A proposed PvP Teams ruleset: Modified SZ (long)

[Vexenu]

Introduction:

This is a big wall of text, be warned. If your immersion levels aren't high then get the fuck out of here while you still can.

All right, you're still here. So let's nerd out for a bit.

All the recent talk about a possible new PvP Teams server has been very interesting. I’ve read through all the threads, and most people seem to be in favor of a ruleset similar to the one that existed on Sullon Zek, although a sizable minority doesn’t have faith in the SZ rules. In this post I will go into detail on why a slightly modified SZ ruleset is the best bet to go with. I do this to hopefully establish some kind of community consensus that can be presented to Rogean/Sirken/nilbog as they consider what to do about a possible PvP Teams server going forward. I base the following ideas on my personal experience playing on SZ back in the day and doing a ton of PvP, my experience playing casually on Blue for the past couple of years, as well as lurking this forum like a motherfucker and getting an idea for the pulse of Red players and their attitudes/experiences with the existing Red server.

To begin with, a quick overview of the SZ rules: there are three hardcoded teams to prevent cross-teaming. Teams based on deity choice (Good, Neutral, Evil). PvP level range was almost entirely unrestricted (a level 60 could kill a level 10, for example, although XP loss only occurred within a 5 level range). No play nice policy, trains, corpse camping, griefing allowed etc…

Although it may strike the uninitiated as strange and even counter-intuitive given the harshness, this is the best PvP ruleset for a number of reasons. Anyone who played on SZ can verify that this ruleset produced the best and most memorable MMO gameplay they ever experienced. Teams allow for a built-in method of providing leveling safety for new players, and promote intense community unlike anything on a Blue server or FFA PvP. It’s very much an “us versus them” dynamic which is impossible to reproduce under any other ruleset, and which results in both the most meaningful PvE and the most intense PvP. Teams have to look out for each other. High level players have to protect lower level zones. Everything is heightened. And meaningful PvP actually occurs with much greater frequency than on an FFA PvP server, because people aren’t worried about earning a PK rep with their enemies, they just kill them. But at the same time, teams provide a safe haven for new and lower level players. It’s the best of both worlds: more PvP and more accessible leveling at the same time.

That being said, SZ did have its weaknesses that subtracted from the enjoyment of the server. Most notable was the dominance of the Evil team and the catastrophic weakness of the Good team. Any effort to replicate SZ must therefore take steps to prevent a similar recurrence of this imbalance. Some changes also must be made given the reality of several other relevant facts: the vastly increased knowledge about the game after 14 years, the smaller population we have to draw from, and the fact that accounts are free and essentially unlimited.

Differences proposed for team balancing:


Evil team is able to FFA PvP within itself. Any evil player over level 10 can attack any other evil player over level 10. Makes RP sense, because since they are evil they don't mind killing each other. This is an easy and elegant solution to address the problem of the Evil team's built-in advantages. This is necessary to weaken the evil team with internal strife and to prevent the evils from having an essentially uncontested a safe haven on Kunark. Powergamers are naturally attracted to the Evil team due to its superior races (Ogre, Troll, Iksar) and PvP classes (SK, Necro). Allowing intra-team PvP among evils will therefore allow for a rift to emerge between PvP powergamers and PvE powergamers. Players who join the evil team primarily to PvP will inevitably begin to prey on fellow evil team members who draw their ire. This infighting will help to weaken the Evil team and prevent its outright dominance.



Good team receives large innate bonuses to their characters, +20 to all stats, including resists. They also receive a permanent +20% XP bonus. The Good team is burdened with such godawful races and starting locations that there is simply no way to get enough people to play them normally. There has to be an incentive. Innate stat and XP bonuses give powergamers a reason to consider the good team, especially for the resist bonuses, which would be significant but not overpowering in both PvP and raiding. The accelerated XP would attract more casual players, who would like the idea of being able to level more quickly on the good team. Even this wouldn't be sufficient to bring the good team to parity most likely, but hopefully it would be enough to prevent them from being a completely blown out non-factor like they were on SZ.



Neutral team receives a similar but smaller bonus, +10 to all stats/resists and a +10% experience bonus. This incentive will encourage more people to roll neutral who do not have a strong opinion on which team to join, and who might otherwise go evil based on chance/spur of the moment decision. Since neutrals have more natural zone control and better racial choices than goods, they don't need as much of a bonus to compete with evils.


Hopefully these modifications (Evil FFA PvP, Good/Newt stat & XP bonuses) would result in more players rolling Good and Newt. Even then, a perfect 33%/33%/33% population split is impossible. But even a population distribution of 20% Good, 30% Neutral and 50% Evil would be workable and better than what SZ had. Even if Evils comprise half the server, they will be weakened by infighting enough to allow the smaller number of Newts and Goods to have more than a fighting chance once they organize. Increasing Good and Neutral team base stats is non-classic, but in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively minor change that is almost entirely behind the scenes, but which could have the very needed impact of swinging more players away from the Evil team.

These modifications should result in a good distribution of players across all three teams. Some more PvE-focused players will go evil to take advantage of the large races, but others will not want to deal with the potential headache of essentially FFA PvP on the evil team. The most hardcore PvPers will go evil exactly for this reason, but if they prey on fellow evils they will basically make themselves pariahs to the entire server and will face the consequences. Overall I would predict a small but persistently annoying level of intra-team PvP within the Evil team, not enough to destroy it but enough to weaken it a bit. The Neutral and Good teams will allow for safer leveling due to no intra-team PvP, which will provide a more natural atmosphere for Blue players to become acclimated to the server. Note that this one simple change to the Evil team also essentially allows for the coexistence of FFA and Team based PvP under the same ruleset. If you want the most hardcore experience, go evil and kill everything in sight. If you want to reap the innate race/class advantages of team evil, be prepared to defend yourself against the chaos of FFA PvP. And if you want a more traditional teams PvP experience with hardcoded allies and enemies, roll neutral or good.

Other needed modifications:


XP would be set at quadruple the normal rate for levels 1-20, and double the normal rate thereafter. A new server MUST get players invested in their characters as quickly as possible. People are not going to stick around if they can't make reasonable progress and get a taste of real PvP with a decently leveled character. Permanent double XP makes the server much more accessible to new players who join down the line as well. Enhanced XP on a PvP server is simply a must at this point.



Characters level 1-9 are not PvP enabled in newbie zones and cities. Prevents shitbags from driving off helpless new players with griefing tactics and uber-twinks down the road.



Add special global chat channels for each team, i.e. /evil, /neut, /good. This will allow teams to quickly and easily communicate amongst themselves, and help to prevent griefing by allowing low level players to summon higher level help. It also will promote feelings of community within each team and facilitate group formation. Basically a team-specific version of global OOC (which should not be on the server).



Put in a Firiona Vie version of the OT hammer. Totally non-classic but completely necessary to balance the teams (OT hammers being massively useful for raid mobilization, it's just more incentive for powergamers to roll Evil). This also goes a long way toward helping to alleviate the problem of team Evil having total domination of Kunark. Make it a semi-annoying faction quest like the sarnak braids, just use drolvargs instead.



Launch the server with Classic only at first. No Kunark. Either follow the original timeline or maybe add Kunark in after 2 months minimum. The world must be smaller at first to make the server feel alive with a smaller population. This also prevents the problem of allowing Evils a huge head start on safe leveling in Kunark. By the time Kunark comes out, Goods and Neutrals will be able to contest most of the continent, and Evils will have to protect their young Iksar from harm.



Remove items that are classic, but which produce un-classic effects with modern knowledge/mastery of the game, i.e. Trak Teeth lifetaps and Soulfire CHs. These have no place in classic EQ PvP.



Allow only characters of the same team on each account, and disallow logging into the server from the same IP with multiple accounts within 30 minutes of each other. Yes there are ways around this, but make it as annoying as possible for people to spy on opposing teams or same-team train. Be very judicious in giving out IP exemptions, and quick to ban abusers.



Cap the speed of leveling shortly after server launch. Something like:

Week 1: Max level 20
Week 2: Max level 30
Week 4: Max level 40
Week 6: Max level 50
Week 8: Earliest consideration of Kunark launch depending on community demand

This means neckbeards can't race ahead of everyone else and dominate the server from the get-go by simply massively outleveling them, as happened with <Ruin> on SZ. This shifts the focus from PvE to PvP, where it belongs on a PvP server. With the 4x XP bonus in place from 1-20, almost everyone should be able to reach level 20 within a week with even modest effort. From there things will open up a little more, but the caps in place should help keep most players in the same general level range, which keeps things fun, and results in battles for PvE zone control rather than just random griefing. Also, imagining a raid-sized force of level 20s descending into Lower Guk during the first week is just hilariously awesome.


Other important considerations:


One of the main things to realize is that the great majority of players on a new PvP teams servers will be BLUE PLAYERS. Many of them will end up quitting because they simply won't enjoy PvP, but a lot of them will end up staying if they start to have positive experiences with the PvP aspect of the game. The best PvP happens with friends and guildmates, so teams encourage this, while FFA PvP is terrible because it totally discourages new players and leaves them feeling helpless and isolated in a hostile environment.


Item loot is terrible because this is an item-driven game, and the possibility of losing items means the vast majority of people will go out of their way to avoid or minimize that risk as much as possible. This means an overall reduction in both the quality and frequency of PvP and an increase in lame tactics like naked casters.


Coin loot is sufficient, as is causing 50% XP loss on death and a corpse run (and a corpse camping if warranted). Beyond that fighting is about nothing more than pride and zone control. That should be sufficient for any truly competitive PvPers. Implement a scoreboard that tracks all kills to encourage this. Possibly have lootable insignias like on SZ with some kind of reward, potions, etc...


The resist system must be as close to classic as possible. 100 MR should resist 99% of roots/snares/blinds etc... 100 FR/CR should be something like 1/4 full resist, 1/4 low partial, 1/4 mid-high partial, 1/4 full dmg, etc... The basic rule of the thumb and most important thing for the resists system is that movement altering spells should basically NEVER land on a non-debuffed player with “good” (100+) magic resist.


Have raid mobs spawn within a 6 hour window with a one hour advance shout. Example, Trakanon is killed, and can respawn anywhere from 72-78 hours later. If he is going to spawn at 75 hours, a global shout announces he will spawn an hour from now at 74 hours. It's basically a one hour advance batphone to everyone on the server. More dedicated guilds will be rewarded by being in a defensive position at zone lines since they can camp the entire 6 hour window, but casual players will be able to move in to attack as the window closes in the final hour. Epic PvP will result. The precise timing could be tinkered with, the main necessity here is serverwide advance shouts for all raid mobs to encourage mass PvP competition for those mobs rather than poopsocking or locking down precise mob spawn times at off-peak hours.


Most important goals of a new server:

Promote parity between Good/Evil/neutral teams as much as possible
Encourage Blue players to stay on server
Prevent dedicated group of neackbeards from dominating server from launch
Eliminate all bugs/cheats/gay shit that plagued launch of Red
Eliminate duping/RMT/account trading/raid drama that plagues Blue

Conclusion:

This server should be started this Fall to capitalize on returning players who left over summer, as well as the fact that MANY players from Blue are currently fed up with the high end scene there. Guaranteed hundreds of them would give a PvP Teams server a try if it promised an escape from the dead-end raid scene on Blue. Launching the server soon would also give people time to gear up before Velious is released. If a new server were released to coincide with Velious, most players would simply remain on Blue, because their geared characters are already there. Blue would then remain overloaded and a new server would have a weak launch. If a new server is ever to succeed, it must be launched soon. And if a PvP Teams server is ever to succeed, it must be launched at this point, when people are frustrated with Blue and ready to start fresh, even if that means accepting some PvP.

Your thoughts:

Let's hear them!

[Agatha]

good post, read mine.

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=119958

[mtb tripper]

sounds like a man with a plan, go make the server please

[Loli Pops]

Looks long enough to garner a reAding. Will save thread for next poop time. A+

[Swish]

http://theonceandfuturecoffeeaddict.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/290432-that-really-rustled-my-jimmies.jpeg

[SamwiseRed]

SZ teams or bust.

[Bogart]

Have you guys heard about that new MMO WoW? It's going to have team PvP.

[runlvlzero]

Also remove all exp penalties. Good read. Good luck.

[runlvlzero]

Have you guys heard about that new MMO WoW? It's going to have team PvP.

Why don't you suck a big fat HIV infested cock.

[Voids]

Great ideas. I'd play on this server in a heartbeat.

[Bogart]

Why don't you suck a big fat HIV infested cock.

