Ok, good to know, I thought the price must be abnormal.
Funny thing about playing CH, some people are very helpful and others not. Recently I was killing stuff in the blood grove when I saw a large spider and a few end game players start attacking it. I shot some spells at it and asked to groupe and got rejected. I thought ok, they saw the spider first, they're doing the work, they want the drop. I then saw that fellfire was up (on the map) and asked for help to kill him, to which I got no answer. The players had just started running away so I'm not sure that they heard but as I ran towards fellfire, I saw that the rogue had stopped only a few seconds away. I whispered to him "pls" but when he responded "what?" I repeated what I said earlier and thought he heard. A few seconds later I noticed the x on my map disappear, so then told him that someone had just killed him, to which he responded it was him. When I checked the area, he was gone.
I know it could have been an unfortunate coincidence where the rogue didn't hear the first time and was already too far killing by the time I explained to him I needed fellfire, but it seemed awfully suspicious to me.
Now even more recently I was killing eyes in OW when I saw purple eye, and another faery land boss up and shouted for the eye. A warrior near me at the ley (a few levels above me) and another end gamer started running out and I followed. On the way there the other boss dropped, and people started clearing out around the eye. I asked to group the warrior and got rejected again. Then they killed it. I know I'm probably not the only one to have seen the eye, but I did call it for those who didn't (which seems to include that warrior) and I showed up.
Funny enough, a ranger maybe 20 levels above me was killing eyes nearby, and we were close to three stars I needed for pirannus's quest so I asked to group. We then killed some and then I asked to kill a specific one I needed, which we then did, but got nothing. The ranger asked which ones I was missing and gave me one they had. No more three stars were up so I said thx and we parted ways, the ranger saying they would keep an eye out. A long while later I got a whisper that they had got a drop and asked if I still needed it, and then gave it to me.
I would say the majority are more helpful than not, but not by that much. It might help if I was in a different clan, as I'm just in a small low level one I got invited to. But I'm not really sure what bigger clans there are (except for evil clowns, but I don't believe clowns should be evil so I don't really want to join them...) but I'll probably find one soon.
Sigh... that’s unfortunate that those players were so selfish. It’s one thing when a lower level calls for a boss they can do no help at and is a clan kill boss (for example an EG boss or a 210 legacy), but from my perspective it’s entirely different when it’s within their level range of quest bosses and they call for it.
From my experience a lot of EG players usually are super helpful.
The issue I suppose on Epona is whereby you can gauge who to ask by clan on other worlds, on Epona clans don’t matter so no real way to filter out whose a bad egg and whose a good player other than experience or word of mouth, two things not accessible to new players.
While there are some players who will drop what they are doing to help new players, there are just as many looking to take advantage, but such is life I suppose :/
I know that Ventius and Toothpick (two forum guides) both play on Epona, and from my experience with the two of them they are great players and helpful overall, it might be helpful to send them a pm on the forums for how best to approach these dynamics on the server. Another idea would be to post about your issues in the Epona sub forum and see if anyone has any ideas moving forward. You could ask about how best to move to acquire fire storm as well as work with the server on lower level bosses. As much as I wish I could help with that I’ve never even made a level 1 toon on Epona and I wouldn’t know where to begin
I hope this helps a bit, I wish I could be more helpful with the Epona issues but I have no real knowledge of the server past what i’ve read about it, most of that coming from Ventius
My experiences with the community have been mostly positive and overall the community is what has kept me playing over the past 6 years and what will keep me around for the time to come, and I really hope you have the same good experiences I and countless others have had!
I know this post hasn’t been extremely helpful, but hopefully this can help point you in the right direction to get some of your more server related questions answered
As always, if you have any further questions don’t hesitate to ask!
— Bob