Yeah, in addition to the large number of people returning to play the game which i think did exceed their expectations, i don't think they expected the additional large amount of players from live servers playing on Ragefire. Unlike the last round of TLPs, which were launched before most guilds beat Veil of Alaris, many live players have nothing to do since there is so little end game raiding or grouping content on live.
Right now, I plan to stay on Ragefire. The only way I would jump to Lockjaw is if everyone playing from here was to go that route, and my real life friends wanted to go that route.
It's good to see them addressing the overcrowding situation, though. Roshen posted they had actually built this server to house more players than any previous TLP, yet it was not enough.
I started up on Lockjaw today, if anyone is going over and need someone to group with send a tell to Melizza, human monk and ill gladly join up and hunt with people. Btw Qeynos hills had 55 players during the afternoon here in Europa, so the server has a solid base of players. Alot of 6 boxers tho.
I'm actually playing with my cousin for the first time in Everquest. I got him to start playing MMOs in EQ2 and he never liked EQ1. But now I get to teach him how fun a game can be with crowd control and other things like camping an area while relaxing with your friends and learning how to manage your group/mana/and dealing with the unexpected.
Last night we finally decided on a trio. Paladin/Cleric/Magician and I was pulling on the Paladin and he kept wanting to follow me around. I had to explain to him that it would be best if I pulled to him while he regained his mana. He's so used to mana just refilling up between pulls and everyone moving together and just AE'ing everything in other games.
Really glad they decided to open a new server, but alas looks like I will miss this TLP.
I have gone from a single guy with loads of time (how do you think I maintained 6 Vanguard crafters to master, and three accounts full of characters) to a no longer single guy with barely any time to game at all. So much so I have cancelled my Tuesday/Sunday morning gaming with friends now for 3wks straight.
So it appears also that many I was poised to join with and recreate Brains and Brawn with have also decided not to play, for what ever reason is their own.
It is a pity, I was looking forward to it, but I have a choice, dedicate time to gaming, or work at keeping the greatest woman ever! She isn't demanding I do anything, in fact she is awesome in that regard, but she is also so far out my league I am not going to do anything stupid to ruin it......Like we men so often do. :) This takes time and effort.
So enjoy it everyone, I really hope it is the TLP experience I always wanted from the 1st attempt.
Aradune said:
Go play. Support the idea of bringing back the old times. Take notes and give feedback.
I am playing on Ragefire, 20 Enchanter right now and taking notes.
- Queues
The server couldn't handle the 4 000 - 5 000 + initial load. One got only an almost insulting pop up window "The server is full. Try again later.". Useless to say that if one stayed 30' spamming the connect button and getting the same pop up all the time, it brought up the worst in us very fast.
A few days later they emergency programmed an additionnal sentence "You are in a queue and will be connected when a place gets free". This was better but not by much.
They lost hundreds of potential long term customers during the first few days and those will never come back.
Lesson : The success of a game is decided in the first week or 2. During this time overload is probable and one shouldn't loose a single Customer. A queue must be programmed from the beginning and be friendly enough that people don't unsub disgusted.
- Instancing
Instances for the newbie zones were foreseen. For example there were 400+ newbies in Gfay but it was not a problem because the zone was duplicated 20 times while the zone wide chat was possible over all instances. However come level 8, Crushbone was overran by 100+ players what made it unplayable.
So they instanced (duplicated) more zones.
The dynamical instancing is probably the right solution if the (Total Number of Players/ number of zones with content = average level of all players) is greater than 50 or so (depending on the size of the zone).
It is clear that this must be a transitory dynamical solution because as the average level of all players increases and tends to the max level, everybody finishes in the few zones with max level content while the newbie zones don't need instancing anymore.
The alternative to dynamical instancing is to multiply the number of servers so that the max population of a server is never greater than the capacity of the max level zones. I guess that the server solution is much more expensive than the dynamical instancing solution.