I thought I'd get a response with a reason to attempt the never before idea of hardcoded teams on a pvp server. But it looks like one doesn't exist, since the idea has been beaten to death by literally every wannabe pvp mmo ever created.

[Loto]

Introduction:

This is a big wall of text, be warned. If your immersion levels aren't high then get the fuck out of here while you still can.

All right, you're still here. So let's nerd out for a bit.

All the recent talk about a possible new PvP Teams server has been very interesting. I’ve read through all the threads, and most people seem to be in favor of a ruleset similar to the one that existed on Sullon Zek, although a sizable minority doesn’t have faith in the SZ rules. In this post I will go into detail on why a slightly modified SZ ruleset is the best bet to go with. I do this to hopefully establish some kind of community consensus that can be presented to Rogean/Sirken/nilbog as they consider what to do about a possible PvP Teams server going forward. I base the following ideas on my personal experience playing on SZ back in the day and doing a ton of PvP, my experience playing casually on Blue for the past couple of years, as well as lurking this forum like a motherfucker and getting an idea for the pulse of Red players and their attitudes/experiences with the existing Red server.

To begin with, a quick overview of the SZ rules: there are three hardcoded teams to prevent cross-teaming. Teams based on deity choice (Good, Neutral, Evil). PvP level range was almost entirely unrestricted (a level 60 could kill a level 10, for example, although XP loss only occurred within a 5 level range). No play nice policy, trains, corpse camping, griefing allowed etc…

Although it may strike the uninitiated as strange and even counter-intuitive given the harshness, this is the best PvP ruleset for a number of reasons. Anyone who played on SZ can verify that this ruleset produced the best and most memorable MMO gameplay they ever experienced. Teams allow for a built-in method of providing leveling safety for new players, and promote intense community unlike anything on a Blue server or FFA PvP. It’s very much an “us versus them” dynamic which is impossible to reproduce under any other ruleset, and which results in both the most meaningful PvE and the most intense PvP. Teams have to look out for each other. High level players have to protect lower level zones. Everything is heightened. And meaningful PvP actually occurs with much greater frequency than on an FFA PvP server, because people aren’t worried about earning a PK rep with their enemies, they just kill them. But at the same time, teams provide a safe haven for new and lower level players. It’s the best of both worlds: more PvP and more accessible leveling at the same time.

That being said, SZ did have its weaknesses that subtracted from the enjoyment of the server. Most notable was the dominance of the Evil team and the catastrophic weakness of the Good team. Any effort to replicate SZ must therefore take steps to prevent a similar recurrence of this imbalance. Some changes also must be made given the reality of several other relevant facts: the vastly increased knowledge about the game after 14 years, the smaller population we have to draw from, and the fact that accounts are free and essentially unlimited.

Differences proposed for team balancing:


Evil team is able to FFA PvP within itself. Any evil player over level 10 can attack any other evil player over level 10. Makes RP sense, because since they are evil they don't mind killing each other. This is an easy and elegant solution to address the problem of the Evil team's built-in advantages. This is necessary to weaken the evil team with internal strife and to prevent the evils from having an essentially uncontested a safe haven on Kunark. Powergamers are naturally attracted to the Evil team due to its superior races (Ogre, Troll, Iksar) and PvP classes (SK, Necro). Allowing intra-team PvP among evils will therefore allow for a rift to emerge between PvP powergamers and PvE powergamers. Players who join the evil team primarily to PvP will inevitably begin to prey on fellow evil team members who draw their ire. This infighting will help to weaken the Evil team and prevent its outright dominance.



Good team receives large innate bonuses to their characters, +20 to all stats, including resists. They also receive a permanent +20% XP bonus. The Good team is burdened with such godawful races and starting locations that there is simply no way to get enough people to play them normally. There has to be an incentive. Innate stat and XP bonuses give powergamers a reason to consider the good team, especially for the resist bonuses, which would be significant but not overpowering in both PvP and raiding. The accelerated XP would attract more casual players, who would like the idea of being able to level more quickly on the good team. Even this wouldn't be sufficient to bring the good team to parity most likely, but hopefully it would be enough to prevent them from being a completely blown out non-factor like they were on SZ.



Neutral team receives a similar but smaller bonus, +10 to all stats/resists and a +10% experience bonus. This incentive will encourage more people to roll neutral who do not have a strong opinion on which team to join, and who might otherwise go evil based on chance/spur of the moment decision. Since neutrals have more natural zone control and better racial choices than goods, they don't need as much of a bonus to compete with evils.


Hopefully these modifications (Evil FFA PvP, Good/Newt stat & XP bonuses) would result in more players rolling Good and Newt. Even then, a perfect 33%/33%/33% population split is impossible. But even a population distribution of 20% Good, 30% Neutral and 50% Evil would be workable and better than what SZ had. Even if Evils comprise half the server, they will be weakened by infighting enough to allow the smaller number of Newts and Goods to have more than a fighting chance once they organize. Increasing Good and Neutral team base stats is non-classic, but in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively minor change that is almost entirely behind the scenes, but which could have the very needed impact of swinging more players away from the Evil team.

These modifications should result in a good distribution of players across all three teams. Some more PvE-focused players will go evil to take advantage of the large races, but others will not want to deal with the potential headache of essentially FFA PvP on the evil team. The most hardcore PvPers will go evil exactly for this reason, but if they prey on fellow evils they will basically make themselves pariahs to the entire server and will face the consequences. Overall I would predict a small but persistently annoying level of intra-team PvP within the Evil team, not enough to destroy it but enough to weaken it a bit. The Neutral and Good teams will allow for safer leveling due to no intra-team PvP, which will provide a more natural atmosphere for Blue players to become acclimated to the server. Note that this one simple change to the Evil team also essentially allows for the coexistence of FFA and Team based PvP under the same ruleset. If you want the most hardcore experience, go evil and kill everything in sight. If you want to reap the innate race/class advantages of team evil, be prepared to defend yourself against the chaos of FFA PvP. And if you want a more traditional teams PvP experience with hardcoded allies and enemies, roll neutral or good.

Other needed modifications:


XP would be set at quadruple the normal rate for levels 1-20, and double the normal rate thereafter. A new server MUST get players invested in their characters as quickly as possible. People are not going to stick around if they can't make reasonable progress and get a taste of real PvP with a decently leveled character. Permanent double XP makes the server much more accessible to new players who join down the line as well. Enhanced XP on a PvP server is simply a must at this point.



Characters level 1-9 are not PvP enabled in newbie zones and cities. Prevents shitbags from driving off helpless new players with griefing tactics and uber-twinks down the road.



Add special global chat channels for each team, i.e. /evil, /neut, /good. This will allow teams to quickly and easily communicate amongst themselves, and help to prevent griefing by allowing low level players to summon higher level help. It also will promote feelings of community within each team and facilitate group formation. Basically a team-specific version of global OOC (which should not be on the server).



Put in a Firiona Vie version of the OT hammer. Totally non-classic but completely necessary to balance the teams (OT hammers being massively useful for raid mobilization, it's just more incentive for powergamers to roll Evil). This also goes a long way toward helping to alleviate the problem of team Evil having total domination of Kunark. Make it a semi-annoying faction quest like the sarnak braids, just use drolvargs instead.



Launch the server with Classic only at first. No Kunark. Either follow the original timeline or maybe add Kunark in after 2 months minimum. The world must be smaller at first to make the server feel alive with a smaller population. This also prevents the problem of allowing Evils a huge head start on safe leveling in Kunark. By the time Kunark comes out, Goods and Neutrals will be able to contest most of the continent, and Evils will have to protect their young Iksar from harm.



Remove items that are classic, but which produce un-classic effects with modern knowledge/mastery of the game, i.e. Trak Teeth lifetaps and Soulfire CHs. These have no place in classic EQ PvP.



Allow only characters of the same team on each account, and disallow logging into the server from the same IP with multiple accounts within 30 minutes of each other. Yes there are ways around this, but make it as annoying as possible for people to spy on opposing teams or same-team train. Be very judicious in giving out IP exemptions, and quick to ban abusers.



Cap the speed of leveling shortly after server launch. Something like:

Week 1: Max level 20
Week 2: Max level 30
Week 4: Max level 40
Week 6: Max level 50
Week 8: Earliest consideration of Kunark launch depending on community demand

This means neckbeards can't race ahead of everyone else and dominate the server from the get-go by simply massively outleveling them, as happened with <Ruin> on SZ. This shifts the focus from PvE to PvP, where it belongs on a PvP server. With the 4x XP bonus in place from 1-20, almost everyone should be able to reach level 20 within a week with even modest effort. From there things will open up a little more, but the caps in place should help keep most players in the same general level range, which keeps things fun, and results in battles for PvE zone control rather than just random griefing. Also, imagining a raid-sized force of level 20s descending into Lower Guk during the first week is just hilariously awesome.


Other important considerations:


One of the main things to realize is that the great majority of players on a new PvP teams servers will be BLUE PLAYERS. Many of them will end up quitting because they simply won't enjoy PvP, but a lot of them will end up staying if they start to have positive experiences with the PvP aspect of the game. The best PvP happens with friends and guildmates, so teams encourage this, while FFA PvP is terrible because it totally discourages new players and leaves them feeling helpless and isolated in a hostile environment.


Item loot is terrible because this is an item-driven game, and the possibility of losing items means the vast majority of people will go out of their way to avoid or minimize that risk as much as possible. This means an overall reduction in both the quality and frequency of PvP and an increase in lame tactics like naked casters.


Coin loot is sufficient, as is causing 50% XP loss on death and a corpse run (and a corpse camping if warranted). Beyond that fighting is about nothing more than pride and zone control. That should be sufficient for any truly competitive PvPers. Implement a scoreboard that tracks all kills to encourage this. Possibly have lootable insignias like on SZ with some kind of reward, potions, etc...


The resist system must be as close to classic as possible. 100 MR should resist 99% of roots/snares/blinds etc... 100 FR/CR should be something like 1/4 full resist, 1/4 low partial, 1/4 mid-high partial, 1/4 full dmg, etc... The basic rule of the thumb and most important thing for the resists system is that movement altering spells should basically NEVER land on a non-debuffed player with “good” (100+) magic resist.


Have raid mobs spawn within a 6 hour window with a one hour advance shout. Example, Trakanon is killed, and can respawn anywhere from 72-78 hours later. If he is going to spawn at 75 hours, a global shout announces he will spawn an hour from now at 74 hours. It's basically a one hour advance batphone to everyone on the server. More dedicated guilds will be rewarded by being in a defensive position at zone lines since they can camp the entire 6 hour window, but casual players will be able to move in to attack as the window closes in the final hour. Epic PvP will result. The precise timing could be tinkered with, the main necessity here is serverwide advance shouts for all raid mobs to encourage mass PvP competition for those mobs rather than poopsocking or locking down precise mob spawn times at off-peak hours.


Most important goals of a new server:

Promote parity between Good/Evil/neutral teams as much as possible
Encourage Blue players to stay on server
Prevent dedicated group of neackbeards from dominating server from launch
Eliminate all bugs/cheats/gay shit that plagued launch of Red
Eliminate duping/RMT/account trading/raid drama that plagues Blue

Conclusion:

This server should be started this Fall to capitalize on returning players who left over summer, as well as the fact that MANY players from Blue are currently fed up with the high end scene there. Guaranteed hundreds of them would give a PvP Teams server a try if it promised an escape from the dead-end raid scene on Blue. Launching the server soon would also give people time to gear up before Velious is released. If a new server were released to coincide with Velious, most players would simply remain on Blue, because their geared characters are already there. Blue would then remain overloaded and a new server would have a weak launch. If a new server is ever to succeed, it must be launched soon. And if a PvP Teams server is ever to succeed, it must be launched at this point, when people are frustrated with Blue and ready to start fresh, even if that means accepting some PvP.

Your thoughts:

Let's hear them!

Well thought out, fairly balanced and enough incentive to keep people leveling rather than deleveling to 20 to rape crushbone night after night.

Pras.

[runlvlzero]

I thought I'd get a response with a reason to attempt the never before idea of hardcoded teams on a pvp server. But it looks like one doesn't exist, since the idea has been beaten to death by literally every wannabe pvp mmo ever created.

No you are spewing hyperbole by overstating the obvious. Yet SZ was a great server for a long time which inspired many games. Including WoW. Which was indeed pretty fun when it was full of openworld pvp. I would go fight high levels with hordes of low levels in Tarren Mill.

Don't be stupid. I'm patently tired of stupid. IRL and on the interwebs. I'm calling you out on it.

[Bogart]

I think you're an ok guy runlvlzero. I just think team pvp sucks. Zergs still happen and if you have real wins and losses(like item loot) in the game, then getting back stabbed by "teammates" you can't attack, and needing alts for each side all that shit doesn't go away. Counter measures just make multiple accounts, or multiple ips all the more valuable.

