For Rogean: A Primer on Teams

[Aenor]

I'm listening to the roundtable, and when the discussion turned to teams, it was clear that Rogean's familiarity with the various teams rulesets was limited. In no way do I feel that this lack of familiarity hurts a new server's chance for success. PvP on live was a success almost by accident. The original developers first created a game with engaging content that was worth fighting over once PvP was added. In the same way, by making such a faithful recreation of the original, Rogean and staff have already done the heavy lifting which makes an engaging teams environment on a new server possible.

One thing that concerned me from the chat was when Sirken explained cross teaming to Rogean and his initial reaction was negative. I'd like to give a more in-depth historical analysis of each classic EQ PvP ruleset in hopes of helping the staff make a more informed decision about the final teams ruleset. I'll give my analysis of the various rulesets in order of their release.

Rallos Zek

Rules: FFA PvP within +/- 4 levels, single item and coin loot

Drawbacks: Since there were no teams in the original EQ PvP ruleset, new players would log into a bloodbath and be subjected to griefing and corpse camping from the moment of character creation. Another issue that I found on Rallos Zek was that the narrow level range resulted in quickly out-leveling players that used to attack me, making them immune to any sort of payback.

The narrow PvP range also made out-of-range healing a much larger issue than it is on a server with a +/-8 level spread. The existence of item loot gave PvP potentially harsh consequences. This in turn eventually led to a PK vs. Anti-PK dynamic on the server. I was never particularly dedicated to Rallos, but in the time I did spend there I found that as soon as I killed another player, they waged a PR campaign to label me as a "PK" so that other "anti-PKs" would attack me on sight and decline to group with me. It was the strangest thing to me that, on what was supposed to be this hardcore PvP server, the act of attacking another player led to being immediately ostracized by the majority of the server's population.

Tallon Zek/Vallon Zek (Race War)

Rules: Four race-based teams, PvP within +/- 8 levels, originally coin and item loot (item loot was removed during the classic era)

Drawbacks: Cross-teaming. Later PvP rulesets such as Sullon Zek, Dark Age of Camelot and WoW would be based around hard-coded teams that prevented players from grouping and guilding outside their own team. On Tallon/Vallon, a player was restricted from attacking other players on their own race team, but was not prohibited from taking beneficial action (heals, buffs, ports) toward members of opposing teams. This created the phenomenon of "immortal healing," where a player would assist a pal from an opposing team in attacking a member of their own team.

This is the thing Rogean had an immediate negative reaction toward when it was described to him by Sirken. That negative reaction is why I am writing this post. Because, although on first blush this seems like a very exploitable game mechanic, the existence of soft-coded teams on Tallon Zek and Vallon Zek created more political options and intrigue than existed under any other ruleset.

I played on Vallon Zek as Aenor, a human druid from Surefall Glade, starting the day the server went online. In the early days, it was every team for itself and most guilds were team-purist. As the server aged, cross-team guilds began to emerge. These guilds were initially decried by the majority of the server but cross teaming eventually became more prevalent through the organic growth of the server.

On Vallon Zek, I led a cross-teaming alliance that established a good-vs-evil dynamic that was accepted server-wide. The history of how that came to be is described at this link, in journal entries by Bregolas (a bard alt of mine) that were posted by Luinelen of the allied guild Elven Royal Guard (below the journal of Lannyen, which was written by Luinelen):

http://z9.invisionfree.com/Mordred/index.php?showtopic=61&st=0&#entry276156

Essentially, my guild Grey Companions and its allies defeated the shortie purist guild First Dwarven Brigade in direct guild warfare, then convinced them to accept a player-imposed dynamic in which the light races (comprised of the human, elf and shortie teams) would only attack members of the evil team on sight. Once this dynamic was accepted by FDB, it quickly became an accepted standard server-wide. The evil team remained almost entirely team-purist but among the other three teams, racial purism became an oddity.

This dynamic remained in place on Vallon Zek for years after I left Everquest and was only abandoned when the dominant light-race guild on the server, Defiant, concluded that it needed to allow darkies in its ranks due to the server's declining population. So again, while at first blush cross-teaming might seem negative, all of these political options would not have existed without it. Hard-coded teams essentially make a player's political decisions for them and remove any freedom of choice.

