Sullon Zek.. and the way the server is turning out so far...

[EZ_Cylant]

Well, i'm quite pleased with sullon zek so far.. except for one problem -- the evils. The evils have been able to level in kunark untouched, and as a result there's really nothing the neutrals or goods can do to gain territory back from them. There's always the threat of the scarry 52 necro wandering around slaughtering anyone who isn't an ally.

From personal experience i've seen the following:

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Territory:

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The Neutral team owns most of the karanas, qeynos hills, qeynos, erud's crossing, kerra island, runnyeye, gorge, misty, rivervale, high hold, and we've been pushing into the commons recently. From what i've heard we have a strong foothold in velious, which i'm hoping we will keep. The neutral has alot of people, and many of them are getting into their 30's now thanks to sporelings in runnyeye . Thanks to a few people who have been out there beating on the evils who try to go there, velious seems to be pretty neutral for now.

The Good team owns... the remainder of faydwer, everfrost, halas, permafrost, and they constantly invade blackburrow. They don't have very many people, they only have a few high levels, and i really don't know what they're going to do. A few of my real life friends play on the good team, and to cope with the problem they've been getting exp over in FV on drolvargs. Seems safe to me.

The Evil team owns everything else, as well as any given zone they feel like going to. They have the levels, the equipment, and not much knowhow.... which basicly leads to everyone getting slaughtered.

If the goods take all of faydwer, and set up shop over in kunark, they have a way of getting to high levels as well as getting some equipment.

As long as the neutrals keep most of velious, we'll be just fine.

The evils are doing fine, word is they've even taken down nagafen. In my opinion they should all die.

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Equipment:

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Equipment wise, all three teams seem to be doing fine... though the evils have access to all the nice stuff -- and it hurts.

Neutral melees have a great place to get equipped, runnyeye. Casters are sort of screwed for equipment for now, but we should do fine when people start farming the crystal caverns.

Goods have a few nice items from mistmore and permafrost.. and they can use these items to get equipment from other teams. They'll be doing ok for a while i think.

The evils once again have the best of the best... blah

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PvP

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All three teams have their select few players that run around scoring points for the team, though the neutrals are doing the best at the moment. I beleive this is mostly because we have a geographical outlet to both the evils and the goods in the form of the commons and everfrost.


The neutrals are scoring the most points, and i'm not completely sure why, though i think it has alot to do with the geography.

The goods are at least sort of holding territory, and they tend to work together when it counts. They invaded runnyeye tonight, and i'm pretty sure they got killed -- though they made a nice entrance.

The evils aren't doing as well as they should be. It seems that no matter what the advantage is that they have, the issue of faction with guards and other NPCs is always a big problem for them. They don't handle invasions very well, but they are pretty intent on shouting the location of any non-evil in the zone every thirty seconds.

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Problems:

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Players are still unable to cast dispell type spells on players from another team. This is a huge problem.

Bard fear still works against players. This is a huge problem.

Other than those two things, i really enjoy the way the pvp system is going.


---------------------------------------------
That's basicly my summary of what i think's going on with the server. If anyone has any input on the evil team i'd love to hear it, seeing as i don't know much about them. They're quite isolated.


EDIT: just pretend that all the typos i made are corrected, it's late Edited by: Cylant at: 8/1/01 3:50:49 am

[EZ_Wolvinsbane]

I'll agree with you on the enjoyment level of Sullon. So far, I'm having some of the most fun I've ever had in EQ... a game I was ready to drop for good just before the server came out.

My perspective is from the Good team. I'm a level 20 Human Enchanter and I generally hang out in the Everfrost area. It's really the only Good controlled zone (talking, totally good controlled) that the Goods have.

So far, being the underdog has been fantastic. No shortage of targets, that's for sure. Being that I've spent my entire time in the snow fields, I've kind of taken on the role of "Defender of Everfrost". There really has been only two types of enemy coming in to invade our little area.

1. The mid-teen neut gang from Black Burrow. We usually slaughter them pretty hard-core once word gets out they're forming up to come in.

2. The REALLY high level (46-52) Evils that come into Everfrost to hit perma and then grief the zone for hours. These guys are a total pain in the ass. You can't do anything about them except try and get an NPC on them. There are no Good players in the Everfrost area that are even close to that level so, you just grin and bear it. If they catch you, however, this is what you see...



I'll must say, that those raids sure do make the day more interesting even if it gets old getting attacked while you're fighting a mob. You learn to deal (ie, charm mob, send on foe, run like hell if he's one of the number 2s mentioned above).

In terms of other people's experiences on Sullon... I bet they can vouch they see a lot of the following:



Kambic (credit to him, great pic) wanted that image as Sullon's caption, if there were one. Love it, haha.

