It all depends on who your main group of playing buddies is, IMO. I
have a 61 main, and 7 alts spread between mid-teens and early 50's.
I 'twink' my newly-rolled characters only in the very vaguest use of
the word. By that, I mean that I start them out with equipment that
is not over 200plat in the bazaar/per slot. But, once I do that, they're
stuck with that equipment until they earn it themselves, either by
drops or quests or some tradeskilled stuff that is passed between
the chars. My main is equipped with 8 pieces of either quested or
armor, the rest is really cheap bazaar items and all four weapons
she uses (3 swords, one bow) are dropped/tradeskilled/quested. And
I'm pretty much the norm for my guild.

Why worry about what others think of your stuff? I'm damned proud of
what I got because I know what I went through to get it. And I had
fun while getting it. I have more stories to tell other than 'Yeah,
I farmed X zone for 3 weeks to get the plat to buy this.' :)

Tracey

If you're just playing on your own or with a group of friends then it
matters not a lick.  If you're looking to join, or currently in, a
guild then it's a matter of keeping up at least enough to be useful
and contribute the guild goals.

I spent about 200p on my beserker in bazaar gear, total, and he kicks
butt.  Of course even as little as 3 years ago 200p was a tidy sum,
but today it's chump change.  Even I, a casual player who only plays
one night a week for a few hours, has about 8k in the bank.

last night in Echo Caverns I actually got 2 upgrades from mob drops.
That was cool.

Not sure exactly where I'm going with this other than, whatever.  It's
a game and I play as I like, or don't.  To me EQ is the greatest
computer game ever created, but I'm simple too.

~F

I found this out too.  A few months ago, I got involved with a guild
that decided to "start from scratch" and use nothing that we did not
loot ourselves.  So, I went through the new tutorial and did the new
PoK newbie quests.  At the same time, I did some really hard looking
around for reasonably attainable gear at low levels.  I came up with
three conclusions:

1. The Iksar Berserker Club (7/18 + buff proc) from Kurn's is grossly
overpowered, relative to everything else at that stage of the game.
2. The best weapons available in the new tutorial (e.g. 8/28 club, 9/27
sword) could not reasonably be replaced until at least level 25 or so
(10/25 spear from named bogling in Echo).  The exceptions to this were
the IBC and the 9/24 iksar BST progressive HtH weapon, both attainable
late-teens.
3. More generally, looting better gear than the newbie armor was really
hard, at least into the late-20's.

Sadly, the guild folded, and I confess I went on to other things.

What I find interesting is that everything I read about the high-end
game makes it out to be exactly what you want, Xiphos.  You just can't
get better gear from the bazaar, after a certain point, and you have to
loot the No Drop items yourself.  Sadly, my highest level character, at
60, still hadn't reached that stage, and bazaar purchases are still a
viable upgrade path for that character.  I would be curious to discover
whether any of the people advocating "use only what you loot" had ever
reached that stage of the game - I might suppose they haven't.

I have also spent some time on the "dark side" playing WoW.  In that
game, there are numerous quest rewards.  My highest level character in
WoW, at level 30, has earned more than half of his gear from one quest
or another (his weapon was purchased from another player; a few items
were tradeskilled).  In addition, every single monster seems to have a
low chance of dropping a spiffy item (no one explains why that tiger
was carrying a pair of magical chainmail boots, but...).  So, while
killing level 25 monsters, you might randomly loot an upgrade to a
random slot, usable by anyone, say, level 18 or higher.  Now, WoW does
have an analog to the bazaar, and there is a brisk economy in trading
drops that you don't need for money.  Nevertheless, it is very possible
to loot/quest regular gear upgrades, without spending hours on end
delving into spoiler sites to uncover some hidden quest/drop, and it is
possible to perform quite well in such gear.  If you want to sell your
dropped magical gear, you'll find that selling drops amounts to a very
significant fraction of the wealth you acquire.  Drops can be had early
too - I had a level 12 character loot randomly dropped gear that would
be sell-able to a level 5.  Finally, in EQ-speak, most quest rewards
are No Drop and most dropped gear is tradable, but Attunable (i.e.
becomes No Drop once put on).  This prevents the EQ problem of the
first FBSS looted in 1999 still being passed around, along with the
thousand other copies looted on the server since then.

Anyway, this is not meant as a commercial for WoW.  However, it does
graphically demonstrate how much modern EQ does not play that way, at
least at most of the lower levels, for most people.  There are lots of
places to grind out experience, but it takes more work and/or knowledge
to find someplace to loot an upgrade.  Generally, the piece you want
drops from one mob in one specific location.  If you just blithely set
up camp anywhere that looks good and kill things, you probably won't
get anything you'd use.  In addition, high level characters can loot
plenty of items that even a level 5 would find as a usable upgrade over
cloth armor.  Perhaps part of the problem is the abundance of
usable-at-level-10 gear dropped by mobs over level 40.

There are two ways to look at it.  Low level upgrades just aren't very
available to lowbies, without targeted hunting.  Or, low levels are
conditioned to gear that is "too good".  While the second may well be
true in this day and age, I think there is a case to be made for the
first, independently of that.  Or, perhaps I'm just off my rocker. :)

<xiphos@rahul.net> wrote:

Not playable...  hardly.  Even a rogue can solo all the way to 70 in stuff
they pick up along the way.  Unpleasant?  Without a doubt.  What is possible
and what is advisable are two very different things.

I started a paladin the other day because I was bored and had never tried
one.  I am the twinkmeister.  Level 1 paladin, 1800+ hp, a 28/30 1'her that
isn't level limited, a 40/40 2'her that isn't level limited, etc.  Strangely
enough, this doesn't help much at 1-10 due to damage caps, other than simply
making sure he stays alive.  After level 10 is when the twinking really
starts to shine.

Many "hardcore" players will adopt the same attitude with twinks.  We're
used to facing mobs that will kill us in one round, so when we twink we're
more interested in being godlike than being challenged.  Our challenge comes
during the raiding.

"Xiphos" <xiphos@rahul.net> wrote in news:1129315496.402545.10750
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Well, I did somehow manage to struggle up to level 65 without any armor I
could legitimitely earn.  I did not seriously bother with the bazaar for
equipment for my main pretty much ever.  I have bought a grand total of 4
or 5 pieces of equipment from the bazaar for my main all after level 65,
the rest I earned through questing and xping, and raiding.