easy_lee
07-21-2014, 08:11 PM
Why is Red broken? The Red server has a low population and a notoriously bad community full of griefers. When surveyed (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158212), forum posters overwhelmingly indicated “the community” as the reason for Red’s low population. Even adding an enormous experience bonus was not enough to get new players to stay on the server.
I invite you, dear reader, to think about Red from a new players’ perspective. It's easy if you try. Do so, and the reasons for the low population are easy to see. In order to get started, one must first create a new character and then gain levels on that character. A 50% bonus to solo experience helps, but people want to group. Groups are not only more efficient than solo, but they’re arguably the entire point of playing an MMO in the first place. So what happens on Red when a newbie tries to get a group?
Try it some time. Level a fresh, no gear, MR-less character to 12, preferably a melee for the full experience, and try to find a group for Crushbone. You’ll immediately run into two problems:
You’ll have trouble finding groups. Most of the population already has high-level characters. Just finding a group with three other on-level players will take all day (personally verified). For the most popular level 9-16 dungeon, this is strange.
When you do find a group (during peak population times), you’ll be beset by griefers. If you don’t have twink gear with plenty of MR, expect to be rooted and blasted immediately by a wizard, chased off by a monk, back-stabbed by a rogue, or get your head knocked in by an SK, probably while you’re in the middle of a fight.
And the higher you go, these problems only get worse. You’ll be spending more time in groups and more time being griefed. The griefers aren't competing with you for mobs. They don’t need your plat. They just want you to die. And, too often, they outnumber the people who just want to group. Try grouping in Unrest, or MM, or God help you, CoM, and see what happens.
These two problems have the same cause: the server has been around for far too long. Kunark lasted just over seven months during live. Then came Velious which lasted almost exactly one year. Here, Kunark alone has lasted several years. The endgame is full, with the hardest encounters currently in the game on farm-mode. Naturally, there’s a lot of pixel whoring going on. The same handful of people get all of the BIS gear on Red.
Pixel whoring - trying to get BIS (best in slot) gear while preventing anyone else from doing so.
So how does this cause the first problem? If the high-level players have high-level friends, and have access to unlimited high-end gear, then leveling a new alt to 50 will take no time at all. Just abuse your favorite power-leveling tactics, along with a fungi and 50+ weapon, and bingo. We’ve all seen this happen; most of the visitors in unpopular dungeons are power-leveling. "Stop whining noob, it's classic."
What about the second problem? Why would high-level players have reason to create twink alts and grief lowbies? Once again, the reasons are simple:
They have nothing better to do. There’s no competition for end-game gear and they already have several characters maxed.
By keeping other players from gaining levels, they prevent themselves from ever facing new competition.
The current environment makes perfect sense given the server’s history. The same thing happens with every MMO once its reached a certain age; it becomes extremely difficult for new players to enter the scene.
Pretend, for a moment, that you're completely new to red. Even if you manage to solo all the way to 60, mostly by playing during non-peak hours, what’s the point? You’re still not going to get any BIS gear because you aren’t one of the elite. If you do raid, the raids will be boring farm-sessions, and the good gear will go to someone else’s alt. Raid loot is distributed based on DKP (Nihilum uses DKP), and a new raider will never get enough DKP to compete with the veterans.
Red is supposed to be classic, but this is not classic. Kunark did not last this long. Live players never got the chance to create an impenetrable pecking order on the magnitude of what we see here.
You can’t put a bandaid on this problem. No number of LNS rules will protect new players from getting griefed out of the XP zones. No experience bonus, be it 300, 400, 500, or even 1000 percent will allow new players to get good gear. Can you imagine joining the Red server fresh and trying to make 10K plat on a new character, just to afford ONE piece of twink gear?
LONG STORY SHORT / TL;DR: The monopoly that has formed cannot be broken through new rules or boons for new players. The server is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. A total server wipe is the only thing that’s going to fix what’s happened to Red. It should have happened years ago, the second Kunark hit the seven month, twelve day mark. A total reset is the only way that anyone is going to experience what the game was actually like back in 1999.
