f13.net

A writeup that epitomizes the definition of catass (http://www.penny-arcade.com/)

This URL will probably have to change, as it's on the front page, but will sneak to the archives after today. Tycho writes about the new "rest state" feature that WoW has added, which is designed to make the catass actually log off and sleep. A funny write up, IMO.

A permanent link (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2004-04-16).

ETA:  I really like the WoW idea of rest states, sounds like a damn good idea to avoid catassery.. I'm somewhat disapointed to hear Tycho say there isn't much bite to it at the end of that writeup.  Hopefully it's just broken and it will turn out to be more strict that what he is experiencing.

I like the idea...catasses SHOULD be penalized for all the bandwidth they use =)

Since rest state is per-character, not per-account, I imagine the hard core catasses will simply level up alts for the eight hour rest period.

Or they won't play WoW. I'm hoping they do though, less people invading the games I'm playing.

No, they'll do as Dave said. So now we'll have uber catasses with multiple uber characters in no time. If it was per account, they would purchase multiple accounts. You have to remember, despite all other excuses to the claim, for some people these games are an addiction and whatever it takes to get a fix is what they'll do.

Hell, I can't even play 4 hours straight, so "catass" is relative term as far as I'm concerned. I'm usually behind no matter what (not that I care). That aside, the only "system" that'll prevent a player like me from falling behind is to start catassing myself. I'm not sure it can be prevented.

As long as you remove things in the game that caters particularly to catasses and lets them change the game world too dramatically (100% player based economy for instance), I think casual players can coexist and still have fun.

Since the limit is 8 hours or so, I'm not sure what all of the "power gamers" are bitching about. 8 hours is a lot of time. What it looks like it'll prevent is extreme binge playing (24 hours - multiple days).

Why does anyone care how long other people play? At what point does it affect you if someone is 40 levels ahead of you? Other than jealously there is no reason to care.

I agree, if it's just "levels". That's dumb. The only problem I have is when there are things in place that tell players they have to play by another player's rules (catasses get first dibs on what those rules might be).

For starters, it helps keep your fucking guildmates in line. Nothing worse than 3 or 4 guildmates getting together for 8 hours and suddenly shooting ahead of the entire group.

What in the world is wrong with that?

Because I hate when people level ahead of me, they should all DIE for leaving me alone.

First, I really like that they added Town Portals, I think this is great.

Second, I really like this idea of a "Rest" system. Being a hardcore gamer (not quit Catass) but stuck with the life and time restrictions of a Casual gamer, I hope they work out the kinks in this system. I like that I will spend most of my online time with a EXP bonus. I also think its funny that people are complaining about getting the exact same amount of EXP when they are at 1/2 they "rest" meter as the did in the last push.

This system is put in place to help the casual gamer keep up with the catass gamer, and you would have to be a MAJOR catass to have any sort of penalty from this system from what I understand. People are freaking out that they dont get the "Power Hour" exp bouns all the time, blah.

I hope they dont cave to the vocial minority.

P.S. I hope they look at CoH, and rip off their SK system. Dont think it will happen, but I can hope.

I believe that they've started with a generous amount of XP that they'll tone down later on.  I think they'll fix it so that if you sleep 6 hrs you gain 6 hrs' worth, but then tune it so it's not possible anymore to gain 2 levels and still be well rested, as some posts on the boards indicate.

There are also reports that the 2x xp is more efficient than questing, so people are now grinding cause it's more efficient.

You may like it now, you may hate it later.  Actually, most likely everyone will become desensitized to the issue, and by the time the game opens it'll be just another of the game's attributes, along with "quest-based", "PvE", "fantasy setting", etc, that people base their decisions on.

AFAIK they doubled the exp needed per level as well.

Let's see...

All your friends and guildmates who can play for longer times than you level past you, so by the time you can play, you have no friends who can play with you. You are stuck with the circle jerk of 1.

Since the game will have SOME PVP, people leveling past you WILL matter. Levels + PVP = imbalances based on time, especially in what people keep saying is "just like EQ only more fun." That means that levels > everything else when PVP comes into it.