By way of contrast, Tallon Zek was dominated by the evil team since none of the light-race teams could form the sort of cooperative action that we took on Vallon. In the world of Vallon Zek, the forces of Light triumphed over the forces of Darkness because of the political options created by soft-coded teams.

Sullon Zek (Deity Teams)

Rules: Three hard-coded teams based on deity (divided into good, neutral and evil teams), no level limit for PvP, training allowed

Drawbacks: Many of the drawbacks of the Sullon Zek ruleset have already been addressed during the roundtable. There does not seem to be any interest among the staff in a server with no PvP level limit. And unlike Sullon Zek, which launched with Kunark already open and Iksar playable from day 1, the P99 staff has already stated that a new server would start with the Classic era.

However, the principal drawback of Sullon Zek remains undeniable. As Sirken said during the roundtable, the evil team will always have the most members. On SZ on live, the server was dominated from Day One until the Zek merge by the evil team. The evil team had more population than the good and neutral teams combined, and cooperation between those two teams was rendered impossible by the hard-coded ruleset.

Essentially, Sullon Zek is one step away from WoW PvP, where politics are imposed on the server by the developers via the ruleset. Sullon Zek was the least popular of the three original PvP rulesets. Most will point to the absence of a level limit and the legality of forms of griefing such as training as the reason for this lack of popularity.

I will submit that most people who decided not to play on Sullon did so because they knew they had a choice between easy mode on the evil team or going neutral or good and having no chance at raid content. Creating a new server with hard coded teams would recreate the exact same problem that exists on Project 1999 Red today, where players have a choice of joining the single dominant guild or having no shot at raid content.

In summary, the Rallos ruleset is off the table because P99 has already tried FFA and Rogean is looking to dynamically expand the level range, not further limit it to +/- 4 levels. Meanwhile the staff's stated intentions to keep training illegal and retain some form of PvP level limit indicate that a Sullon-style ruleset will not be attempted without significant modification. The most important decision that the staff must make about a teams ruleset, therefore, is whether to have hard-coded WoW-style teams or use the most popular PvP ruleset in the history of Everquest, the soft-coded teams of Tallon and Vallon Zek.

Sullon Zek had only a fraction of the population of Rallos, which in turn had only a fraction of the population of the Race War servers. The Race War ruleset was the only PvP ruleset that was so popular they had to open a second server to meet the demand. The history of the two servers shows that there is no pre-determined outcome when you give players political options. On Tallon, the darkies won. On Vallon, the lighties won. Same ruleset, different outcomes. With hardcoded teams, the outcome is pre-determined and we all know it.

[Rec]

The only flaw in SZ in my eyes was that it was set up to allow the Evil team to dominate. Hindsight that we now have in 2013 that they did not have in 2001. Either good and neutral has to be combined to provide sufficient enough live bodies to compete or non Evil sides need bonuses of some kind to make up the difference.

As far as attaching the word WoW to hardcoded teams in an effort to greater malign the concept when EQ had it first, nice try.

[Darksinga]

Aenor +1 post man. Good stuff. Though I played on Vallon Zek and loved the server I kind of disagree with the desire to implement soft-coded rather than hard-coded teams. Let's be frank here... This isn't live... With soft coded teams we will be back to square one because unlike live, we will just all make whatever race we want and guild with each other (sounds exactly like a FFA server.) Like I said, I loved Vallon, especially because back then there was "honor" in PvP and none of this random CCing crap--we actually allowed LnS and people said hey man great fight even when they lost-- soft coded teams will just not work... X teaming ultimately results in a FFA server. I played in the guild Aerist and around the Luclin area we accepted darkies into our midst. After that point the server was basically FFA.

[heartbrand]

Lookin forward to being merged to team99 with my tov loot while griefing team99 with my all erudite wizard guild. If I get merged to blue even better, like finding out your Honda accord is now a bentley.

[heartbrand]

Anyone who doesn't realize how bad rampant x teaming boxing is going to be here clearly doesnt get or underestimates the red99 populace. ETA till Lewis has 50 on every team? This is going to be such a shit fest of epic proportion with the rampant boxing which was basically admitted last night that they have no way on cracking down on.

[Rec]

Don't worry heartbrand, your FFA server will surely be more popular in the end and everything will be ok

[Aenor]

"soft coded teams will just not work"

Why? It was the most successful ruleset on live. Sullon Zek's population was never a drop in the bucket compared to the number of players who picked race war. Sullon Zek failed on live. Explain to me why it's going to succeed here.

