Newbie Zones: Ready for Launch?

[Chryorn]

I created a Troll SK yesterday. I was the only player in the swamp and I had to run around and search for mobs. It took a long time to reach level 3. Most of it spent running around, searching. At least I got 4 bone chips for the Rusty Two Handed Sword while still at level 1. But even at Level 3 I had only managed to get 1 tadpole flesh and no froglok meat. No chance to get the 2 tadpole flesh and 1 froglok meat for the Rusty Two Handed Battle Axe. Not enough fungus spores for even 1 patchwork armor quest either. It didn't help that Zimbittle was up as well. She and the roaming guard competed with me for the few mobs around. - And I even made it all the way to South Ro in hopes to find mobs. Frogs one level above me were much too hard though, with just 4 pieces of cloth or netted.

3 days ago I made an Ogre SK. Lots of running around in Feerrott as well, but at least there were more mobs around. Much better than the swamp. It was easy to get a set of cloth armor and lots of lizard meat for the weapons quests. Lizard tails for the armor quests were less common. But by level 4 I was fully clothed, most of it cloth, with 4 patchwork pieces and enough plat for a full set of Large Leather Armor from the vendor.

The week before that it was Rivervale. Halfling Cleric. No real newbie quests, not many mobs that even dropped a few copper or a silver. By level 3 I still hadn't managed to get enough coins for all the useful level 1 spells and had 2 pieces of cloth armor. It didn't help getting dressed that parts of the cloth armor dropped by the skeletons is not halfling wearable. But at least those 2 pieces were valuable, compared to the animal parts.

After Rivervale I tried a dwarf. Much better. By level 4 I had most of my level 5 spells and was fully dressed in patchwork and tattered. Much less frustrating than Misty Thicket. The Bone Chips quest helps a lot with that.

Of course my two test chars in Qeynos and Freeport had no problem at all to have lots of mobs around them all the time. Lots of armor and rusty weapon drops as well.

The differences between the newbie zones are huge, both in gear and cash drops. I had the most fun with the Ogre SK, despite the running around. The Troll was the most frustrating. Grobb has lots of newbie quests, it just was not possible to even find the mobs. Most kills were snakes. The poor Troll was thankful to find something to kill at all.
I was planning to start a Halfling Cleric on Green. I like the look of female Halflings in plate armor. But Misty turned out to be a bad place to start, even without competition. Not being able to afford even the basic spells is frustrating. My Halfling managed to loot a cracked staff. But it is the best weapon available for her, can't just sell it. The Ogre had no such problems. 4 lizard meat for Sword or Axe plus a few silver for sharpening stones took 15 minutes. The cracked staves he got went straight to the vendor. The Dwarf Cleric is not tempted to sell her cracked staff. Getting dressed and buying spells was no problem anyway. The Troll has heard of cracked staves, but believes them to be a myth.

[Fammaden]

So back in April I thought I saw quotes from a Q&A with Rogean that happened at the convention where green was first announced. And one aspect supposedly mentioned was dynamic spawn times for the launch population surge in newbie zones to potentially scale with the zone count. Not sure if that's still on the table. It wouldn't be strictly classic but neither will 3k+ people I'd say, and it is something that happened on EQ at some point later.

It really would ease some conflict if the newbie yard mobs were respawning immediately once a certain number of players was reached. After the newb zones you have more than one zone to pick from in your level range generally, so they could be more hands off outside of starting areas. For that first weekend at least, a dynamic respawn timer might be nice.

[Verityn]

Originally Posted by Fammaden [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So back in April I thought I saw quotes from a Q&A with Rogean that happened at the convention where green was first announced. And one aspect supposedly mentioned was dynamic spawn times for the launch population surge in newbie zones to potentially scale with the zone count. Not sure if that's still on the table. It wouldn't be strictly classic but neither will 3k+ people I'd say, and it is something that happened on EQ at some point later.

It really would ease some conflict if the newbie yard mobs were respawning immediately once a certain number of players was reached. After the newb zones you have more than one thing to pick in your level range generally so they could be more hands off outside of starting areas. For that first weekend at least, a dynamic respawn timer might be nice.

I wanted to lend some weight to the idea that dynamic spawning in newbie zones is actually sort of classic. Take it as hearsay if you will. According to two former GM's that I used to know they would sit it in the newbie zones and spawn mobs over and over. After learning this I realized there were times where a spawn was just going nuts with stacks of fire beetles in one spot that never ended. Once enough people were onto that spawn it would stop and move elsewhere. At the time I just thought the spawns were being funny since so many mobs were being killed.

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by Verityn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I wanted to lend some weight to the idea that dynamic spawning in newbie zones is actually sort of classic. Take it as hearsay if you will. According to two former GM's that I used to know they would sit it in the newbie zones and spawn mobs over and over. After learning this I realized there were times where a spawn was just going nuts with stacks of fire beetles in one spot that never ended. Once enough people were onto that spawn it would stop and move elsewhere. At the time I just thought the spawns were being funny since so many mobs were being killed.

Good enough evidence for me, make it happen. We can all sit and kill our single soft instanced skeleton mob for five levels that first weekend. :P

[Vizax_Xaziv]

I'm guessing the 4k milestone will be hit EASILY during the first week of launch. Someone on my Classic WOW server was talking about it the other night.

There's a handful of relatively large Twitch Streamers (read 1000+ concurrent viewers daily) who've shown interest in Green as well.

[Baler]

/petition harrysacket stole my fire beetle and swore at me.