But what about people who buy the game after a year?  And what about people who play 1 hr per week instead of 2-3 per day?  And why are you, casual gamer, in a powergamers guild?  And in a normal game, once your powergamer friends pass you in level, are you prevented from finding other casuals and playing with them?

I'll take the argument that they did it to slow people down, but I refuse the idea that they did it it as a favor to me, casual284, so that I have "more friends".

And high levels are like ebay gear.  What can be done about it doesn't eliminate the stuff entirely, just reduces it to "acceptable levels."  And most of the arguments are due to jealousy.

Have you ever tried playing in a pickup group?  It's nuts.  Generally you end up with half of the group consisting of FOTM uber chars that are crippled until near max level, or are only geared towards pvp.  Another half of the group has no idea how to play their class whatsoever.  Understand, usually there's overlap between the two groups.  (I'll never forget the time I watched someone try to PBAE in DAoC, standing so that the creature was being tickled by the rings.  Since PBAE has dropoff to near 0 at the edge, this person was blowing through a lot of mana to no purpose.  Repeated efforts to tell this person to stand next to his target had no effect on him.)  Critical classes will be missing, such as tank, healer, and aggro manager.  Usually all of them.  Some of the group will want to go to spot A, which is a reasonable idea for the group based on the composition.  Some of the group will want to go to a spot which is fine for a well tuned group, and would earn massive XP for that well tuned group.  Sadly, for your pickup group, it's a great way to lose xp, items, and whatever other death penalties are inflicted.  So by the time you agree, and generally the people who want to go to the "impossible" spot win these arguments, one or more of the group has to log.  So now you get to repeat the whole process again.

So yeah, it fucking matters a ton if you can't play with your friends.

Pickup raids suck.  Pickup groups most of the time are good.  I've never had the experience you describe, and trust me I've pickup grouped a lot.  Maybe cause I leave if it starts to look like there are idiots in the group.

The idea is that after a while LFG daily at the hours you play at, you'll find yourself grouped with the same casuals (that play at the same time as you) over and over again.  You can then proceed to make a guild.

It's how people get started in the game.  They only become elitist and closeted later on, and I've only seen it in powergamer guilds, where the slightest mistake matters because it affects their race to the top.

Pickup groups are like orgies with strangers. Yeah, you might find a Traci Lords among the bunch, but chances are, you're going to be Ned Beatty to some demented three-toothed fucker in a smoking jacket while all the people who know each other are fucking models.

Pickup groups are great if you like squealing like a pig while gargling man-love.

Otherwise, they are full of the most retarded, slack-jawed Mongoloids on the face of the planet, all of whom are individuals tasked with the holy quest of getting you and the rest of the party killed in the most inane fashion possible. Relying on pickup groups in MMOG's will hone any love of humanity you previously had into a jagged, toothy shiv which you will then use to jab your eyes out at the jaw-droppingly stupid mass of said humanity.

I've had some good pickup PvE, particularly at the high end.  Generally, at least in DAoC, the real idiots stall out around 35 or so, because no one will group with them anymore.  At the low levels, it's just nuts what you end up with.

In PvP, pickup group = death.  Hence the popularity of zergs.  Get enough pickup groups together, and maybe you can overwhelm the people who play together 4+ hours a day, every day.

I agree with this to an extent.  However, where PvP is involved, I feel that a system where 'time spent catassing > skill' needs to be avoided.  For me this has a lot more to do with competitive frustration and less to do with jealousy.  

You could go outside and practice basketball 9 hours a day while I sit here in the office.  I'll still kick your ass when I have some free time on Saturday.

This statemetn couldn't be further from the truth.  The real problem with catassing is mudflation.  It has nothing to do with jealousy, I couldn't care less if some catass outlevels me, it has everything to do with keeping the curve of the high end game maintainable for normal human beings.  The problem with catasses is they blow through the content then demand that the content be brought up to their level.  Typically that cuts out most of the rest of the gaming population from experiencing the new content.

If you need an example of out of control mudflation look at the "end game" of Everquest now compared to the end game of Everquest after the first year.  The difference is outrageous.  If something had been done to remove the uber guilds, or at least curb the rate of advancement for the uber catasses the game would be much more casual friendly today.