[Rec]

Sullon Zek didn't fail till they added the pop books. Then it failed

[heartbrand]

Don't worry heartbrand, your FFA server will surely be more popular in the end and everything will be ok

Does it make a difference? It's a win win for me with the merge. I get to shit up team99 and then merge to it with a highly organized and geared raid force down the line. Couldn't be better IMO. For me that is not for the server.

[Aenor]

The only flaw in SZ in my eyes was that it was set up to allow the Evil team to dominate.

If you hardcode the teams, one team will always dominate. Population will flock to whatever team Nihilum picks and it will be a blue server with occasional flashes of grief PvP. There will be no possibility of contesting whatever team Nihilum picks. The solution? More teams, not fewer. Look for another post from me in a couple hours.

[heartbrand]

Did you not get the memo? We don't need to pick a team because we get to farm more uncontested loot for six months then be merged to the server where we get to kill it. Though it does seem like there's a strong amount of nihilum who will all play together there and with team rules, its pretty safe to say they'll dominate again. Won't be me tho, me and my child / wife / dog will be playing wizards.

[Aenor]

I get to shit up team99 and then merge to it with a highly organized and geared raid force down the line.

I doubt it. 99% likely Nihilum99 gets merged into blue. The point of making a new server is to have a fresh start and not repeat the mistake of allowing Nihilum to exploit while punishing others for it. That purpose is kind of defeated if you then import Nihilum's exploited gains into Team99. Rogean is playing PR brew... have fun on blue.

[Aenor]

And it's hilarious to me that you think getting merged into blue elevates you to bentley status. Once a bluebie, always a bluebie.

[heartbrand]

Was basically confirmed in TS last night by Zade that merging to blue was a mistake by rogean and that it would be the two red servers merging, though ill be trolling about it nonetheless on blue forums for great luls.

[heartbrand]

And it's hilarious to me that you think getting merged into blue elevates you to bentley status. Once a bluebie, always a bluebie.

If you don't understand why then I can't help you pal. It has nothing to do with the actual playing of the game tho.

[Aenor]

I don't understand and will never understand. No help required. I would never place any value in a character on a server with no PvP.

Edit: Oh I get it... a tacit but plausibly deniable admission that you're on Niz's RMT payroll. Bentley status... I get it!

[heartbrand]

Triple post rage but here's what you don't get. You aren't going to beat people who treat eq as a real life job in place of the job they don't have. The vast majority of nihilum are all going to play the team server and are more dedicated than ever. Except this time when they have 200 members you'll only be able to recruit from two teams to fight them, and if you roll their team? Enjoy having to reroll to compete.

[Rec]

If you hardcode the teams, one team will always dominate. Population will flock to whatever team Nihilum picks and it will be a blue server with occasional flashes of grief PvP. There will be no possibility of contesting whatever team Nihilum picks. The solution? More teams, not fewer. Look for another post from me in a couple hours.

One team will only dominate if you don't actually learn from the lessons of the past. As much I liked SZ anything can be improved and should be

[Aenor]

One team will only dominate if you don't actually learn from the lessons of the past. As much I liked SZ anything can be improved and should be

You can learn all the lessons you want. If you give people the option to select a team where they will be non-kos to the majority of the population, that's what they will pick. You can take away the advantage of the evil team having Kunark to itself at SZ's launch. Doesn't matter. More than 50% of the server will be evil team. And the more the numbers skew that way, the more players who started off good and neutral will reroll to evil to escape the gankfest = blue server. Devs, please do not listen to all these bluebies. We don't want Blue Part II.

[heartbrand]

The more teams the more you help a highly organized juggernaut like nihilum. Most people will roll with their friends or whatever team seems coolest to them. Pop will be dispersed throughout the teams. Nihilum on the other hand will have a 100 man roster all rolling the same team plus all the new blue apps who can basically be safe from pvp on a team server. Since you can't x team you would need a similar force from one of the teams. Zero chance at that.

Big guilds can be defeated with variance + boxing + high rate of exp with all three being dependent on one anoter (variance without boxing only fuels the problem further) that's about the only way tho.

With velious and people getting geared you'd likely see some nihilum defections down the road. On a team server? Who can I defect to I'm hard coded to my team. Some of the best red99 moments have been defections.

