Like I never saw a flayed turmoil skin belt drop in 1999, but I've seen them drop multiple times every time I've raided Fear on P99.

Also I remember spending months trying to get my last pieces of Woven Shadow, and I had seniority on them. We cleared all the abhorrents and the stuff just didn't drop. I also had a Cleric friend who despite raiding Hate for years, never completed their full purple look. Meanwhile on green I had characters getting full planar in a single raid.

Like I don't know. I think the game might actually be more fun if they tuned raiding to be way harder, and maybe made the loot slightly more rare, to where getting a piece of planar gear is a huge achievement and not the equivalent of welfare loot (a WoW term, I don't mean that to disparage anyone).

Or maybe I'm out of touch? Maybe raiding was easier on other servers, and I've seen some interviews with Brad where he addressed the planes being treated as a place where you get free armor. But man I swear I struggled really hard on my server just to get basic planar stuff [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]