I'd rather have my maxed out char be frozen, with a suggestion to "try playing an alt till the next expansion, or take a break", than have a sour game throughout.  Except, most MMOG's don't do that...  they try to put you in a hold pattern instead, where you can PvP, raid, farm, whatever, aimlessly, so they can keep taking your money.

They should just have an ending to the game, instead of an endgame.  Or an intermission, rather, till the next expansion.  It would piss people off a lot less, especially if they warn you about it upfront.  It wouldn't feel like a restriction on your playtime so they can milk your cash.  And the decision would be entirely yours, how you want to play.

I care because the game ends up being balanced for catasses.

Which means plenty of normal people that I'd prefer to play the endgame with tend to give up from the tedious number of identical mobs that have to be killed while sitting at exactly one camp.

Cevik, Everquest is VASTLY more casual-friendly right now than it ever has been in its history.  Easy to travel, easy to CR, easy to solo, etc.  

So what if people are 20 zones ahead of you and then they add 10 more zones on top of that?  You still have those 20 zones to advance into.

There are two solutions for this problem:
A: you slow down or keep an alt at your friends' level so you can play with them.
B: you punish everyone in the game by making it pointless for them to log on whenever your friends are not on.

I pick A.

The game itself may be more casual friendly, but the endgame is not, at least from my experience.  In early EQ a dragon raid took a few hours and a lot of friends, but now the planes raids take a full weekend and a huge ammount of friends, and it's hard to stop half way through if your wife tells you it's time to log off or she's flying back home to Oklahoma and you'll never see your son again.

They've managed to combat that somewhat by putting in the instanced dungeons, but the only way to get the real "end-game" equipment (epic weapons, uber class specific quest armor, mega dragon drops) is to have a full guild of multiple catasses that can play for at least 48 hours straight at a moments notice.

This is sounding more like jealousy again.  Why do you need the best and shiniest of everything?  If Mr Casual has his suit or armor and some weapons that are more than adequate for the content he is facing, why would he stay awake nights crying about how unfair the game is because someone, somewhere else in some zone far away has Quarm gear?

  Is it just the raiding style that you like?  If so, that's a vallid point and I think WoW is trying to provide that for everyone as an option.  But if it is just "I am not at the END, i.e. #1 so we must keep everyone else down so I can always be #1 too," then that's just jealousy in my book.

How about C?

C You don't pay for a game that doesn't allow you to play with your friend on the character of your choice.

As for EQ being casual-friendly, in some ways, yes. But for the endgame, which is probably 60% of the whole game itself, it is in no way casual-friendly, even with LDoN and GoD instanced missions.

Well, there are several problems.  None involve jealousy:

1)  Most of the effort spent by the developers to balance the game revolves around end game balance (at least at the time I was playing).  Example:  Enchanters were nerfed because an uber guild could use Enchanters to trivialize an endgame encounter.  This indicates that the developers are developing a part of the game the average person is never going to be able to experience.  The majority pay a monthly fee to pay for the advancement of the game for the minority.

2)  Without the "end-game" equipment you're aren't qualified for the "end-game".  Thus, unless you are a person who has a lot of "friends" you'll never get to experience certain parts of the game, no matter how much effort (not time, effort) you put into it.  The average person has no chance of being involved in the end game because they can't put in the time required to involve themselves in that part of the game, even if they can put in the effort.  MMOGs and MMOG players tend to confuse time and effort, but they are not the same thing.

3)  Any game which intentionally precludes a portion of it's players simply because they are who they are is flawed.  If, when you first fired up Splinter Cell:  Pandora's Tommorrow, it asked you if you were Caucasian or African American, then later in the game before any conclusion to the story was met it said "I'm sorry, but only white people can advance past this point, you'll have to quit now" you'd be outraged.  It would be even worse if you had to pay a monthly subscription to Ubisoft to get as far as you did in SC:PT.  All players should be given the same opportunity to advance through the game as any other player.  They don't have to take that opportunity but they should be given the opportunity.  The mudflation in Everquest has gotten to the point where not all players have that opportunity.

