Teams PvP confirmed by Rogean, transcript of convo..

[Dulu]

Rogean was gracious enough to sit down with the PvP community tonight and discuss the possible upcoming PvP TLP server, as well as Project 1999 Teams, and the possible future of Red99.

Below is the transcript. I have left out some 3rd party/irrelavent comments from people not engaged in the conversation, and cleaned up some of my own grammar/formatting, but Rogeans answers are unchanged. Enjoy!


Rogean: PvP TLP? :thinking:
It would probably have instancing :eyes:
DULU: @Rogean instancing is something we are willing to deal with. Its not so much about the specific rulesets: the goal of our crusade is to prove there is an interest in classic everquest pvp.

Beimeith:
Of course there is an interest...of about 50-100 people. Which is not enough to justify a server and the massive amount of work it would take to make it not horrible.
Eq pvp has never had mass appeal
Rogean: imo the biggest problem isn't a lack of players.. it's that they only live for the initial opening. If we were to open a brand new pvp server, it would be popular for a few weeks, then people would want another fresh start again.
! Jsyn:
Whats wrong with fresh restarts? Path of Exile and Diablo do it all the time
its also huge in the WoW private server scene to play the newest server
people with too much time on their hands love it ;p
Rogean:
Because you have a dilemma.. you start a fresh server and then 2 months later, what happens.. everyone loses their chars? That's not fair to the people who want to continue playing.. just keep opening new servers? Then you're left supporting +1 server every few months, which is difficult for a volunteer team as it is
Zubek:
I think something different may have more sustainable appeal, like a teams server
Rogean:
I'm not against a seasonal server but it would have to be just that.. declared ahead of time, this is a seasonal server, it will be gone in x months..
Hence why we're not going to just wipe the red server.. we've gone on record that unless it's declared ahead of time before the server opens, you'll never lose your chars
! Jsyn:
If its known before hand that the style of server will reset thats just what it is. Each time the reset occurs I'm sure you'll have just as much if not more players there ready to grind all over.
Yeah, I totally get and respect that.
Zubek:
So what are the plans for the PvP community as far as Project 1999 associated products go? I understand you had SOME plans but did not want to disclose them until green had launched, given green and teal have now merged perhaps u could engage on that topic?
Rogean:
Part of my idea for the pvp community (Mentioned back in october) included a seasonal server, but it was going to be one part of the solution.. something has to be done with red, I don't want to open a second permanent server and have to support both.. I'd like to make red relevant again, if that means transforming it into something else, so be it.. but how many would come back to play is the question
Zubek:
IMHO red should be the blue style museum a second PvP server, whatever form that took, gets characters placed into at the end of its "life cycle"
but i understand you not wanting to open an additional server
perhaps red could be merged into Blue then?
! Jsyn:
Tough situation for sure. But in my opinion the only way it'll be and stay relevant is like you said a seasonal approach.
Rogean:
There's a lot of people that don't want to play a seasonal server either though... they want to pvp but also their raid gear actually means something. I had some ideas, maybe I'll just have to lay them out in a forum post to see what people think, before I do a ton of work making it happen

Zubek:
i think the red community would appreciate it, the PVP TLP community has grown pretty well and we've gotten a lot of outside support from outside the normal red99/roz communities.

Rogean:
The nice pro of a seasonal server though is that we could constantly change up the ruleset every iteration.. discord, teams, ffa, etc
DULU:
As far as red, I think if you brought it to the community that is still active there and put it to them bluntly "Do you want to keep your pixels on a 40 player box or have a fresh p99 pvp server?" I think many, myself included, would be willing to sacrifice our geared characters.
and by sacrifice, I mean merge to blue
Rogean:
If it was up to me alone I would have already merged red into blue years ago


Rogean:
I didn't get any other supporters from the staff on that idea though
DULU:
It makes sense - you guys want to protect your reputation. You said you wouldn't do it, and that's fair. But I think the overwhelming majority of players would be OK with you doing that, if you asked them. It's a tough situation.
Rogean:
I never said we wouldn't merge it, I only said we wouldn't delete the chars.. so I'd be all for merging it into blue.. but there's a lot of concerns that staff had, such as a sudden influx of raid gear from red that was easier to obtain because of lack of any pvp competition.. influx of legacy items, etc
Dulu:
thats true, but I think much of that concern is mitigated by the release of Green now? Blue is sort of a 'completed' server

Rogean:
I'd love to do what some other MMO's have done.. like I still play swtor and they got rid of the pvp servers and just allowed you to declare which you are, and pvp had it's own instances, essentially it's own server but it's still the same server.. and just the sanctuary zones were shared between them
Alas, I ripped out essentially all of the instancing code from P99 :rofl:
! Jsyn:
Now that would be awesome. Thats how WoW does it now on retail
Rogean:
Doesn't surprise me.. swtor copies everything from wow :neutral_face:
DULU:
Live has many, many problems, and the 'Zek' server is just a lost cause.
The TLP's have promise, if they have one with a good pvp ruleset
it could work
Rogean:
needs to be teams.. it's the only way to protect the newer / isolated players
otherwise you get one guild strong arming everyone

DULU:
Agreed 100%. Preferably 3 teams, to help limit cross teaming.
Zubek:
players need the built in support network of a team, the competition for control of resources etc
hardcoded to prevent xteaming
Rogean:
3 teams might segregate and already extremely small community a little too much
Rogean:
I also would like to avoid 'good vs evil', because naturally.. everyone goes evil :neutral_face:
DULU:
Really? In WoW wasnt alliance always more popular than horde?
Rogean:
Not sure, never played wow
swg and swtor the empire was always stronger
DULU:
what are your thoughts on hard-teams vs soft-teams? Should people be able to trade with the other team(s)? communicate?

Zubek:
it depends on the composition, i liked the evil VS shorties+elves VS races of men but like Dulu said that can be discussed at length down the road
I'd just like to see Rogeans current ideas and open that up to discussion with staff at some point before I get overly specific
Zubek:
@Rogean Anyway nice speaking with you, hope to see you at our community event on February 29 at 8pm EST
Rogean:
:eyes:
Dulu:
Thanks. So do you have any timeline in mind for a teams pvp server? Should people hold their breath? rogean pls
:smile:
Rogean:
Soon (tm)
(but not really soon, haha)
! Jsyn:
Daybreak would love for you to take all the PvPers off their hands
Rogean:
Heh, I'm sure there's mixed opinions about that
Zubek:
Well we'll find out, our army is growing and its 10 days until DDAY
and we've gotten a lot of good traction and media interest thus far
so we'll see
DULU:
thank you again Rogean, seriously
Zubek:
Yup, look forward to the forum post you mentioned.
And I know you don't play Everquest much less EQ PVP but when/if the TLP PVP server comes out, feel free to hop in, you just might like it.
Rogean:
Might come as a surprise but I enjoyed later everquest expansions more than classic.. like, pop, gates, omens, etc. I enjoy running p99 because it's a hobby and a passion :slight_smile:
I"d love to add AA's to blue, without luclin
But that's on the 'wish list' of coding you could say
Anyways, back to irl work.. busy week :sob:

[galach]

Neat.

[iamnotsalem]

Where is it confirmed ?

[Danger]

https://www.cameo.com/v/nQPezHSGb

[Heywood]

Please do not merge red with blue. I love the fact that we can pvp, you're punishing active players because of the people who left.


All you're doing is opening up all those red characters for RMT on blue.

[Dulu]

Please do not merge red with blue. I love the fact that we can pvp, you're punishing active players because of the people who left.


All you're doing is opening up all those red characters for RMT on blue.

Serious question.

What would you rather have? Red in it's current state with 40 people in perpetuity.. or a brand new Teams PvP server with a thriving community?

[Heywood]

Rogean's hit the nail on the head though, most people lose interest fast.

So why choose the people who WILL eventually stop playing/lose interest over the people who have been playing here for a long time?

I wouldn't mind something similar like green. Have a seasonal purple server where the rulesets change each time and then throw all the toons onto red.

Make legacy items no drop when they're transfered onto red though.

[Danger]

Rogean's hit the nail on the head though, most people lose interest fast.

So why choose the people who WILL eventually stop playing/lose interest over the people who have been playing here for a long time?

I wouldn't mind something similar like green. Have a seasonal purple server where the rulesets change each time and then throw all the toons onto red.

Make legacy items no drop when they're transfered onto red though.

because you're catering to 10 people instead of a potentially larger and sustainable population. red has had a lot of challenges throughout its lifespan, continuing on with red in its current state is trying to rebuild a burnt down house built on top of sand.

i get it, you're attached to your pixels, but it's time to move on to something bigger and better.

With that said, as grateful I am to Rogean for P99 I've also seen nothing tangible from him as far as developments for Red99 in a LONG time, and despite him saying more today on the topic to Dulu than he has in YEARS, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Heywood]

because you're catering to 10 people instead of a much larger, sustainable population. red has had a lot of challenges throughout its lifespan, continuing on with red in its current state is trying to rebuild a burnt down house built on top of sand.

i get it, you're attached to your pixels, but it's time to move on to something bigger and better.

more like 50 people during peak times. Which is the same amount of unique players on RoZ.