The names are going to be the best part.
trust me

[AegnorP99]

I've got a feeling it's going to be insane. I've half a mind to give it a few days before rolling up a character. But let's be real, I'll be there Day 1 like everyone else running around wildly looking for something, anything to kill.

[Jibartik]

I have nothing but my memory but my best friend and I that played EQ together played a troll, and I played a dark elf. I leveled in the dark elf area and he leveled in the troll area.

The troll area was like "the place to be" for a noobie. You would get a full set of mesh there leveling (or was it woven?) it was a leather graphic for a caster... We had started over a lot together, and did lan parties on weekends and he would just be like you're wrong, you're wrong, everytime I tried to level anywhere but the swamp. I finally listened and went to the swamp, Id think "man he is right this is the spot!" and got a full inventory of leather graphic armor for my darkelf necro by the time I got him to level 8 there and went back for spells, proudly I wore that armor through the oasis, I remember that trip!!

That armor stuff sold for like a gold+ each!

Id always go to the swamp to level noobies from then on..You made hand over fist plat leveling in that area as a noobie just killing froggies.

I tried bringing a character there because of my memories when I started playing p99 and was like, what the heck this area is the worst! there is nothing to kill but like 2 tads!

Like loramin says, we likely will never prove this one, but idk... I suspect some things may have changed since the old days with regards to some of these noobie zones.

Cant prove it, but my suspicion is now stuck in my brain.

Edit: Or it could have just been that classic effect "46 froglock tads with one AoE!" or maybe that guy litreally did kill 46 froglock tads? I just dont know now....

[Deathrydar]

I remember back in the beta in 2009, there were not enough MOBs in each starting zone. I only knew Freeport like the back of my hand, so only Freeport was fixed as a GM gave me the powers to create MOB paths as he added MOBs to the zone.

Over the years, it seems that some other zones were fixed, but the MOB count in Innothule and Feerrott are way too low. More should be added ASAP, definitely before Green's launch!

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Lojik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I know it's been mentioned before, but it really seems like the newbie zones are going to be practically unplayable at launch. Let's assume a population at the low end of estimates, 1000 players. You're probably looking at numbers something like ~350 on Faydwer, ~250 in Qeynos, ~200 in Freeport, ~150 in Oggok/Grobb, ~50 in Misty. Do you guys think GM's will add more mobs or have gms in different zones with /spawn command (I think someone mentioned they did this on some new servers on live.) If not, which zones do you think will be most able to handle the amount of players?

1) Freeport. Seems like a decent bet, as there are not one but two newbie yards. Dark elves will probably come here too, some will stay in nek. EC and Nro have some newbie stuff.

2) Qeynos. Probably going to be really awful. I think people will be attracted to this one with all the great newbie quests, but theres only one newbie yard, QH is relatively spaced out, and a lot of barbarian and erudite players will come here to hunt. Speaking of that....

3) Everfrost. Seems emptier of roaming gnolls and goblins than I remember on live, but we all know how reliable memory is. It's a tough start on blue for sure with hardly any level 1 roamers in those chasms. Maybe it won't be that bad on green since most mobs are level 2+ people can group and take them down, but still seems somewhat devoid of creatures to hunt.

4) Tox. Actually not as bad a newbie zone as you might think, but the current version on blue is littered with too many infected rats (75% of stuff north of the river maybe?) rather than stuff that drops armor/weapons. Seems to be a classic monster though so it's probably going to be like that at launch unless it gets fixed.

5) Misty. I don't know much about this zone, but since it's pretty much going to just be halflings here it might be a good bet. I am not familiar with mob density

6) Feerrott. Some camps here that are tough for single ogres to break, but should be doable with groups of ogres, so might not be that bad? Not sure if mob density is enough for peeps though, seems unlikely?

7) Innothule. I'm not sure there will be enough creatures here to hunt for the newbies, as you pretty much need to stay close to the wall. Unless some brave groups venture into the watery parts of the swamp, but there don't seem to be a high density of critters so I'm not sure it'd be worth it.

8) Gfay. I don't know shit about this place as a newbie zone, but it seems like a lot of people love it. How good is it going to be with 250+ (probably at a minimum) newbies looking to kill orcs. How is the monster density in this zone?

9) Steamfont. Also don't know shit about this zone, is there enough to hunt for 50 gnomes and some sprinkled wood/half/high elves that want to come here (maybe some dwarves?)

10) Butcher. Don't know much about this zone either but seems pretty spread out.

11) Neriak. Forest is ok I think, I'm assuming people will hunt the halflings on green. Probably a bunch gonna go to freeport.

What do you guys think?

I'm really confused by your comments on FP and Qeynos. Why would a Dark Elf who is KOS to some people in FP come to FP to level in its newbie yard? A lot of them will be okay with the guards, but having to trek all the way down through the tunnels to get to vendors who will sell to you? Not being able to bank in North FP? It simply doesn't make sense for a Dark Elf to go to FP until they've accrued several levels and they're ready to start leveling in EC or N Ro. Not to mention that Nektulos is a phenomenal newbie zone with a great progression of content through the first several levels.

As for Qeynos, the newbie yard is pretty big there. Why would Barbarians go there? Everfrost has some great early level quests that you can do to get decent starter gear and then you can go straight to Blackburrow. Honestly, if I created a character in Qeynos I'd probably try and get to Everfrost instead of the other way around. I guess some Erudites might go to Qeynos at level 1, but why? While not great, Toxx isn't awful either. Not to mention, an evil Erudite (i.e. Necromancers) won't be able to get to Qeynos on their own until they get Gather Shadows at level 8.