Some questions.

Finduilas

From the FAQ

Depending on how many people you need in your group and what types of characters you want in it, there certainly will be some waiting.

That said, there will be functionality in the game to assist players in both finding groups and keeping groups together.

I would like to know how they plan to deal with this. I quit EQ because, as a casual player, I'd login to play in the evening, 1-2 hours max, and have the above problem. Neither the LFG tool, LDON instancing, not even being in a guild, helped solve this. Will we see the old, "still waitng for the cleric" scenerio?

Some downtime is good... resting between fights, memming up, healing, strategizing for the next battle, using the restroom, grabbing a Dr. Pepper... But too much downtime means you're not really playing the game, and that's bad.

I hope they will get rid of the need to bring along a good book. Crafting for 2 hours in Horizons, for example, was excruciating without a good read. What about waitng in the tavern, whilst all the other groups members show up? What about the wait for a rez, corpse drag etc? And what about soloing; when you solo you set your own downtime, because you can run to a safe spot then get a drink. But will there be enforeced downtime, to heal or med up?

The trick is to make it such that travel is still meaningful, distant lands are still distant and exotic, but to make the journey fun and interesting in and of itself. This is really one of those areas where, like instancing, we feel there is a trend to 'throw the baby out with the bath water': ‘traveling has been boring, so let's get rid of travel! Teleport where thou will’t!’

Whilst I understand and agree with this, in part, what happens if I login one evening and ALL my guidlies are FAR away fighting somewhere and by the time I get there it'll be time to log off? I am not talking about a planned event, where I could travel there the night before then log off. But general play. My play time doesn't allow me to be part of a group of friends that log in each night at the same time and works there way through content tegether. I shape my gaming around RL not the other way around.

The casual areas require less of a contiguous time commitment and you don't need a full group.

Does this mean that a casual gamer WILL need a group, tho not a full one. Will soloing be possible as all?

The grouping areas, well, require you to group. Think classic, old school grouping.

How will this be tackled? Will we still have the wanted classes, healer, slower, tank, then the reams of DPS classes fighting it out for the remaining slots? Will we have "must have classes" and groups not getting off the ground because no needed classes are available?

Death will have a sting, and it's mostly classic corpse retrieval with a few variations like we'll make it easier to find your corpse, yet you'll still have to fight to it.

Hmm. So it's 11pm, almost time for bed. The group wipes in a dungeon, and it will take time to "fight" our way back to where we were. Everyone else agrees to work there way down, but me, I HAVE to log off, work the next day. So when I next log in, how do I retrieve my corpse? Even assuming I have a second set of equally good armor, I surely cannot solo my way back in.

Lastly, we want to grow the MMOG gamespace by appealing to 'non-core' gamers, but, again, never at the expense of the playerbase who already identifies with our goals and our previous work.

And these different areas aren't there just to appeal to people who always have more or less time. They are also there for the gamer who often does play longer hours but at times wants to log on and play a shorter session, or for the person with less time who wants to occasionally devote an entire Saturday to playing.

I am interested to see how they deal with with. Everquest 2 did a bad job, IMO, of providing casual content, at least from my open beta experience, and I posted about this often on the boards. I got flamed by hardcore players telling me to "go play Morrowind" "it's a multiplayer game dude" and the dev team pretty much stated their disdain for the casual gamer, and their "vision" for grouping, raiding, progressing through the game together.

Just a few questions, I'll prolly have more.

Dontmove

Personaly all the things you brought up. CR's / Running to Zones / Fight downtime These are all things I truely miss and will keep the punks away to make it actualy enjoyable game. Like oldschool EQ where the saying Risk=Reward ment somthing! Not oh you died wait 5 min for courpse to pop at entrance to zone a, run as a ghost to get free rez with no penilty moving, or you can get it sumoned to you here for alitle exp penilty. I dont want to click a stone, jump on a bird, or talk to somone to send me 6 zones over. I also think its unrealistic *oh ya know somone going to flame me for saying that word for fantasy games* to fight almost with in death to be able to stand up 30 seconds later to do it agin. Even if you are a healer your mana would be low and require you to meditate after a wile. This is just my opinions and this is why I cant wait for Vanguard! They have a few coments like those you posted that make me hope for the tedius game EQ was.