cjguy wrote:
still does not help anyone below 85 sure goto current content at 85 see what happns. 99% mobs summons have so much hp takes 10 minutes just to kill one. I do not box or power level nor do I want to or be forced to. as I stated in another post 90% to 95% people do that leaves the rest of us high and dry, that is the major problem with eq and why new people quit.
A background confession: I'm a casual alt-hololic that didn't enjoy the raid-aspect of this game at closer-to-end-game content years ago, so I have been behind ever since. The last 7 years I have mostly soloed, with the occasional foray into a fun family guild. When I first played, I quit a week in Omens of War because I felt like my class (enchanter) was broken and the content was ridiculous. From my perspective at the time it is fair to say it was. So I could easily have posted something like what I quoted above.
But... if OoW had been easy for me (in my way underdeveloped character, soloing or inadequate grouping of similarly played characters) then the expac would have been completely trivial to the more dedicated playerbase (in the sense of character progress, not love of the game or time spent).
So fast-forward that idea ahead to today:
I dislike the summoning mechanic for non-uber boss mobs, but the devs decided long ago this was there way of preventing certain classes from soloing way above their heads. (Necro is my longest played main in the game, trust me I hate summoning). It's basically their "this is group content" label. Level 85 is within grouping range of current cap... but getting far enough that it is part of the hotzone cycle now. Hotzoning being the devs inelegant fix for "bad xp grinding to get to population". It lets us solo the lowest con trash we can for decent xp.
Nobody has to box. Nobody has to powerlevel. Nobody even has to group to skim the edge of the more-current content, but ultimately if one wants to progress in the up to date content when it is current one has to group (and if you want the good stuff you have to raid). This was actually worse Kunark to PoP than it is now in my view (except that a lot of really good stuff was tradable up till Velious). Any class that is well-played can solo up to 75 in TSS. Using a merc makes that speedy for even the most otherwise tedious of classes.
Could they do some work extending the TSS approach to a few zones so the chain clearly goes 76-95? Yes they could.
The problem they've been arguing internally about (we've seen drips of it publicly over the years on the official boards such as in Elidroth's threads) is how to make it even easier for the player types that solo without the advantages to catch up without making it "too easy" for the people that use/have access to the advantages. AA count is really the crux of this gap (they've given us stupidly overpowered gear, and a decent spell system).
So it comes down to the individual player's wants. I long ago decided that I will enjoy each characters' journey and not care how far I take them (really helps with the alts). If I got serious about a character I would join an active guild. I would use vet rewards, hotzones, xp pots, mercs and group with much higher levels as a level 61 (as in take the friendly power-level so that I actually am useful to my guildmates in a group rather than just a leech) and get myself up to the content where they need me to actually play. This would mean buying the new expacs though...