I just don't want my red toons getting merged with blue. I'd even rather have a seasonal server and have red on hold. Then when the season is over, start Red back up with new players dumped into it until the new seasonal server begins again.

[Dulu]

more like 50 people during peak times. Which is the same amount of unique players on RoZ.


I just don't want my red toons getting merged with blue. I'd even rather have a seasonal server and have red on hold. Then when the season is over, start Red back up with new players dumped into it until the new seasonal server begins again.

I don't want to be rude, but I'd like you to address the question.

Do you want a fresh Teams PVP server, with a sustainable population, or do you want to keep your current pixels on Red?

What if we gave your character that migrated from Red to Blue a unique title?

Heywood the Conqueror - something like that? Showing you leveled on a PVP server.

What can we do to bring you to the table?

[Heywood]

It doesn't have to be either this or either that though. I don't think anyone is actually against a new pvp server, I'm sure as hell not. The dilemma is what to do with the red server. Most people who play(ed) on red, don't like blue because of the fact you can't pvp. So if you move red toons onto blue, it's almost guaranteed that those red toons will never be played again and it opens up the opportunity of severely geared toons ending up getting RMT'd.

I'm giving you viable options. What's wrong with a seasonal purple server, off-season red server, then another seasonal purple server setup?

[Danger]

Because rogean doesn't want to have to open a new physical server. Therefore a new pvp server would be hosted on reds current box.

The only way to have a new pvp server is to do something with reds characters. because of p99s anti wipe stance the only real solution is transfer, in all probability, onto the same server that green99s characters will also be transferred to at the end of its lifecycles, blue.

Think of blue as a museum for elf victories of the past red, blue, and green (post recycle).

[Dulu]

It doesn't have to be either this or either that though. I don't think anyone is actually against a new pvp server, I'm sure as hell not. The dilemma is what to do with the red server. Most people who play(ed) on red, don't like blue because of the fact you can't pvp. So if you move red toons onto blue, it's almost guaranteed that those red toons will never be played again and it opens up the opportunity of severely geared toons ending up getting RMT'd.

I'm giving you viable options. What's wrong with a seasonal purple server, off-season red server, then another seasonal purple server setup?

Because in the interview with Rogean today, that wasn't a viable option.

He clearly stated he does not want to run an additional server.

The option right now, is to merge Red characters into Blue. MAYBE give them a title or something, and then relaunch Red as a Teams PvP server.

Perhaps all of the characters who go from Red to Blue will remain PvP flagged permanently, even on Blue?

We need a resolution that does not involve an additional server, sadly.

[Bhairava]

wipe red clean 2020

rogaine penis pump industries shareholders agree

[Christina.]

Because in the interview with Rogean today, that wasn't a viable option.

He clearly stated he does not want to run an additional server.

The option right now, is to merge Red characters into Blue. MAYBE give them a title or something, and then relaunch Red as a Teams PvP server.

Perhaps all of the characters who go from Red to Blue will remain PvP flagged permanently, even on Blue?

As a red99 player this sounds ok to me. A title and still bein PvP flagged would be cool. In addition, getting a fresh new PVP server, why not? Out with the old in with the new.


Think of blue as a museum for elf victories of the past red, blue, and green (post recycle).

Im down with the analogy :)

[Allishia]

Voting yes on aa's on blue without luclin :p

[Rick Sanchez]

Dulu, I like you taking initiative man so /respect there. However, teams wouldn’t solve the issue of player retention. The genuine problem will always be the toxic players that grief people into not wanting to play, to counter balance this, the idea of instances and pvp flagged zones etc sounds like a mass appealing idea. Again, I would prefer PvP classic way but the fact of the matter is, it brings out the unemployeds who drive away the majority casual player base. Also if the server does a year/two year restart and before every season there is a vote on the rule set or perhaps something along those lines, sounds fun. But teams isn’t the answer at all.

Also - what would be the point to put in AA’s on blue without additional content ? Might as well just add Luclin at that point.

[kaizersoze]

Let the red people come to blue. But they keep PVP tags. If they want to fight it out at camps with other reds, let em. I'd be down for some team battles on a fresh server.

[Allishia]

To have more reason to play your main. You have any idea how much more fun would be to actually improve my toon when playing around in xp groups ! :p. Woohoo for crits and OMG could hit like 9k hp with AA

[Quiet]

They missed the root problem.

Why does Red get stale after a month or 2? Because that is when the gear gap starts to increase from your casual pvpers and unbalanced PVP classes who don't need gear. One guild starts to dominate raid content and push other guilds out of getting gear almost entirely, then they fall behind, to where they have to join up, or risk never catching up.

Instance the main raids and it gives other guilds a chance to get in and safely obtain gear, with the danger being the pvp that will take place on the way to the instance and so on. It creates a spot of guaranteed pvp, as guilds will need to traverse to the instance points and can battle along the way. This keeps them in the game longer and allows them to stay within distance. EQ pvp isn't balanced between classes and gear makes it even less balanced, this is one of the more fun aspects of it but having both working against a person, it becomes no longer exciting. Hence 2 months in, people are like screw this, not logging in to feed trolls and get shit talked for 6 hours a day, with no chance of actually winning, new server plz.

Keep an open world spawn that guilds can compete over for extra loot, this allows that one dominate guild or multiple guilds a chance to compete for an increase in premium loot and still gives them a chance to set some distance, but never allows them to get so far out of reach, that there is no longer a point to log in.

[Danger]

instancing has been gutted from the p99 infrastructure.

teams is your best bet to prevent a unipolar server.

numbers, coordination, and strategy can outweigh gear, especially during classic. Tune on Drybone and a couple BIS apex went up against like 20 Heretic recently and it didn't go well for the gear advantage.

We've only had one P99 pvp server, and the population drop around the 2 month time frame was due to staff banning the 2nd high end competing guild. That soured a lot of people and shifted the power balance dramatically and in a way the server never really recovered from.

[agnostic]

I'd toss my vulak gear and primal into mt doom for a fresh pvp server

[derpcake2]

The problem red has involves two parts.

One issue is that people will outgear others so much in Velious, that PVP turns very one-sided. This was the nail in the r99 communities coffin.

Regular wipes would solve this, but they will lower the amount of effort people are willing to put into their characters.

I think 6 months of classic, 3 months of kunark, 4 months of velious and wipe would be ideal. I don't see the point of transferring characters to blue, if you want to play on blue, just level there, not as if that is challenging.

[White_knight]

Another issue is that lots of people dont play red for the PvP, they play it for the easy pixels -- they won't play a new PvP server or a seasonal server.

The key also is to cater for the casuals, not the no-lifers. No-lifers ruin servers, esp. PvP servers where they can 'feel' some dominance by flexing to make up for their inherent lack of IRLife.

[White_knight]

So in effect:

You need to make a server with faster respawns, and reduced raid requirements, i.e 7 day dragons are every 3 days with variance. ToV should be tuned to require half the amount of people. Also, VP and ToV should be instance zones. However the catch is dragons drop less lewt, i.e 1 item each so not as to mudflat the server with gear.

There should be a 1-50 list of zones that do not have PvP.

So in effect you offer faster PvE (both in leveling and gearing) and 'safe' leveling areas to casuals, remove the no-lifers claim to griefing, in addition make each server have a 12-18 month life span before rolling into blue.
This way people can spend 12-18 months playing on a hybrid casual-PvP server then swap out to playing on blue.

No PvP server will last if it's setup for the no-lifers.

[BlackBellamy]

Regarding any kind of "teams" server. If you're going to split up the teams where one team doesn't have access to a certain class, like for example good vs evil and evil doesn't have bards, then you WILL see a cross-teaming guild dominate the server.

[Danger]

Regarding any kind of "teams" server. If you're going to split up the teams where one team doesn't have access to a certain class, like for example good vs evil and evil doesn't have bards, then you WILL see a cross-teaming guild dominate the server.

rogean said he doesnt like the good VS evil dynamic. a lot of people have stated they want the teams hardcoded to prevent xteaming.

[Danger]

You need to make a server with faster respawns, and reduced raid requirements, i.e 7 day dragons are every 3 days with variance. ToV should be tuned to require half the amount of people. Also, VP and ToV should be instance zones. However the catch is dragons drop less lewt, i.e 1 item each so not as to mudflat the server with gear.

There should be a 1-50 list of zones that do not have PvP.

So in effect you offer faster PvE (both in leveling and gearing) and 'safe' leveling areas to casuals, remove the no-lifers claim to griefing, in addition make each server have a 12-18 month life span before rolling into blue.
This way people can spend 12-18 months playing on a hybrid casual-PvP server then swap out to playing on blue.



https://i.imgur.com/Ac9dPZi.png

[Bigsham]

He literally told you that you are getting nothing, darkpaw giving you nothing either

enjoy the nothing

[Gustoo]

I think red can stay the dumpster for pvp characters. PVP Guys don't want to be with blue guys and blue guys don't want to be with pvp guys.

I think that the FIRST Brown 99 server should be a really short life server like Discord so that issues can be flushed out without hitting big hurtles associated with people crying about losing their time investment in the game. Everyone knows discord is short.

2 teams pvp, DISCORD permadeath short life cycle server.

See how the teams work and other dynamics.

Go from there.