[Rec]

You can learn all the lessons you want. If you give people the option to select a team where they will be non-kos to the majority of the population, that's what they will pick. You can take away the advantage of the evil team having Kunark to itself at SZ's launch. Doesn't matter. More than 50% of the server will be evil team. And the more the numbers skew that way, the more players who started off good and neutral will reroll to evil to escape the gankfest = blue server. Devs, please do not listen to all these bluebies. We don't want Blue Part II.

Exactly why you need to merge good and neutral. I am glad you agree with me. SZ is going to win it has the most support here :)

[runlvlzero]

Lookin forward to being merged to team99 with my tov loot while griefing team99 with my all erudite wizard guild. If I get merged to blue even better, like finding out your Honda accord is now a bentley.

Thats the spirit =) Will be great HB. Maybe i'll finally stop playing alts and we can cyberhug when you merge over.

[Aenor]

Exactly why you need to merge good and neutral. I am glad you agree with me. SZ is going to win it has the most support here :)

Two teams? So WoW had it right then?

[runlvlzero]

Nihilum is not the reason were doing a teams server.

Were doing a teams server because theres players that want to play on a teams rulesset and think the FFA server is toxic.

Has NOTHING to do with zergs. Sirken doesn't want balance (I agree to some degree). Its EQ. The rest are considering some balance tweaks to teams so we just dont end up as heavily zerged.

Teams server is to attract population BACK to the project as well as fresh pop. And move some of the die hard SZ/TZ/VZers from blue etc.

[Not_Kazowi]

If you hardcode the teams, one team will always dominate. Population will flock to whatever team Nihilum picks and it will be a blue server with occasional flashes of grief PvP. There will be no possibility of contesting whatever team Nihilum picks. The solution? More teams, not fewer. Look for another post from me in a couple hours.

hardcoded or not, it will all end up the same. Soft coded race war servers will have a dominate guild like pandemonium that will just get all the raid mobs and lock everything down.

A new server is NOT the answer. The problems that red99 has can not be cured with a new server.

Fix the current server, add variance, open velious. one guild can not hold down every raid mob in velious. It is impossible.

[Bazia]

rexx log on dude

[Rokannis]

If you hardcode the teams, one team will always dominate. Population will flock to whatever team Nihilum picks and it will be a blue server with occasional flashes of grief PvP. There will be no possibility of contesting whatever team Nihilum picks. The solution? More teams, not fewer. Look for another post from me in a couple hours.

All the older PvPers from Zek team servers don't give a flying fuck about Nihilium. We will all pick the opposite team from them to show them how its really done. The current poll about "what race will you choose" already has evil at its lowest pick.

So yes, you couldn't be more wrong.

The fact that everyone is ignoring that a lot of old time big player will come play on a teams sever and are ready to shit on Nihilium is being highly overlooked.

[Aenor]

The current poll about "what race will you choose" already has evil at its lowest pick.

So yes, you couldn't be more wrong.

Yeah cause polls are super reliable.

[Aenor]

hardcoded or not, it will all end up the same. Soft coded race war servers will have a dominant guild like pandemonium that will just get all the raid mobs and lock everything down.

I agree with you to a certain extent but it didn't happen that way on Vallon Zek. Defiant, the dominant lightie zerg, had legitimate competition from Xanit K'ven, an evil purist guild. Certainly in the case of Red99, Nihilum's bloobs will flock to whatever team gives them the best chance to level uncontested so they can gear up and then grief lowbies/cockblock content. Hardcoded teams just makes it possible that 90% of the population will be on a single team, making it inches away from being another blue server.

[SamwiseRed]

hardcoded or not, it will all end up the same. Soft coded race war servers will have a dominate guild like pandemonium that will just get all the raid mobs and lock everything down.

A new server is NOT the answer. The problems that red99 has can not be cured with a new server.

Fix the current server, add variance, open velious. one guild can not hold down every raid mob in velious. It is impossible.

Variance is the dumb shit I've ever heard if on a pvp server.

[Darksinga]

Why does every one in this forum think for a minute that Nihilum will dominate the new server??

Have you seen Nihilum pvp??? They're intimidated to fight lvl 52s (have known to use trak teeth on kids 8 lvls lower,) always have insta gate pots, and with VP gear AND epics still won't fight solo-- with the exception of Tune due to his endless clickies-- soulfire etc.