Anyway, it's a total blast. Mezza Onnaeu"I felt like destroying something beautiful."Single serving Enchanter

[Nimmbull]

Aye, good synopsis.

I am coming from the point of view of an Evil Human Enchanter, growing up in Qeynos and later, Odus (with brief jaunts to Lavastorm, Oasis, etc. until I realized they were boring).

I agree with your thoughts on why the neutral team is dominating in points at the moment. It's definitely geography and numbers- most of the evils in Kunark rarely see another team. Which brings me to my next thought- I think those evils in Kunark quietly leveling are gimps. I didn't respect them before Sullon (the Kunark leveling guide) and I don't respect 'em now. For me, it's been all about keeping a challenge going.

Odus is interesting. The evils that are spending time in the Warrens (and Kerra) are intelligent, organized people. We defend Paineel on a regular basis from Neutral/Good invasion. I've seen 4 attempted raids and all 4 have been soundly defeated. The equipment in the Warrens is nothing spectacular, but a lot of the armor for the melee's is good (plate classes). The weapons ain't that great, though.

One thing that I'm looking forward to will be the opening of the Stonebrunt Mountains. I certainly believe this will be an evil stronghold, but the PvP activity in the region should increase and that's always good. Anyways, thanks for the synopsis, it was a good read. I didn't realize that Neutral had such a stronghold in Velious. That's certainly troubling

Nimm Nimmbull
Retired 47th Level Hoodlum, Bristlebane
Sanguine Blade
Cinderheart, Sullon Zek

[EZ_Mordier]

Well I'll throw in an evil commentary for the hell of it.

Regarding pvp points, I think neutrals lead b/c they have the most targets around them to attack. They're intermixed with goods, and the evils are both easy to find AND concentrated on leveling (and so often caught off guard). More and more evils are going out on raiding parties finally though which is nice to see.

Zone control? Well I can only speak for the evils here as I have no idea what's going on over towards Qeynos. Evils control Nektulos, Lavastorm, EC, Freeport (mainly), Nro, Oasis, Sro, Innothule, Feerott, RM, and often LR. Add to that OOT, which I find as odd but its usually evil. The lower level zones in Kunark also seem to be evil controlled, although there are fairly constant newt raids. Haven't been to Velious yet so I'm not sure about that area.

WC and SK are both great battlegrounds, although WC is usually evil controlled.

The more the newts raid, the more the evils pull together which is nice to see. People give alerts to invaders and warn strangers through tells about potential enemies. This is much improved from the early days where evils were scrambling to level and resorted to any cheap tactic they could to do so, even against their own team.

Smelvin

[EZ_Skarwolf]

Everyone is saying that evil should be leading the points because there are so many of them. Yet neutrals are consistantly ahead by fair margin. Why... because there are so many evils for them to kill. They raid Lake of Ill omen, sometimes solo, or in small groups. This is like the cheetah or lion in amongst all the Wildebeasts' and zebra's, theres tons of them to pick from. Hence the large amount of points because there are so many evils.

If the evils actually want to hunt down the newts, its huge swarms of them searching for 2-6 man teams. When a group of newts raided Kunark, killed some people in FM, and OT about 40 or more evils swarmed after them. I saw one newt corpse looked like about 30 or more guys sitting around it. Same in sro other day, about 7 evils camping one newt corpse all vying for points.

Not only that but alot of the evils are just stupid. I've seen one 30+ guy get killed. Then run right back to his corpse where the 5 newts were waiting. Dies again, then runs right back a third time. Each time a different person in the group would kill the guy.

[EZ_Cylant]

i did levels 15-19 in kerra island, and every day i would go over to paineel.. hide myself in a rock.. and then pop out and blast people when whites walked by. I think i got two solo insignias there at level 19. You folks go down easy

-Charles Darwiin
-Gnomish Neutral Enchanter
-Sullon Zek

[EZ_Bigith]

Killing a guy getting his corpse would not gain you points. As I understand it any deaths after four result in neg points. If 5 ppl kill you 4 times each then they just got neg points for 16 kills.
Of course I could be wrong about the point system.

A word about Velious

I went there as a level 14 necro, hehe. I had a plan.
Plan did not work but I did get to thurgadins bank where a lame newt named giddy tried to PK me and could not get it done before I gated back to EW.

Ok I can tell you are really interested in why the hell I took a lvl 14 necro to EW. The plan was to find some higher lvl evils hunting ulthorks so I could maybe pick up a walrus tooth for myself. (Insert flames here)
Plan might have worked accept there were no evils in the zone. As a matter of fact there was almost no one in velious at all. 3 ppl in IC (Me being one of them) 8 in EW me being one of them, and 11 in thurgadin, 10 after I slipped away from giddy.
This was about a week ago so there are prolly greater numbers in velious atm.