[Gustoo]

Another issue is that lots of people dont play red for the PvP, they play it for the easy pixels -- they won't play a new PvP server or a seasonal server.

The key also is to cater for the casuals, not the no-lifers. No-lifers ruin servers, esp. PvP servers where they can 'feel' some dominance by flexing to make up for their inherent lack of IRLife.

All EQ is for no lifers. If you have a life you can play casually and enoy the game, no problem. All MMO is designed for time sync. EQ Easy mode isn't going to help. No lifers will still lock down the pixels for their pixel hoard. Don't worry about them.

[Kerwin 5.0]

Teams is so gay just give us a fresh red99

[Squire]

Teams is so gay just give us a fresh red99

Would u rather have +/- 4 level range pvp with anyone ala red99

or

no level limit but 2 hard coded teams so you can kill anyone not on your team

[derpcake2]

pras new server

[derpcake2]

All EQ is for no lifers. If you have a life you can play casually and enoy the game, no problem. All MMO is designed for time sync. EQ Easy mode isn't going to help. No lifers will still lock down the pixels for their pixel hoard. Don't worry about them.

on eqlive all the rules made for casuals just got exploited by neckbeards

pretty sure they still haven't fixed the bug where people can drop an instance when the raid mob is at 1% and avoid the lockout

just rotate 3 alts and chain farm the instance

[Oadina]

PVP Guys don't want to be with blue guys and blue guys don't want to be with pvp guys.



Why not ask the people who stayed on red their entire eq "career" then tried p99 red, and ended up on blue, why they switched? There are quite a lot. I speak to them daily. That's your player base you are missing out on.

Frustration I bet would be number one reason. Maybe I'm biased, I grew up on tallon. But my last attempt at a red play through was quite discouraging. No groups, and the 20 or so people online at the time, were so excited at the prospect of someone new to hunt, my level 20 was literally harassed and chased out of every zone. Not a p99 experience. And please, no "get gud" replies, I'm pretty sure my level 50 something enc/cleric are still in existence.

oh, nearly forgot, something about level 50's deleveling after getting fully geared, so they could, kill the newer ungeared folks. Do I like the blue ruleset? No, I HATE FTE. But at least its somewhere to play, and have closer to the og eq experience.

[iamnotsalem]

Oadina looks like such a little bitch rn

[Gustoo]

oh, nearly forgot, something about level 50's deleveling after getting fully geared, so they could, kill the newer ungeared folks. Do I like the blue ruleset? No, I HATE FTE. But at least its somewhere to play, and have closer to the og eq experience.

This is a classic problem but is ridiculously easy to mitigate in one of like 1000 different ways. One way is the no level range teams PVP that was proposed. Another way is to impose level REQ on these items. Player skills were retained on rallos through all the develing originally, but that changed on live to being like skills of a character that is +2 levels or something.

I'm not trying to say that red99 is a great server I am just saying that there isn't a lot of incentive to bring red99 guys over to blue99 archive server for either party.

[Squire]

I am just saying that there isn't a lot of incentive to bring red99 guys over to blue99 archive server for either party.

A new pvp server is pretty big incentive imo.

[heartbrand]

The deleveling thing was such fake news. Avoid unrest and mistmoore problem solved.

[Traak]

sz ruleset or bust

[crossplay]

Excited for any new pvp server.

[Quiet]

sz ruleset or bust

I do like this idea simply because it would allow them to be the most hands-off. I get the coding would take work, but once implemented and running in 2030, they could essentially sit back, collect social security and not have to concern themselves with anything, except actual hacking or exploiting. The PVP aspect and all methods used to win within legal boundaries would be a not their problem type issue.

I have been surprised that Daybreak or Darkpaw or whoever hasn't gone that route. They have literal servers up with 2-6 people total playing on them. They keep those servers running without issue. The idea that they would need to even occasionally peek in on an SZ ruleset is dumb and not needed. Plus they could gouge a few months of subscriptions with minimal overhead.

[Kerwin 5.0]

they added and removed xp bonus so many fkin times when red was really growing is what happened

[Dulu]

I'm not trying to say that red99 is a great server I am just saying that there isn't a lot of incentive to bring red99 guys over to blue99 archive server for either party.


Bruh.

We're talking about a new Teams PvP server.. and the main thing holding Rogean back from doing it is the Red Question. "What do we do with red?"

Getting a fresh pvp server is a huge incentive to have our red characters merged into blue.

Wake up, before we miss this chance.

[Etorryn]

R99 some of the most fun I have had on a MMO. Started on R99 with no friend ( no friends who played EQ pvp) and ended with many that I still game with on discord today. Some really fun times and laughs on R99 that I cherish today (no lie).

[silo32]

I say keep red running forever, if you wanna pvp go log in...

we don't need another new fresh server because that's all people are gonna do is cry fresh every year

red is fine try green

[Darthmuhh]

Serious question.

What would you rather have? Red in it's current state with 40 people in perpetuity.. or a brand new Teams PvP server with a thriving community?

What I would rather have is for them to UNbreak red so that we can raid end content again with our numbers. They totally fucked our server.

Muhh 5700hp rogue

[Danger]

What I would rather have is for them to UNbreak red so that we can raid end content again with our numbers. They totally fucked our server.

Muhh 5700hp rogue

i'll render a hand salute as your 5700hp rogue is transferred to blue for storage like arnold schwarzenegger being lowered into molten steel at the end of terminator 2

thats a sacrifice im willing to make for a thriving box.

[AenorVZ]

I don't want to open a second permanent server and have to support both ... There's a lot of concerns that staff had, such as a sudden influx of raid gear from red that was easier to obtain because of lack of any pvp competition.. influx of legacy items, etc

The solution, and I think you could get the staff on board with this, is that all players transferring from Red would have a different name color to flag them as Red refugees. All high end items for the transferred characters should be flagged in such a way that they can only be transferred among former Red players. So it's kind of a scarlet letter. Sure a former Red character may have some uber gear, but it's always obvious which server the gear originated from and they can't flood it into the economy of Blue. You of course could also make it so that former Red players can still engage in PvP with each other on Blue but it sounds like you've already considered that.

The nice pro of a seasonal server though is that we could constantly change up the ruleset every iteration.. discord, teams, ffa, etc

Another pro is that one of those seasons could be the final season. You don't have to commit to another perpetual server.

[It] needs to be teams.. it's the only way to protect the newer/isolated players ... otherwise you get one guild strong arming everyone. Three teams might segregate and already extremely small community a little too much.

It's always going to be one strong guild. Here's why I hope you will reconsider the original Race War ruleset. When Tallon Zek opened, it was the only ruleset that was so popular that they had to immediately make a copy of it (Vallon Zek) to load balance the population. Rallos and Sullon Zek never had this problem.

Here's how it went on those two servers. On Tallon Zek, the evil team won for the exact reason you mentioned. The zergs planned ahead to share Evil team (just like they did on Sullon Zek) and no other team had a chance. On Vallon Zek, Sirken and many others fought at my side to make sure Evil did not prevail. The three light race teams banded together.

Now I know we'll get a major cryfest about cross teaming but soft coded teams provides players with political options. You can be team exclusive. You can crossteam. Only WoW players need the ruleset to establish who their allies and enemies were. There is no interaction so real as when you're grouping with and trusting someone knowing they could attack you if they chose to. Interactions in a hardcoded environment will never be that meaningful.

[Old_PVP]

Just merge Red into Blue already, make all red players permanently PVP flagged. Wipe your hands clean of Red, it had it's shot. Time to put this old dog down. Launch new teams on Red's ashes, and repeat the same process 3 years from now.

Over time, the assimilated Red players from a multitude of failed Red servers will band together to form red only guilds and spread their toxicity onto the Blue community. Various ingenious forms of griefing on unsuspecting blues will be introduced and revisited. Staff will be forced to implement the Guild War command (which is classic) to allow the fool blues to deal with these rabble-rouser Red players. Chaos ensues, some guilds find the balls to issue guild wars, and we once again have a semi-PVP enabled server to call home. Our evil plans will come to fruition my degenerate friends.


...or something like that.

[Quiet]

TZ and VZ had the same cross teaming issue and evil over balance, due to the simple fact that evil had better shit.

Their location was more centralized.
They had best tank class (Ogre)
They had best regeneration class (troll)
(Dark Elves) are arguably the best caster class in that era with ultravision and 2nd highest Int. I remember trying to run around Qeynos Hills at night has a level 3 human, unless you jacked gamma up to max, couldn't see shit.
Evil race towns were easiest access points to the main leveling area/loot zone of the time (Guk).
The other 3 Teams lacked any real way to level 1-60 on home turf. They were spread out or as elves as Dark men of Odus go, too condensed in a location that didn't really grant them access to anything. Their classes were inferior. Only option was to band together in a system that had them at a huge initial disadvantage.