I challenge Nihilum to start up on the new server and prove me wrong, but understand this, the only reason Nihilum won was because they remained on a dying server to get eons ahead of others on gear, only to have bronze heroes return months (if not a year later) and attempt to contest. And what does Nihi do to these bronze heroes? Instead of encourage the competition, they do their absolute best to grief them off the server. Lvl 20 epic rogues in Unrest ring a bell? Corpse camping random people for hours? Porting up to Hate after a low lvl 50 guild wipes just to corpse camp them until they log off?

With the server being much faster xp Nihi won't have months to get ahead on gear due to their poopsocking nature.

[Tradesonred]

Because unlike a FFA scenario, where opposition could potentially be pooled together to contest if theres no xp loss in pvp, they will be split in half in an underpopped faction.

Also, part of the capable population will roll evil side for griefing, team protected lulz so you lose those numbers

[Aenor]

Darksinga I approve this message.

[Absynthe2k5]

A few things the op failed to mention about SZ. Evil team did not dominate pvp, they made deals with the heads of other team guilds which allowed them to clear content and jump ahead of everyone else at which time they said all bets are off...

Sure they dominated Raid content and this was because of the brains of the leadership not because of brute force. They saw losses daily in pvp just like every other team.

The real issue you folks have with any ruleset you decide to use on a secondary server is that once a dominant force is established folks will flock to their side for ezmode. A very small contingent of folks will fight to the bitter end but in general never catch up once a gear distance is established. The rest of the population will give up or join the "dark side" or sit around griefing lower players bitching about the guy griefing them.

There is no way around it, unless you have folks willing to take the hardships to be the underdogs you have no fight and every attempt at a pvp server will end up being run by those with the best gear (raidwise) PVP failed on live cause in general most folks can't hack getting screwed with, mentally or physically and there is a huge and I mean huge herd mentality with todays gaming crowd.

[heartbrand]

Why does every one in this forum think for a minute that Nihilum will dominate the new server??

Have you seen Nihilum pvp??? They're intimidated to fight lvl 52s (have known to use trak teeth on kids 8 lvls lower,) always have insta gate pots, and with VP gear AND epics still won't fight solo-- with the exception of Tune due to his endless clickies-- soulfire etc.

I challenge Nihilum to start up on the new server and prove me wrong, but understand this, the only reason Nihilum won was because they remained on a dying server to get eons ahead of others on gear, only to have bronze heroes return months (if not a year later) and attempt to contest. And what does Nihi do to these bronze heroes? Instead of encourage the competition, they do their absolute best to grief them off the server. Lvl 20 epic rogues in Unrest ring a bell? Corpse camping random people for hours? Porting up to Hate after a low lvl 50 guild wipes just to corpse camp them until they log off?

With the server being much faster xp Nihi won't have months to get ahead on gear due to their poopsocking nature.

Nihilum will always "win" because they will continue to play long after everyone burns out and quits.

[Rec]

No one would quit team99, it's too much fun

[Syft]

Essentially, Sullon Zek is one step away from WoW PvP, where politics are imposed on the server by the developers via the ruleset. Sullon Zek was the least popular of the three original PvP rulesets. Most will point to the absence of a level limit and the legality of forms of griefing such as training as the reason for this lack of popularity.


FACT: Sullon Zek had a higher population than Tallon and Vallon combined often was a running joke on Sullon that often boasted 2000+ player's on the weekends. And had over 4000 active player's just not logged in at the same time. Most of the player's from Rallos migrated to Sullon, and Sullon had a much higher pop than rallos!

FACT: The Neutral were actually the most accomplished in pvp and had the highest ranked player's and guild's on leaderboards!

however training cannot be made legal on a sullon type server it will be a bigger clusterfuck than VZTZ cross teaming.

[Absynthe2k5]

On a side note this is your server, why does everything have to be classic. Sure don't implement a bunch of retarded crap but you guys have the power to create your own rule set and your own way of pvp.

No rule set in live was perfect. I played all 4, I liked SZ the best because I hate the OOR heal mechanics on other servers. I didn't mind item loot but if you tried to come into that server anywhere after the start you were killed and looted all day long same as SZ/TZ/VZ You folks say no level limit is bad but at the same time what stops folks from making twinks for every level bracket, nothing. The only thing a level bracket/ item loot favors is established players unless you plan to enforce a 2 character max on accounts and only allow 1 account.