- Duration of the classic era
The poll and the devs have decided that classic will last 6 months and then there will be a vote on Kunark release.
In reality there were max levels after 1 week or even less. Vox and Nagafen were killed by 16 players out of which 8 mages after 2 days. This is a difficulty because it seems to me that this "old school" concept attracts "old school" players.
And these players always contained a significant fraction (20-25 %) of hardcores spending MUCH time in game (say 50 + hours/week). These players are also among the most vocal. Result ? I am sure that the hardcores will force the devs to release Kunark MUCH faster than the decided 6 months.
- Predatory guild, instancing, boxing
These issues form a whole. There is a high probability that the hardcores mentionned above will gather in a guild with the target to lock all content for the rest of the players. This is of course what happened on Ragefire too. The predatory guild is locking all raid targets as well as all camps with interesting loot.
As they have some 200 members, the time necessary to equip all members (+ alts and boxes) is such that 90% of the players will not have access to raids or interesting camps for months. The situation is much worse if the zones are not instanced.
Boxing (whether the boxes belong to the predatory guild or not) contributes to the same result. On Ragefire the boxed "mage armies" are taking over (aka "stealing") camps all over the place.
It is a true and important question whether getting money from 5 or 6 boxed accounts is worth chasing away dozens of non boxing players who simply unsub.
As for the toxic predatory guild, the only way to prevent it to chase other customers away is probably only an enforced PnP with bans and/or disbanding of the guild.
Unfortunately Daybreak suppressed the old PnP and declared that Ragefire's Policy is "DPS rules and camps are FFA". This is explicitely giving green light to the predatory guild and I Wonder how many casual "normal" customers will be left after 1 year. I am giving myself 1 more month to see whether the game is playable or not.
- Revamped zones and food
There is no lesson to be had here but I have to say it. The inconsistent mix of old style zones and the revamped zones is catastrophic for immersion.
Especially the revamped Freeport is utterly hideous. It looks like if it was designed on purpose to depress people as much as possible - dark, ugly, lifeless labyrinthe - one would rather say that this is how the first circle of hell would look and not a thriving, bustling, living major port.
In the same vein food and drink don't matter anymore (because of the other live servers, Daybreak dixit). It used to have an impact on mana&HP regen speed but the only thing it does now is to spam the "you are out of food" message. This is disappointing and annoying.
I didn't expect as much as some folks expected, I guess. I am one of the fortunate in that I spent maybe 20 minutes in the queue, at most, and that only twice. All I wanted was to play EQ similarly to how I did in 1999, and that is exactly what I'm doing. The biggest difference is that I have created 6 characters to play instead of the 1 I did in '99. I am not racing. I haven't had one problem yet of finding mobs to kill. As a matter of fact, I am finding starting zones such as kaladim with a normal amount of people in them, and most of them have moved on to open up the true newbie area(s).
Yes, there are some things which are not "old school", such as food/drink necessity and coins do not have weight, but then again instancing is not 'old school' and everyone was yelling for it, and for more of it. :) The instancing was needed. It was needed because EQ is an older, smaller zoned (especially before Kunark), designed game. I remember whenever an expansion came out 'in the day', there would be a flood into the new zones, making them unplayable for many who did not have the better Video cards, or were lacking in memory space. Pantheon will not need instancing even at launch.
If there is one thing to which VRI should sit up and listen, it is the complaint of boxing armies. I would not be one to throw away the money from people who want 6 accounts so they can run a full group, but the 'armies' ruin immersion and can wreck havoc on the game. The way to minimize boxing 'armies' is to make it a bann-able offense to use any software which facilitates the automation of boxing multiple accounts, and squash it with quick and heavy hammer when it is found. If a person is alt-tabbing, then let them have their army. I alt-tab two accounts, without any additional software, and the 'trouble' of it at times causes me to want to group with other players more than boxing my accounts. If VRI makes all software bann-able and then enforces it, and they make the game very difficult for boxers to maneuver, then the 'armies' will be fewer and the plat/item farmers will be fewer.