There is a dichotomy in Everquest.  A schism between the have's and the have not's.  I'm not jealous that the have's have what they have, I'm pointing out the game is flawed because it was designed to create that schism.  A valid game design will allow everyone to eventually get to the same point, if they all put in the same amount of effort.  However, mudflation insures that the schism exists because it requires exponentially more effort to achieve the same goals each day past release (because the game is expanding at a rate that keeps the "power gamer" happy).

Saying that someone who disparages poor game design is "Jealous" is simply a cop out.  An extreme cop out.  I was part of the "have's" to be quite honest with you, I played 4-8 hours a day, depending on how sleep deprived I wanted to be; and often I'd play through whole weekends especially on raid weekends.  I certainly wasn't jealous of myself.  Labeling me as Jealous because I see a poorly designed game is a misnomer.

The only concrete reason I can think of is the devs don't want catasses chewing through content too quickly.

90hrs/week on 1 character = lots of fresh content consumed.
90hrs/week spread across 4 characters = lots of content repeated.

As for 1, you have a good point.  The nerf to the number of people that can be on a charmed mobs aggro list is pretty minor, and probably needed to be done for all phases of the game anyway, though.

As for 2, again, "the point" you want to get to is #1.  You are obsessed with keeping up with Furor.  Why do you care?  If you pick any objective point, it is easier for the casuals to get there now.  You say you will "never" get to see parts of the game, but that isn't true. You can kill all the Kunark dragons with a pick up group.  Who woulda thunk?  You can kill most of NToV and a ton of Luclin bosses with a couple groups.  These used to take huge numbers of people many hours.  You will be able to see every inch of the game, you will just do it later.  Hell, mudflation HELPS the casual player.  When they get to these spots, they will have vastly better gear and more powerful abilities that the first people who got there did.  This allows them to do it with smaller groups and much faster.

The "end game" is a moving point, but if you want to explore every place in the game, you can.  Just not all this second.  If you want to measure your e-penis against Furor's, then no, you can't.

As for 3, there are levels -- MANY levels -- of chess play that I have a 0% chance of ever experiencing no matter how hard I try.  OMG discimination!
Chess is flawed because it created schisms! If you want a game where everyone can do everything at the deepest level after playing for 30 seconds, your game is going to suck.  You seem to just be using "flawed" instead of "makes me jealous" because it sounds better.
 
You want to protect your e-penis so you say "I play 2 hours a week, so I demand a game that makes it impossible for anyone to ever gain any advancement in any form for more than 2 hours a week so I can always be ub3r number1 big dog or else I'll take my ball and go home."

I say "hey, Furor has a metric fuckton of gear that I won't see for a long, long time, if ever.  Good for him.  As long as I have enough fun stuff to do, so what?"

Again, I ask you, as long as there is enough fun stuff for you to do, why do you care that people have shinier pixels?

Now excuse me while I go break Shaquille O'Neil's legs because the fact that he plays basketball better than I do ruins my weekend pick up games for me.

You're really barking up the wrong tree with the ad hominems and accusing me of wanting to keep up with Furor.  I had no interest in keeping up with anyone and it's a rather absurd conclusion.

People don't really understand mudflation.  They think it's all about the MUDs economy, but that's only a small portion of the real problem with mudflation.  The real problem is that the difficulty of the  game itself must expand to make encounters non-trivial for those who have experienced the monetary deflation.  When the game first comes online, it's balanced so that people running around with steel swords can kill the content.  Eventually no one uses steel swords and everyone has a polished granite tomahawk.  The devs realize that the encounters are now trivialized and they increase the difficulty of the encounter.  This cycle continues (eventually everyone discards PGTs for something stronger, etc).  This will happen in any mud.

The problem is, when the average rate of difficulty growth is made to expand faster than the median player thanks to the high end players vastly out growing the low end players.  It's not a "keeping up with the joneses" idea that makes the median player want to keep up with the high end players, it's sheer need due to survival in a world that is increasing in difficulty faster than the average player can grow.  



Again, I will repeat this until you finally realize it, it's simply not jealousy.  Mudflation isn't just an economic phenomenon, if it were we would simply refer to it as deflation.  Mudflation is the steady increase of the difficulty of the game because the economy has deflated to a critical point.  This curve often grows faster than the average player advances (because the top in players exponetially outgrow the bottem end players making the need for the average difficulty of the game to outgrow the average player).