Make and enforce training and griefing policies. Get involved with the server if something isn't working good change it, don't keep limiting yourselves by saying it was classic and therefore it shall be. Your attempting to create a better pvp server so it will thrive more like blue so trash all the crap that is wrong and add a bunch that is good and makes folks want to participate.

Do the full server spawns more then one time a week and at random times to benefit everyone in different tz's make the gear that could possibly be abused by flooding the server no drop or something. It may not be the complete answer but anything you do to help give smaller groups chances to succeed will help to foster growth on the server not decline.

Get some more volunteers so the server has a moderator more then a few hours a day. When someone is there to say hey stop being a dickhead to the guy 8 lvls below you that just started, it enforces good behavior. All the ooc trolls stfu when they see sirk/zade show up. Why should it be any different any other time? Offer awards for good conduct, for good guild practices for people who help newbies grow. this will also help the server growth and the community to form in a positive light not the trashcan it is now.

[Absynthe2k5]

FACT: Sullon Zek had a higher population than Tallon and Vallon combined often was a running joke on Sullon that often boasted 2000+ player's on the weekends. And had over 4000 active player's just not logged in at the same time. Most of the player's from Rallos migrated to Sullon, and Sullon had a much higher pop than rallos!

FACT: The Neutral were actually the most accomplished in pvp and had the highest ranked player's and guild's on leaderboards!

however training cannot be made legal on a sullon type server it will be a bigger clusterfuck than VZTZ cross teaming.


+1 for the truth!

[Absynthe2k5]

Originally Posted by Aenor View Post
You can learn all the lessons you want. If you give people the option to select a team where they will be non-kos to the majority of the population, that's what they will pick. You can take away the advantage of the evil team having Kunark to itself at SZ's launch. Doesn't matter. More than 50% of the server will be evil team. And the more the numbers skew that way, the more players who started off good and neutral will reroll to evil to escape the gankfest = blue server. Devs, please do not listen to all these bluebies. We don't want Blue Part II.

Exactly why you need to merge good and neutral. I am glad you agree with me. SZ is going to win it has the most support here :)

Ya there was no need for a good and neutral team. No need to split pop even further. When goods/newts started working together Hate offered the good team flagging access and they became pets for awhile. Smart move on Hate's behalf. Divide and conquer.

[Syft]

Why does every one in this forum think for a minute that Nihilum will dominate the new server??

Have you seen Nihilum pvp??? They're intimidated to fight lvl 52s (have known to use trak teeth on kids 8 lvls lower,) always have insta gate pots, and with VP gear AND epics still won't fight solo-- with the exception of Tune due to his endless clickies-- soulfire etc.

I challenge Nihilum to start up on the new server and prove me wrong, but understand this, the only reason Nihilum won was because they remained on a dying server to get eons ahead of others on gear, only to have bronze heroes return months (if not a year later) and attempt to contest. And what does Nihi do to these bronze heroes? Instead of encourage the competition, they do their absolute best to grief them off the server. Lvl 20 epic rogues in Unrest ring a bell? Corpse camping random people for hours? Porting up to Hate after a low lvl 50 guild wipes just to corpse camp them until they log off?

With the server being much faster xp Nihi won't have months to get ahead on gear due to their poopsocking nature.

Everything in this post is true, from the lvls of 52-54 in every encounter I've had with Nihilum they have saved themselves with SF charges, shiny brass idols, and gate pots.

Every death I incurred was due to a Trak Tooth or wanding.

After they blow these items to kill me they spend a good 2 hours flaming me in OOC saying I suck even tho they needed to blow multiple clicks to kill someone 6-8 lvls lower, lol the irony!

These are the tactics they use to grief players off the box, sadly GM's and DEV's seem happily ignorant of this and ignore every post talking about clicks.

[Absynthe2k5]

Originally Posted by Aenor View Post
You can learn all the lessons you want. If you give people the option to select a team where they will be non-kos to the majority of the population, that's what they will pick. You can take away the advantage of the evil team having Kunark to itself at SZ's launch. Doesn't matter. More than 50% of the server will be evil team. And the more the numbers skew that way, the more players who started off good and neutral will reroll to evil to escape the gankfest = blue server. Devs, please do not listen to all these bluebies. We don't want Blue Part II.