Deadshade has written an awesome write up so far. These are some things Pantheon should consider before they release their game. A very solid launch is essential. Also having enough things to do at end level is very important too. Everquest 1-50 keeps me busy for a long time play around 2-3 hours a night. But you also need to keep the hardcore gamers satisfied and that will become an interesting conversation.
Fantastic feedback, thanks guys.
On the issue of multi-boxing... it's a tough one. I don't like forcefully stopping someone from logging in more than one account from the same machine. But I do think it interferes with group interdependence -- it gets around having to group, because you are your own group (I dislike Mercenaries for similar reasons).
At this point, we're hoping that because of how involved and tactical our combat is, that it would be very difficult for most/many to 2-box. Outside of that, we're still brainstorming and wanting feedback.
Aradune said:
Fantastic feedback, thanks guys.
On the issue of multi-boxing... it's a tough one. I don't like forcefully stopping someone from logging in more than one account from the same machine. But I do think it interferes with group interdependence -- it gets around having to group, because you are your own group (I dislike Mercenaries for similar reasons).
At this point, we're hoping that because of how involved and tactical our combat is, that it would be very difficult for most/many to 2-box. Outside of that, we're still brainstorming and wanting feedback.
This is an issue that I think is compounded on the server by the idea of Krono. In and of itself it's not a bad idea... BUT - Theoretically you can open up enough accounts for a short time (paid) to get yourself to the point of becoming a money making machine - and then used in game money to keep all of your accounts open.
I would doubt there are nearly as many people who seem to be playing 6 characters at a time on the server actually paying for 6 avatars at a time. I don't know that - but it seems like a pretty high investment.
I made level 15 in 3 days from launch. The login problems were annoying but temporary. I hate the boxing. It really destroys the immersion for me when I see a group of obviously boxed toons running around. In my mind they do not register as a real person and I see them as robots. This is coming from a guy who boxed a warrior, cleric and enchanter to level 72ish when I came back to EQ in 2007ish so I understand the draw. I just don't see why you would do it with thousands of people your level that you can group with. Lets see how getting a group is now that I am still level 15 a week and a half from launch.
Since these progression servers are non-pvp, I can see the mega issue of camps always being taken, we never really had that problem on the PVP servers because if someone is in your camp, you either take it from them or realize they are too strong for you and negotiate or leave.
We need to come up with some real ideas on how to curb this problem without using instances on PVE only servers. Instances in Pantheon would guarantee me walking away from it, thank goodness they have said they will not have them. I really think it's simply having enough content that the population you let into a server will never get out of control like that, where there are 5 camps in a zone and 10 groups trying to get them. Ideally you would want 5-6 groups seeking those camps.
Nevertheless I feel that players, even some of us older ones.. are having the WoW theme rub off on them far too much, some of us are making it seem as if we're entitled to experiencing what the game has to offer whenever we want, without having to wait in line. This is in fact some of the essence of what made EQ great, there were no instances, if someone was there before you, you had to wait or try to beat them to it next time, or in the case of PVP, fight for it or negotiate.
EQ servers were never meant to have 4000+ concurrent players. Not in classic at least, and certainly not while everyone was starting from level 1. I played from day 1 of EQ in 1999, and even though it was really crowded, I did not feel constrained. I'm 100% against instancing, but I understand why Daybreak doesn't want to create too many servers, in the event that the population starts to thin out down the line. They are trying to prevent having to merge servers.
That said, if you don't force more people into a single server than the content was designed for, there's little need for instancing.
Boxing while convenient for a few, ruins grouping for a lot more. It's like a one bard kiting an entire zone and screwing everyone that wants to xp in that zone out of it because they want to be greedy. The same can apply to people who box. I understand it's an additional challenge, though I think most do it to not have to depend on anyone and keep loot for themselves.
It obviously makes the game more money in the short term though and It's hard to say no to that. However, if we are forced to group and talk to one another, I really feel we would have something to cherish for a long time to come. Just my opinion of course.