[iamnotsalem]

I logged into red yesterday to see Muhh's 5700 HP rogue die to Fame of all people. Shut this shit down and send that trash to blue where he belongs

[Danger]

Rogean:
"There's a lot of people that don't want to play a seasonal server either though... they want to pvp but also their raid gear actually means something. I had some ideas, maybe I'll just have to lay them out in a forum post to see what people think, before I do a ton of work making it happen"

lemme get that forum post rogean

show me the post, i want the post

https://i.imgur.com/lk1teeo.png

[raski]

i would be ok having my red toons moved to blue with a title and guild wars being a thing,or instead of the title keep the red name without the negitive effects of being discordant

[Danger]

i would be ok having my red toons moved to blue with a title and guild wars being a thing,or instead of the title keep the red name without the negitive effects of being discordant

If that is doable I think it's a great solution

[Dulu]

i would be ok having my red toons moved to blue with a title and guild wars being a thing,or instead of the title keep the red name without the negitive effects of being discordant

I agree with you and Danger.

I think this is the best solution for the fate of Red.

[Darthmuhh]

I logged into red yesterday to see Muhh's 5700 HP rogue die to Fame of all people. Shut this shit down and send that trash to blue where he belongs

Aye, it was a super close fight but I went down for sure. Fame like a hero was shouting to his comrads, " I got this, he;s MINE! ", and the wall of red text damage began. Minutes ticked by then hours and still Fame soldiered on swinging his little heart out. Sweat blurred his vision, the sun was dropping over the horizon, he could do it...1 point of damage...20 points of damage, ooo that was a massive hit... 1point of damage... His friends logged off but he continued his quest to drop the Mighty Muhh, a thing whole guilds could not do, yet he was doing it! He was soling the Muhh man himself! Oh glorious day Oh glorious day! It seemed to be only a few short hours and it happened, the impossible happened... Muhh went down! ( screen shot ) (screen shot)... " Oh yellow text screen shot I will love you forever. " He preened around his room like a little school girl after her first valentines card. Life was good.

I woke up from my nap, awww fuck, " look how long it took this guy to kill me, lol, what a retarded fuck. I'll never here the end of this, bet he's crankin his little weener already."

Muhh 5700hp rogue wielder of CT's brain

[Fammaden]

OMG I'm so excited by this story, logging into red right now I'm sure hundreds of others are about to as well!

[Danger]

OMG I'm so excited by this story, logging into red right now I'm sure hundreds of others are about to as well!

Ｃ Ｕ ＲΣΣＬ Ｓ♢♢Ｎ

[Robersonroger38]

Aye, it was a super close fight but I went down for sure. Fame like a hero was shouting to his comrads, " I got this, he;s MINE! ", and the wall of red text damage began. Minutes ticked by then hours and still Fame soldiered on swinging his little heart out. Sweat blurred his vision, the sun was dropping over the horizon, he could do it...1 point of damage...20 points of damage, ooo that was a massive hit... 1point of damage... His friends logged off but he continued his quest to drop the Mighty Muhh, a thing whole guilds could not do, yet he was doing it! He was soling the Muhh man himself! Oh glorious day Oh glorious day! It seemed to be only a few short hours and it happened, the impossible happened... Muhh went down! ( screen shot ) (screen shot)... " Oh yellow text screen shot I will love you forever. " He preened around his room like a little school girl after her first valentines card. Life was good.

I woke up from my nap, awww fuck, " look how long it took this guy to kill me, lol, what a retarded fuck. I'll never here the end of this, bet he's crankin his little weener already."

Muhh 5700hp rogue wielder of CT's brain
When I saw this scroll on the screen I was wondering, whhhaa thaaa.

[Fame]

Seasonal model has burnout as well. Playing a seasonal server atm, on season 5-6 and the burnout is real so the long term servers def have some value and staying power. Also some huge benefit, the server i play on does some experimenting every season to test new ideas out on the player base and if it works it gets rolled into the next season. Over time it has really helped add to and enhance the experience.

[Worry]

Merge red with blue and make new pvp server! All for it!

[Dulu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-XStKImnJ4

[Swish]

https://i.imgur.com/7wokh5n.gif

[Nirgon]

Team evil server gonna go as well as "just wipe it and roll it with 8 lvl range and xp loss" box

Im sitting here laughing how little they've learned from their mistakes

I listened to the idiots last time and the box failed hmmm

Let's do that again!

It's not like live was any indicator of what will happen either

:D

[Dulu]

Team evil server gonna go as well as "just wipe it and roll it with 8 lvl range and xp loss" box

Im sitting here laughing how little they've learned from their mistakes

I listened to the idiots last time and the box failed hmmm

Let's do that again!

It's not like live was any indicator of what will happen either

:D

What does this even mean?

How about instead of crying, you try to give constructive input?

[Nirgon]

What does this even mean?

How about instead of crying, you try to give constructive input?

No tears here

Just I told you so

I was shocked when Rogean listened to VZTZ crew last time and look how it turned out within 2 months

This teams thing is gonna be a joke

I'll roll up, but it's gonna be evilfest then deader than this last one

[heartbrand]

I disagree with the premise that most people get bored due to some sort of gear gap. The reason in my opinion that blue and green and what not can retain a large pop while red cannot is because of two major reasons and one minor reason.

1) it takes longer to achieve “end game” status on blue. This keeps the carrot going that makes you want to continue to login to progress. On red you just join the one raiding guild and get near BiS within a couple of months.

2) PvE has a vibrant economy where people can play TunnelQuest which is it’s own metagame. You farm items, monitor supply and demand, make some shekels here and there, and proudly post pics of your plat on the forums. Red has zero economy due to the ease of obtaining end game gear, and the lack of any interest in 99% of droppable items.

3) the minor reason simply being a lot of people like the concept of PvP to contest and resolve disputes for camps and raid targets, but in practice don’t like how it actually plays out, which is typically incredibly griefy and not an “honorable” duel to the death combat between two prepared guilds or characters, but rather guerilla war tactics in Afghani caves.

That’s my tl;dr. There are plenty of custom solutions to these issues but they involve changes that hardcore PvPers hate such as a safe zone, a more elaborate and enforced PnP, etc.

[Danger]

I disagree with the premise that most people get bored due to some sort of gear gap. The reason in my opinion that blue and green and what not can retain a large pop while red cannot is because of two major reasons and one minor reason.

1) it takes longer to achieve “end game” status on blue. This keeps the carrot going that makes you want to continue to login to progress. On red you just join the one raiding guild and get near BiS within a couple of months.

2) PvE has a vibrant economy where people can play TunnelQuest which is it’s own metagame. You farm items, monitor supply and demand, make some shekels here and there, and proudly post pics of your plat on the forums. Red has zero economy due to the ease of obtaining end game gear, and the lack of any interest in 99% of droppable items.

3) the minor reason simply being a lot of people like the concept of PvP to contest and resolve disputes for camps and raid targets, but in practice don’t like how it actually plays out, which is typically incredibly griefy and not an “honorable” duel to the death combat between two prepared guilds or characters, but rather guerilla war tactics in Afghani caves.

That’s my tl;dr. There are plenty of custom solutions to these issues but they involve changes that hardcore PvPers hate such as a safe zone, a more elaborate and enforced PnP, etc.

Great points. I think a hardcoded teams environment may help mitigate some of those issues given a non unipolar guild server as well as a future box not having 7 years of Kunark etc

[Frug]

Serious question.

What would you rather have? Red in it's current state with 40 people in perpetuity.. or a brand new Teams PvP server with a thriving community?

"Thriving community" is a pretty large presumption. I'm sure fewer people want all-out PVP as opposed to teams, but my gut says even that population is pretty small and prone to rapid decay after the honeymoon is over <shrug>

[Bigsham]

Still no confirmation of anything from anyone

[Nirgon]

Great points. I think a hardcoded teams environment may help mitigate some of those issues given a non unipolar guild server as well as a future box not having 7 years of Kunark etc

There's gonna be a huge evil team guild

Probably that guild alone will be larger than the entire "good" team faction, and all max lvl

Would love to be wrong btw

[Danger]

There's gonna be a huge evil team guild

Probably that guild alone will be larger than the entire "good" team faction, and all max lvl

Would love to be wrong btw

That's assuming teams are divided into good/evil

Nilbog had an East VS West teams lineup that was something along the lines of

Erudites
Barbarians
Humans
Halfling
Dark Elves
Ogres

VS

High Elves
Gnomes
Dwarves
Trolls
Wood Elves
Iksar

Half elves can go either way depending on starting location.

[Rick Sanchez]

They missed the root problem.

Why does Red get stale after a month or 2? Because that is when the gear gap starts to increase from your casual pvpers and unbalanced PVP classes who don't need gear. One guild starts to dominate raid content and push other guilds out of getting gear almost entirely, then they fall behind, to where they have to join up, or risk never catching up.

Instance the main raids and it gives other guilds a chance to get in and safely obtain gear, with the danger being the pvp that will take place on the way to the instance and so on. It creates a spot of guaranteed pvp, as guilds will need to traverse to the instance points and can battle along the way. This keeps them in the game longer and allows them to stay within distance. EQ pvp isn't balanced between classes and gear makes it even less balanced, this is one of the more fun aspects of it but having both working against a person, it becomes no longer exciting. Hence 2 months in, people are like screw this, not logging in to feed trolls and get shit talked for 6 hours a day, with no chance of actually winning, new server plz.

Keep an open world spawn that guilds can compete over for extra loot, this allows that one dominate guild or multiple guilds a chance to compete for an increase in premium loot and still gives them a chance to set some distance, but never allows them to get so far out of reach, that there is no longer a point to log in.


Agreed.

[heartbrand]

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

[Christina.]

