Proposed new server ruleset: PvE+ [long effortpost]

[Rygar]

A lot of your ideas will make the game more difficult and harder to advance, I just think they would be too frustrating and people would leave the game. If I don't have time to group but want to work on a quest or tradeskills, I can run around and do it on p99 myself, but it seems a lot harder in your world to convince other people to do my coldain ring or help me increase my blacksmithing. You are making a game that requires 4hr blocks of time to achieve things in (finding a group is the frustrating part, actually doing things is the rewarding part), I think that is a flaw in classic that only encourages addictive personalities and poopsockers. The food no rent stuff I don't get, how does a bottle of water go bad?

Raid mobs destroying gear permanently? Seems extreme. I think vanilla WOW had it right with repairing early on, where if you didn't repair gear it could permanently destroy. You could make repairs only doable in town, so that people can't just park out at mobs round the clock. Wiping with some partial repair damage could destroy your gear permanently, this would slow the raid machine down a bunch and could add risk (Do we attempt Vulak again and risk a wipe and lots of tears with lost gear? or concede mob and fight another day?). You would probably need to restrict repairs to town and not allow items or tradeskills to do this, else every raid would have them there. This could also balance the economy. Perhaps items that are repaired have a 1 hr 'cooldown' period where they can't be repaired again until that time is up.

In regards to charming, I agree it is OP without that much consequence. I just think when charm breaks mob gets some kind of 'rage' buff that makes it unstunnable / unrootable / unsnarable / unmezzable / uncharmable and adds 50% haste buff for 10 seconds. Still very usable in groups, but extremely dangerous solo (better be ready to chain cast rune).

Recharging should exist, but not by current method. Maybe certain items can be recharged in certain town locations using a vendor, and have deity / faction restrictions (such as only Tunare worshippers can recharge root nets). A lot of these charge items should be NO DROP to prevent transferring for recharges.

I'm definitely in favor of larger assist calls on mobs, it never made sense to me that you can beat a froggie down and then 20 feet away some guard that is FACING YOU is just letting you beat up his buddy. For immersion sake and better focus on off-tanking / CC it would be better that any mob within a 200-250 range is given an assist call (but that mob won't issue an assist call else entire dungeon would pull at once).

I really like the permanent EXP loss angle in the planes, that is just really appealing to me. Can make for some great stories, especially if you add a lot of mobs to the zone in to make breaking in difficult (my most fond classic memory is a rough break-in to Plane of Hate). Getting gear and kills in that zone would make you feel legit as hell.

No MQ I agree on 100%, same with corpsing no-rent items (makes no sense to me how it currently works in game).

In general, I'd encourage your changes to make you fight as a smarter player, not just require more numbers or a longer grind. As an example, maybe you can cap rez exp gain to 75% in the game, so that death always has a real consequence, yet make rez available to paladins and necromancers so it is more available in the realm.

Bottom line though, any changes to EQ aren't going to be called 'classic in spirit' or anything like that, just call it what it is: improvements to classic. Should help avoid the haters (although most people seem to hate threads like this... which were classic on EQ server boards everywhere back in the day).

[fadetree]

I've always liked the repair mechanic, especially when the 'higher' levels of repair are only available from actual players. It helps solve a bunch of problems and adds a lot of immersion and camaraderie.

[Amyas]

What is in the spirit of classic is subjective to opinion.

[Amyas]

Sounds like a pain in the ass to me.