Deson

I don't. Why have to go back to the city just to return to level? Just having to visit the NPC to pick the level is enough.

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Sulan

What on earth does need have to do with general itemization? Itemization isn't about what people need, it's about dangling that next carrot just far enough ahead to motivate them keep them playing.

The speed shard runs are already banned, it's just a matter of getting caught or not. Usually if you keep your mouth shut about it, you'll be ok. Personally, I hated doing it this way when I was farming shards. I had a few players in my guild who geared themselves to T2 this way. As a result they had the gear, but not the ability, to do any real TSO content. We're talking Deep Forge wipes here. It was sad.

I'm looking forward to the self mentoring. Randomly beating the crap out of a lowbie zone on a slow night to gear up an alt was alot of fun in EQ1.

feldon30

I really don't know what to say to folks who ONLY want to solo. SoE didn't spend 4 years developing a solo adventure quest game with a chatroom bolted on. Personally, I think there hundreds of better solo adventure games out there.

Once you get to 80 with 200 AAs, and level 80 tradeskill, unless you are grouping or raiding what more is there? Giving people gear they don't need to trivialize content that will have to be balanced somehow in the next expansion?

EQ2 was never designed to solo and if that many folks really prefer playing this way, then some other means of measuring players besides level, AA, and gear is going to have to be added to keep their interest. Solo players blew through Moors of Ykesha in 3 days. What do they do for the other 362 days? Actually over add 3 months to that with the SF delay. There is never going to be enough solo content to keep a solo player occupied for a year.
Incorrect.
They are taking no action, and are no longer seeking a method to stop it.

Then play the actual content if you "hate" getting shards this way. If your guild sucks, get a better one, or group outside the guild.
Been there, done that. Playing with folks who might as well have bought their characters on eBay. Soloed to 80, never grouped before. Don't know where Nek Castle is. 110 AAs. These folks more than anyone need to actually play the game. Gear for them is a crutch, rather than a tool.

Have I gotten shards thru mentoring or using someone else's instance? Of course. But this is not my primary means of gearing up or running dungeons.

Another thing people get hung up on is running the Daily Double. Folks who are just learning their characters should not be attempting these zones. They should be doing the EF/LS/CL zones and just completing the mission, not trying to clear the dungeon unless they think they can. Some of those shard missions require killing no names.
There isn't any level 20-65 gear worth talking about anymore. Mastercrafted beats it. Self-mentoring is strictly for AA.

As a test, in September I intend to level a toon from 1-80 doing hardly any quests at all and see how many AAs I can end up with. I have 200 AAs and have completed 1,262 quests on my main.

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Deson

And fun since lower level content sucks less.

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firamas

Your logic is flawed here. Total Time Invested is not the only reason that raid guilds "get to have" fabled gear. There are definite elements of coordination and player skill in dealing with increasingly complex scripts/encounters. That's actually most of the reason why the loot is better. Trying to put some kind of "Total Man-hours Spent Raiding -vs- Solo Time" conversation ratio into this argument is meaningless. If you want to even start to consider that then you need to account for the total time that guild spent doing all progression past solo stages. All heroic progression required to be able to raid, all raid progression required to learn and defeat increasingly harder encounters. THEN you can start to say "we'll give soloers the same quality of loot, but they're going to have to invest XX hours"... and in THAT scenario, that time variable is going to be way the fuck off the chart and no one would try to solo it anyway. =)

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Oh, no!

feldon30

Indeed. I'd like to see folks genuinely excited about going and running Nek Castle and other low-level dungeons because they will get so much AA that they won't fear that big AA bubble when they hit 80. It's possible now to hit 80 with 100 AAs. Scary.

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drychnath

in general that sounds like a good plan, to make the whole self mentor thing at all risky or whatever, but it doesn't cure the gray shard run problem. mentor to 50, open all the 50 doable shard runs (like 6 or 8 zones) and then go back to town. instances are locked to you so, you're all set, you just had to take an extra step to go back to town (or more likely your GH... they'll add a mentor amenity... which guilds could place right next to the shattered lands bell and portal druid for the TRULY lazy)

call to guild hall, unmentor, go back out, rape zones... not even the full zone, just 20-40 mobs or some clickies, get 6 shards. what would that take? 2 hours? three? Go from MC gear to a t2 BP in 6 days (because you have to get the t1 first...)... assuming no DD's or doing any zones they way they should be done. t2 arms 7 days later... t2 legs, boots, helmet, 5 days each... one month to full t2 armor solo... 2-3 weeks later, full jewelry. there will be at least 6, but probably 12 days in those 6 weeks that you were doing the dd's, so that trims off a day here and there.

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feldon30

People look at gear as a trophy. I look at it as a tool. Raids are designed around players having certain gear.

Kunark was a fluke because folks cleared it with Faydwer raid gear. I doubt that was the intention.

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Sulan

I did about 3 grey shard runs ever. As a result of the whole situation, I've ended up with a very small core of people I'll actually group with these days.

This expac has done alot to kill some of the enjoyment for me simply because so many people seem either unwilling or unable to properly play their class through the content.

EricaMouse

This is the most recent quote I've been able to find on the matter by Kiara, replying to someone else (who is replying to a thread)

Good lord people, this topic is getting tiresome.
ZOMG, SOE made a mistake, build a bridge and get over it.
There is no viable way to fix it at this point. The only ethical way to fix it would be to roll back the servers to the expansion release which introduced it so no one could ever benefit from it. That, would, of course cause a huge uprising so their stance is basically the one they have taken. They have acknowledged its existence, arent going to fix it but will learn from it and try to keep such things from happening in the future.
Now, can we move on to something a little more constructive than rehashing this for the millioneth time?
/kkthnxbye

This is essentially correct
Whilst grey shard runs are technically an exploit (in that we did not intend for the content to be used in this way) it's been part of gameplay for long enough that changing things now would simply be punishing to our players and a major buzz kill.
Going forward we're going to do our best to ensure that we prevent stuff like this, but we won't be "breaking" the current dynamic.

So sounds like you can relax.