[runlvlzero]

It has its pros and cons, and EQEMU is vary flawed and heavily favors the cons of team pvp, single character, single account, single person would be ok... but no matter what you tie accounts to, unless you collect drivers licenses and verify their authenticity it will always be questionably easy to forge new accounts. If there was a good work around. It wouldn't be that bad. I don't think many people invested in cross teaming that much in WoW when I played during openworld pvp.

Then again. Maybe if the no 2 boxing rule was heavily enforced cross teaming and multiple characters would not rate that high of an issue. Because people would have to focus on one character at a time. Nullifying the overall benefit of being able to back stab your teammates. Not to mention if someone has a character known for backstabbing it will be shunned pretty fast.

I don't see it as impossible to deal with. The original point of SZ style teams is to get multiple tiers of characters involved in playing in a zone together. It really is bad if you have no allies on a team. Which judging by this server... is probably how it will be most of the time due to population alone. i.e. SZ worked because out of 200 people on a team, 20 would spend time defending newbie areas at least. I don't know. I don't see that deep level of investment on this server from anyone. Unrest changes hands based on who desires to PL the most there. Or its in the hands of an individual "twink pk guild(TM)" because thats who has invested the time to park a character there 24/7. It would be kind of funny if high levels could run in and steamroll "Knights Templar, or Unrest County Police" or whatever. It would require them to level up for sure. Rather than just stay level 18 with a fungi and MOSS.

Its not impossible to level on a purely no level range server. Although its extremely tedious at times. A server like that will definitely favor Nihilum like players the most.

However at best, for most of SZ's existence the only way to have BIS characters was to be team evil. It seems 90% or more on EMU servers play to achieve BIS gear on min/max toons. They don't RP or immerse beyond pixel hunting very well. Handfuls of players on both servers just play "to be their character" or their on line persona.

Maybe TLDR... but at release WoW was not a bad example of teams working, it was one of the good ones.

[Rec]

Good and Neutral will get stomped unless they are combined. All the "cool" kids want to be Evil. You can give each side all the special rules you want, it's not going to make up for it, and the more new rules you make the less it's Everquest Classic pvp.

[Rokannis]

I think you're an ok guy runlvlzero. I just think team pvp sucks. Zergs still happen and if you have real wins and losses(like item loot) in the game, then getting back stabbed by "teammates" you can't attack, and needing alts for each side all that shit doesn't go away. Counter measures just make multiple accounts, or multiple ips all the more valuable.

Stop posting, you have no clue at all what you are talking about. You "think" they suck, you don't know. Those who have played SZ ruleset KNOW its great and can/will vouch for it and will straight up tell you its perks and flaws like this man. Great post, and great fix ideas.

P.S. anyone who thinks that people won't come out of the woodworks to play on a server like this are fucking delusional. Every SZ player I am still in contact with always tells me they can never get the same experience elsewhere and would come play on something like this in a heart beat.

Lets make this happen please, thanks.

[Rokannis]

Good and Neutral will get stomped unless they are combined. All the "cool" kids want to be Evil. You can give each side all the special rules you want, it's not going to make up for it

Thats a terrible idea and you would be very surprised how many don't roll evil. Especially after <Hate> eventually took over SZ, all the old schoolers would love nothing more than NOT to be evil, as we have an engrained hatred for the darkies. Its even weird for me to play an Evil race on Blue server even though I played neutral 13 years ago on SZ.

There will be underdogs, and it won't be a perfect balance. But thats fine because at least its not <Nihilium> vs the server. Teams gives you auto allies...something that is very needed to help a lopsided FFA.

[Vexenu]

Stop posting, you have no clue at all what you are talking about. You "think" they suck, you don't know. Those who have played SZ ruleset KNOW its great and can/will vouch for it and will straight up tell you its perks and flaws like this man. Great post, and great fix ideas.

P.S. anyone who thinks that people won't come out of the woodworks to play on a server like this are fucking delusional. Every SZ player I am still in contact with always tells me they can never get the same experience elsewhere and would come play on something like this in a heart beat.

Lets make this happen please, thanks.

If you still talk to some SZ people definitely send them a link to this thread. We'll only get one chance (if that) for a PvP Teams server here, so we'll need as many people with legit PvP experience from live advocating for a ruleset like this to make it happen. There seem to be a lot of players here who have only ever PvPed on emu servers, and who don't understand how things were on Live and who have a distorted view as a result.

[Rec]

Thats a terrible idea and you would be very surprised how many don't roll evil. Especially after <Hate> eventually took over SZ, all the old schoolers would love nothing more than NOT to be evil, as we have an engrained hatred for the darkies. Its even weird for me to play an Evil race on Blue server even though I played neutral 13 years ago on SZ.

There will be underdogs, and it won't be a perfect balance. But thats fine because at least its not <Nihilium> vs the server. Teams gives you auto allies...something that is very needed to help a lopsided FFA.

It's a terrible idea to think the Evil side won't dominate again. You can spout all the supposed veteran sentiment all you want. As long as necromancers and sks are unique to one team that's an incredible lure and boost on a pvp teams server. The counter lure is suppose to be druids and paladins but as long as they are split between two teams, it just becomes too dilluted of a force strength. I think sullon zek was my favorite EQ experience, I am with everyone on everything else just 2 teams instead of 3. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

[runlvlzero]

I liked SZ teams on live. Don't want it to replace this server. But if there were like 600 posts from unique accounts. I'd say it would be worth some investment.

[Stinkum]

Will save thread for next poop time. A+

[Bogart]

Stop posting, you have no clue at all what you are talking about. You "think" they suck, you don't know. Those who have played SZ ruleset KNOW its great

Very convincing argument. Except almost every single MMO has had a team pvp server. It's like you're from the past and you have no knowledge of anything that's transpired since 1999.

[Vexenu]

It's a terrible idea to think the Evil side won't dominate again. You can spout all the supposed veteran sentiment all you want. As long as necromancers and sks are unique to one team that's an incredible lure and boost on a pvp teams server. The counter lure is suppose to be druids and paladins but as long as they are split between two teams, it just becomes too dilluted of a force strength. I think sullon zek was my favorite EQ experience, I am with everyone on everything else just 2 teams instead of 3. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

I think you are underestimating the impact of the team balancing changes I proposed. FFA PvP among the Evils would make them a less cohesive force. Smaller numbers of Goods and Newts would have a greater impact than they did on SZ. And the bonuses for those teams would attract more players to reduce the population discrepancy further. Also, most people coming from Blue would probably roll Neutral or Good to avoid the prospect of FFA PvP on evil.

That being said, I would rather see this server with 2 teams than not at all. But I think 3 teams is best and provides the richest experience, despite the inherent balancing challenges.

[Rec]

I think you are underestimating the impact of the team balancing changes I proposed. FFA PvP among the Evils would make them a less cohesive force. Smaller numbers of Goods and Newts would have a greater impact than they did on SZ. And the bonuses for those teams would attract more players to reduce the population discrepancy further. Also, most people coming from Blue would probably roll Neutral or Good to avoid the prospect of FFA PvP on evil.

That being said, I would rather see this server with 2 teams than not at all. But I think 3 teams is best and provides the richest experience, despite the inherent balancing challenges.

I saw your changes, we're all on the same side I think, trying to get to the same end result, just have different approaches that's all.

[Dullah]

tldr

nothing he has to say hasn't been said. Teams offers nothing for the server.

[Loli Pops]

Pooping now. Would read again. A-

[Aenor]

http://theonceandfuturecoffeeaddict.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/290432-that-really-rustled-my-jimmies.jpeg

Literally the greatest .jpg in all of recorded history.

[Smedy]

didn't read but i don't think any ruleset changes can save the server without a complete wipe at this point and there's never going to be a wipe so server dead

perhaps blue transfers could get it done, but what would keep nizzar from absorbing all these bluebies and just make a bigger nihilum? Nothing. There's no rules again'st recruiting everyone, and since getting pixels is the most important, that's what's going to happen.

[Dubs]

Yuk... let the blubies copy over

[Aenor]

There's no rules again'st recruiting everyone, and since getting pixels is the most important, that's what's going to happen.

Saw Nizzar swimming off the FP dock at bard speed with no bard today. If you're going to RMT, why would you destroy your customer base? More obvious everytime I log in that this is a sandbox.

Much as I know I'm kidding myself, I'm hoping Sirken and Rogean are going to open up the floor to real ideas like a team server. Make it hardcore as possible, no wipe, keep the current server up so customers are not stripped of their merchandise. Those who want a blue experience with optional PVP will stay put. The hardcore PvPers will go to a teams server with item loot and limited GM intervention.

Some pals are coming back for more punishment in the fall. We've been through this before on VZTZ where there's no challenging the dominant guild and you learn to ignore them and focus on the part of the game that's available to you and contesting with those who also exist in the margins. It's still the best PvP game in production at the moment. I don't hate. I appreciate.

[Aenor]

Funny story.. Heartbrand made this big show of being magnanimous in another thread and offering me gear, PM'd me to say send him a tell in game, meet him in fp bank. When I talked to him in game all he wanted to know was am I re-apping to Nihilum. I said hell no I'm done with Nihilum.. I quit the server for 6 months I was so bored raiding uncontested. I told him I'm going to lead the resistance. He said didn't you hear I'm the Jew of P99 and I never heard from him again. Apparently he's worried that a 44 war in crafted might topple the evil empire. No twink gear for poor Narg.

[Nyrod]

Yuk... let the blubies copy over

i live in seattle too :P

[Aenor]

Now, just to clarify, I have no problem with RMT. Used to make a grand a month selling shit on ebay, mostly on the strength of farming ee bags (not kidding). My customers were guys with good jobs and limited free time. They wanted to trade their money for my time.

What I have a problem with is anything that hurts a server so badly that it goes from 500 pop to 100 pop. If I had the talent to build a server like p99, you better believe I'd be all up in the cookie jar. But I'd be maximizing population like a mufucker.

[Vexenu]

For the people who spend 10 hours a day in-game but can't take 10 minutes to read a post: this is NOT a proposal to fix Red. It's a suggested ruleset for a new server. Red is dead. This is about the future.

[Stinkum]

Great ideas. I'd play on this server in a heartbeat.

Actually read op's whole post now. A+

[Loli Pops]

http://i.imgur.com/A44k8Y0.jpg

[Aenor]

LMFAO

[Rokannis]

tldr

nothing he has to say hasn't been said. Teams offers nothing for the server.

All I see is, "I'm a faggot"

[HippoNipple]

I think you are underestimating the impact of the team balancing changes I proposed.

I am with you on that.

I would pick a dwarf or barbarian warrior over ogre if you got all those bonuses.

Dwarf vs Ogre
-20 str
-12 sta
+20 Agi
+35 Dex
+20 all resists

Barbarian vs Ogre
-7str
-7sta
+32agi
+20dex
+20 all resists

Rogues would be ridiculous for the evil side compared to barbarians. Classic era would be cake for Barbarians.

naked Barbarian vs DE rogue in full reavenscale

+52str
+40sta
+1 agi
+2 dex
+7 vs magic
-2 vs disease
-3vs po ison
+15 vs cold
+15 vs fire

[heartbrand]

All I see is, "I'm a faggot"

Lot of bluebies asking for teams and variance and other shit. I got good news for you, there's this game out on the market which is immensely popular and it has a big new content patch in a week and a half coming out. It has two teams, you can't kill people on your own faction even if they're attacking things you want, there's instances so you can't be cock blocked, pvp on demand via instance, it's called world of warcraft. Meanwhile ill stick with my FFA pvp server where I can't be cock blocked from content by people on my own team. Good news tho bros, if you couldn't compete on red before with teams you could roll the same team as nihilum and never worry about pvp again! Sounds like a great pvp game.

Teams with 70 pop prime time as if there's 300+ people out there waiting for teams el oh lol morans

[Rec]

Lot of bluebies asking for teams and variance and other shit. I got good news for you, there's this game out on the market which is immensely popular and it has a big new content patch in a week and a half coming out. It has two teams, you can't kill people on your own faction even if they're attacking things you want, there's instances so you can't be cock blocked, pvp on demand via instance, it's called world of warcraft. Meanwhile ill stick with my FFA pvp server where I can't be cock blocked from content by people on my own team. Good news tho bros, if you couldn't compete on red before with teams you could roll the same team as nihilum and never worry about pvp again! Sounds like a great pvp game.

Teams with 70 pop prime time as if there's 300+ people out there waiting for teams el oh lol morans


If I was a fan of the current FFA server I wouldn't want a Sullon Zek like server coming out and destroying my server's population even more. So your statement and motives makes sense.