Niien said:
Boxing while convenient for a few, ruins grouping for a lot more. It's like a one bard kiting an entire zone and screwing everyone that wants to zone out of it because they want to be greedy. The same can apply to people who box. I understand it's an additional challenge, though I think most do it to not have to depend on anyone and keep loot for themselves.
It obviously makes the game more money in the short term though and It's hard to say no to that. However, if we are forced to group and talk to one another, I really feel we would have something to cherish for a long time to come. Just my opinion of course.
Because a few bad seeds farm gold and want to be anti-social while boxing their own full group, we all must be anti-social players with the intent of loot hoarding? Solo players can act the same too, should we monitor and limit/restrict their play time just to be sure? ;)
That is a pretty poor generalization, do you box mate?
As a boxer myself, I can tell you the reasons for boxing for the majority of players is lack of groups, off peak time zones, low population on servers, very short/limited play time (don't want to start a dungeon then screw the group over by leaving after 20 mins and get bad rep for quitting early), boxing to fill a group that has either left you and your group stranded or you have been advertising for hours and need to box to fill out a group with a required class or heals etc. so friends or family can finish a dungeon/quest etc.
There are many legit reasons for boxing and the added benefit of extra revenue is always appealing to any company but generalizing that all boxing ruins the game/grouping for everyone else is absolutely not true. It is a very small minority that do this and you will find the same trype of people training other players for fun in solo play or small groups of bored kids (or in some cases adults).
Kilsin said:
Niien said:
Boxing while convenient for a few, ruins grouping for a lot more. It's like a one bard kiting an entire zone and screwing everyone that wants to zone out of it because they want to be greedy. The same can apply to people who box. I understand it's an additional challenge, though I think most do it to not have to depend on anyone and keep loot for themselves.
It obviously makes the game more money in the short term though and It's hard to say no to that. However, if we are forced to group and talk to one another, I really feel we would have something to cherish for a long time to come. Just my opinion of course.
Because a few bad seeds farm gold and want to be anti-social while boxing their own full group, we all must be anti-social players with the intent of loot hoarding? Solo players can act the same too, should we monitor and limit/restrict their play time just to be sure? ;)
That is a pretty poor generalization, do you box mate?
As a boxer myself, I can tell you the reasons for boxing for the majority of players is lack of groups, off peak time zones, low population on servers, very short/limited play time (don't want to start a dungeon then screw the group over by leaving after 20 mins and get bad rep for quitting early), boxing to fill a group that has either left you and your group stranded or you have been advertising for hours and need to box to fill out a group with a required class or heals etc. so friends or family can finish a dungeon/quest etc.
There are many legit reasons for boxing and the added benefit of extra revenue is always appealing to any company but generalizing that all boxing ruins the game/grouping for everyone else is absolutely not true. It is a very small minority that do this and you will find the same trype of people training other players for fun in solo play or small groups of bored kids (or in some cases adults).
Well my friend we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Just because we want something now doesn't mean we should get it in my opinion. I just personally hope that combat is engaging enough that boxing won't be feasible. If you want something different I totally understand. We are two different people and have our own likes and dislikes. If boxing is in, then I will most likely box most if not a whole group and monopolize content. It's what people do to stay ahead of the game. So for my own selfish reasons mainly lack of willpower not to box if available, I hope it's not in.
Also I would like to say that some of the most fun I have had in EQ was trying to do things without the "required classes". It's in these times that we were missing healers/tanks/etc that we found different ways to make it work and had a lot of fun doing it.
My apologies for the generalization, though I speak from first hand knowledge as I'm sure you do as well, however I've seen it to be used a lot more for greed instead of need when it came to boxing.
Niien said:
Kilsin said:
Niien said:
Boxing while convenient for a few, ruins grouping for a lot more. It's like a one bard kiting an entire zone and screwing everyone that wants to zone out of it because they want to be greedy. The same can apply to people who box. I understand it's an additional challenge, though I think most do it to not have to depend on anyone and keep loot for themselves.