I predict that team evil will head to velious when they want to get serious about PvP play. And I predict that the Newts there will be hard pressed to keep control of the frozen continent for very long.

YnY
Yinn-n-Yaing

The Bringers of Darkness

[Nimmbull]

LOL yer Charles?

<-----Cinderheart. Oh, and why is it I'm the only one on the freakin continent that knows about that bug? lol, yer little disciple (forget his name now....'nother gnome chanter) started doing the same thing, I'd mez him in there and wait for the calvary to come and they still couldn't find him. heh heh

Oh and I didn't go down so easy. ;-)

Nimm Edited by: Nimmbull at: 8/1/01 5:21:09 pm

[Aldarion Shard]

now if only there were more than 3 people on the server who had ever initaited a fight against a non green con id go back to it. Azeroeth

[Krimzan]

Hehe, I take on white cons alone. Did that 2x today and won both times. I did it yesterday too. Just gotta remember a few things...the most valuable thing in my book is the element of suprise. Even if they know you're there...sometimes you can still suprise them. For example. Today I was stairing at 4 evils at the WC zoneline. I was suprised to see them there (and likewise)...so I figured I'd keep the element of suprise on my side and I charged at them shouting my battle cry. (I am the terror that flaps in the night! RAAARRRR!) And ended up routing them.

Also, casters sometimes have a kind of @#%$-syndrome. There was a mage that was obviously a high white to me yesterday, with pet. And I decided the best thing to do would be to outright attack him...which he wasn't expecting. Daggerstorm Coddefender Level 54 Rogue, Warlords of Wrath
The rogue formerly known as:
Krimzan Daggerstorm"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"All information should be right, but may be wrong."
-ShadowCross Veldrin'Alur, Ring Warden of Solusk Ro

[EZ_Anni D]

Well, it is interesting, I can gurantee that.

First, that soun guy is a putz. He got me about 15 times total the other day in highkeep. He came in with a group of 4 people, and they were still too scared to move in the zone, they all hid at the zoneline. Sad when 50+s have to hide at the zoneline while attacking low 20s.

Then of course today, where I see some more of team evil(tm)'s awesome skills. There I am fighting something solo, I kid you not, they waited for me to start fighting. 6-7 evils appear and start nuking me 2 of them deep reds (one a cleric, the other probably a wizard). After loading, I send a tell to one of the reds saying what a putz he was and that death was coming.

Apparently, he figured I was joking. After I got my corpse a TDC hitsquad arrived. Results, evil all dead, neuts, no losses.

That is the new pvp that you can expect to see. mid level characters running around with 50+ clerics. what a joke.

-Anni

[EZ_Shikaku the Gorotsuki]

Funny thing is..Newts may be behind in level...they may be underequipped..but they do a pretty good job of kicking ass when they need to. We did the same thing on Test. We're not a team to be @#%$ with, cause we know how to shout for help in friendly zones when on a CR.. We know when you're weakest..we dont give a @#%$ what your level is.. We arent your bitches. We're evils gods. - Shikaku the, *******, Gorotsuki -

[EZ_Cylant]

Haha.. small world nimmbull. Your guild has got to be around #1 on my "explode at will" list.

anyways..

I managed to catch a glimpse of more evil skill in the past few days. An evil was on a corpse run through misty thicket, so he shouts "I'm an EVIL on a CR!!!!" like four times as soon as he gets into misty thicket. The result was nearly half of the zone swarming his location and killing him. This is the same misty thicket where 52 necromancers sit and gank newbies, we don't like evils.

[EZ_Mordier]

/sigh

I wish you'd all realize that EVERY team has people that do that crap, not just the evil team. Every death but one that I've suffered so far (4 of 5) has happened when I was attacked mid-fight by a redcon. Three of them were redcon newts and one was a redcon goodie. All of them attacked me while I was fighting a mob.

Is every newt and goodie player like them? Nope, those are just the ones I've run into. I have yet to corpse camp anybody (partially b/c I think it's cheap, partially because it's against the guild charter), and there are other evils that feel the same way. It just depends on who kills ya.

As for fighting even cons, you're exactly right, if you get the jump on the other guy you've got a great chance of winning.

Smelvin

[EZ_Maximilean]

Kunark is the fastest place to level in the game for people who are low level and desperate to catch up. Why leave xp bonuses and 10 trillion bone chips/ok loot to go level in Lavastorm or whatever the other good teen alternatives might be? Oasis? You have to be joking.

I've got no aversion to pvp. At any rate, I have to contend with "I hate evil team!" types who roll an evil and same-team train Blackhand around in FOB. Do the poor, suffering neuts and goods in the old lands see anything more irritating than the following?

