VP Keys Quests should not be in game

[azxten]

It would be interesting to see data on how many people on a given server had a VP key at Velious launch. I bet it was less than 50 on any live server. I bet some servers may have not had anyone get a key or not enough to conduct raids.

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/templa...ndex_jun_dec00

November 11, 2000 Posted by Arele
Veeshan's Peak Cleared - Phara Dar Dead!
Afterlife cleared Veeshan's Peak this weekend, starting Friday night with the slaying of Silverwing. Saturday we reassembled to kill the rest of the dragons - Hoshkar, Xygoz, Druushk, and Nexona on the way to the big prize (and only dragon not yet defeated) Phara Dar herself.

September 9, 2000 Posted by Arele
Xygoz & Druushk Slain!
Two more mighty beasts of Veeshan's Peak fell tonight at the hands of Afterlife. This was also the first time on any server the dragon Xygoz has been killed!

Monday August 7th 2000 Posted by Thanotos
Afterlife's First VP Raid
Well, we went in today. We didn't do bad for the people we had, but will be needing a few more keys before we can really show VP who's boss. Here's a screenshot for you...
Veeshan's Peak

Sunday Jul 23'rd 2000 Posted by Thanotos
Afterlife enters VP
Delnatha entered VP today, and took a few screenshots, we're not quite ready to go in and show VP what we are made of yet... but it wont be long. Watch out Veeshan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Afterlife didn't clear VP until November 11th.

Kunark releases April
Afterlife gets first VP key July
Afterlife first raid August
Afterlife global firsts August-Sept
Afterlife clears VP November
Velious releases December

So from this we know...

1. It took one of the best EQ guilds ever which was achieving global first kills about 4 months to get anyone a VP key. Was this due to lack of knowledge or was the quest not working?

2. From first key to first raid took 1 month but notes they're still short on keys. They likely had almost no competition for keys and only the drop rate was the limiting factor.

3. From almost raid force keyed to cleared took about 4 months.

4. The best guild possibly ever to exist in EQ was only able to clear VP when Velious was less than a month away from launching.

Like I said, I bet a LOT of servers may have had zero VP keys at Velious launch. Probably 95% of servers had not cleared VP when Velious launched.

I think VP key quest or VP difficulty should be modified to try to mimic this kind of time scale. VP should only be for the most neck bearded losers and it should involve true challenge probably through more powerful mobs.

It's abnormal to play a "classic" EQ server where by Velious launch probably 3-5 guilds will be easily able to clear it both in terms of keys and ability.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/...3&p=3#comments

In this dungeon no gm help is available even in the case of Link Death or server crashes!

This is kind of interesting. Should VP be a FFA zone? I've proposed this before, on live GMs did not participate in "lawyer quest" like they do on P99. Apparently someone calls this zone out as special which I vaguely remember. I wonder if on live training and other activity in VP would never be addressed by a GM.

I still think the problem is bigger than keys or mob difficulty. P99 is simply too easy. ZEMs shouldn't exist, channeling shouldn't be so successful, and so on. The player level curve here skews way too fast to the top end. In live only the most dedicated players could raid a given expansions end game content before the next expansion dropped. This was good because it kept guilds and players spread out throughout the game. On P99 bonus exp alone results in too many max level characters than should exist for the time period designed.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the best EQ guilds were only clearing VP 1-2 months before Velious released. It's because the game was DESIGNED to provide a challenge that was only just achievable given the expected duration of the expansion.

On P99 we're adhering to classic time scale but not designing the game to fit that time scale. Faster exp than classic but using a classic time scale results in content that becomes trivial too fast and a bottleneck forms causing player frustration.

Want faster exp rates? Great. Then expansions also need to release faster to maintain proper design.