I'm going with ranger this time around or maybe shadowknight

[Platexchange]

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

100% agree. The challenge with EQ PVP in its current state is that without a PnP it degenerates down to who is willing to stay up the longest and put in the most hours. Ironically, they solved this issue over a decade ago when servers like Vallon Zek came up with their own PnP ruleset that actually made PVP and PVE competitive and available for the masses. What you have seen on EMU servers the past 10 years is a result of the small subset of degenerates, who CAN spend countless hours griefing, all playing on one sandbox of 100-150 dudes.

Conclusion, find a way to implement a player enforced PnP that doesn't get the gm's involved and you'll see a thriving server. Yes there will be retards who don't follow it, but that's what blacklisting is for. Only reason people get away with it on the emu boxes is every person is needed and not replaceable.

[White_knight]

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

This is exactly why I say you have to make a PvP server more casual orientated for it to be successful.

EQ PvP dynamics dictate that no-lifers "win" by default. If systems could be put in place to enhance the desirability for more people to play, whilst facilitating PvPing then a server could be more successful.

Allowing a server's entire raid content be dominated by 1 guild, usually with 15-20 no-lifers at helm, is one of the reasons what keeps these servers low pop.

A normal person doesn't have 15 hrs to play EQ in a day because 5 people decide to spend their Monday training a raid.

Also I don't agree with LNS, that system is shat.

[crossplay]

Still no confirmation of anything from anyone

[Gustoo]

A normal person doesn't have 15 hrs to play EQ in a day because 5 people decide to spend their Monday training a raid.




There is no way to make EQ a game that doesn't favor the people with 15 hours a day to play. That is how the entire game was designed and anything that anyone does to try to change that will fall flat. Other games do not require maximum hours dedication, everquest does, for maximum victory.

The 2 teams with Sullon full level range PVP gives the most amount of people a chance at having a good time, besides regular red 4 lvl item loot rules.

A winning team will always develop and the losers will always come to forums to complain.

People are always going to want a fresh start after a while. For me, I don't really care about a fresh start EVER but I want population, I want people to come to the server to play casually or however they enjoy playing. Red now is actually 99% dead which means we need to start over.

[heartbrand]

There is no way to make EQ a game that doesn't favor the people with 15 hours a day to play. That is how the entire game was designed and anything that anyone does to try to change that will fall flat. Other games do not require maximum hours dedication, everquest does, for maximum victory.

The 2 teams with Sullon full level range PVP gives the most amount of people a chance at having a good time, besides regular red 4 lvl item loot rules.

A winning team will always develop and the losers will always come to forums to complain.

People are always going to want a fresh start after a while. For me, I don't really care about a fresh start EVER but I want population, I want people to come to the server to play casually or however they enjoy playing. Red now is actually 99% dead which means we need to start over.

I don't think anyone would dispute that this game favors those with the most disposable time. However, the current way mass raid pvp plays out does not allow for a thriving competitive landscape that is fun for almost anyone involved.

[Danger]

100% agree. The challenge with EQ PVP in its current state is that without a PnP it degenerates down to who is willing to stay up the longest and put in the most hours. Ironically, they solved this issue over a decade ago when servers like Vallon Zek came up with their own PnP ruleset that actually made PVP and PVE competitive and available for the masses. What you have seen on EMU servers the past 10 years is a result of the small subset of degenerates, who CAN spend countless hours griefing, all playing on one sandbox of 100-150 dudes.

Conclusion, find a way to implement a player enforced PnP that doesn't get the gm's involved and you'll see a thriving server. Yes there will be retards who don't follow it, but that's what blacklisting is for. Only reason people get away with it on the emu boxes is every person is needed and not replaceable.

What was the Vallon Zek PNP policy?

[aaezil]

You can promise something and then be wrong about it later down the road you know. Its acually a worse look for staff to not wipe red.

[Dulu]

There is no way to make EQ a game that doesn't favor the people with 15 hours a day to play. That is how the entire game was designed and anything that anyone does to try to change that will fall flat. Other games do not require maximum hours dedication, everquest does, for maximum victory.



I agree. But I'd go a step further.

Any game worth shit is going to have people playing it 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day, 365. That's just the state of our species right now.

Log into any niche multiplayer game lobby, and you'll see kids with 10,000 hours on their steam profile.

People need to just accept they aren't going to be able to compete on even footing with these people, unless they have some incredible natural talent. But even then, the talented player is going to get beat by the person who merely outworks them.


Everquest (and games like it) are just unique in the sense they give power to the character, while most games these days put the power in the hands of the player.

Think of a kid with 5,000 hours in the latest Call of Duty, or Escape from Tarkov. He's going to shit all over a typical boomer, and no one would bat an eye. But because EQ's power is character based, people want to cry "nerf, balance,change!".

[Dulu]

You can promise something and then be wrong about it later down the road you know. Its acually a worse look for staff to not wipe red.


100% this

From talking to the TLP nerds a lot over the past week+, there is a negative connotation with project 1999, partly due to Reds population.

They are stupid as shit, but they see Reds low pop and use that as an argument in every fucking thread when discussing P99.

[heartbrand]

People are making it sound as though somehow the top guilds on this server won by a skilled set of players banding together who play 24/7. That's not the reality. They "won" because no one on either side has patience to sit and engage for 20+ hours daily in monkquest and the associated fuckery that go with 2 to 3 people engaging in tactics to prevent the other side from killing dragons. So inevitably people stop logging in until everyone bands together in the new guild of the month that will kill dragons. It's the same 2 to 3 sick human beings that do this that have been associated with all of these guilds while everyone else on both sides stare at zone walls and watch porn or netflix on the other monitor.

[Bigsham]

Above poster was a part of every zerg guild that griefed all competition so they would quit , he then got "BIS" And quit and acted cool, like colgate.

[heartbrand]

Above poster was a part of every zerg guild that griefed all competition so they would quit , he then got "BIS" And quit and acted cool, like colgate.

I played in pretty much every guild on this box through 2017, and made RD to contest as well. I have experienced it on both sides. But ok.

[Gustoo]

OK so we know that everquest is broken in these ways, and PVP in it can make it even worse. The game wasn't meant to be beaten and we have beaten it and ground it into powder and spit on it and pissed on it and cussed at it and written it bad report cards and complained about it, and we are still here.

So to keep this thing everquest and good there isn't a whole lot of fancy stuff we can do except to try to not have the community be too toxic. But geez when you're playing a game that rewards 20 hours / day of play theres not a lot you can do when you get to the top levels of pixel rot. Pixel rot happens guys.

Thats why I was pretty focused on an item loot 4 lvl pvp range server (without de leveling, and with level req's on epics) because you can use different strategies and the top tier gear is quite obtainable.

But now I don't care and would be fine with sullon rules for a while.

[White_knight]

It's simple boys, if you make a server that caters to the 'normal' crowd of EQ PvP server players and it will be dead before you know it.

The engine room (population) of any EQ server is it's casuals, therefore if you want a semi-sucessful eq pvp server (not a server with 50 nerds on it) you need to cater to the casuals.

Simple as formula.

[White_knight]

The same 50 nerds that will play a 50 pop server will play a casual eq PvP server.

They don't need to be catered too.

[heartbrand]

The same 50 nerds that will play a 50 pop server will play a casual eq PvP server.

They don't need to be catered too.

Correct

[Rick Sanchez]

All valid points but I think the opposing argument is how fun is a 20 year old MMO emulated server without a decent size population. I see both sides of opinions, maybe something in the middle so the server isn’t the same 50 stay at home sons perhaps. ? /shrugs

[Psyborg]

I've never played nor had interest in EQ PvP. A few questions I have:

1. For a seasonal team PvP server (a server that starts and ends on predetermined dates), would it be more fun to level a character or go straight to max level? In other words, is the leveling experience a must have for a seasonal server?

2. For a seasonal team PvP server, is the obtaining of gear through raids and grouping an essential part of the fun? In other words, is obtaining gear a chore or part of the fun?

3. Is there some sort of scoring system involved in team PvP?

[Danger]

Know what'd really tie this thread together? A nice, long, comprehensive, and detail filled Rogean or Nilbog reply.

https://i.imgur.com/M7GiXbq.png

[Flexin]

Would play a new p99 hosted red server or a wipe, would not touch any of the other boxes and i'm sure many people feel the same way.

[Old_PVP]

Know what'd really tie this thread together? A nice, long, comprehensive, and detail filled Rogean or Nilbog reply.

https://i.imgur.com/M7GiXbq.png

Confirmed, staff don't care.

Just start logging back into Red again, server thriving recently.

[Ragnarokkr]

I don't want to be rude, but I'd like you to address the question.

Do you want a fresh Teams PVP server, with a sustainable population, or do you want to keep your current pixels on Red?

What if we gave your character that migrated from Red to Blue a unique title?

Heywood the Conqueror - something like that? Showing you leveled on a PVP server.

What can we do to bring you to the table?


So basically I have a few ideas to bring to the table. In my opinion, I would like to present 2 ideas that might have been commonly thought of, alas I have never seen them.

1.) Remove cross team healing.
2.) Bring all current existing pvp characters to blue as RED status. (priest of discord).

