There seems to be a trend (as much as we can ever figure out what arches truly
intend) to have players make their own eq. This is generally a good thing,
since eq is one of the more enjoyable parts of the game.

There has also been a problem with highbies raping lowbie/midbie eq. This has
lead to tunes for increased difficulty, rape prots, and, more usually, general
craptuning of the eq. I think we can all think of many dozens of items that
used to be decent eq that have felt the heavy tunepole and now are truly
garbage. It is hard even for a newbie to justify using such trash, and never
necessary for them to even attempt to kill such a monster, since the eq can be
gotten off of sales at mb shopbid, and the difficulty of doing it themselves is
certainly not worth the meager reward.

Why not take this eq and increase its stats, but only for people who\'s name
is on the eq? Or decrease the stats on non-named eq, if the craptune has not
yet been applied. This could either be done on an eq-by-eq basis and applied
only to eq that needs it, or it could be done more globally. Perhaps all eq
stats could be given +1 if the eq has your name (or -1 if it does not, or even
both). The effect on newbie eq would be a lot more signifigant than that of
highbie eq (2 vs 1 is twice as good, 7 vs 6 is not as big of an increase).

This could lead to a class of eq monsters that could be successfully killed by
lowbie parties that have eq with at least some (1-2 or so) stats. It would not
be unbalancing to allow a lowbie to get a full set of 1-2 stat items that they
made themselves. The benefit would be many more players learning how to play
the game and learning the areas and starting to figure out how to do eq
themselves, which is challenging and fun, rather than just doing gold and
buying it on sales, which is not.

Midbie parties could possibly even make a few really nice pieces of eq with
decent stats that wouldn\'t be impossible to get. The drawback, again, would
be that they would have to have made it themselves. Much like the Damien
quest, the eq could be quite worth getting for midbies and still be doable
with the right knowledge and skill. It would still not compare to highbie eq,
and really would not have different stats than the midbie eq in use now, but
it would be doable by the midbie player, instead of just sold down by a
highbie.

Rapeprots would not be (as) necessary since there would be no resulting eq
flood, since the eq is really only valuable to the party that made it.

This could also help us idlebies who do not have the time or ability to
participate in midbie eq, but would still be able to help out on some quick
lowbie eq and maybe fill out a nice named explore set with at least reasonable
stats. It would bring a little bit of fun back to the game for us, instead of
just idlesolo while watching newbies buzz by us on the plaque. Its not
powerhours but...

This suggestion is not unique, I believe that I have heard it once or twice
before in news, and there possibly is already eq out there that is tuned like
this. It would be nice, though, if more eq could be tuned in this fashion,
either uptuned from the garbage state that the eq is in currently, or used
instead of downtunes to existing eq that are deemed necessary in the future.