[HippoNipple]

Meanwhile ill stick with my FFA pvp server where I can't be cock blocked from content by people on my own team. Good news tho bros, if you couldn't compete on red before with teams you could roll the same team as nihilum and never worry about pvp again! Sounds like a great pvp game.

Teams with 70 pop prime time as if there's 300+ people out there waiting for teams el oh lol morans


1) The entire post was created as an idea for a new server so Nihilum has nothing to do with it.

2) Nihilum represents at least 2/3 of the 50+ players. If someone rolled on the Nihilum hard coded team they would obviously be wanting to join Nihilum and they can join them now no problem with the current rules. It would at least stop players from using other guilds to gear/level up to then just leave to Nihilum.

3) Since Nihilum is a PvE focused guild you could assume they would go evil. If you read the OP evil would be the only team that could also attack their own team, so nothing you mentioned is relevant.

[abacab-winner]

Lot of bluebies asking for teams and variance and other shit. I got good news for you, there's this game out on the market which is immensely popular and it has a big new content patch in a week and a half coming out. It has two teams, you can't kill people on your own faction even if they're attacking things you want, there's instances so you can't be cock blocked, pvp on demand via instance, it's called world of warcraft. Meanwhile ill stick with my FFA pvp server where I can't be cock blocked from content by people on my own team. Good news tho bros, if you couldn't compete on red before with teams you could roll the same team as nihilum and never worry about pvp again! Sounds like a great pvp game.

Teams with 70 pop prime time as if there's 300+ people out there waiting for teams el oh lol morans

WoW-EMU servers have 30x the pop as Red99 so obviously their PvP boxes are thriving on teams.

[heartbrand]

Great, I suggest you try them out sounds like your type of game.

[Velus]

Lot of bluebies asking for teams and variance and other shit. I got good news for you, there's this game out on the market which is immensely popular and it has a big new content patch in a week and a half coming out. It has two teams, you can't kill people on your own faction even if they're attacking things you want, there's instances so you can't be cock blocked, pvp on demand via instance, it's called world of warcraft. Meanwhile ill stick with my FFA pvp server where I can't be cock blocked from content by people on my own team. Good news tho bros, if you couldn't compete on red before with teams you could roll the same team as nihilum and never worry about pvp again! Sounds like a great pvp game.

Teams with 70 pop prime time as if there's 300+ people out there waiting for teams el oh lol morans

Bluebies asking for teams? I'm a former SZ player that would love for someone (especially the p99 staff) to create a new SZ/teams server. I see a bunch of other SZ players also asking for teams.
SZ players are about as hardcore as you can get for MMO PvP standards. We had to deal with nasty PvP exp deaths, almost absolutely no play nice policies (including same-team training for a long time), AND the constant threat of being PvP'ed by anyone regardless of their level over you.

SZ was vicious, and as the OP laid out... it also created the single greatest MMORPG experience I've ever had to this day.


To the OP - I love your ideas. They perfectly address the problems SZ experienced, and I could really see the evil infighting as a big thing to complicate that team. As an evil, I know damn well that there were times I would have loved to slaughter certain of my team mates - even being well aware of the shit storm it would have set off between guilds.

The only possible suggestion I would make is that +20 attributes for good characters might just be a bit much, mostly as evidenced in the circumstance of barbarians. Although that could easily be changed by just reducing the barbarian's bonus to that of the neutral team level regardless of which faction the player chooses.

In closing I'll say this:
Whoever makes the server OP has outline (or as close to it as possible) - I and many of my old SZ friends WILL play on it.

[Vexenu]

I am with you on that.

I would pick a dwarf or barbarian warrior over ogre if you got all those bonuses.

Dwarf vs Ogre
-20 str
-12 sta
+20 Agi
+35 Dex
+20 all resists

Barbarian vs Ogre
-7str
-7sta
+32agi
+20dex
+20 all resists

Rogues would be ridiculous for the evil side compared to barbarians. Classic era would be cake for Barbarians.

naked Barbarian vs DE rogue in full reavenscale

+52str
+40sta
+1 agi
+2 dex
+7 vs magic
-2 vs disease
-3vs po ison
+15 vs cold
+15 vs fire

Yep, that's the idea. Make the Good and Newt teams more appealing by buffing their stats. You might have inflated the Dwarf a little though, if you applied the +20 bonuses instead of +10, because Dwarves can only be Neutral team, so they would get the lesser bonus of only +10 (see this post by Faerie (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1049890&postcount=221) for the complete race/class breakdown by team). Good Barbarians can't be rogues, either, so it would really just be Good Barb warriors who had near-parity to Ogres (minus the frontal stun immunity and + some DEX). Neutral Barb/Dwarf warriors and rogues would still be very strong with their +10 bonuses though.

Each team would come with its pros and cons that would hopefully result in a relatively equal population split among dedicated players. I could see some hardcore types going Good for the underdog factor and the stat bonuses, while other hardcores would favor Evil for their race/class advantages and the extra challenge (but also opportunity, since it would mean not even your own team could contest you for spawns without a fight) of FFA PvP. Then you'd have the Neutral team occupying a large middle area, with no real weaknesses, good racial choices and large natural zone control. It would be a fun dynamic and would be interesting to watch how it played out.

[heartbrand]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.

[Vexenu]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.
Under these proposed rules, if you rolled on the Evil team you could attack anyone on the server over level 10, including other Evils.

That freedom comes with a price, however, in that if your Evil guild starts PKing other Evils you will basically become enemies to the entire server, and will have no safe haven anywhere, since all three teams would be gunning for you. So it's a dangerous option for any guild to consider, but one a top guild could possibly pull off, but not without a great amount of risk.

Red enough for you?

[heartbrand]

So Tera basically got it

[Velus]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.

To me Red is a pseudo-blue server. No exp loss, and because everyone can join every guild, it allows for one guild to gain dominance and strong-arm everyone into joining them. On SZ this simply wasn't a possibility, as even though there was Ruin and then Hate which had clear dominance on the server... they also still had massive opposition from the Goods and Newts simply because those two faction were unable to group/guild with the Evils.

Anyway, as also is outlined in the OP's post, the evil force would be able to fight among themselves... which would essentially create a FFA PvP team.

[heartbrand]

Teams won't fix the guild issue, look at blue you have over a thousand players and no one can contest TMO. One guild will still dominate this server welcome to classic eq working as classically intended.

[Rec]

I am not buying people not liking Sullon Zek. The server had the biggest pvp names and it was the place to be. It's much more likely that people don't want to give up the dominance they have over the other 50 people on the FFA server

[Velus]

Teams won't fix the guild issue, look at blue you have over a thousand players and no one can contest TMO. One guild will still dominate this server welcome to classic eq working as classically intended.

I get the feeling that you never played on SZ, and are making statements around something you have no experience with.

The reason it worked there is primarily because of 2 simple points.
1) The teams were hard coded. Meaning people were 'forced' to hate each other. Everyone with a red name was your enemy, and was to be stopped/killed. Everyone with a blue name was your ally. There was no mamby-pamby shit of "You're my enemy and I will kill you!.... Oh wait. Your guild can help me get epic loots? Never mind, I love you guys and here's my app!".

2) Trains were allowed. Your guild is about to take down Trak? Well clearly no one will be able to stop you, as you guys are in position and are just finishing last minute buffs to-OH SHIT. A bard just zoned in and I'm sure he has Selo's Song of Travel on, and he's headed right for your raid with every single mob in the zone in-tow.
This happened all the time, and many raids were ended because of it. Raids would start setting up advanced groups to intercept any training and protect the raid itself from the wipe.

[Vexenu]

Teams won't fix the guild issue, look at blue you have over a thousand players and no one can contest TMO. One guild will still dominate this server welcome to classic eq working as classically intended.

Look, it's quite obvious you either haven't read my proposal in detail, lack the intelligence to understand it, or are so hopelessly immersed in Red that you reflexively shit all over the idea of another server because it would threaten your guild's monopoly of pixels on Red.

My proposal includes the idea of serverwide advance shouts for raid mobs plus a small variance. This would make it much harder for a single guild to dominate PvE, since the entire server would have an hour warning on each boss spawn and would be able to contest for the mob with PvP. Additionally, the spawns couldn't be locked down with respawns precisely timed to the minute as happens with no variance on Red now, which means guilds couldn't reliably lock down spawns during off-peak hours.

[HippoNipple]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.

You are on a server where you can't attack 2/3 of the people in your range and you play a lot. Don't even act like you have free will on this server. You are restricted by something much more powerful than hard coded rules.

[heartbrand]

You are on a server where you can't attack 2/3 of the people in your range and you play a lot. Don't even act like you have free will on this server. You are restricted by something much more powerful than hard coded rules.

negative because I have the option to deguild @ any time of my choosing and kill people. if my guild pisses me off and I dont like em? I can deguild and go to town on them. Team server? im fucked

[heartbrand]

here's wut u people dont get. velious is going to take 60 active people @ any one time to down targets, this has been confirmed by current beta testing where 45-55 + people are getting raped currently. all the PVEr's will flock to that guild, there aren't enough people out there to sustain teams.

[Stinkum]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.

No one believes that you really think that. If it was Chewie or someone who said this, everyone would believe him because that's how he has always rolled on this server. It sounds like you're just coming up with random arguments that suit you, not what you really think.

[heartbrand]

No one believes that you really think that. If it was Chewie or someone who said this, everyone would believe him because that's how he has always rolled on this server. It sounds like you're just coming up with random arguments that suit you, not what you really think.

then surprise surprise anon forum troll, u dont no me

[runlvlzero]

Any server where I can't attack whoever I want is a blue server IMO.

I took you off ignore because you fuck up with lil juicy tidbits like this.

Dood YOU ARE ON A SERVER WHERE YOU BASICALLY CANT WONT DONT ATTACK ANYONE. (edit missed a V in my rage)

Gratz on Nili app.

The man in Nili saying this ... taste the rainbow jizz. Drunk on it.

And P.S. no one respects you much anymore or your opinion because all you do is come shit up legitimately cool threads/ideas with this crap.

[HippoNipple]

negative because I have the option to deguild @ any time of my choosing and kill people. if my guild pisses me off and I dont like em? I can deguild and go to town on them. Team server? im fucked

So it's that choice you have that makes this server fun for you even though there is 0% chance you would ever bite the hand that feeds you? As the poster above said, coming from you this is a complete joke. You can't front being a rebel, pvper, etc. on this server when everyone knows your past. Your identity has been lost and you have been issued a number.

I actually feel bad for the Nihilum members that do just want to come here, keep their head down and enjoy some PvE they can't get anywhere else. People like HB that preach this bullshit while being an obvious hypocrite make the guild look bad.

[heartbrand]

dunno dawg I fought nihilum for over a year in multiple guilds, what's your credentials? I get more pvp in nihilum than I would outside of it atm. If you're not in nihilum you can't kill other people cuz then you piss them off and grief them to nihilum, the servers too small to make fun small pvp guilds cuz no1 to kill really, but if you're in nihilum you can kill every1 else. There's not a lot of nihilum on during the week so it's not as if I detagged that I suddenly would have tons of targets.

At the end of the day I don't get it. People talk about this being a big bad pvp server where pve is dumb and meaningless but yet they seem so concerned about what Nihilum does or does not do, how does them killing bosses affect your enjoyment of pvp server?

[Stinkum]

Like I said, no one believes you. People are judged on their behavior in game. How many years have you been in Nihilum now? You've had absolutely no problem with not being able to attack 4/5ths of the populace in your range for years now, so don't feign that you suddenly are concerned.

[runlvlzero]

dunno dawg I fought nihilum for over a year in multiple guilds, what's your credentials? I get more pvp in nihilum than I would outside of it atm. If you're not in nihilum you can't kill other people cuz then you piss them off and grief them to nihilum, the servers too small to make fun small pvp guilds cuz no1 to kill really, but if you're in nihilum you can kill every1 else. There's not a lot of nihilum on during the week so it's not as if I detagged that I suddenly would have tons of targets.

At the end of the day I don't get it. People talk about this being a big bad pvp server where pve is dumb and meaningless but yet they seem so concerned about what Nihilum does or does not do, how does them killing bosses affect your enjoyment of pvp server?

A valid point, touche. But it does not detract from the idea that many want a teams server or want to think about it.

Nor does our wanting a team server revolve around Nihilum. It could be quite possible that pvp here is stale for other reasons and that Nihilum is just a symptom of that staleness.

Yet the both you and Hippo fell into the trap of whether teams was going to affect Nihilum or not. You from the perspective of how Nihilum would effect teams and and Hipp how teams would effect Nihilum.