I have no need or desire to have the prettiest weapon or to be the first to slay the dragon or to be the same level as Furor.  I have a need to stay competitive with the difficulty of the game as it slowly increases due to a small portion of the players being able to trivialize encounters.



Good example, it should be noted that I purposely don't play professional basketball because I'm not capable of competing.  It's not a flaw with professional basketball because it doesn't attempt to make money from me by allowing me to compete in the game.  Unfortunately everuqest is not a spectator sport.  If Sony wants my money they have to get me to come compete in the game.  The better the design of their game the more likely they are to get my money.  

I have nothing against Everquest, it was a fun game while I played it.  I have no desire to level as fast as another guy, it doesn't bother me if I'm the fastest or the slowest, I play games to have fun.  You are constantly accusing me of being jealous over something that I'm honestly not.  I understand why WoW has taken the approach that they have, and I think it's a good idea.  I'm sorry that you seem to think it's a personal affront to you that I agree with curbing powerleveling for the benefit of the overall game, but it really has nothing to do with e-penises or anything else you want to accuse me of having.

My apologies for getting a little carried away on the ranting there.  I see your point about mudflation, but I am still not seeing how it hurts the casuals.  When the casual gets to orc1, he'll have a PGT instead of fine steel.  When the casual gets to lower guk, he'll have a lammy instead of a pgt.  When the casual gets to lower sebilis, he'll have a LSoEE rather than a lammy, etc.  It's actually easier for the casual to master the content because of the mudflation.

I am a second tier player at best, about a whole expansion behind in gear vs the bleeding edge players.  Yeah, new stuff is harder than old stuff.  And?  My guild and I still have fun doing it, and it takes much less catassery for us to do things (currently the elementals, as an example) than it took the bleeding edge guilds to do them last year.

The old world -> kunark -> velious -> luclin -> PoP content trail is still there for someone starting today.  And, because of LDoN and Mudflation, every step of the way will be easier and require less catassery than ever before.  It seems as if you are arguing that because they added GoD on top of it, that everything else came to a screeching halt.  It didn't.

Adding harder content does not hurt anyone, so long as there is enough content for everyone.  Considering that 2 of the last 4 EQ expansions have had almost no raid content and were squarely aimed at casual players, I don't see the problem.  The only kind of person who I think could be upset is the person obsessed with keeping up for keeping up's sake (or maybe someone with close friends who play a lot more, but that is a different issue).

As for paying, I have to pay for court time at the local tennis court and I still can't serve 100 MPH.  Hell, I can't serve in bounds consistently.  But I still pay to play, because it is fun to play, even at my noobler level.

I don't want to get involved in the discussion, but I kind of agree with El Gallo.  Mudflation doesn't make content harder, it only makes the bleeding edge newly released zones harder.  

Sheer need due to survival?  I think not.  The casual can survive just fine in the old world, where he is now, and he can keep his pace and get to the new zones eventually.

Now casuals that want to experience the powergamer content when the powergamers do, that's a different matter.

Ahh but there are multiple ways of combatting mudflation, and Everquest switched tactics midstream, which is why we are even having this argument.

Back when I played, it was the days of The Vision (TM), and the de facto method of combating mudflation was increasing the difficulty of trivialized encounters.  Each patch would bring a slew of changes intended to make the encounters more difficult (either via nerfs to players or buffs to "trivialized" mobs).  This is the Everquest I remember.

Sometime after I quit the game, Sony fired (or otherwised forced out) everyone involved with The Vision (TM) and began to attack the problem from a different, and from the sound of it, a better angle.  Instead of focusing on making the current  content less "trivialized" they anticipated the constant need for game inflation by increasing the rate at which they created expansion packs.  They began to combat the problem by adding more content at the same rate in which the old content became stale.  I can only go by your review, since this trend started after I quit, but it sounds like a welcome change and a decent solution to the problem.