[Bigsham]

show picture of unemployed children tomorrow who arent getting a new server because adults dont care

[Danger]

So basically I have a few ideas to bring to the table. In my opinion, I would like to present 2 ideas that might have been commonly thought of, alas I have never seen them.

1.) Remove cross team healing.
2.) Bring all current existing pvp characters to blue as RED status. (priest of discord).

I think moved red chars to blue should have a cosmetic red player name without the typical discord drawbacks (i.e. cant be healed by nor buffed by non discord players), idk if thats even doable, but just to show where these chars came from as a badge of honor (or scarlet letter depending on who you ask).

As far as teams I'd go even further and say they need to be hardcoded, i.e. no grouping, healing, buffing, porting, bard songs, trading, etc between team lines. Hell I'd remove common tongue.

[Christina.]

2.) Bring all current existing pvp characters to blue as RED status. (priest of discord).

I think moved red chars to blue should have a cosmetic red player name without the typical discord drawbacks (i.e. cant be healed by nor buffed by non discord players), idk if thats even doable, but just to show where these chars came from as a badge of honor (or scarlet letter depending on who you ask).

Both of these quotes.

[Bigsham]

Lots of great ideas in this thread by children, its unfortunate the adults dont care

[magnetaress]

<3

[Danger]

Lots of great ideas in this thread

IKR? Lets see what develops!

[Sear]

Brogean and Nildog, you chaps make this happen (teams or seasonal - sounds good to me) and I'll bring as many VZTZ/TZ ppl as I can to play it.

Despite that most of us just ruined our social lives again with classic WoW + are adults with families, actual responsibilities, etc.

My armchair game designer recs are to go faster-than-classic on the exp rate and hardcode the teams if you do teams.

[Rogean]

I also would like to avoid 'good vs evil', because naturally.. everyone goes evil

Team evil server gonna go as well as "just wipe it and roll it with 8 lvl range and xp loss" box

Im sitting here laughing how little they've learned from their mistakes

This teams thing is gonna be a joke

I'll roll up, but it's gonna be evilfest then deader than this last one

https://i.imgur.com/nzqAWV9.gif

[Christina.]

Perhaps a movement of characters to blue then, then a refresh of regular Red 99 then? Hm.

[Sear]

Good vs evil worked on TZ/TZ, but 4 teams (what was originally intended by Verant) fell apart in just a few months.

More players went evil races obv but there were just 3 of them compared to good races having 9 plus classes inaccessible to darkies. I would guess the pop distribution was something like 55/45% in favor of lighties, if not 60/40.

It ended up being relatively balanced with the vanilla world layout lending to certain races having an advantage of controlling nearby dungeons. Darkies could more easily control Guk because they had Grobb/Oggok right there. Lighties had Mistmoore/Unrest. Solusek B was a toss up.

[Nirgon]

Have fun with another custom box yall

I AINT with it

[Bigsham]

Good vs evil i will roll good with the rest of my gnome homies and melt stupid dark elfs like dirty nirgon and the dark men of odus

[Tassador]

Teams is crap and nobody who like pvp wants teams. Anyhow it’s 2020 so not playing a 20 year old game isn’t that big of a deal anymore.

[Nirgon]

Good vs evil i will roll good with the rest of my gnome homies and melt stupid dark elfs like dirty nirgon and the dark men of odus

Green is great

Classic is the way

[Danger]

Green is great

Classic is the way

Green isnt classic tho.

Enjoy your custom box.

[Danger]

Teams is crap and nobody who like pvp wants teams. Anyhow it’s 2020 so not playing a 20 year old game isn’t that big of a deal anymore.

Teams is probably the only sustainable PVP server type. The most hardcore people like the idea of FFA, right there with you, but I rather play on a dynamic, decently populated box where curious bluebies and casual dads have a built-in support network and parallel top end guilds can develop and duke it out.

Rogean what is your current idea(s) on non Good/Evil alignment based teams?

[magnetaress]

Imo should be elves vs everyone else.

[Old_PVP]

Green is great

Classic is the way


Green isnt classic tho.

Enjoy your custom box.

None of these servers are truly classic. One of the custom changes I find particularly amusing & annoying, depending on what situation you are in... is Line of Sight for spell casting. Talk about kicking casters right in the nuts. Casters never had line of sight checks.

The whole 'greedy' merchant custom change is another one I laugh about... and some people still don't even realize it's a thing. This is obvious because people still sell shit to these merchants, when they could walk 5 steps to another merchant and sell for double the price.

They are all custom boxes, but sadly, they are the closest thing we will get to classic. But I digress...

We need TEAMS. If left to a FFA ruleset...A lot of you guys like to talk tough, but most of you wind up taking the path of least resistance and joining that one big zerg guild to get your easy pixels. Very few of you choose team underdog, or 'guild B' underdog and take the fight to 'guild A' zergfest.

2 completely balanced teams, East vs. West style laid out by nilbog. Or 3 teams SZ / DAOC style is what this new server needs.

[magnetaress]

None of these servers are truly classic. One of the custom changes I find particularly amusing & annoying, depending on what situation you are in... is Line of Sight for spell casting. Talk about kicking casters right in the nuts. Casters never had line of sight checks.

The whole 'greedy' merchant custom change is another one I laugh about... and some people still don't even realize it's a thing. This is obvious because people still sell shit to these merchants, when they could walk 5 steps to another merchant and sell for double the price.

They are all custom boxes, but sadly, they are the closest thing we will get to classic. But I digress...

We need TEAMS. If left to a FFA ruleset...A lot of you guys like to talk tough, but most of you wind up taking the path of least resistance and joining that one big zerg guild to get your easy pixels. Very few of you choose team underdog, or 'guild B' underdog and take the fight to 'guild A' zergfest.

2 completely balanced teams, East vs. West style laid out by nilbog. Or 3 teams SZ / DAOC style is what this new server needs.

I pretty much agree, and there should be no item trades or buffing, healing, or grouping between teams 1 character per loginserver account maybe? IDK. There are plenty of ways to discourage crossteaming I saw the devs talking about it on streams and lots of posts about it here I don't have to re-iterate.

--------------------------

One custom change that I think a lot about is disabling exp loss so people simply cant delevel high lvl twinked alts. Or *gasp* no pvp at all until lvl 40-50, and when kunark launches bump that up to 49-60. But my favorite pvp is lower lvl and in the planes between small guilds not massive zergs vs one or two xudes training. An alternative to people being twinked is to level scale stats on higher lvl items total item percentage so people with a fungi on a lvl 17 character only get like 1+hp regen instead of plus 20. That requires a lot of custom work tho. but can bet tailored to specifically OP items like epic weapons and fungi stuff

bluebies aren't good at pvp and to recruit them they need an environment they can pvp in with like, training wheels, and most of us are lazy even people who played on red99 for years. I am super lazy. I prefer to spam chat and forum posts rather than play most of the time, I am afk on the box.

[magnetaress]

I feel like a lot of bluebies make it to lvl 19 in unrest but log off when its 5 vs 1 guy with instant invis and fungi and their dmg is capped at 20 instead of 40+ hps per joust. They just give up and become overwelmed when one guy can kill their entire party EZ because they are just not that good. We need to help those folks out. (yes this is a very bluebie carebare way of thinking), but we need more players, not a harder box.

Ideally pvp should be lethal and dangerous and everyone should be able to die to everyone else with less emphasis on gear and more emphasis on strategy, groups, and situational awareness and fighting over camps.

maybe also make it so casters can only bind were melees can.

[Gustoo]

NO ONE has been talking about doing Good VS Evil teams

It was proposed full custom teams hard coded, not the same teams that were ever used on any live server. It seems like it would be fun to try. If it fails then all the toons can go back to Red.

I propose no legacy items to make the game about the game and not about poopsocking temporarily in game junk like bind clickies manabones and such.

Just a straight up server with straight up content. Sorry psychopaths.

[magnetaress]

NO ONE has been talking about doing Good VS Evil teams

It was proposed full custom teams hard coded, not the same teams that were ever used on any live server. It seems like it would be fun to try. If it fails then all the toons can go back to Red.

I propose no legacy items to make the game about the game and not about poopsocking temporarily in game junk like bind clickies manabones and such.

Just a straight up server with straight up content. Sorry psychopaths.

in a game like EQ there will always be people camping players for pvp at rare spawns if not manastone it would be something like the FBSS @ frenzy or the helm from lord or one of the sola camps.

Just need more empaths to protect the zone and pvp the pkers. You are pretty special though gustoo. You are 1 of a kind unique :D

on old live people RP'd, chatted, and generally played more with less inclination to level and collect their own pixels. I remember high lvls always hanging around EC, nektulous zone line buffing newbs while selling and pvping other guilds, meeting up with their friends for powerleveling and what not waiting for groups. on rallos that is

*****reds OG community kind of drives away empaths tho.

[Robersonroger38]

If they move our chars to blue... can you Turn Seb,Kael, and the planes All pvp.. I mean cmon all those bluebees against just the 50 of us? Surely they’ll win those camps.. >=)

[Bigsham]

No one is doing any teams or any pvp servers, Transcript of convo Lol

see you in thurgadin !

( i wont be there )

[Danger]

Merge red empty 2020, would delete all pixels and my 8 paladins for a fresh box. Even the naysayers would play and thrive.

