Non-boxing playthrough?

[crx]

Would love to do this, but being in Europe it can be awkward to be on during the same times.

I'm all for a guild who levels using self restraint to make the experience more fun.

Hi Kuldiin

Good to see you again

On this topic though somewhat not related, there was an effort a few years ago to rebalance content difficulty so that it was more suitable for non-donor guilds and I think that was a step in the right direction. In relation to this topic, one of the areas I may look at once the current content and ROF2 are both released and working fine is the server's existing pathway for smaller guilds/group content. Indeed, the content we're designing right now is primarily aimed at groups and small guilds (though some encounters will need a larger raid to complete).

I think it's important that there be a fun and challenging pathway for players who don't want to or cannot raid up and that includes players who don't want to box but can't form a 24+ player guild. There's quite a lot of great content already for those players (you can single group all the way up to ToV, there's ldons and group instances like ascent and more recently discord tower) but I'd ideally like there to be a contigiuous pathway through the tiers that bridges any gaps between those different existing areas.

The main issue, for me, is that anything that's designed for a group to do tends to be balanced by making you do that content about 1000x more to get similar sets of gear to raid content. I get the requirement for that but I'm going to spend some time thinking about how that might change, yet still keep things fair.

One place I'm going to start with is the epic 3.0s. Vaion's work so far on these is superb and most of the sequences and challenges I went through to complete these quests were so much fun. One part of my very long "to do" list is to continue these quests where Vaion left of. But before I do that, I'm going to have a think about how to make the solo branch of these quests a little more fun and less grindy/Everquest Live campy.

No promises or guarantees right now and this might be months away before I even start. Just wanted you to know it's something I'm thinking about.

As always, any ideas are welcome so please do discuss this.

I think this would be a great discussion to have in it's own thread where we can really hash out what players and devs think is a good direction for the server to go. I'd imagine there are a lot of ideas we could talk about and see if there's anything that we, as a community of THF, and in general, EQ enthusiasts could do to make this server even better than it already is, especially from the perspective of a single character player. I think we may be sitting on an opportunity to grow the community and improve the game. Would you mind starting that thread for us Ydiss?

[John Stark]

I have been setting computers for my wife and kids, and we're all going to play some groups together non-boxed. We're also thinking about starting a guild for single box players, but haven't made a firm decision on that yet.

My wife and I both prefer to single box, as do our kids, so some of us might be available depending on play times to group up with others.

The only downside to having 6 real players in terms of grouping up with others to play through the content here is that our primary goal is to have fun playing with our 4 kids, so when they have free time we would be focused on grouping with them.

That being said, they have a bed time and my wife and I would be available sometimes to play evenings while the kids are in bed.

We will probably never box here, or if we do, we would at most box 1-2 extra characters at most in order to be able to do some of the tougher content.

We haven't played here since 2015, so we'll need to reacquaint ourselves with the server again before we jump into playing with others. I don't expect that to take too long, but that includes setting up our UIs, key binds, and son on, so it may be a week or two before we're up to speed to actually play with others.

It would be great to see the server grow with more folks that only single box.

[ocsi]

Welcome back Stark

I'll start messaging those who showed interest regarding availability, and try to move on from there. I will post here when I hear back from others and/or give updates regarding this topic.

[John Stark]

Welcome back Stark

Thanks, and I did read your PM. Still working out some kinks with all of our computers and making sure the game runs well to play on THF again. All of us are up and running though, and can play.

[Kuldiin]

We did this years ago with Mofish(?) It was the most fun I've had in Everquest in years.

There was about thirty of us from around the globe who played solo boxes all the way. We didn't tear through content, but doing it with no boxes was the most fun I've had in a long time.

No buying tokens for access, no buying spells/pets/gear you hadn't earned yourself.

if you form a guild let me know, I'll get this reinstalled and hop on.

[Syong]

You had me at hello.

[xadien]

Hey old friend. I'm always down to kill stuff with you. I'm In.

[kultivater]

I've always been against boxing, because for me it takes the fun out of the game. I've always preferred to play the game the way it was meant to be played: Playing one toon at a time. I've always leaned toward being a soloist because I prefer to be alone. But, as badass as my main is(Beastlord who does an 8.5k attack every second or few seconds), I've found that I still can't withstand the attacks of anything above 70+ Group zones long enough for my incredible damage output to make any difference(even with almost 14k HP). I find myself interested in seeing how much more powerful he can become by having the ability to survive in the raids tiers. PM me on here, or send an in-game tell to Gatos and I'll partner with anyone who wants to. I might be persuaded to start a new toon, though honestly I've had my fill of leveling on this server, and would prefer someone of similar or equal power to my Beastlord to join with for raiding.

[ocsi]

The purpose of this run through will be purely for fun, and for experiencing the game differently. I want to stick to that motto, and I would never put restrictions on players interested in playing along. That said, if anyone is not interested in playing new characters we can still work something out so you can play with us on a character you've already put some work into.

I'll be looking more closely at my PM responses later today and will post an update here with what I've got.

Cheers

[John Stark]

I requested the creation of a guild yesterday named Fellowship of the Ding. Thanks Lillu!

Originally when my wife and I talked about making a guild, it was just going to be for us and our four kids. However, we talked about it, and we are thinking of opening up to others that might be interested in a "family" type guild that requires single boxing.

The only thing with that is we're pretty strict about what our kids watch and so on, so our prime concern for the guild is to keep it clean; no foul language, explicit chat, so-called "adult" salty language, etc. So in this case, "family" guild would mean just that.

That of course may be an issue and might well be a reason that other players wouldn't want to join, and we understand that.

However, even if others might not be interested in joining our family guild, we would like to play on THF with others to play content that requires a raid force. My wife and I both have a couple of level 70 characters, and 3 of 4 kids have one too. That being said, we are planning on starting over with a new single box group that we plan to level up together. That does not preclude us making other characters to group with THF members interested in a single-box raid experience. I know that I would love to level up some other characters with other THF members too, as it is a goal of mine to level up one of each class for fun, and group (single box) play has always been a lot of fun for me.

So, we would like to either offer membership in our new guild to others that would like to play one character at a time, or offer a guild alliance with other like minded players who form their own guild to do the same (if folks would be turned off by our "family" guild rules for chat and so on).

My main is Robert Dreadford (70 Ogre SK with IIRC Tier 9 access). A few of my alts are Wenwi (Iksar Monk I just made), Elvish Presley (32 Elf Bard), and Valarauk (70 DE Cleric). My wife's main is Elizzabeth Terror (70 Troll Shammy) and Mordaelin (70 DE Mage).

Feel free to hit us up in game to group up, and remember that I have no problem whatsoever making a new character for one or more single-box groups! Its not like it takes a ton of time to get to 70 on this server, lol.

My only caveat is that we don't have tons of time to play EQ (work, school, etc.), and sometimes when we do play, its time set aside just to spend time with our kids.

It does seem timely to me, however, that just after our decision to try this server out again that this post was made, and I like to strike while the iron is hot.