However, it sounds a bit like a ponzi scheme.  It all works well when the developer can afford to constantly throw man hours at the problem by creating expansion after expansion to include new inflated difficulty content for the users to consume, but eventually you're going to hit a critical mass where you can no longer create the content fast enough.  Probably that's why EQII is being developed, a "reset" point where the whole cycle can start again.  If you really want to see an example of why mudflation is bad, wait until a year after EQII comes out and they stop all content creation on EQI.  You'll see that everything in the game has been trivialized and there will be no future content on the horizon to anticipate.



Would you continue to play if tommorrow the court owner posts a sign that says:  "We have 100 regular customers.  Of these customers 10% feel that the game of tennis is too easy, thus it has been trivialized.  In order to combat this growing problem we have made the following rule changes, all players will be required to observe these changes regardless of skill level.  1)  All rackets will be reduced to 1/4 of the normal regulation size.  This will ensure the advanced players will have a more difficult game while simultaneously giving the begining players the ability to drastically increase their skillset.  2)  The first person to score twice in any game is considered the winner.  We felt that there were not enough come from behind victories and thus the game was not appropriate balanced.  This new rule will allow the overpowered player to win faster thus less time will be wasted.  3)  We have retained the services of Andre Agassi.  All games will now be played against Mr. Agassi, you will no longer be able to use our court to play any other opponents.  Due to the workload, Mr. Agassi will of course be tired, so he will be allowed to use a full sized regulation racket.  Mr. Agassi is only available for play from 3-4 PM on Wednesdays, so our court will be closed at all other times.

Thank you, we think you will find our new version of tennis a much more involving and challenging version of tennis than you are previously accustomed to.  Enjoy!"

Except the casuals are still forced out of certain encounters because they aren't trivial in terms of size of raid or timesink requirement if you're going to talk specificaly about EQ.   I'm part of a 'casual' players guild that raids.  Most of us play maybe 3 or 4 hours at our longest stretches.  We're only JUST starting to get to the point we're thinking about doing some of the high-end Luclin stuff like Ssra Emperorer. (We had a 'guild first' of the Arch Lich of Ssra two days ago.) Even that stuff is a challenge to us because a wipe means 1/3 of the holy trinity class players are past their logoff time for work/kids/etc.

   The casual players aren't in second or even third tier guilds. They're in the unranked "unnamed" guilds those first two tiers don't pay any attention to.  I've seen people get excited over FT2 items because it's a big upgrade. Meanwhile the 'hardk0r3' folks I know(1) chuckle or say 'oh yeah, i've got those on my twinks.'

It begins to rub you the wrong way after a while.  You've bought the last 3 expansions, but you may as well have bought nothing since 2001 because you're only providing content for other players. Sure there's a few tidbits to keep you interested, but when weighed against the price of admission (monthy & box.) you do begin to wonder if you'd be better off in a single player game.  That's where the ire comes from.  You love the game, but you hate the underlying pyramid scheme of content & the remnants of 'teh vision'(2).


1) None of the hardcore I know have jobs. They're all on welfare or SS because of some disability or another or in college/ HS. Sometimes it makes me wonder how much parody is actually within our jests about the EQ elite. But then there's always the dismissing argument of anecdotal evidence and a sample of 1 person's experience.

2) Plane of Air still took a "well-equipped casual'" guild (uberest equipment is AoW level of stuff.) raid of 32 players from Noon PST Saturday until 5PM, and then from 6AM - 11AM on Sunday just for a Mage epic.

Let me give an EQ anecdote to show you how the powergamers, the Furors of the world, helped fuck up EQ.

I played EQ started about 3 weeks after release. I was and am a slow leveler, as I tend to take a "it's the journey" approach and want to see lots of shit. I didn't start leveling in earnest past level 10 until almost 6-7 months into it. When Kunark was released, I was level 19.

Now, Kunark was designed with zones for all levels. But, in the time since release, two planar zones had opened up, dragons had been killed, and the powergamers had torn through all of that content and started bitching about challenges. So, McQuaid got in a pissing contest with the powergamer sect, embodied by Furor, trying to measure whether his l33t game design skills could bitchslap Furor and other loudmouth uber asswipes with tougher content. So, the EQ team adjusted the damage done by monsters, as well as their hitpoints. Adjusted upwards, mind you. Way upwards.