Exactly why you need to merge good and neutral. I am glad you agree with me. SZ is going to win it has the most support here :)

Ya there was no need for a good and neutral team. No need to split pop even further. When goods/newts started working together Hate offered the good team flagging access and they became pets for awhile. Smart move on Hate's behalf. Divide and conquer.

[Absynthe2k5]

Also for the guy calling Sullon bluebie, you have the same exact scenario happening now on ffa...derp. Over 50% of the active server is "evil" and the rest of you just sit around crying about it.

Sure folks may have been camped off the server then if the stories are true, that means you folks should be trying to press for positive change in the form of augmented rules that auto punish for being retards. If you wipe and get camped log and pick up the pieces later. Another reason to press for positive change.

[mtb tripper]

nuclear aftermath

[Aenor]

Ya there was no need for a good and neutral team. No need to split pop even further. When goods/newts started working together Hate offered the good team flagging access and they became pets for awhile. Smart move on Hate's behalf. Divide and conquer.

More evidence of why the Sullon Zek ruleset was retarded from the day it was conceived and why it was, by an order of magnitude, the least populated of the four PvP servers. Sirken said they're doing an experiment to see what will retain population. Race War retained population. Sullon did not. Case dismissed.

[Rec]

Sullon retained population till the books were put in. Case reopened

[Aenor]

Basically what you describe Absynthe is exactly what we have on FFA now... one dominant team and several smaller teams that can't successfully unite to oppose the dominant team. Launching a server with two or three teams would only make the issue worse because people would pick Nihilum's team so they could be PvP immune to 70+ percent of the server. You're asking for a modified blue server. Need more teams, not fewer.

[Aenor]

Sullon retained population till the books were put in. Case reopened

Sullon never had a fraction of the population of Rallos, which never had a fraction of the population of the Race War servers, case dismissed.

[Aenor]

Sirken said they're trying to retain population. Of the three rule sets in classic everquest, Sullon by far failed the hardest at meeting this goal.

[Rec]

Do you have a link that shows the populations at the time? Because I can simply say that SZ was most popular

[Vexenu]

More evidence of why the Sullon Zek ruleset was retarded from the day it was conceived and why it was, by an order of magnitude, the least populated of the four PvP servers. Sirken said they're doing an experiment to see what will retain population. Race War retained population. Sullon did not. Case dismissed.

I don't think you know what the term "order of magnitude" means.

Hint: It's not a synonym for "a lot".

Also, SZ had very good pop numbers, especially considering most of its players were drawn from the existing PvP servers.

[nilbog]

google..

"sullon zek" "lowest population"

Or,

"everquest" "pvp servers" "population"
"everquest" "pvp servers" "how many people play"

"rallos" "vallon" "tallon" "zek"

After searching, you can click search tools, then modify 'any time' to 'custom range' from 'year A' to 'year B'

[nilbog]

Point being, you can't trust what people here say without quotes. Never do that.

For example from the top 4 or 5 matches:

Sullon Zek probably had the lowest population of all servers. In fact, I'm certain it did. That was because of frequent griefing, a bad economy that lagged behind every other server, and there were no GM's. Nonetheless, I liked the atmosphere. But it's not practical for most users.


Why would they make a new pvp server when the last one they made, Sullon Zek, has the lowest population and it was what people wanted at that time?

At a guess, (I played on SZ when it opened and up until recently) I would say that the low population of SZ is due to 1. the difficulty of the server (it is a harsh server unless its changed a lot since I left), and 2. there are already so many glaring problems with pvp in EQ that all pvp servers in EQ have naturally low populations. SZ is just the lowest of the low because of the difficulty factor.


The time the devs spent on BALANCING PvP could have been used to make the PVE better...and the 4 PvP servers were the lowest population servers. The Last one Sullon Zek, was the absolute lowest server population

[Rec]

what year? I am trying to find actual numbers of people online before they put the pop books in which was on oct 2002

best I see is this

August '02
Good: 1485 - 33.2%
Neutral: 1201 - 26.9%
Evil: 1783 - 39.9%

[Banai]

Sullon Zek was a fucking shit server with shit people who circlejerked eachother with mechanic abuse and griefing, anyone with a few brain cells left would turn that shit down.. Griefing and harrassing people isnt PvP its just retarded

[Aenor]

I don't think you know what exaggeration is. Congrats on out-geeking me, however.