[AenorVZ]

NO ONE has been talking about doing Good VS Evil teams

Because it's a horrible idea. Go play WoW.

[Christina.]

Yeah I'm not going to lie , I'd give up the little shit that I've collected over the years for a fresh start too lol. It's about that time.

[magnetaress]

this is a strong community it has outlived original EQ, it will thrive again one day :D

[Gustoo]

Because it's a horrible idea. Go play WoW.

Agreed thats what I'm saying.

[Tradesonred]

With all due respect for the work put in to make classic EQ servers, especially pvp, Rogean's input is comically out of touch. It was explained inside and out why the population drained during the first few months: He didnt listen to feedback about xp loss, or he did, but the wrong ones (people saying xp loss is fine cuz they were either PVEers or Griefers). Nihilum's poopsockers were a prime example of people who were militant on the forums about xp loss, and we now know RMT was involved, which is why they liked that stranglehold on Fear and wanted no change on the status quo. People were literally bragging for months on the forums that they used xp loss in pvp to get people to give up and quit. You had to actually try real hard not to read the forums for this to not be plain as day. Or he thought red had a large population of assholes, reading red forums was like sticking your head in a 3 week old cat litterbox so he just didnt do that.

Also props to sirken for putting in time, but when i saw him announce (i think it was during kunark?) that they were gonna nerf xp to help the population recover, i was speechless, this just drove in the final nails in the coffin, no surprise there.

I mean i wondered all these years if Rogean reads feedback, now im pretty sure he doesnt. At least as much as it was easy to get a clear picture of why red was drained of its population during red's launch (lets say the first 6 to 8 months), he cant see it.

So at this point im expecting the same debacle with teams, because all the feedback is there already (teams will kink fast toward one side or the other being dominant, with no means of rebalancing teams like guild switching on red serves that purpose, its easier to grief people when you dont have the 4 levels safeguarding) but most likely will not be read/ignored. I mean ill come here one last time with a bag of popcorn if on top of letting level 45s camp blackburrow lowbies they put in xp loss, because that shit will drain faster than red ever did. It will be a fitting end, im sorry to say.

[magnetaress]

I hope teams is better. I believe people who will do it care, have been involved in red, and will have learned from the last few years.

All that said. I would take the risk to move, understanding your fear. We have to live in the moment. Even though this is EQ. I want more people to try it out. I believe a few fresh people may show for a fresh teams box with the knowledge that it will get merged if necessary. Who knows, red could merge onto the teams box as well if the server did exceptionally well within a year.

[Gustoo]

Any fresh box would be fun.

I don't think +-4 pvp range without item loot is the best system. The no item loot with no level range system seems like a worthwhile experiment for the next generation system. The custom box teams proposed a year or two ago seems like a worthwhile experiment for the next generation system. Both of these changes are in line with classic EQ values.

Seems like it could be fun and worth trying.

[Gustoo]

in a game like EQ there will always be people camping players for pvp at rare spawns if not manastone it would be something like the FBSS @ frenzy or the helm from lord or one of the sola camps.



Those items never get pulled from the game. They can be permenently poopsocked but they never become a lifelong investment in your EQ career like a manastone does and moreso the bind affinity item from kunark. These are significant game changing items and they should either be in the game or out of the game. We made the decision not to allow zero cast time pumice in the game because it is too awesome, why would we leave the pixel rot items in the game. I know that the game is supported by the people with pixel rot frenzy and who are hoping to RMT to pay their bills but it would be nice to launch an EQ classic timeline server that avoids the sickness.

Bind at pots is either always on or always off
Manabone always on or always off.

so on

[Tradesonred]

I hope teams is better. I believe people who will do it care, have been involved in red, and will have learned from the last few years.


I dont. What the devs need here, for years, is brutally honest, uninvested feedback. What they were getting from those Nihilum poopsockers for example, was tainted feedback. They knew xp loss made it so that no one could challenge them in raid zones strictly because of their numbers which meant they won without even having to fight for it 95% of the times. So they told the staff everything was fine, although it was bad for the server. Same story with the griefers, they had fun making people quit, so they also told staff everything was fine. It was not hard to figure out what was going on though, if the devs mod had time / cared about it, minimally.

Heres some more out of touch snippets:

"Hence why we're not going to just wipe the red server.. we've gone on record that unless it's declared ahead of time before the server opens, you'll never lose your chars"

Again more proof Rogean just doesnt get pvpers. When he moves my 60 shaman on blue (if i still played) thats the end of my character. I played pvp classic, i played pvp emus, i play pvp. Pretty sure thats the story of most people who roll on red. Thats just like deleting the characters. Not that i am against it, but it is what it is.

"needs to be teams.. it's the only way to protect the newer / isolated players
otherwise you get one guild strong arming everyone"

Nothing will stop a bored lone griefer druid to port in and out of newb zones to grief them. It will be easier than ever to grief newer/isolated players when you can literally one shot them before they know what happened. These are the players without a solid guild starting out, lagging behind in levels, just feeling their way around who will get shit on 24/7 by Cast-type players. Its just a repeat of red's launch, like i said, its just comical to read some of that chat.

He has some interesting ideas (like how seasonal servers could be fun to try different rulesets) but i think its time for Rogean to have a bit of humility and just accept hes just not good at getting a hang of what works in pvp. Listen to people like Angwe (forgot his dev name here), have some serious post where people pick apart the potential flaws for different server setups and actually read and think about them.

To be clear im not against a teams server, but these issues have to be addressed before the server is launched, with solutions thought through or it will just be a tragi-comedy thing all over again.

[magnetaress]

Fair enough.

[Danger]

Love that this thread is still going strong and its brought in some posters who are not regulars on red forumquest. We can have a mental circle jerk about hypothetical mechanics and rules and do autopsies on why red99 died, as many already have, but ultimately for this discussion to be productive whatsoever we need some feedback from Rogean and/or Nilbog.

Now, Dulu and I spoke with Rogean a bit during our "PVP Crusade" event we held last week. I personally found it very encouraging.. at least initially. Rogean (as seen in the transcripts) stated he had some ideas he wanted to lay out in a forum post, nilbog said Rogean "can't stop talking about" pvp ideas previously.

Rogean doesn't owe me anything, I get that. But if he can't be bothered to write a forum post of ideas then I'm not overly confident in his willingness to devote the free time to developing a new server. (I genuinely hope I’m proven wrong here)

https://i.imgur.com/T1tmZKC.png

We've derived countless hours of free entertainment from this Project, and I know members of the PVP community "make it really hard [for Rogean] to give a shit about [us]" (paraphrasing Rogean from the now deleted Lite thread), especially the vocal minority that posts here, but the total lack of communication is part of why some people here have the opinion of Rogean that they do.

It's been years since the dev team engaged in a substantive manner on Red or PVP so asking for a forum post or a little communication isn't being overly demanding imo.

[White_knight]

Heard Rogean cant stop talking about this that he had an over the dinner table discussion with his spouse about his plans.

She found it a very romantic notion to talk about his PvP server plans and apparently encourgaged him to progress on his ideas.

[Sear]

Heres some more out of touch snippets:

"Hence why we're not going to just wipe the red server.. we've gone on record that unless it's declared ahead of time before the server opens, you'll never lose your chars"


They're in between a rock and a hard place with this. The "never delete your characters" thing is to maintain trust and integrity. I get it, even though I think the playerbase would accept it after ten years of server uptime.

My philosophy was to wipe VZTZ after one guild "won" the server, cleared every PvE thing, and people were gearing their 19th alt with BIS items. The fresh grind and competition of a server launch is the fun part for a lot of people, especially on red servers imo. It was a ghetto seasonal server approach before that became a thing.



He has some interesting ideas (like how seasonal servers could be fun to try different rulesets) but i think its time for Rogean to have a bit of humility and just accept hes just not good at getting a hang of what works in pvp. Listen to people like Angwe (forgot his dev name here), have some serious post where people pick apart the potential flaws for different server setups and actually read and think about them.

Angwe = Null. Does he still post here?

You're never going to please everyone. The raiding neckbeards want Kunark dropped two weeks after a vanilla launch while casual pvp'ers want the opposite of that. There's always a lot of noise and bitching to sift through.

[magnetaress]

Personally if Exp and drop rates are classic & there isn't a lot of cheating. I would prefer it stay classic for a year, move to kunark. For a year. Then merge to red or blue for velious. Rinse, repeat.

I would enjoy item loot but no one new will appreciate it. So I don't think it's possible.

[Gustoo]

I disagree about no one new appreciating item loot.

Scary stuff is fun. Losing items is scary.

HOWEVER at this point I wouldn't mind seeing teams tried so it can be behind us, or maybe work out and everyone loves it.

With 2 custom teams and sullon zek rules, we would have to hope that people that farm lowbies on opposing team just get corpse camped by enemy team once they are caught. Its a good way to have tit for tat PVP where high levels get to interact in non raid scenarios.

Worst case is that the people with high levels only log for raids and don't give a shit what goes on during non raid hours. Some people will be like that.

I really think a classic timeline NON legacy server would be the most fun. I think there is a special type of toxic in the rush to get manastones that we've seen on green/teal

Live servers like live Discord did not have legacy items and they were still fun. It would also emphasize that fact that this server is not about establishing a pixel hoard in the same way as other servers.