And isn't reliving the past the whole point of Project 1999?
I invite you, dear reader, to think about Red from a new players’ perspective. It's easy if you try. Do so, and the reasons for the low population are easy to see. In order to get started, one must first create a new character and then gain levels on that character. A 50% bonus to solo experience helps, but people want to group. Groups are not only more efficient than solo, but they’re arguably the entire point of playing an MMO in the first place. So what happens on Red when a newbie tries to get a group?
Try it some time. Level a fresh, no gear, MR-less character to 12, preferably a melee for the full experience, and try to find a group for Crushbone. You’ll immediately run into two problems:
You’ll have trouble finding groups. Most of the population already has high-level characters. Just finding a group with three other on-level players will take all day (personally verified). For the most popular level 9-16 dungeon, this is strange.
When you do find a group (during peak population times), you’ll be beset by griefers. If you don’t have twink gear with plenty of MR, expect to be rooted and blasted immediately by a wizard, chased off by a monk, back-stabbed by a rogue, or get your head knocked in by an SK, probably while you’re in the middle of a fight.
And the higher you go, these problems only get worse. You’ll be spending more time in groups and more time being griefed. The griefers aren't competing with you for mobs. They don’t need your plat. They just want you to die. And, too often, they outnumber the people who just want to group. Try grouping in Unrest, or MM, or God help you, CoM, and see what happens.
These two problems have the same cause: the server has been around for far too long. Kunark lasted just over seven months during live. Then came Velious which lasted almost exactly one year. Here, Kunark alone has lasted several years. The endgame is full, with the hardest encounters currently in the game on farm-mode. Naturally, there’s a lot of pixel whoring going on. The same handful of people get all of the BIS gear on Red.
Pixel whoring - trying to get BIS (best in slot) gear while preventing anyone else from doing so.
So how does this cause the first problem? If the high-level players have high-level friends, and have access to unlimited high-end gear, then leveling a new alt to 50 will take no time at all. Just abuse your favorite power-leveling tactics, along with a fungi and 50+ weapon, and bingo. We’ve all seen this happen; most of the visitors in unpopular dungeons are power-leveling. "Stop whining noob, it's classic."
What about the second problem? Why would high-level players have reason to create twink alts and grief lowbies? Once again, the reasons are simple:
They have nothing better to do. There’s no competition for end-game gear and they already have several characters maxed.
By keeping other players from gaining levels, they prevent themselves from ever facing new competition.
The current environment makes perfect sense given the server’s history. The same thing happens with every MMO once its reached a certain age; it becomes extremely difficult for new players to enter the scene.
Pretend, for a moment, that you're completely new to red. Even if you manage to solo all the way to 60, mostly by playing during non-peak hours, what’s the point? You’re still not going to get any BIS gear because you aren’t one of the elite. If you do raid, the raids will be boring farm-sessions, and the good gear will go to someone else’s alt. Raid loot is distributed based on DKP (Nihilum uses DKP), and a new raider will never get enough DKP to compete with the veterans.
Red is supposed to be classic, but this is not classic. Kunark did not last this long. Live players never got the chance to create an impenetrable pecking order on the magnitude of what we see here.
You can’t put a bandaid on this problem. No number of LNS rules will protect new players from getting griefed out of the XP zones. No experience bonus, be it 300, 400, 500, or even 1000 percent will allow new players to get good gear. Can you imagine joining the Red server fresh and trying to make 10K plat on a new character, just to afford ONE piece of twink gear?
LONG STORY SHORT / TL;DR: The monopoly that has formed cannot be broken through new rules or boons for new players. The server is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. A total server wipe is the only thing that’s going to fix what’s happened to Red. It should have happened years ago, the second Kunark hit the seven month, twelve day mark. A total reset is the only way that anyone is going to experience what the game was actually like back in 1999.
And isn't reliving the past the whole point of Project 1999?