Kerosh Blackhand hits YOU for 78 damage!
Kerosh Blackhand backstabs YOU for 234 damage!
LOADING, PLEASE WAIT.

That happened when I was level 10 or 11, I believe.

Kunark is the land of xp, not the land of PVP immunity. I leveled 4 chars on 3 servers there, and 3 of the characters were good, one on VZ.

I'm not saying pvp-fearing people aren't hiding in Kunark, but generalizing the skill-level of a team mostly out of sour-grapes is becoming a good/neut national sport. You don't know whether people are in Kunark to hide or to level faster, so don't pretend you do.

[Nimmbull]

Yeah the guild I'm in.....I'm not all too sure about yet. They seem disorganized at times. And that leads to many deaths and lots of frustration. Also, many of them are French-speaking and it is sometimes difficult to communicate when you really need to. I dunno, they seem like good people and decent players but I think sometimes their egos get in the way and they die because of it

Nimm Nimmbull
Retired 47th Level Hoodlum, Bristlebane
Sanguine Blade
Cinderheart, Sullon Zek

[Krimzan]

There are a lot of EQ newbies on the neutral team...and we are somewhat disorganized. But usually the best place to kill people is where they don't expect it. For example, Oasis is quite good, so is Crushbone. So sometime I want to take a group to The Overthere / Lake of Ill Omen.

EDIT: Sig is over 22K! Please trim it down in file size Edited by: Fricka at: 8/3/01 10:49:56 pm

[EZ_Shikaku the Gorotsuki]

Speaking of which.. once I ding 6... I'm going to CB and I'm gonna cut off some heads LoH rox

[EZ_Mordier]

French people with egos? I don't believe it.

[EZ_Cylant]

Mordier, are you leveling in kunark?
If so, that would be the reason for red-death. No level 7 has the guts to go all the way to the field of bone to kill level 6's. It's generally people near 30 who go to places like the lake of ill omen and kill mid-20's, or anything else they see.

If you aren't leveling in kunark, tell me the next time you're in my level range, i'll come kill you

[Marbh]

What lvl are you Cylant?

[Lisboa]

I only attack even cons. It's a habit from Vallon. I have my most mana expensive spells memmed so at this level I'm not going to waste mana trying out a greenie to see if he's not immune. Lisboa Bixiestinger
Retired level 42 rogue of Bertoxxulous
Rorer Junior
Retired level 28 Iksar Shaman and Freeport Resident

_____, level X necromancer of Sullon Zek

[EZ_Mordier]

Um, no haven't been to Kunark yet on SZ. Four deaths were in WC, one in EC to Bagen.

My point is you all are insane if you think cheap play is coming solely from the evil team.

And I'd love to meet you in game Cylant. ) ...but you won't find Mordier on a /who list. Try searching for the name on my sig.

Smelvin

[EZ_Grimjaw Badflagon]

I decided to level first, pvp second for awhile. I have died to an even con only once. Died bout a dozen times to reds. No greens have bothered.

Stay Frosty Grimjaw Badflagon Retired "cosmopolitain" Thug, Former Ringwarden of Terris Thule,
Infinity Watch
Ulster of the Shanks, Elder Banker and Fence.(Vallon Zek)
Grimshade of Honorbound
I bought me an illusion and I put it on the wall...I let it fill my head with dreams and I had to have them all...

[EZ_Cylant]

I've had you on my friend's list since day one when we met up over in steamfont -- you're almost never online!

(To the person who asked, i'm level 26)

PS: i'm charles, not cylant, on sullon. Edited by: Cylant at: 8/3/01 2:36:46 pm

[EZ_Mordier]

Hehe aye I've had you on mine as well since the old gnome days )

I see you on quite a bit...but lately I've been on in the mornings. Like Grim I've started to concentrate on pve a bit so I can get into the "point levels". I'm 18 atm so it shouldn't be too long. I've been playing every morning with a couple guys to get to that point.

I'm keepin' my eye open for ya Charles hehe, I just have a feeling that when we finally meet again you'll be very red to me. The more you leave dead, the less you need to watch your back.

Morvran McGuinness [Shanks], VZ
Smelvin [Da Bashin' Iggles], SZ

[Marbh]

I rerolled as a rogue (it calls you back) so just hit 13. Felt naked with only one weapon.

[EZ_Cylant]

that would be the reason why i haven't seen you online smelvin, i go to sleep around 5am PST and wake up at 1pm PST... and i usually don't log on until around 3pm PST. I then play until around 2-3am. So yeah, i'll probably be really red to you .

[Nimmbull]

Just wanted to share something I found cool. When I go into dwarf form my face is the same as Ozaaks' ole grizzled mug.

Nimm