Everquest vs Leveling

[tdanger84]

Huppy, you are correct, but in order for people to do things like that there has to be some kind of benefit. I will use your server as an example because I played on it for awhile. You have merchants that sell defiant gear for all level ranges, as well as jewelry and summoned items. This is exactly the formula for the "eq leveling" experience that you were describing. why bother venturing out to different dungeons looking for equipment upgrades and such when better gear is available to be bought from a merchant? At that point leveling is basically all there is to do. IMO if you want the more original EQ experience of doing quests and adventuring to different zones looking for cool drops then the rewards should be worth the effort. I have played on pretty much every server I could find on emu and to me the ones that are the most fun are the ones that let you obtain all the original equipment and such and either tune it up or tune down the content to fit. It is also cool to lower req lvl, and remove lore/no drop tags on items.

[Huppy]

Originally Posted by tdanger84

Huppy, you are correct, but in order for people to do things like that there has to be some kind of benefit.

The benefit that each individual gets would be a preference, I guess.
What someone, like myself calls a benefit in this game is simply the fun of playing.
I've never looked at a task, or a quest and thought "What do I get out of it?"
I don't need to benefit anything in the end, it's the fun of doing it all.
One example, a halfling doing the armor quests in Rivervale. The cheesy little
items you get from doing it all are NOT the reward or benefit. It's the fun of
doing it.

When you said the following, you hit it right on the nail:

why bother venturing out to different dungeons looking for equipment upgrades and such when better gear is available to be bought from a merchant?

TEMPTATION is what leads people to make their choices. One could totally
ignore those merchants with defiant gear. One could ignore the Bots and even
forget about the mercs. I would CHALLENGE anyone to start a level one toon
and don't go near the PoK for free buffs, don't go near bazaar for items. And
don't go near the Tutorial. Don't spawn any bots or mercs. Put your MQ away.
How long could you play like that AND enjoy it ???

Eventually, THIS server is heading to be EXACTLY what eq live was when OoW
came out. All the gear and items will have the tags they had on live.
Those defiant merchants will not be there, the summoned gear will be gone and
any merchants set up will only have items that you typically would of seen on
live servers. Anything custom that I have in place now, is just to let people
piddle around while I work on it all.

My server is like a backyard BBQ. The neighbours are more than welcome to
come and enjoy it, but they will have to eat what I am cooking.