Last night I lead my first “break” of the zone known as the Plane of Fear in EverQuest. And now I understand the above quote from an old friend.
It refers to two alternate planes in EverQuest: Hate and Fear.
Hate is, by far, a cakewalk. You zone in to a spot that is somewhat safe and, most importantly, defendable. In the days before people thought up all the different strategies for Hate, they used to zone in, and huddle together waiting for something to notice you. Then if you survived the first onslaught, you started slowly bringing the rest of the zone to you in a somewhat orderly fashion. However, since the plane has existed for quite some time, people now zone in, run along the walls to a safer camp and pretty much do as they please. Its almost smooth as clockwork.
Fear, on the other hand, is a bitch. You don’t zone into a somewhat safe spot, you zone into a shitstorm. You don’t sit and wait for something to notice you, it hits you on the way in. Now, to offset this incredibly annoying way to be greeted into the zone, Verant did make it so any schmuck level 46 and above can just walk right in, whereas Hate requires a wizard to teleport groups up. Sadly, this doesn’t make things easier. Because if one member of your raid party forgets to go into Anonymous or Roleplay mode, which hides your location from others in player queries, the word will get out that a Fear raid is happening, and all the schmucks level 46 and up will start heading over.
After almost 4 hours last night we had managed only to kill one denizen of the Plane of Fear. One. About 20 of us had died, and in the end, a few of them lost their experience permanently since we didn’t get to their corpses in time to resurrect them.
I fear Hate, but I hate Fear.
Those are words to live by.