Like I said, no one believes you. People are judged on their behavior in game. How many years have you been in Nihilum now? You've had absolutely no problem with not being able to attack 4/5ths of the populace in your range, so your attempt to feign that you suddenly care about this is comical.

Stinkium your rep is fine... I mean HB rep is pretty shot, almost as bad as Gloinzz was before and after apping. In concurance with Stinkum here.

[heartbrand]

cuz a lot of the reasons ive seen given for teams have been in order to avoid one big "zerg" guild

[heartbrand]

Like I said, no one believes you. People are judged on their behavior in game. How many years have you been in Nihilum now? You've had absolutely no problem with not being able to attack 4/5ths of the populace in your range for years now, so don't feign that you suddenly are concerned.

you can't have it both ways, you claim that during the week nihilum isnt on so we need variance but you claim that by being in nihilum I have no one to kill

[Velus]

dunno dawg I fought nihilum for over a year in multiple guilds, what's your credentials? I get more pvp in nihilum than I would outside of it atm. If you're not in nihilum you can't kill other people cuz then you piss them off and grief them to nihilum, the servers too small to make fun small pvp guilds cuz no1 to kill really, but if you're in nihilum you can kill every1 else. There's not a lot of nihilum on during the week so it's not as if I detagged that I suddenly would have tons of targets.

At the end of the day I don't get it. People talk about this being a big bad pvp server where pve is dumb and meaningless but yet they seem so concerned about what Nihilum does or does not do, how does them killing bosses affect your enjoyment of pvp server?

I have no knowledge of your "history" cause I'm new here, but it sounds like you don't get it because you've never quite experienced anything like what we're trying to describe.

I get the feeling, after having read MANY posts on these forums about R99, that this server is largly split into two categories. There's the PvE, and then there's the PvP. They both interact sometimes, but for the most part they are different... I'm assuming because this server has more strict PnP in place. People go about killing their raid targets (mostly Nihilum from what I understand), and sometimes people will go out looking for PvP.

On SZ the culture and game mentality was a bit different. In a way PvE was everyone's goal, but PvP was the thing you constantly did to prevent your opponents from being able to accomplish PvE. The PvP was an inherent part of PvE, and not at all a separate topic.

Because you always knew exactly who your enemies were, and exactly who your allies were, you never worried about "ticking anyone off".
As you yourself say, you find better fights as a member of Nihilum because you seemingly know exactly who your opponents are (i.e. non-Nihilum members).. well take that same dynamic and apply it to the hard coded teams. You also know exactly who your opponents are. You know who you should attack, and you don't have to stop and consider if you should attack them from fear of being black-listed or simply screwing yourself over in some unforeseen future consequence. You simply have the freedom to attack them without worrying about anything other than them calling some immediate friends in.

I guess all that can really be said now is that you haven't experienced what it was like first hand, and you just kinda have to trust those of us who did.

[runlvlzero]

I have no knowledge of your "history" cause I'm new here, but it sounds like you don't get it because you've never quite experienced anything like what we're trying to describe.

I get the feeling, after having read MANY posts on these forums about R99, that this server is largly split into two categories. There's the PvE, and then there's the PvP. They both interact sometimes, but for the most part they are different... I'm assuming because this server has more strict PnP in place. People go about killing their raid targets (mostly Nihilum from what I understand), and sometimes people will go out looking for PvP.

On SZ the culture and game mentality was a bit different. In a way PvE was everyone's goal, but PvP was the thing you constantly did to prevent your opponents from being able to accomplish PvE. The PvP was an inherent part of PvE, and not at all a separate topic.

Because you always knew exactly who your enemies were, and exactly who your allies were, you never worried about "ticking anyone off".
As you yourself say, you find better fights as a member of Nihilum because you seemingly know exactly who your opponents are (i.e. non-Nihilum members).. well take that same dynamic and apply it to the hard coded teams. You also know exactly who your opponents are. You know who you should attack, and you don't have to stop and consider if you should attack them from fear of being black-listed or simply screwing yourself over in some unforeseen future consequence. You simply have the freedom to attack them without worrying about anything other than them calling some immediate friends in.

I guess all that can really be said now is that you haven't experienced what it was like first hand, and you just kinda have to trust those of us who did.

Exactamundo.

[Stinkum]

you can't have it both ways, you claim that during the week nihilum isnt on so we need variance but you claim that by being in nihilum I have no one to kill

I have always thought variance is a retarded idea so you are obviously mixing me up with someone else. Nice deflection though.

[runlvlzero]

I have always thought variance is a retarded idea so you are obviously mixing me up with someone else. Nice deflection though.

Deflection is his favorite diplomacy card to play.

[Vexenu]

It's pretty clear that most of the people in Nihilum are defending the status quo on Red completely out of self-interest. I mean, there's no defensible argument in favor of a server where half the players are in a single guild and have no real competition. They're basically just playing on their own private guild server. Literally every other non-Nihilum could disappear from the server and they'd still probably still have two dozen guys logging on to raid and collect pixels to show off to each other.

I'd have a lot more respect for them if they would come say flat out that they enjoy raiding uncontested and having the occasional PvP steamroll for kicks. Because pretending that they're playing there because they love PvP or competition is completely laughable, and it's obvious they don't even believe that themselves. There's literally nothing more blue than raiding uncontested with half the server in your guild and rolling over unorganized opposition wearing Planes armor while you're fully decked in VP gear.

The funny thing is, I guarantee that 90% of Nihilum would actually have a lot more fun on a Teams server. They've got to be getting bored as fuck with the current state of Red. Yeah, you'd lose your pixels starting over on Teams, but so would everyone from Blue. And once you saw how exciting the Teams environment is, you wouldn't miss them. At least, not if you're the type of EQ player who values friends/fun/PvP/excitement more than simply acquiring pixels. And I think that's actually most players, even the ones currently hoarding pixels on Red.

Red is basically stuck in a rut and will never emerge, because there's zero incentive for any new players to join the server. It's on a long, slow death spiral and will continue that way. It will just be Nihilum raiding, one decent sized "opposition" guild that picks up the scraps, and a handful of PvP guilds of half a dozen people or less who run around randomly trying to pick people off. It will never get any better because no one wants to play on a terrible server like that except Nihilum and a few die hards who have already leveled characters and log on occasionally just to look for fights.

If you actually want a functioning PvP server, and not just a Nihilum raiding sandbox, you should support a new PvP Teams server with these proposed rules.

[Harllo]

As a SZ vet, i would play on a fresh sullon-style server.

[Old_PVP]

I would definitely play on this server.

Teams creates an atmosphere that allows bigger and better pvp battles.

Speaking from experience.

-RZ, SZ, DAoC, UO vet

[Bazia]

nothing like a bunch of people who either haven't played or played a day or two telling the staff how to fix the server

server aint broke (other then resists)

leave it alone

[Rec]

We don't want to do anything to your well running server with 50 people. This would be for a different server.

[Bazia]

I'm sure staff are going to put up another PVP server with the great interest red99 has gotten.

Not a second blue server to relieve the congestion of the 1k+ people playing there.

Server had 137 on last night, you mad newfag?

[Rec]

I'm sure staff are going to put up another PVP server with the great interest red99 has gotten.

Not a second blue server to relieve the congestion of the 1k+ people playing there.

Server had 137 on last night, you mad newfag?

No, I am happy for you, it sounds like an FFA pvp server was definitely the right move with those kinds of numbers.

[Bazia]

im glad you are an expert in red99 history and have zeroed in on why the pop is low

[Old_PVP]

im glad you are an expert in red99 history and have zeroed in on why the pop is low

You act like "red99 history" was something that merits remembering in the first place. You don't have to be an expert in "red99 history" to recognize the signs of a dying server struggling to stay afloat. Don't be so arrogant in thinking that your precious red99 is a perfect server that is not in dire need of an overhaul.

Most of us that are posting suggestions want to see this server succeed, because it is potentially one of the best options for free MMO pvp out there. Some may not have any "red99 history" but we do have years and years of PVP history from all walks of MMORPGs. This isn't our first rodeo, and this isn't 1999. Most of us aren't noobs anymore. We know what works and what makes good PVP, and teams work, even in EverQuest.

Get with the program and turn red99 into something worthy of remembrance.

[runlvlzero]

I'm sure staff are going to put up another PVP server with the great interest red99 has gotten.

Not a second blue server to relieve the congestion of the 1k+ people playing there.

Server had 137 on last night, you mad newfag?

In Bazias defence. 137 is pretty impressive for an EMU and what blue had near launch for a long while.

[Vexenu]

As a SZ vet, i would play on a fresh sullon-style server.

Harllo the Troll SK from Iggles? This is Spinfusor, good to see ya man. :D

[Harllo]

spinfusor! awesome!
good to see you're around

[Velus]

I'm sure staff are going to put up another PVP server with the great interest red99 has gotten.

Not a second blue server to relieve the congestion of the 1k+ people playing there.

Server had 137 on last night, you mad newfag?

And yet you can clearly see in this thread (along with the numerous others over the past month) many new people who have made accounts on this forum specifically to say that they would play on an SZ server.

Listen. Those of us who played the original SZ have mostly no interest in playing R99 because we just don't like the rule set... otherwise we would have played RZ - and I started out on RZ before SZ.

The interest is out there. Just because you don't understand it or refuse to acknowledge it doesn't mean that it goes away. Random people signing up for the forum shows that there are players interested.

[Rec]

This is a joyous day

[Porz]

No Rules SZ deity!

[runlvlzero]

Huzzah!

[Bazia]

yay just got the fuck griefed out of me, "we never wipe" but we will merge and then delete the server and replace it with a new one!

[Rec]

Bazia you doubted me earlier and now you see the truth.

[Bazia]

yeah i believed staff when they said they dont wipe servers

i was a moran

[Visual]

They should really just open the new server and leave the current one alone

anti-merge movement 2013

[Syft]

I actually love this idea! I was newt Dark elf on Sullon, but with this plan I'd roll evil just because it would allow me to kill everyone!!

The only thing I hated about Sullon was I couldn't kill those bluebie hate wannabe's in TOW!

[runlvlzero]

Its my mission to keep this thread near the top now =)

[dogbarf]

Hardcoded teams with the option to go FFA if you turn in your discord book pls.

[Tradesonred]

First thing i ever read that gets me to say a server like SZ might not fail

Still, griefing lowbies with a pvp pop thats having trouble keeping its head above 100 players, xp loss in pvp... MEH

[Vandy]

I like this a lot, I currently play blue and yes it's getting stale. I would give this server a shot.

[liveitup1216]

I'll dust off my p99 folder for a SZ server.

[Fawqueue]

Thorough read, and I like a lot of your ideas. I'm torn though on a lot of the alterations. On one hand, it would alleviate a potential repeat of the lop-sided teams on live. On the other hand, we're not just talking about people from the project who have tried Red and decided against it. A brand new classic server with a SZ rule set will be attractive to a lot of people who've never played here. And some of those potential new players might be turned off to find that all these unexpected alterations to a classic formula they thought they were getting.

I do think the SZ rule set is the way to go. We have FFA now and it's not working. Racial teams is enjoyable from the standpoint that everyone you start with is a buddy, but it's even more troubled with missing class/race comps.

I'm not suggesting not to make any of these changes, some of them are good (the only one I'm really against is the massive stats/resists bonus because even though it would help...it just feels too 'not real EQ' to me). I'm going to put my faith in the devs and the community to make this thing work. Retaining players is important, but I started years ago when our population was no better than Red. The quality of the product kept people coming in and staying, so if we do the same thing here we won't need quadruple xp and other weird "that's why I don't play emulators" kinda stuff.

[heartbrand]

Here's the problem with the FFA doesn't work argument, it's like opening up a shoe store that has no shoes / says fuck you to the customers and refuses to stock shoes for 2 years, then shuts down and opens up a suit store saying "well people just don't want shoes."

[Bazia]

no ruleset will work, once big dog is established people will quit

its not specific to FFA, your basically just fucking over the people invest in the current red

[Vexenu]

Literally the only thing confirmed at this point is that the new server will be teams, so continuing to talk about FFA is a waste of time. The server must include teams to attract enough players to keep it from turning into Red 2.0.

Also, under my proposed ruleset, the Evil team WILL BE TOTALLY FFA. If you want the freedom to attack anyone, it's very simple: roll Evil. If you think Nihilum will roll Evil, that means they'll have to deal with not only the Good and Neutral team coming after them, but potentially their own team as well. With serverwide advance shouts + small variance, they would also be forced to PvP for every spawn. If they can dominate the server by overcoming all that, then my hat will be off to them, because they would clearly have earned it.

