Anyway, my purpose here is not to condemn this practice because it's permitted by Verant and therefore the law of the land. I do want to share two thoughts though. First, my approach for dealing with these folks will curiously not be to add them to my hit list. It's not that I wouldn't love to see Axzyl get owned. It's just that pursuing that goal for myself will consume a lot of time and energy that I could otherwise be using for constructive purposes like leveling and helping my friends. Plus, the guy is just a punk. He shoots fish in a barrel. PKing his character may be an accomplishment, but I don't feel the same about defeating the player behind the character.
Now on to the other subject. Call it "fair" or "unfair", but twinking is legal. Verant I'm sure has given this issue a lot of thought and the result is the policy that is in place now. Here's the part that doesn't compute given the info that I have so far. How does Verant plan to sustain the population on this server? As time progresses, some players drop out of the game. The resulatant reduction in server population must be balanced by an influx of new players and their characters. On a PvE server, it's easy for a new player to enter (perhaps easier than it's ever been ... there's a lot of good gear floating around and high levels who are willing to donate it to aspiring newcomers). Twinks aren't a problem to newbies. PvP on the other hand is a different ballgame. I could see lots of people in our position quickly getting discouraged trying to get a toehold on Tallon Zek. It's tougher than it was at the beginning, because newbies must contend with the usual challenges of raising a character, plus the ever-present menace and arrogance of the PKing twinks. For the meantime, I personally have chosen to carve out a niche and insulate myself against the twinks. But given the type of folks I've seen playing EQ, I bet a lot of them will take a look at the situation, decide that it sucks, and not even bother. Assuming I've got this right, it bodes for a declining population on the server as the seniors retire and are not replaced by a sufficient supply of newcomers. This is certainly a bad trend as far as Verant is concerned. They have calculated optimal population levels for their servers to maintain the best gameplay, and this is a threat to that balance. I'd be curious to know what (if anything) Verant plans to do to reduce the edge that the twinks have over the newbies.
Carrying cash
Be careful with how much cash you have on your character.
Remember that if you're PKed, the killer can loot your cash
(but not your items). This had slipped my mind once at the
city zone in Nek Forest, and I engaged a gnome SK in a fight.
He owned me and I figured what the hey, it was cool to get
some hands-on with PK. Then I realized there was cash in my
pockets doh. Not a heckuva lot, but at our level even a few pp
is not trivial to acquire.
Orcs
Zorgg the shaman was running through EC toward WC.
He was on auto-run and while I turned away from the computer
for a second he ran through the orc camp. No biggie, I thought.
He has SoW and the orcs can just chase his butt to the zone. These
orcs are fast and kept nipping at Zorgg's heels. Eventually
one landed a stunning blow, allowing the whole party of orcs
to catch up and get in their licks, and Zorgg didn't survive.
Random PK attacks while traveling solo
Zorgg has had a few encounters with PKers when he was traveling
around. For some of these, I wanted to experiment and tried
attacking the other player. I found out later that gnome SK was 5 levels
higher and appeared to be pretty twinked (surprise!).
I'll assume that since the server is several years old,
there are a lot of twinks running around with serious weaponry
and resist gear, tilting the odds for surviving a chance encounter
to be in the favor of the twink. On a few occasions I held back
on my urge to engage the PKer and instead ran from the scene. This is a
hard thing for a guy to do ... we're taught from the git-go to
be brave and stand and fight. Pragmatically, it's a bad idea when I'm
alone though because the odds are I'll lose and then have to spend
another 15 or more minutes medding, memming spells, and returning
to the scene of the fight to loot my corpse. All for what?
Better to look like a chicken and save time. I also try to keep a
low profile and not make myself a desirable target (this includes
keeping my yap shut). Last thing I need is to make it onto the
hitlist of some stupid twink and increase the risk of getting
ambushed. If some buttmunch ever makes it onto my hitlist,
I'd like to plan the PK so that the odds are in my favor when
I try to take him out.
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS stay anon.
If you are in a guild, optionally you may do /role
to show your guildtag.
If your guild is powerful, this could prevent attacks from other players,
but typically full anon is called for.
SoW
Keep in mind that the speed that this spell gives you is in part a function
of the level of the caster. SoW from a 10th level
shaman may not necessarily outrun a mob or another player, whereas SoW from a
60th Ranger or Druid will outrun anything but a Bard. If you have 10th
level sow and the guy chasing you is a 20th ranger...he will catch your arse.
Resist Gear Rulz
Our gear on this server will
be very different than on Rodcet. Typically characters concentrate on
stats/ac/hps until they are raiding level and then acquire a set of resist gear
for certain raid encounters. On this server we will always choose resists
first and everything else secondarily as this is the ONLY thing that keeps us
from being constant victims of wizzies and druids. So, my
recom endation is as soon as possible we should
begin pouring plat into jewelry skillz for goober.
Home City Stuff
There may be cities or areas of
cities that you are not KoS in, but are not your race. If a
person who is of that race attacks you, the guards will do nothing to
stop it. For example. If you are a barbarian, you will not be KoS in
Kelethin to the guards or merchants, but if a High Elf attacks you in
Kelethin, the guards will ignore it and let him kill you. So be wary that
the guards will not always protect you from other players, and for this reason
sometimes the most dangerous place to be is in a city. Players like this
get rich lurking near the bank watching for people who are loaded up with plat
to buy something so they can Ice Comet their arse and take all their plat.
This may only apply to Rallos as that is where the person that told me this
plays. He has the record for the most PKs on Rallos and is a High Elf
Wizzie. He makes a fortune PKing people at the Kelethin bank, since GFay
is the marketplace on his server. Humans, Barbs, Gnomes, Erudites and
Dorfs can all move freely thru the city, but if he attacks any of those races
the guards will not protect them and loaded down encumbered with plat they
really don't stand a chance. On the downside for him he is KoS in every
other city in Norrath. But when you can port to Kelethin at any time
that's not really a big deal I suppose. You take faction hits with the
city the person is from if you kill them, something else to think about.
Again that may not apply to the team server but I thought I would thro all this
in cause we need to check it out.
Safety in numbers
The only thing that will protect us from the twinks
is to stay together at all times. We won't be doing much Pking for quite
some time. Rax is right this is a mature server and most of the characters
on it, just like our server, are twinks. What this means is not only will
they have superior armor and weapons they will also be almost certainly
completely resistant to our casters. Casters will be particularly
vulnerable for this reason. We need to travel in a group, we need to all have
see invis as soon as possible at all times. Travelling invis will
partially protect us from lone melee types, but will not offer as much
protection as you might think. You might want to keep your lowest level
dot up at all times if you can cast one. Dotting yourself is the only
thing that will safe you from an Enchanter. If they get a mez in on you
you are toast - trust me.
Bout all I can think of at the moment. I'll swing by there and see if they can give me any other info.