It obviously makes the game more money in the short term though and It's hard to say no to that. However, if we are forced to group and talk to one another, I really feel we would have something to cherish for a long time to come. Just my opinion of course.
Because a few bad seeds farm gold and want to be anti-social while boxing their own full group, we all must be anti-social players with the intent of loot hoarding? Solo players can act the same too, should we monitor and limit/restrict their play time just to be sure? ;)
That is a pretty poor generalization, do you box mate?
As a boxer myself, I can tell you the reasons for boxing for the majority of players is lack of groups, off peak time zones, low population on servers, very short/limited play time (don't want to start a dungeon then screw the group over by leaving after 20 mins and get bad rep for quitting early), boxing to fill a group that has either left you and your group stranded or you have been advertising for hours and need to box to fill out a group with a required class or heals etc. so friends or family can finish a dungeon/quest etc.
There are many legit reasons for boxing and the added benefit of extra revenue is always appealing to any company but generalizing that all boxing ruins the game/grouping for everyone else is absolutely not true. It is a very small minority that do this and you will find the same trype of people training other players for fun in solo play or small groups of bored kids (or in some cases adults).Well my friend we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Just because we want something now doesn't mean we should get it in my opinion. I just personally hope that combat is engaging enough that boxing won't be feasible. If you want something different I totally understand. We are two different people and have our own likes and dislikes. If boxing is in, then I will most likely box most if not a whole group and monopolize content. It's what people do to stay ahead of the game. So for my own selfish reasons mainly lack of willpower not to box if available, I hope it's not in.
Also I would like to say that some of the most fun I have had in EQ was trying to do things without the "required classes". It's in these times that we were missing healers/tanks/etc that we found different ways to make it work and had a lot of fun doing it.
My apologies for the generalization, though I speak from first hand knowledge as I'm sure you do as well, however I've seen it to be used a lot more for greed instead of need when it came to boxing.
Absolutely, I understand that everyone has different experiences in all manners of gaming, including boxing but I just wanted to throw it out there that not all boxing is bad and the bad ones are a very small minority.
You will find that many boxers will drop their boxed group in a heartbeat to join a real group, boxing just allows us to continue playing the game we love instead of logging out in frustration due to not having the required number of people to do a quest or dungeon run etc. once that required number appears, most of us will go out of our way to bring whatever class is required to play with other people and socialise!
Pantheon is not the type of game that you will be able to monopolise content easily by boxing but I wish you luck in trying friend! :)
Kilsin said:
Niien said:
Kilsin said:
Niien said:
Boxing while convenient for a few, ruins grouping for a lot more. It's like a one bard kiting an entire zone and screwing everyone that wants to zone out of it because they want to be greedy. The same can apply to people who box. I understand it's an additional challenge, though I think most do it to not have to depend on anyone and keep loot for themselves.
It obviously makes the game more money in the short term though and It's hard to say no to that. However, if we are forced to group and talk to one another, I really feel we would have something to cherish for a long time to come. Just my opinion of course.
Because a few bad seeds farm gold and want to be anti-social while boxing their own full group, we all must be anti-social players with the intent of loot hoarding? Solo players can act the same too, should we monitor and limit/restrict their play time just to be sure? ;)
That is a pretty poor generalization, do you box mate?
As a boxer myself, I can tell you the reasons for boxing for the majority of players is lack of groups, off peak time zones, low population on servers, very short/limited play time (don't want to start a dungeon then screw the group over by leaving after 20 mins and get bad rep for quitting early), boxing to fill a group that has either left you and your group stranded or you have been advertising for hours and need to box to fill out a group with a required class or heals etc. so friends or family can finish a dungeon/quest etc.