And all this talk about exploiting teams to grief people is complete nonsense. Same-team training is illegal and should result in a suspension/ban if repeated. Running around with 6 wizards to KS people on your team doesn't even need to be illegal, because no one's going to do it. That's pure forum bullshitting. Plus, most of the people who want to grief will be rolling evil team for FFA anyway, so they would have no protection from hardcoded teams.

[runlvlzero]

no ruleset will work, once big dog is established people will quit

its not specific to FFA, your basically just fucking over the people invest in the current red

You sound like a pussy. What guild are you in? Join the motherfucking underdog team and be a pro. SZ worked great like that.

[Bazia]

yeah because on red everyone joined the underdogs

wait no they didnt they either joined nihilum or quit

well at least 90%

[runlvlzero]

Dood your argument is a straw man. You cannot predict the future of a server to that degree of accuracy. Everyone NOT in Nihilum was banned early on and the server had like a year to just rot in classic, then Nihilum had kunark on lockdown.

SZ was different. Totally different dynamics and evil dominated for entirely different reasons. And there was a ton more PvP and the underdogs did kill a lot of evils. Unlike here where they just infight constantly and let Nihilum run rampant.

[Bazia]

i really dont care got somewhat confirmation on merge that guilds will not be split

time to stack before merge

[Vandy]

Out of all the proposals I have read so far this one still seems the most interesting to me.

But I would say instead of adding Variance and having a world shout for the Spawn to just leave out variance.

[Vexenu]

Out of all the proposals I have read so far this one still seems the most interesting to me.

But I would say instead of adding Variance and having a world shout for the Spawn to just leave out variance.

The rationale behind having a small window of variance is to prevent a single guild from locking down spawns at off-peak hours, which would allow them to kill raid mobs with little to no PvP competition. This is basically what happens on Red now. With a 6 hour variance in place, if a guild kills Trakanon at 11 A.M. EST on a Tuesday, he could respawn at any time between 11 A.M. and 5 P.M. Friday (as opposed to respawning precisely at 11 A.M. again on Friday, 72 hours since the last kill). Then if he is killed at 4 P.M. on Friday, he could respawn at any time between 4 P.M. and 10 P.M. Monday, and so on.

The devs could tinker with this variance a bit to make it better. This is just a rough idea. The most important thing is simply having something in place to prevent raid spawns going uncontested due to being locked down at off-peak hours. This server needs to have raid spawns decided by which guild/team can kill their rivals, not which can avoid PvP because they lock down every raid spawn while their enemies are at work or sleeping. This is one of the most important elements to get right for drawing in disillusioned Blue players, who are sick of TMO dominating the high end game there, and would jump at the chance for real and direct ingame competition for mobs through PvP rather than by tracking and batphoning.

[Pudge]

Introduction:

This is a big wall of text, be warned. If your immersion levels aren't high then get the fuck out of here while you still can.

All right, you're still here. So let's nerd out for a bit.

All the recent talk about a possible new PvP Teams server has been very interesting. I’ve read through all the threads, and most people seem to be in favor of a ruleset similar to the one that existed on Sullon Zek, although a sizable minority doesn’t have faith in the SZ rules. In this post I will go into detail on why a slightly modified SZ ruleset is the best bet to go with. I do this to hopefully establish some kind of community consensus that can be presented to Rogean/Sirken/nilbog as they consider what to do about a possible PvP Teams server going forward. I base the following ideas on my personal experience playing on SZ back in the day and doing a ton of PvP, my experience playing casually on Blue for the past couple of years, as well as lurking this forum like a motherfucker and getting an idea for the pulse of Red players and their attitudes/experiences with the existing Red server.

To begin with, a quick overview of the SZ rules: there are three hardcoded teams to prevent cross-teaming. Teams based on deity choice (Good, Neutral, Evil). PvP level range was almost entirely unrestricted (a level 60 could kill a level 10, for example, although XP loss only occurred within a 5 level range). No play nice policy, trains, corpse camping, griefing allowed etc…

Although it may strike the uninitiated as strange and even counter-intuitive given the harshness, this is the best PvP ruleset for a number of reasons. Anyone who played on SZ can verify that this ruleset produced the best and most memorable MMO gameplay they ever experienced. Teams allow for a built-in method of providing leveling safety for new players, and promote intense community unlike anything on a Blue server or FFA PvP. It’s very much an “us versus them” dynamic which is impossible to reproduce under any other ruleset, and which results in both the most meaningful PvE and the most intense PvP. Teams have to look out for each other. High level players have to protect lower level zones. Everything is heightened. And meaningful PvP actually occurs with much greater frequency than on an FFA PvP server, because people aren’t worried about earning a PK rep with their enemies, they just kill them. But at the same time, teams provide a safe haven for new and lower level players. It’s the best of both worlds: more PvP and more accessible leveling at the same time.

That being said, SZ did have its weaknesses that subtracted from the enjoyment of the server. Most notable was the dominance of the Evil team and the catastrophic weakness of the Good team. Any effort to replicate SZ must therefore take steps to prevent a similar recurrence of this imbalance. Some changes also must be made given the reality of several other relevant facts: the vastly increased knowledge about the game after 14 years, the smaller population we have to draw from, and the fact that accounts are free and essentially unlimited.

Differences proposed for team balancing:


Evil team is able to FFA PvP within itself. Any evil player over level 10 can attack any other evil player over level 10. Makes RP sense, because since they are evil they don't mind killing each other. This is an easy and elegant solution to address the problem of the Evil team's built-in advantages. This is necessary to weaken the evil team with internal strife and to prevent the evils from having an essentially uncontested a safe haven on Kunark. Powergamers are naturally attracted to the Evil team due to its superior races (Ogre, Troll, Iksar) and PvP classes (SK, Necro). Allowing intra-team PvP among evils will therefore allow for a rift to emerge between PvP powergamers and PvE powergamers. Players who join the evil team primarily to PvP will inevitably begin to prey on fellow evil team members who draw their ire. This infighting will help to weaken the Evil team and prevent its outright dominance.



Good team receives large innate bonuses to their characters, +20 to all stats, including resists. They also receive a permanent +20% XP bonus. The Good team is burdened with such godawful races and starting locations that there is simply no way to get enough people to play them normally. There has to be an incentive. Innate stat and XP bonuses give powergamers a reason to consider the good team, especially for the resist bonuses, which would be significant but not overpowering in both PvP and raiding. The accelerated XP would attract more casual players, who would like the idea of being able to level more quickly on the good team. Even this wouldn't be sufficient to bring the good team to parity most likely, but hopefully it would be enough to prevent them from being a completely blown out non-factor like they were on SZ.



Neutral team receives a similar but smaller bonus, +10 to all stats/resists and a +10% experience bonus. This incentive will encourage more people to roll neutral who do not have a strong opinion on which team to join, and who might otherwise go evil based on chance/spur of the moment decision. Since neutrals have more natural zone control and better racial choices than goods, they don't need as much of a bonus to compete with evils.


Hopefully these modifications (Evil FFA PvP, Good/Newt stat & XP bonuses) would result in more players rolling Good and Newt. Even then, a perfect 33%/33%/33% population split is impossible. But even a population distribution of 20% Good, 30% Neutral and 50% Evil would be workable and better than what SZ had. Even if Evils comprise half the server, they will be weakened by infighting enough to allow the smaller number of Newts and Goods to have more than a fighting chance once they organize. Increasing Good and Neutral team base stats is non-classic, but in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively minor change that is almost entirely behind the scenes, but which could have the very needed impact of swinging more players away from the Evil team.

These modifications should result in a good distribution of players across all three teams. Some more PvE-focused players will go evil to take advantage of the large races, but others will not want to deal with the potential headache of essentially FFA PvP on the evil team. The most hardcore PvPers will go evil exactly for this reason, but if they prey on fellow evils they will basically make themselves pariahs to the entire server and will face the consequences. Overall I would predict a small but persistently annoying level of intra-team PvP within the Evil team, not enough to destroy it but enough to weaken it a bit. The Neutral and Good teams will allow for safer leveling due to no intra-team PvP, which will provide a more natural atmosphere for Blue players to become acclimated to the server. Note that this one simple change to the Evil team also essentially allows for the coexistence of FFA and Team based PvP under the same ruleset. If you want the most hardcore experience, go evil and kill everything in sight. If you want to reap the innate race/class advantages of team evil, be prepared to defend yourself against the chaos of FFA PvP. And if you want a more traditional teams PvP experience with hardcoded allies and enemies, roll neutral or good.

Other needed modifications:


XP would be set at quadruple the normal rate for levels 1-20, and double the normal rate thereafter. A new server MUST get players invested in their characters as quickly as possible. People are not going to stick around if they can't make reasonable progress and get a taste of real PvP with a decently leveled character. Permanent double XP makes the server much more accessible to new players who join down the line as well. Enhanced XP on a PvP server is simply a must at this point.



Characters level 1-9 are not PvP enabled in newbie zones and cities. Prevents shitbags from driving off helpless new players with griefing tactics and uber-twinks down the road.



Add special global chat channels for each team, i.e. /evil, /neut, /good. This will allow teams to quickly and easily communicate amongst themselves, and help to prevent griefing by allowing low level players to summon higher level help. It also will promote feelings of community within each team and facilitate group formation. Basically a team-specific version of global OOC (which should not be on the server).



Put in a Firiona Vie version of the OT hammer. Totally non-classic but completely necessary to balance the teams (OT hammers being massively useful for raid mobilization, it's just more incentive for powergamers to roll Evil). This also goes a long way toward helping to alleviate the problem of team Evil having total domination of Kunark. Make it a semi-annoying faction quest like the sarnak braids, just use drolvargs instead.



Launch the server with Classic only at first. No Kunark. Either follow the original timeline or maybe add Kunark in after 2 months minimum. The world must be smaller at first to make the server feel alive with a smaller population. This also prevents the problem of allowing Evils a huge head start on safe leveling in Kunark. By the time Kunark comes out, Goods and Neutrals will be able to contest most of the continent, and Evils will have to protect their young Iksar from harm.



Remove items that are classic, but which produce un-classic effects with modern knowledge/mastery of the game, i.e. Trak Teeth lifetaps and Soulfire CHs. These have no place in classic EQ PvP.



Allow only characters of the same team on each account, and disallow logging into the server from the same IP with multiple accounts within 30 minutes of each other. Yes there are ways around this, but make it as annoying as possible for people to spy on opposing teams or same-team train. Be very judicious in giving out IP exemptions, and quick to ban abusers.



Cap the speed of leveling shortly after server launch. Something like:

Week 1: Max level 20
Week 2: Max level 30
Week 4: Max level 40
Week 6: Max level 50
Week 8: Earliest consideration of Kunark launch depending on community demand

This means neckbeards can't race ahead of everyone else and dominate the server from the get-go by simply massively outleveling them, as happened with <Ruin> on SZ. This shifts the focus from PvE to PvP, where it belongs on a PvP server. With the 4x XP bonus in place from 1-20, almost everyone should be able to reach level 20 within a week with even modest effort. From there things will open up a little more, but the caps in place should help keep most players in the same general level range, which keeps things fun, and results in battles for PvE zone control rather than just random griefing. Also, imagining a raid-sized force of level 20s descending into Lower Guk during the first week is just hilariously awesome.


Other important considerations:


One of the main things to realize is that the great majority of players on a new PvP teams servers will be BLUE PLAYERS. Many of them will end up quitting because they simply won't enjoy PvP, but a lot of them will end up staying if they start to have positive experiences with the PvP aspect of the game. The best PvP happens with friends and guildmates, so teams encourage this, while FFA PvP is terrible because it totally discourages new players and leaves them feeling helpless and isolated in a hostile environment.


Item loot is terrible because this is an item-driven game, and the possibility of losing items means the vast majority of people will go out of their way to avoid or minimize that risk as much as possible. This means an overall reduction in both the quality and frequency of PvP and an increase in lame tactics like naked casters.


Coin loot is sufficient, as is causing 50% XP loss on death and a corpse run (and a corpse camping if warranted). Beyond that fighting is about nothing more than pride and zone control. That should be sufficient for any truly competitive PvPers. Implement a scoreboard that tracks all kills to encourage this. Possibly have lootable insignias like on SZ with some kind of reward, potions, etc...


The resist system must be as close to classic as possible. 100 MR should resist 99% of roots/snares/blinds etc... 100 FR/CR should be something like 1/4 full resist, 1/4 low partial, 1/4 mid-high partial, 1/4 full dmg, etc... The basic rule of the thumb and most important thing for the resists system is that movement altering spells should basically NEVER land on a non-debuffed player with “good” (100+) magic resist.


