This would be the only way I would start EQ again.
I won't play during the summer but in September it sounds like fun
Email sent

.

I re-installed EQ this weekend and it turns out someone bought me GoD
and OoW - that was nice of them wasn't it!  :-)  

steve.kaye

<SNIP>

Rumble,
About the price of EQ - I saw EQ with all the expansions (10 or 11)
for $20 in Wal-mart.
Julie

    Ok, email sent :) I see no harm in trying it on.

    Should be very interesting to see how playing a non-twink tank in
today's EQ will go. I'm thinking very, very badly after the first few
levels.

cheers,
James

Email sent.

I'm in the middle ground where I haven't been playing long enough to
have burned out on original characters, so I don't really want to take
time away from them to try your idea, but it does sound interesting.
(My characters are "self-twinked" in that they've earned money to pay
for bazaar gear, but except for my more recent alts I've mostly not
gotten hand-me-downs from higher levels.)

Some fine points that you'll need to think about:

It's fine to say you won't pay for level-inappropriate buffs, but what
about free buffs?  If someone passes through your newbie zone and gives
you SOW or a high-level DS, will you click it off?  What if you had a
level-appropriate buff from a groupmate who's since camped, and a
passing stranger overwrites it with a higher level buff?

If you decide to work on, say, tailoring, and need some smithing or
brewing done to make some of the ingredients, do you have to do the
smithing/brewing yourself?  That sort of defeats the point of it being
a multi-player game, so I assume you could at least have someone else
in the guild do those parts.  But can you go out and hire someone to
do the combines if you provide the ingredients?

You don't need to write a legal contract covering these things, nor do
you even need to enforce them, or even be consistent about them, but
you should at least have some idea where you intend to draw the line
at interacting with the rest of the "massively multiplayer" part of
the game.

Good luck, and I hope you have fun!  (That's the important part, after
all!)

    -- Don.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 56 on E. Marr       Note: If you reply by mail,
-- Terrwini, Druid 52 on E. Marr       I'll get to it sooner if you
-- Wizbeau, Wizard 36 on E. Marr       remove the "hyphen n s"
-- Teviron, Knight 21 on E. Marr

Email sent.

~Deborah~

Bristlebane Server:
Kentigern Fyrebear - Level 38 / Barbarian / Shaman
Vaerity Trueheart - Level 29 / Gnome / Paladin

Never looked into it, but sounds interesting.

Palindrome

Yup. I can remember not having 2pp to rub together. I would get the
occasional random buff, and the even less occasional gift from a higher
level player, but a) that gift was never anything as good as what a player
at that level can now readily afford in the Bazaar, and b) it was a way of
life for me. I didn't develop my playstyle around having extraordinary
gear, and therefore was very interested in all the placed I could go for my  
attainable modest upgrades. I saw a lot more of Norrath then.

Me either. PoK and even the Bazaar can still have their purpose. They don't
have to be abused to be useful. Again, this isn't about taking away
conveniences so much as it is about staying off the fast track and enjoying
what you can achive on your own.

It basically boils down to whether or not you could buy into the philosophy
of looting/questing your gear as opposed to buying what someone else
looted/quested. That style of play isn't for everyone.

Part of why it's so easy to fall into the "buy upgrades" trap is that
it's actually hard to find level-appropriate things to spend money on
after a while.  Those bandages, food, and so forth don't get any more
expensive as you level up, but you're making much more plat (including
selling vendor trash) from the mobs you kill.  Tradeskill components
can of course consume an infinite amount of plat, and if you're a
caster the spells do get more expensive as you level, but I expect
you'll find you're accumulating plat and, as you say, it's reasonable
to expect you should spend it on something.

One thing you might consider allowing, with care, is purchasing level-
neutral gear, provided you can earn the money for it.  E.g., it's
unlikely anyone in your guild will be making Leatherfoot Haversacks
for a while, given the tailoring skill needed.  But if your accumulated
plat is enough to buy one in the Bazaar, you might allow that.  I.e.,
for stuff that drops off mobs, or requires travel to certain zones, it's
easy to see what level you need to be for it to be level-appropriate,
but for things that really ARE obtained by paying another player to do
the work, you might define the appropriate level as being whatever level
you're at when you decide you've got the plat to spare.  (I agree that
farming just to raise the plat is best avoided.)

