I didn't know the term either until I played an MMO a few years ago where some of the gear had proc effects.

Proc just means it has a chance of occurring in response to an action - so it'll proc in defense or on attack.

Thanks Rika and Charune!

I didn't know it until Kongai. Thanks Shiri!

Programmed Random OCcurrence. It's origins are forever lost in the vast void of the internets.

I remember it being called "process" way back when (in the environment where it was spawned/reached a wider audience). That's the word I always associate it with.

A brief Internet search of the term seems to suggest that is the "most common" understanding of the word, as well. While yours is a better fit, it's one of those things that appears to have come out far after the fact (as sometimes happens).

PS: Charune, which server?

Psht, google tells me it's from mud progs

Basically says it comes from some muds that used it as a short-cut for process, but it wasn't very common / widespread because only a few of them used it, until it hit EQ.

So, let's expand on this and look at lesson investment. These numbers will account for the binding bonus (up to 2500 lessons), but will not count lessons gained from levelling or starting out. The results I post below are also independent: each assume you start from inept in all skills. I've also rounded down most of my numbers.

No guildskills, but in order to gain Focus Mind, Trueshield, Tesseract, Tumble and Thirdeye you have to invest 2459 lessons. That's 289 credits with the binding bonus (and remember, no guildskills yet!).

Add guildskills in there, assuming you trans all 3 of them, and you need 7604 lessons total. That's 894 credits, roughly, with the binding bonus. You still have no magic or resilience, and you don't have contemplate, shieldparry, conglutinate, etc. 900 credits costs US$279.99.

Now, let's say you want to ramp it up a bit. Transcendent Discipline, Expert Combat for stance head, Transcendent Magic, Transcendent Resilience, Transcendent Planar for Conglut, Expert Environment for Tumble, Master Discernment for Thirdeye. Does this list look familiar?

Without guildskills, that's 7884 lessons. With, that's 11529. I'll be doing the calculations for with, as the calculations for without are fairly similar to what's above.

The first 1000 credits gives you a binding bonus of 2500 lessons. That drops it to 9029 lessons, which is 1504 credits. 1500 credits costs US$441.99.

You have no highmagic or lowmagic. You have no influence or dramatics. You have no aethercraft. If you need contemplate for a mana-based instakill, you need an extra 734 lessons (912-178). As you've already used up your binding bonus, that's 122 extra credits. I've heard it said that certain classes pretty much require artifacts to be effective at high level combat (artifact runes). You still need a system, although you can buy a decent one for a lot less of a credit investment. All of these simply add to the cost to enter combat.

I'm fairly certain my numbers are correct, but they might not be - feel free to double-check them.

Thoughts?

Just to be sure your calculations are right, thirdeye appears twice in your calculations, and did you take into account that some costs you already partially covered in the first part, like you added Tesseract in the first part, and later added Conglut.

Also, to be fair, you'll need to take into account that to fight you need to be at least level 70 (?) which is 350 lessons by itself + 100 (?) bonus lessons you get every few levels till level 70, so that's another 600 lessons when you don't count the conversion bonus.

If you look at the first paragraph, it says that all the results are independent: they assume you start from inept in all skills.

Edit: After re-reading I found out the part I misunderstood, so now your calculations make sense to me.

No guildskills, but in order to gain Focus Mind, Trueshield, Tesseract, Tumble and Thirdeye you have to invest 2459 lessons. That's 289 credits with the binding bonus (and remember, no guildskills yet!).

If you were to go for Focus Mind, Trueshield, Tesseract, Tumble, Thirdeye, and guildskills (the first set), you would need 7604 lessons to get from all inept to these skills.

If you were to go for Transcendent Discipline, Expert Combat for stance head, Transcendent Magic, Transcendent Resilience, Transcendent Planar for Conglut, Expert Environment for Tumble, Master Discernment for Thirdeye, and guildskills (the second set) you would need 11529 lessons to get from all inept to these skills.

What was not included in my original post, but you seem to want: The difference is 3925 lessons, or roughly 654 credits (I'm not going to bother to calculate where the binding bonus drops out here). 600 credits costs US$197.99, 700 costs $230.99. It's more expensive to move up in this way than to just jump up to the more expensive stage from having nothing and buy all your credits at once.

If your numbers are correct, then with my arties and the number of things I transcended - both in an alt and from my aquamancer/cantor guild skills.. I might have spent more that $1000 on the game..

very surprising.. If you asked me if I would be willing to spend more than $1000 on a free game, I would have said, nowaigtfo..

Yet here we are. It's funny that the first four years I played IRE, I never bought a single red credit. Not one. Not when lesson bonuses were added, not when the credit market was added, not when the lesson bonus was made AWESOME(used to be this deal where you got a cool bonus only once, only on the first purcase, only within 21 days of creation, bleh).

Now I hardly make a character without at least a 1k credit investment. Am I getting impatient in my old age?

It is really surprising, and disheartening - one of the reasons I looked at the exact numbers was because I know I don't have much free money, or just money that I'm willing to spend on a (supposedly) free text game, and wanted to know if I should continue to invest or just try and be happy as a substandard combatant simply because I don't have hundreds of dollars to sink.

Anyway, goodnight. I'll be gone for a couple of days, too.

Well, for me the fun of the game is earning all of these abilities, as slowly as it may be. Being maxed out may be fun for combat, but I tend to get bored with characters once I've meta-gamed out and have achieved every ability/quest. Right now I hunt for gold to purchase credits over the open market. Not quick, but it is steady ((and gives me a second purpose towards hunting for experience)).

I'd say plan to be substandard in one-to-one combat, but plan to hone your character's IC abilities, and your OOC PVP skillz for group combat. I've contributed to raids before; and-- as insubstantial as my character's abilities and PVP skillz are-- I still feel that I contribute to the group fight.

In reconsideration, what are the Entry Requirements for GROUP Combat?

Ranges from "buy a web enchant" to the same as 1v1, I'd think, depending on the situation.

Yep. You sure CAN participate with just web or nature curse, and you may not die if the rest of your team happens to be strong enough anyway, but to -really- participate you need basically the rest of that stuff.

You mean vines right? Nature cursing isn't at all effective.

I meant nature curse...I don't know why I said that though, I was talking about an example Nihilist so pretend I said cosmicfire. Yes I know that isn't that useful either, but it's still a damage skill. I used to get occasional group combat kills with pre-usability moonburst when there wasn't any point waning/vining a target any more than I already had, so.