Have raid mobs spawn within a 6 hour window with a one hour advance shout. Example, Trakanon is killed, and can respawn anywhere from 72-78 hours later. If he is going to spawn at 75 hours, a global shout announces he will spawn an hour from now at 74 hours. It's basically a one hour advance batphone to everyone on the server. More dedicated guilds will be rewarded by being in a defensive position at zone lines since they can camp the entire 6 hour window, but casual players will be able to move in to attack as the window closes in the final hour. Epic PvP will result. The precise timing could be tinkered with, the main necessity here is serverwide advance shouts for all raid mobs to encourage mass PvP competition for those mobs rather than poopsocking or locking down precise mob spawn times at off-peak hours.


Most important goals of a new server:

Promote parity between Good/Evil/neutral teams as much as possible
Encourage Blue players to stay on server
Prevent dedicated group of neackbeards from dominating server from launch
Eliminate all bugs/cheats/gay shit that plagued launch of Red
Eliminate duping/RMT/account trading/raid drama that plagues Blue

Conclusion:

This server should be started this Fall to capitalize on returning players who left over summer, as well as the fact that MANY players from Blue are currently fed up with the high end scene there. Guaranteed hundreds of them would give a PvP Teams server a try if it promised an escape from the dead-end raid scene on Blue. Launching the server soon would also give people time to gear up before Velious is released. If a new server were released to coincide with Velious, most players would simply remain on Blue, because their geared characters are already there. Blue would then remain overloaded and a new server would have a weak launch. If a new server is ever to succeed, it must be launched soon. And if a PvP Teams server is ever to succeed, it must be launched at this point, when people are frustrated with Blue and ready to start fresh, even if that means accepting some PvP.

Your thoughts:

Let's hear them!

I agree with almost everything you said. Lots of great ideas. 2 things:

1) if darkies get FFA status, this may actually be an advantage during raid time if one dark guild has enough numbers. Other teams would have to deal with spies sitting in the midst of their raid, waiting to call out when the mob gets engaged. But darkies can kill all unknowns. However, if raid zones are going to be flagged FFA anyway, this becomes a non-issue (if we flag FFA zones/areas, server becomes slightly less team oriented, but I think it might be worth it.). OR have the zones go FFA only when the dragon is up, I like this idea better.

2) I think item loot can work.. it just has to be custom tailored to make it still fun for everyone. Maybe looting stackable items only, something of that nature that isn't too harsh but can also be a treat.

[Pudge]

In terms of variance, no variance. Just stagger the spawns so the mobs aren't popping at the same time every Sunday. Give them timers like 7.2 days instead of exactly 7 days. This way the time the dragon spawns will still be known, but the actual time of day will be different, pushing the mob to another playtime. Give different mobs slightly different timers so they spread themselves out over time, and it won't be just a 3 hour window every week that the mobs are up.

[Old_PVP]

yeah because on red everyone joined the underdogs

wait no they didnt they either joined nihilum or quit

well at least 90%

no ruleset will work, once big dog is established people will quit

its not specific to FFA, your basically just fucking over the people invest in the current red

True pvpers WANT the underdog team. They want the challenge, they truly are the 1%. Many of the older pvpers have been moving from game to game, searching for that long lost spark of PVP. Trying to find a fix, waiting for that perfect ruleset to come along. They don't care about shiny loot or ever seeing end game bosses.

All they want is to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."

The real reason for underdog failure, in any game, is never a lack of spirit and willingness to fight. Core mechanics are to blame, such as in red99. If you have a FFA pvp environment, item loot MUST exist, in order for the dynamic of the server to be balanced. Item loot must be present for various different reasons on FFA. Without it, the underdogs of the server have little chance of inflicting noticeable damage to the top guilds.

This is all a moot point anyways since the new server will be TEAMS, and a team style ruleset does not need item loot to succeed.

-Underdog for life

[Vandy]

In terms of variance, no variance. Just stagger the spawns so the mobs aren't popping at the same time every Sunday. Give them timers like 7.2 days instead of exactly 7 days. This way the time the dragon spawns will still be known, but the actual time of day will be different, pushing the mob to another playtime. Give different mobs slightly different timers so they spread themselves out over time, and it won't be just a 3 hour window every week that the mobs are up.

I like this solution over variance. The spawn time would always be X.25 days later so if its killed at 11am then it will spawn at 5pm the next time and then 11 pm the following.

[Dullah]

In terms of variance, no variance. Just stagger the spawns so the mobs aren't popping at the same time every Sunday. Give them timers like 7.2 days instead of exactly 7 days. This way the time the dragon spawns will still be known, but the actual time of day will be different, pushing the mob to another playtime. Give different mobs slightly different timers so they spread themselves out over time, and it won't be just a 3 hour window every week that the mobs are up.

Makes no sense at all. Variance just complicates the process of contesting mobs, the most important element on a pvp server.

[runlvlzero]

After thinking. Hardcoded locked in place teams based on race and religion are bad. Yeah its great immersion. But not the cure.

SZ came close but it fell short in a lot of ways.

R99 can do better than SZ.

[Rec]

SZ can be improved like anything else. I am still confident SZ like would win any vote though :)

[Zuranthium]

The original post of the thread is beautiful. Give us exactly that server.

I'd just add in one extra modification - the Good and Neutral teams should be able to collectively vote upon individuals within their team that they want to be able to kill. This server definitely needs to have no rules and no GM interference, aside from fixing bugs and banning hackers/boxers. Let the players handle EVERYTHING on their own. As such, the good and neutral teams need to be able to weed out trolls. If enough people within the team 'report' a certain individual, then that individual should become killable for a period of 24 hours.

[Old_PVP]

The original post of the thread is beautiful. Give us exactly that server.

I'd just add in one extra modification - the Good and Neutral teams should be able to collectively vote upon individuals within their team that they want to be able to kill. This server definitely needs to have no rules and no GM interference, aside from fixing bugs and banning hackers/boxers. Let the players handle EVERYTHING on their own. As such, the good and neutral teams need to be able to weed out trolls. If enough people within the team 'report' a certain individual, then that individual should become killable for a period of 24 hours.

Great idea. This would keep the no lifers that are hell bent on same team training and x-teaming in check.

I also agree this modified SZ type server that the original poster describes is pretty close to perfection.

Make it so GMs!

[Vexenu]

I want to expand on a few points here in response to the ongoing debate about a ruleset.

Item loot: nilbog and a few others seem to like the idea of some sort of item loot. It's inarguable that item loot heightens the PvP experience, but it works out much better in theory than in practice. Ultimately what item loot does is make PvP less frequent and less fun. It encourages ganking and lopsided fights, because it's never smart to risk your gear if you don't have to.

Item loot also ends up contributing to the imbalance of the server by favoring the most hardcore players who can secure a full set of no-drop gear. So those players can essentially PvP risk free, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, while more casual players wearing droppable gear have everything to lose and nothing to gain. And of course, item loot also strongly favors casters, who don't rely on gear at all compared to melees.

Item loot would do more than anything else to kill a new server before it even got off the ground. Even most Red players don't want item loot. Given the love of griefing on Red, that should tell you something. It's just a mechanic that the vast majority of EQ players have no interest in. Item loot is not needed as an incentive to PvP with SZ rules. The incentives to PvP with SZ rules are: pride, zone control, mob competition and simply to survive. The end result is that you get a lot more PvP occurring without item loot in place, and the PvP that does occur is much more fun and meaningful, rather than naked casters and lopsided gank squads rolling people.

PVP level ranges: Level ranges seem like a good idea to prevent griefing, but they take a way an awful lot from the immersion of the server and lead to a lot of problems with out of range healers. Having no level ranges like on Sullon Zek sounds, on paper, like it would result in a ton of griefing, but it doesn't work out like that in practice. Also, if the new server utilized the level caps during the weeks after server launch like I suggested in my first post, that would virtually eliminate the possibility of high levels griefing newb areas during the critical early period of the server's life. As the server matured and the level caps came off, the possibility for high level characters to grief newbie zones would emerge, but by then each team would have a sufficient number of leveled characters to defend its newbies. The team chat channels would assist this as well by making it very easy to summon help.

There's really no need to devise a complicated system for determining which players you can attack based on whether or not they cast a heal and fall into a given level range. Just allow any character over level 10 to be attacked. With accelerated XP in place, most characters will not be under level 20-30 for long, anyway.

No level ranges is what allows for zone control to emerge, which is a huge dynamic on a Teams server. With level ranges in place, higher level players are basically unable to defend their lower level teammates from PKs. And level ranges ultimately do nothing to stop determined griefers, who will simply used supertwinked characters with high level healers supporting them. With no level ranges in place, the high level members of a team have the freedom to simply attack and kill any enemy who harasses that team's leveling zones. This means that in order to truly grief hard, a player must go out of his way with a max-level character, repeatedly and during off-peak hours when help can't be summoned immediately. Which brings me to my next point...

Griefing: There seems to be a small minority of players who want nothing more than to inflict suffering on others and to intentionally make the new server fail. These people most likely have some kind of severe IRL problems that result in them feeling completely powerless and angry toward the world, so they enjoy taking revenge in a virtual world where they can feel powerful. I would recommend removing these people from the box by having GMs take action against their accounts without warning if they repeatedly demonstrate retarded and purposeless griefing behavior like slaughtering and corpse camping newbies, or deliberately abusing team protections to grief their own team, etc... I'm not advocating banning players who do this a few times or every now and then, but only those who literally go out of their way to shit on the server and deliberately abuse the ruleset to try to sabotage it and make people quit. The server and staff simply have no obligation to tolerate this behavior. It would be like a restaurant allowing patrons to come in, trash the place, spray every other diner with bottles of ketchup, then leave without paying. People like this are the reason that Red failed, and there seem to be a handful of people who would deliberately try to make the Teams server fail. There's just no reason to put up with that.

You could even grief the griefers with less punitive measures, like hitting them with an undispellable snare with an hour long duration or a debuff setting all their stats to -100. Basically, just give them a taste of the grief they love to inflict on others. Most of these people just need to have their asses kicked, so to speak, to wake them up and make them realize what shitheads they are. Once they are on the receiving end of some grief, I think most of them will wise up and not make it their life's mission to sabotage the experience of a 14 year old elf simulator. But GM's should not be afraid to step in and regulate on players who repeatedly attempt to shit up the server to compensate for their failures IRL.

[Absynthe2k5]

Have you guys heard about that new MMO WoW? It's going to have team PvP.

Ya I heard about it and guess what ther is a shitload more pvp in it then here atm...omg.

Could you maybe stop trying to derail progress and say something worthwhile? Guy has a bunch of good ideas.

[Vandy]

After thinking. Hardcoded locked in place teams based on race and religion are bad. Yeah its great immersion. But not the cure.

SZ came close but it fell short in a lot of ways.

R99 can do better than SZ.

Red99 is stale. You have absolutely no new influx of players. Those that do start there are alone in the wild and are quickly griefed off the server. If you are happy with the current population and pvp level of R99 then continue to play there by all means.

I think that the early days of the server will be the most critical if you can get people to invest time to around level 30 they will most likely stay and play. That is why I support the idea of level limits for an initial period of time before the level limit is removed. This will allow the casual players to actually level up at a similar pace as those people who can play eq 24/7 and don't have other obligations.

[Masq]

One of the most original and thought out suggestions for the new PvP server. While I'd prefer a blue server, this sounds like something I could get behind and give a shot at.

[wrxBRAH]

A very well thought out proposal Vex. I'd play on this server.

[runlvlzero]

I still like the idea of Dullah's teams. Being able to select team is important. But I would be in favor of min/max races being default discord or FFA team.

This is a better rules set for a more RP oriented server. Which, the EMU community sorely needs. But will it retain PvP players?

[funhorroryes]

should just be SZ ruleset. i like the fact evils can attack other evils though.. but honestly, that will make the team more attractive

also, rolling rallos wood elf bards/warriors and rallos halfling warriors was blocked 4 weeks after launch

[Rokannis]

should just be SZ ruleset. i like the fact evils can attack other evils though.. but honestly, that will make the team more attractive

also, rolling rallos wood elf bards/warriors and rallos halfling warriors was blocked 4 weeks after launch

Oshit funhorror coming out of the woodworks.

[Elderan]

The rationale behind having a small window of variance is to prevent a single guild from locking down spawns at off-peak hours, which would allow them to kill raid mobs with little to no PvP competition. This is basically what happens on Red now. With a 6 hour variance in place, if a guild kills Trakanon at 11 A.M. EST on a Tuesday, he could respawn at any time between 11 A.M. and 5 P.M. Friday (as opposed to respawning precisely at 11 A.M. again on Friday, 72 hours since the last kill). Then if he is killed at 4 P.M. on Friday, he could respawn at any time between 4 P.M. and 10 P.M. Monday, and so on.