    -- Don.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 56 on E. Marr       Note: If you reply by mail,
-- Terrwini, Druid 52 on E. Marr       I'll get to it sooner if you
-- Wizbeau, Wizard 36 on E. Marr       remove the "hyphen n s"
-- Teviron, Knight 21 on E. Marr

Hmmm...  So, I have a question about where this is going that will be
somewhat of a yardstick.  But first, let me begin with a story. :)

Right now, I have a brand new troll shadowknight on Stromm (my only
character on the server).  The whole point of this character is to
check out the new tutorial and lowbie armor quests.  It has been great
fun starting literally from nothing and building the character from
scratch.  Buying bazaar gear would run counter to the whole point of
this experiment, so I am mostly not doing it.  What I cannot avoid is
"twinking" the character with my accumulated knowledge of the game,
including tradeskills.

So far, I have done a few things that are grey and probably some that
would be forbidden, under Rumbledor's rules.  Perhaps they will serve
as starting points for discussion. :)  Most of my gear is from the
tutorial.  (By the way, the No Drop tutorial gear is *quite* nice, if
you are starting untwinked!)  I exited the tutorial twice to hunt some
mobs with decent vendorable drops, while they were still blue (so far,
I have drawn a line at farming greens purely for cash).  Again, I
decided to avoid using any bazaar-buyable gear, at least until I see
how the gear from the new quests turns out.  I gave in to four moments
of weakness.  I bought an Opal Encrusted Stein in the bazaar, because
not even troll vendors will give a troll good prices.  This is a
tradeskill product, not a monster drop, and does not require any
monster drops to make.  On the other hand, someone at my current level
would simply not have the resources to have a skill high enough to make
it.  I found a Shiv (5/22 piercer) and a Netherbian Chitin (AC 20 plate
BP) on sale on NPC vendors that I happened across (skilling up smithing
to sharpen a rusty weapon for an upgrade!).  These sell *very* cheaply
from vendors (<1 and ~6 plat respectively).  I love these kinds of
"lucky breaks", so I bought them.  I also found a Great Reptile Tooth
that someone had sold to a vendor!  My finely honed bazaar trader
instincts would not allow me to pass that up for only ~18 plat, even
though that wiped out my savings.  I thought about selling it in the
bazaar for a small fortune in cash, and I somehow managed to leave it
in my bank, for now.  I am almost done with the tutorial, and I have
found a better weapon than the Shiv, but the quested breastplate is
inferior to the Netherbian Chitin, for those keeping score at home.
After I leave the tutorial, funds permitting, I'm considering learning
some more smithing to create banded armor.  This would be an upgrade
over the cloth and burlap that I'm wearing now in many slots.  If I
were a leather or silk class, I might have been looking into tailoring
instead.

So, it is inevitable that adventuring will cause your bank balance to
grow.  You just won't spend it all on spells, disciplines or spell
reagents, and not everyone will choose to do tradeskills.  Here's the
question.  If you do allow purchase of items, will this mean that, even
within your new guild, banded and studded leather armor will be
obsolete?

What about the journeyman/expert DON armors?  If I were twinking a new
alt, I wouldn't even consider journeyman DON armor, due to much better
bazaar alternatives.  For those keeping score at home, the journeyman
DON breastplate has better AC than the Netherbian Chitin, which can be
had by killing a level ~25 named.  A large downside to journeyman DON
smithing is the expense of the components (10.5 plat investment in the
hammer, ~18plat for the cultural metal for one attempt, plus a rare
farmed component).  I would probably have to charge around 20 to 35
plat per piece, just to cover the cost of failures, once I had
completely trivialed banded armor.

If I could get a queue of guildies lining up for me to make them banded
armor, I might just join this new guild.  :)