I felt it even at lowly level 19, because in Kunark and every zone released after Kunark, the new monsters were built on this paradigm of higher damage/higher hitpoints. These just normal, everyday encounters were balanced against twinks and alts who had planar gear, or at the very least had gear they wouldn't have gotten except for they got the hand-me downs of ubers who managed to get planar gear. They were balanced for a challenge and gear level that was above what most average people could muster.

So yes, when powergamers bitch and whine about challenge in a game whose balance is focused on the "endgame" everyone suffers. That's where mudflation comes in. It affects the whole goddamn game in a negative way.

Sometimes it is like some of you played a different game than me.  When kunark came out I was about level 30.  Not TOO much higher than haemish.  We would play in small groups in lake of ill omen (before it becam lake of ill manners) and quickly moved to frontier mountains.

Guildnights would be kunark or oldworld dungeon depending on our mood.  I never noticed oldworld mobs being easier or harder for their con than kunark mobs.  And I sure as HELL did not have uber gear.

I remember at that time I had JUST paid what I considered a fortune at that time for an ebony longsword (1k plat).  This was thankfully after the root/snare problem was fixed.  This sword was my prized possession.  And I could only afford one.  And even for that I had to borrow some money.  So my gear SUCKED.  I was also a RANGER, and I was the the only melee character of my level in the guild.  So I was the PRIMARY TANK.  As a ranger with suckass gear.  Kunark was NOT that hard for non-twinks.  Heck, two of our clerics burned out of the game and quit around this timeframe (cleric in those level ranges was fucking awful, probably still is) so I often went with a druid or shaman as the only healer.  So it could NOT have been that hard.

I really don't know what some of you are talking about.  Interesting how perceptions can be so different in the same game at the same timeframe.  I didn't feel things actually get harder until velius for normal non-boss content.  And even then the changes were limited to the new continent where I made sure to have a real cleric because I took a spanking vs those giants.

This isn't me praising the game.  I think back to what i used to do around velious and wonder where my head was at.  We would sit outside of a giant fort and pull giant after giant one at a time.  We would do that every night for a week or so, then do a guildnight somewhere new, then back to pulling giants.  Jesus, how could I stand that?  Tiny guild with really really close friends must have been enough.  We did have a lot of fun bsing.  But not really playing the game.  I have blacked out the MONTHS I spent at the fucking aviak fort.  All I remember are a few funny 'asleep at keyboard' stories and having fun leaping from the top to the first pedestal.

Maybe it was the people we were around.  Nobody in our guild bothered reading the boards that much.  I was the only one aware of the existance of Lums, nobody complained about minor changes that didn't really affect us.

Haem, even if they made Kunark zones impossibly difficult (which they didn't) and added no new Kunark zones aimed at your level (they did) you still had 80% of the original game content ahead of you that you had never even touched.  AND it would be easier for you every step of the way through that content because of price deflation on gear and new character abilities, so you get to go through those zones with LESS catassery than your predecessors did.

Yes, it sucks for people who insist on skipping almost all of a game's content because they only care about being at the endgame, wherever that is.  But the only plausible motive for such a desire is jealousy.

Perhaps they should build in mechanisms that make expansions available based on total worth or something.  If you're a powergamer, you got the gear, here's the expansion.  If you're a casual, sorry, you still have content that you haven't seen in the old world, no expansion for you, come back next year.

But then that's a system that "punishes" the casuals.  I wonder what the talk on the boards would be.  Probably the same uproar as the rest system, except everyone who hates that will love this, and viceversa.

Yes, yes they DID make the Kunark mobs harder in comparison to the old world mobs, and at every single level. The mobs did more damage, and had more hitpoints. No, it wasn't "impossibly" so, but it was a distinct difference. Everything in the Kunark expansion was balanced along the lines of people with twink gear, and with the idea that some of the better Old World gear would filter down through player-to-player trades and sales to the "average" player. That's the effects of mudflation, and it hit the entire game. The experience modifiers for the Kunark zones were higher than their Old World level-range counter parts, which is why places like Lake of Ill Omen became de facto hunting spots for certain levels.