The devs could tinker with this variance a bit to make it better. This is just a rough idea. The most important thing is simply having something in place to prevent raid spawns going uncontested due to being locked down at off-peak hours. This server needs to have raid spawns decided by which guild/team can kill their rivals, not which can avoid PvP because they lock down every raid spawn while their enemies are at work or sleeping. This is one of the most important elements to get right for drawing in disillusioned Blue players, who are sick of TMO dominating the high end game there, and would jump at the chance for real and direct ingame competition for mobs through PvP rather than by tracking and batphoning.

Except all mobs are up in prime time now on R99 and have been for months.

Blue has proven that variance does not allow for other guilds to kill raid mobs.

[Elderan]

Red99 is stale. You have absolutely no new influx of players. Those that do start there are alone in the wild and are quickly griefed off the server. If you are happy with the current population and pvp level of R99 then continue to play there by all means.

I think that the early days of the server will be the most critical if you can get people to invest time to around level 30 they will most likely stay and play. That is why I support the idea of level limits for an initial period of time before the level limit is removed. This will allow the casual players to actually level up at a similar pace as those people who can play eq 24/7 and don't have other obligations.

R99 is stale due to the focus on raid level people. R99 needs alot more people from 1-55 range not more raiders. But right now R99 gets 147 people avg and thats not far from where we need to be. A target of 300 average is reasonable for any pvp server and much larger then any emu pvp server out there.

[Colgate]

are you sure that we shouldn't be aiming for 301? or 299?

[Vexenu]

Except all mobs are up in prime time now on R99 and have been for months.

Blue has proven that variance does not allow for other guilds to kill raid mobs.

Neither Blue nor Red has a serverwide global shout announcing the spawn of each raid mob one hour in advance. That is the crucial point, not the small variance window. The small variance window is in place to prevent mobs being locked down exclusively off-peak, which is exactly what guilds would try to do in response to the serverwide advance shout if the variance were not in place. The intention of both of these changes together is to make it as difficult as possible for any single guild or team to get raid mobs without having to PvP for them.

[Dullah]

Neither Blue nor Red has a serverwide global shout announcing the spawn of each raid mob one hour in advance. That is the crucial point, not the small variance window. The small variance window is in place to prevent mobs being locked down exclusively off-peak, which is exactly what guilds would try to do in response to the serverwide advance shout if the variance were not in place. The intention of both of these changes together is to make it as difficult as possible for any single guild or team to get raid mobs without having to PvP for them.

An announcement of when mobs are spawning wont change anything. Its easy to find out when raids are taking place if you're paying attention. If you don't know when dragons are spawning, chances are you're not going to be able to kill them anyway.

[Vexenu]

An announcement of when mobs are spawning wont change anything. Its easy to find out when raids are taking place if you're paying attention. If you don't know when dragons are spawning, chances are you're not going to be able to kill them anyway.

It's a teams server, not a guild vs. guild server, which is basically what Red (FFA) and Blue both are in practice.

Under existing rulesets, there is no reason for guilds that can't kill/mobilize for certain raid mobs to even bother keeping track of the spawn timer. With teams, however, even smaller/less powerful guilds can contribute to the kill by helping their team out in the PvP battles before the raid kill.

A one-hour advance shout would be sufficient to generate spontaneous PvP competition for the majority of raid spawns. It wouldn't require poopsocking or any advance knowledge of the spawn timer whatsoever. It would be everyone on the server getting one hour notice that Trak or CT or whatever is about to spawn, and then mobilizing and preparing to battle the other teams to get the kill.

[jcmtg]

An announcement of when mobs are spawning wont change anything. Its easy to find out when raids are taking place if you're paying attention. If you don't know when dragons are spawning, chances are you're not going to be able to kill them anyway.

So what? With a server wide announcement i'll know where PvP will be.

[Vexenu]

Bumping this because more talk of Teams lately. Would like more eyeballs on these ideas pointing out pros/cons so we can eventually come up with the best ruleset possible.

[runlvlzero]

Aenors other ruleset better still IMO.

[Origin]

Excellent. Would play on this server.

[Aenor]

Bump. Discuss teams, nerds.

[Aenor]

Finally tried to read this. You lost me when you started talking about stat bonuses for good and neutral. My personal pref would be to simply have the original raceware ruleset, aka the most successful ruleset in history, i.e. keep it 100% classic. Since the staff seems opposed to fully soft-coded teams, I came up with the hybrid hard code/soft code server. You can't have all these customizations because it ruins my immersion. However, a server where you were only pvp- to the people from your starting city would be highly immersive. REP YO CITY.

[Lowlife]

Aenors other ruleset better still IMO.

[Vexenu]

Finally tried to read this. You lost me when you started talking about stat bonuses for good and neutral. My personal pref would be to simply have the original raceware ruleset, aka the most successful ruleset in history, i.e. keep it 100% classic. Since the staff seems opposed to fully soft-coded teams, I came up with the hybrid hard code/soft code server. You can't have all these customizations because it ruins my immersion. However, a server where you were only pvp- to the people from your starting city would be highly immersive. REP YO CITY.

Your ruleset is pretty good (the best besides mine, IMO), but has a few problems that make it unworkable. It wouldn't be balanced. No evil Bards and good Shamans alone ensures that. Every endgame player will end up on the Neutral team because those are core raiding classes.

My ruleset is basically SZ with a few corrections for balance reasons. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel with an entirely new ruleset. I'm going with something that worked in the past. The goal is simply to have an SZ style server with teams more balanced than they were on live. Stat bonuses to Neut and Good, Evil team FFA PvP and FV hammers are the major balance changes proposed. Stat bonuses are basically behind the scenes and do nothing to affect immersion. FFA PvP on Evil has nothing to do with immersion either. The FV hammer is the most drastic change, but even that is basically just copying an existing item in the game and making it available to players on every team. Nothing I proposed is unbalancing in the least.

Basically, the only valid criticisms to be leveled against my proposed ruleset are those that focus on the SZ rules themselves (i.e. training, no level limit PvP). The fixes I proposed are actually quite minimal, and would be preferable to the balance issues that would emerge from other rulesets which are far more problematic in my mind. Due to EQ's design, there is no "perfect" PvP ruleset, especially not that adheres to classic gameplay and the game's lore. But I think these modified SZ rules come the closest to squaring that circle.

[Lowlife]

rep yo city > convoluted and complicated and even less classic system,

taking down raid mobs without the benefit of shamen or bards should be worth bragging rights

[Gustoo]

I think the most important thing for the new server will be a timed level cap roll out. This will allow the server to more accurately emulate a classic EQ experience. It will allow more players to enjoy more aspects of the game. Guys with multiple upper perscriptions can level up 5 or 6 guys to max level while normal people can level 1 guy to max level. This will keep everyone bashing shields together for prolonged periods and will allow more new players to stumble into the fresh server before 50% of pop is max level and everyone is whining about max level stuff.

Regarding the OP:

The only levels where EXP bonus is needed is level 2 and 3. These are the worst hell levels in the game bar none.

Level 1 should be normal XP, 2 and 3 should be 400% and level 4-20 should be standard EXP at the fastest. People flying through these levels makes the game suck and means 80% of in game items are literally not carried back to be sold to vendors let alone players. Most people get BORED with their characters in the 40's when leveling gets slow and boring, and having an EXP bonus everywhere means the game gets top heavy too quickly and new players just see emptiness everywhere. Not fun and not classic.

[runlvlzero]

I think the most important thing for the new server will be a timed level cap roll out. This will allow the server to more accurately emulate a classic EQ experience. It will allow more players to enjoy more aspects of the game. Guys with multiple upper perscriptions can level up 5 or 6 guys to max level while normal people can level 1 guy to max level. This will keep everyone bashing shields together for prolonged periods and will allow more new players to stumble into the fresh server before 50% of pop is max level and everyone is whining about max level stuff.

Kind of derailing thread, in my head I roll my eyes at timed level cap, but since we'll have two servers capping levels may be a good idea to get more people to play both at once, try teams99 without completely shifting population.

[Gustoo]

I didn't want to create two new threads back to back. Derailment was intentional. ;)

I just think it would be more fun with more people around a similar level for a longer time. It isn't fun for a guy to discover the server two weeks after its birth only to find that he already has no one to group with.

[Aenor]

This guy needs an xp bonus to make it out of lvl 3. Also, I support time locked leveling.

[Gustoo]

I don't like EXP bonus. Level 2 and 3 are the hardest levels in the game though and if a bonus were to be applied it should be at those two levels.

[runlvlzero]

I don't like EXP bonus. Level 2 and 3 are the hardest levels in the game though and if a bonus were to be applied it should be at those two levels.

EXP bonus really stifles the teamwork aspect of this game, but at least the staff are considering an enhanced bonus for groups and de-valued solo bonus.

[Vexenu]

Time locked leveling is something that sounds like EQ heresy at first, but when you start thinking about it you start to see how beneficial it would be, especially in the specific instance of launching a fresh PvP Teams server. Why? Because it encourages a high population. It helps keep people in the same level range during those crucial early weeks. This not only makes finding allies, forming guilds and making friends much easier, it prevents a dedicated core group of neckbeards from outleveling everyone else by poopsocking 20 hours a day for a few weeks.

Then, since you don't have a group of no-lifes frontrunning the rest of the server, the more casual players don't feel hopelessly left behind and aren't as tempted to quit.

Basically, it's just a gimmick rule to make the server more casual friendly during the critical launch and early weeks. The hardcores are going to keep playing regardless, so leveling caps won't affect them. With leveling caps the idea is that basically every player on Blue will have no reason NOT to make a character on Teams, since they will know they won't have to poopsock for a few weeks to stay competitive. Then, once they start to have fun with EQ PvP, the hope is that they get sucked into the server and stick around for the long haul.

As to the guy who thinks levels 2 and 3 are hell levels, I have two words for you: cracked staff.

[Vexenu]

^^^ Confirmed mad. Thanks for bump.

[Castigate]

Time locked leveling seems like a really good idea especially with how popular Bard power-leveling has become.
Sure you can't really do it as well in old world as Kunark, but even just guilds PLing themselves into the upper 20's in the first couple days would have drastic effects on peoples faith in the server. At least if they're locked from going past 20, 30, and 40 people won't feel like they've been beaten before even getting to fight it out.

[Greegon]

cracked staff.

/bonerthrob

[Aenor]

Outstanding arguments re: time locked leveling from Vexenu. I hope our pal Zade is still following the thread. Devs have stated that pop retention is the goal with a new server. The neckbeards will cry about this and preach doom but they're not going anywhere. This is pro casual and thus pro sustained population. Vexenu for staff 2013.

[Lowlife]

Aenor for staff

[tomato2]

more teams faggot shit from faggots like aenor no one gives a fucka bout

[runlvlzero]

The best way to do time locked leveling is the Eve way. You don't earn exp from killing. You get EXP from having an account and it levels accordingly. Maybe at a 2x rate if your online.

[Barladore]

Bump for OP, hire him on the dev team, pay him whatever he wants.

[Kergan]

With progression into Kunark and Velious on a timer why cap level speed? Anyone serious about playing on the server will have plenty of time to get to 50 before Kunark is released. Considering this server will be 95% people rerolling from red/blue I wouldn't object to a mild experience bonus either, maybe scaling down as you get higher level.

This is of course assuming there is progression and the server isn't released with expansions enabled, which I guess is a different discussion? It's almost a shame the original game didn't have a 40 level cap, Kunark added 50 and Velious 60. Velious has a certain charm to it though being a content only expansion which is unheard of nowadays.

I just don't see what slowing people down at the high end will accomplish. The people dedicating more time to the box will always be ahead and I don't disagree with that.

[big mouth chew]

no wonder everyone is so retarded around here, they spend time reading threads like this :confused:

[HippoNipple]

Aenor your attempt to limit the servers progression to fit your play schedule isn't going to work bud. Sorry, you can't make it so people that want to play 24/7 don't progress past your limitations.

[Vexenu]

Please, a little reading comprehension. The idea is to only lock leveling during the first few weeks of the server's life. This is not done to punish hardcore players, but to create an atmosphere that is most conducive to retaining a high population during the crucial launch period. The more people who stick out the first few weeks, the higher the retained population will be thereafter.

Red suffered an abysmal launch and the server never recovered. It's in the long-term interest of the Teams server to have as strong a launch as possible. Limiting levels during the first few weeks is probably the best way to do that.