There are many legit reasons for boxing and the added benefit of extra revenue is always appealing to any company but generalizing that all boxing ruins the game/grouping for everyone else is absolutely not true. It is a very small minority that do this and you will find the same trype of people training other players for fun in solo play or small groups of bored kids (or in some cases adults).Well my friend we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Just because we want something now doesn't mean we should get it in my opinion. I just personally hope that combat is engaging enough that boxing won't be feasible. If you want something different I totally understand. We are two different people and have our own likes and dislikes. If boxing is in, then I will most likely box most if not a whole group and monopolize content. It's what people do to stay ahead of the game. So for my own selfish reasons mainly lack of willpower not to box if available, I hope it's not in.
Also I would like to say that some of the most fun I have had in EQ was trying to do things without the "required classes". It's in these times that we were missing healers/tanks/etc that we found different ways to make it work and had a lot of fun doing it.
My apologies for the generalization, though I speak from first hand knowledge as I'm sure you do as well, however I've seen it to be used a lot more for greed instead of need when it came to boxing.
Absolutely, I understand that everyone has different experiences in all manners of gaming, including boxing but I just wanted to throw it out there that not all boxing is bad and the bad ones are a very small minority.
You will find that many boxers will drop their boxed group in a heartbeat to join a real group, boxing just allows us to continue playing the game we love instead of logging out in frustration due to not having the required number of people to do a quest or dungeon run etc. once that required number appears, most of us will go out of our way to bring whatever class is required to play with other people and socialise!Pantheon is not the type of game that you will be able to monopolise content easily by boxing but I wish you luck in trying friend! :)
Challenge accepted lol. Thanks for the civil disagreement Kislin. :)
As I've already mentioned, it's not the boxing, it's the automation of boxing. The farming, RTM, camp stealing, etc... bots are automated. Alt-tabbing boxed groups are not as much a threat to groups made of all different players. I have to wonder though, how many full group boxers would there be if there was no automation involved. I know a few would still do it, but it would be much less than now.
Heck, I have a hard time alt-tabbing two accounts lol
Except that it's absolutely impossible to stop automation of just about everything. Even the people with the most resources and experience (Blizzard) have completely given up on trying and instead just let it slide while they ban accounts every now and then and make more money on repurchases. I would say Brad's approach is the best chance any game has of trying to control botting.
There are bots in Diablo 3 that can play the game better than any human ever possibly could, because there's so much going on at once that the human brain only makes judgement calls based on the situation, whereas a bot can crunch all of the data in a millisecond and automatically know what the best decision is.
BloodbeardBattlecaster said:
As I've already mentioned, it's not the boxing, it's the automation of boxing. The farming, RTM, camp stealing, etc... bots are automated. Alt-tabbing boxed groups are not as much a threat to groups made of all different players. I have to wonder though, how many full group boxers would there be if there was no automation involved. I know a few would still do it, but it would be much less than now.
Heck, I have a hard time alt-tabbing two accounts lol
Any automation in boxing is cheating/botting which is entirely different mate.
Most boxers is use a program that mimics keystrokes, so if I click on a particular spot on my hotbar, if my other characters are set up correctly it will hit the same spot on their hotbars and from there I can create macros in those spaces but it can become quite difficult to manage and most of us just use the extra accounts for spot heals and auto attacks with the odd debuff/dps ability with a few basic abilities.
I use multiple monitors and have an account open in each screen so moving between them with your mouse is quite easy once you get used to it, although it can get quite hairy in tight situations if you're not careful but as it gets harder that is when I would want to join a group and socialise, boxing is just a way to continue playing when no one is available to group/quest with.
There is a significant difference between manual boxing and automated cheat programs though, please don't generalise and confuse the two as one is legitimate and provides extra revenue to the company while allowing paying players to remain logged in and enjoying their game and the other is completely illegal and considered cheating that ruins games and communities for many people, including us boxers.
Just to clarify, human controlled boxing is perfectly fine as long as you are clicking the buttons, moving the mouse etc., anything AI or program controlled is cheating and not fine.