[Syft]

Sullon Zek was a fucking shit server with shit people who circlejerked eachother with mechanic abuse and griefing, anyone with a few brain cells left would turn that shit down.. Griefing and harrassing people isnt PvP its just retarded

Hell yea Vallon and Tallon was... wait sullon what you high?

[Vexenu]

I don't think you know what exaggeration is. Congrats on out-geeking me, however.

If you're trying to make a factual argument, you can't carelessly throw around a term that means "by a power of 10" and call it "exaggeration". Because that results in a much larger numerical difference than the word exaggeration would imply.

I mean, if you wanted to exaggerate your height, you wouldn't go around telling people you were 62 feet tall, would you?

So it's equally silly to claim that SZ had a 10x lower population than the other servers, because even if it was the lowest pop server, it was not nearly by that much.

[Aenor]

I don't think you know what exaggeration is

<---- called it.

[Vexenu]

More evidence of why the Sullon Zek ruleset was retarded from the day it was conceived and why it was, by an order of magnitude, the least populated of the four PvP servers. Sirken said they're doing an experiment to see what will retain population. Race War retained population. Sullon did not. Case dismissed.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d3hAGLm3gmA/Tzk6y0RFLeI/AAAAAAAAB_4/_TrYyhM79r8/s1600/88.gif

[mtb tripper]

magnitude says blackie

[mtb tripper]

google..

"sullon zek" "lowest population"

Or,

"everquest" "pvp servers" "population"
"everquest" "pvp servers" "how many people play"

"rallos" "vallon" "tallon" "zek"

After searching, you can click search tools, then modify 'any time' to 'custom range' from 'year A' to 'year B'

[Aenor]

My body is ready to forumquest you all into the ground.

[pvpbot]

Www.treborlogic.com/sz/history/

[Fael]

I loved the SZ rule set. It was my favorite MMO experience. Real fights over real content. It was a blast, even though i played as a neutral.

I wish they would only have two teams, but if there must be three, then something substantive needs to be done to lessen the draw of the evil team (probably restrict race class combos that allowed certain races to be evil: elf warriors, gnome rogues, etc etc.) If i recall correctly, the total race class combos for evil team was much better than either good or neutral--I will have to go back and check.

Anyways, I would seriously consider rolling a bard on a SZ style server.

Dolic

[Runya]

That sz history link was actually pretty cool......can read all the names of kills/deaths brought back alot of names i forgot

[Swish]

I loved the SZ rule set. It was my favorite MMO experience. Real fights over real content. It was a blast, even though i played as a neutral.

I wish they would only have two teams, but if there must be three, then something substantive needs to be done to lessen the draw of the evil team...

I hate playing faggot tree hugging hippy races and their short pals next door. I don't care how nerfed the evil team is, you'll see me on it :)

http://i.minus.com/ibikwC9T2Dj6eD.gif

[Something'Witty]

Was basically confirmed in TS last night by Zade that merging to blue was a mistake by rogean and that it would be the two red servers merging

Can anyone else confirm this?

[Old_PVP]

The narrow PvP range also made out-of-range healing a much larger issue than it is on a server with a +/-8 level spread. The existence of item loot gave PvP potentially harsh consequences. This in turn eventually led to a PK vs. Anti-PK dynamic on the server. I was never particularly dedicated to Rallos, but in the time I did spend there I found that as soon as I killed another player, they waged a PR campaign to label me as a "PK" so that other "anti-PKs" would attack me on sight and decline to group with me. It was the strangest thing to me that, on what was supposed to be this hardcore PvP server, the act of attacking another player led to being immediately ostracized by the majority of the server's population.

Isn't it ironic that the whole pk vs. anti-pk mentality on Rallos Zek essentially created teams in a way? The pvp community subconsciously categorized players as good, evil, and neutral. All while staying on a FFA server, and all due to ITEM LOOT, since this very unique dynamic of pk vs. anti-pk cannot exist without item loot. Item loot creates personal vendettas and the need for REVENGE, unlike anything else in a pvp environment, which is priceless for the health of PVP!

Even back in 1999, players somehow knew that some type of sorting of the population into "teams" had to be established in order to create a fun environment. A server with the mentality that "everyone is a pk, LOLZ" is doomed to fail, such as Red99.