I wouldn't even be opposed to leaving manastone and other legacy items in game permanently but with an insane rare random drop rate from basically any monster or something wild like that. Or that they are obtainable from an in-game casino which also helps with plat inflation.

I think that this next server could be a test bed for some of those concepts as long as they are active at making the pvp situation make sense.

[Stasis01]

Even if you get the right mechanics and rule set, the community is so invested with their egos that people will stack it and just play safe making it stale.

Let the dream die.

[Gustoo]

Shit cuts too deep for me Stasis.

It will get stale, thats why they should have a fixed lifespan. Play to win not by biggest RMT pile but by ?? most fun? whatever.

[Bigsham]

fixed lifespan = 200 pop

sorry

[Gustoo]

200 pop would be a smashing success for red. 200 pop playing for good times would be probably ok.

Your characters can dump to blue or OG red.

[magnetaress]

Got a lvl 9 sitting on red right now, taken me 5 hrs to lvl cuz I am afk, but I aint got no ego, I don't care about loot. I just want to be able to log into EQ every once in awhile.

Would be great to group but I don't have the time to invest to make a lvling partner/date. I just think people are growing up and we can only invest so many lvl 60s into our butts before they get to sore to sit on anymore (btw ALWAYS working on getting up between med cycles so I don't die of decrepitude). It is possible to play R99 responsibly, but ya, we got to give up dreams of living in a pixel palace.

[Danger]

Sacrifices must be made. I'll trade my fungis on a 40 pop box for banded and several hundred anyday.

[White_knight]

New server has to be seasonal, with a ladder for PvP and PvE.

One seaon as teams.
One season as FFA.
Etc. Etc.

Each season lasts 6 months. 1 for classic 2 for Kunark 3 for velious.

Rinse and repeat with carry over titles.

Make it easier leveling so even a casual can make it to 50 by end of 1 month of classic.

Don't make a server that nerds can fester on and make 15 alts in full NTOV..i.e current red99.

[magnetaress]

Is it really that hard for a group of players to take down an NTOV geared? Like can 1 NTOV wipe an entire group of Kunark? (minus the training and elite pvp tactics)

In classic 1 wiz could pop an entire grp if played well (waiting for the group to start wiping)

If ur in a zone to do some stuff and u see someone u don't like pvp them, then do ur stuff

[Raclen]

When I read rogean say soon but not really soon that sounds like a confirmation that it will never happen.

[magnetaress]

When I read rogean say soon but not really soon that sounds like a confirmation that it will never happen.

It could happen anytime between now and 2043. Good chance it will happen at some point though.

[Gustoo]

It will happen, eventually. Just like red happened. I left poor old shards of dalaya for blue when the prospects of redness were greater on project 1999 and my attempts at stirring up zeal for PVP on shards were falling on dark blue ears.

When one person with NTOV gears walks into a room of kubark geared players, half the kubark players go into a fit of lustful pixel rage and start PBAOEing their own group to try to satisfy the broken yearning in their hearts. It's truly sad.

[magnetaress]

It will happen, eventually. Just like red happened. I left poor old shards of dalaya for blue when the prospects of redness were greater on project 1999 and my attempts at stirring up zeal for PVP on shards were falling on dark blue ears.

When one person with NTOV gears walks into a room of kubark geared players, half the kubark players go into a fit of lustful pixel rage and start PBAOEing their own group to try to satisfy the broken yearning in their hearts. It's truly sad.

I will probably never set foot in NTOV, that is not why I play here, but if I do, It will be with pals, and I will defend them with all my little elf heart, even risking losing my corpse, forever.

[Gustoo]

I'm just goofing around. Me too.

There is more strategy to eq pvp than just wearing best in slot items. People like to make excuses. EQ always rewards people who are most prepared and also who have the most time to invest.

[AenorVZ]

https://i.imgur.com/nzqAWV9.gif

Mad nerds don't speak for us. Thanks for giving thought to a new PvP server.

[Sguchi]

Sounds fun

[Tradesonred]

To me the wildcard for population here are streamers: Im re-downloading warhammer online emu right now (return of reckoning) because some streamer gave favorable reviews for the emu and population jumped from 400 to 2900. Pop might not stay forever but it really made me think its still possible for emus to get pops in 2020 provided the game and server setup is fun enough to retain a pop.

And heres what to me is the kicker:

Imagine this happened here in 2011, server jumping from 500 to 3k at launch. What would have happened? Likely just more fun for griefers to make people quit, for a little while more.

Whats important is you have a window to make it work, if it doesnt gel during the first few months, you lost that opportunity. Red re-launch will be that opportunity for EQ classic probably for one of the last times.

The game needs to be fun for people unfamiliar with the game you succeeded in attracting, to retain them.

Having fast levelers camp your zone for hours, with you having 0 chance to fight back, not fun. You have to think this through like the worst outcomes will happen: If theres a way to grief, you can be sure it will be milked to its fullest potential by the worst aspect of the red population.

Now some irritation is to be expected for new pvp players: You will have to learn the game, through pvp, you will die alot. That will filter out part of the pop who just isnt cut out for EQ pvp. A problem arises when, exactly like what happened at red's launch when the learning curve is too steep because the players cant practice. They are getting so crushed, that they just cant get good at it. New players that are potentially EQ pvp material can hardly learn pvp because practicing at it means you will get hurt so badly (massive xp loss or in red's potential new iteration: pvp means 95% of the times getting one shot, over and over by a griefer) it will make you quit the game when you do the fun vs tedium calculation in your head.

That was the beauty of Wow, even at 27 vs a 52 hunter, you could still dmg him if other players were around. It would make you practice at getting better, while having fun at it. Thats what Rogean seemingly never got, he viewed pvp strictly as a means to control PVE, not as fun in itself. Getting crushed through xp loss on red during launch was not like getting killed over and over in wow pvp, for alot of players it would make you try harder, approach the situation from different angles. You just dont try to approach a pvp situation from a different angle if you are taking massive xp hits each time you die. You avoid it. The same is true for a teams server where 9 times out of 10 encountering a red player, you will die in one or 2 hits. You can see that coming from miles away: Once again, pvp will be something you avoid 95% of the times, not something fun you participate in daily (my experience on Rallos), its so predictable.

So that will play out in red's re-launch as well: If you cant evade pitfalls like griefers running the box (which will happen if you let them just port around and one-shot newbs, that i need to point this out to counter-argument Rogean isnt a good sign in dev direction for the box) the pop will drain out fast again. New players' experience will be once again to be shit on 24/7 by vets because of the way devs set up the server, which leaves no room for unexperienced players to get good at the game and enjoy themselves while doing it.

[Tradesonred]

Theres no avoiding that vets will run the box, that they will be better than the rest of the players.

What you can avoid, is putting odds overwhelmingly in their favor like what happened during red's launch. You will decide if they have an edge or hope-crushing, making-people-quit-the-server unassailable dominance, through the server setup.

[Danger]

To me the wildcard for population here are streamers: Im re-downloading warhammer online emu right now (return of reckoning) because some streamer gave favorable reviews for the emu and population jumped from 400 to 2900. Pop might not stay forever but it really made me think its still possible for emus to get pops in 2020 provided the game and server setup is fun enough to retain a pop.

And heres what to me is the kicker:

Imagine this happened here in 2011, server jumping from 500 to 3k at launch. What would have happened? Likely just more fun for griefers to make people quit, for a little while more.

Whats important is you have a window to make it work, if it doesnt gel during the first few months, you lost that opportunity. Red re-launch will be that opportunity for EQ classic probably for one of the last times.

The game needs to be fun for people unfamiliar with the game you succeeded in attracting, to retain them.

Having fast levelers camp your zone for hours, with you having 0 chance to fight back, not fun. You have to think this through like the worst outcomes will happen: If theres a way to grief, you can be sure it will be milked to its fullest potential by the worst aspect of the red population.

Now some irritation is to be expected for new pvp players: You will have to learn the game, through pvp, you will die alot. That will filter out part of the pop who just isnt cut out for EQ pvp. A problem arises when, exactly like what happened at red's launch when the learning curve is too steep because the players cant practice. They are getting so crushed, that they just cant get good at it. New players that are potentially EQ pvp material can hardly learn pvp because practicing at it means you will get hurt so badly (massive xp loss or in red's potential new iteration: pvp means 95% of the times getting one shot, over and over by a griefer) it will make you quit the game when you do the fun vs tedium calculation in your head.

That was the beauty of Wow, even at 27 vs a 52 hunter, you could still dmg him if other players were around. It would make you practice at getting better, while having fun at it. Thats what Rogean seemingly never got, he viewed pvp strictly as a means to control PVE, not as fun in itself. Getting crushed through xp loss on red during launch was not like getting killed over and over in wow pvp, for alot of players it would make you try harder, approach the situation from different angles. You just dont try to approach a pvp situation from a different angle if you are taking massive xp hits each time you die. You avoid it. The same is true for a teams server where 9 times out of 10 encountering a red player, you will die in one or 2 hits. You can see that coming from miles away: Once again, pvp will be something you avoid 95% of the times, not something fun you participate in daily (my experience on Rallos), its so predictable.

So that will play out in red's re-launch as well: If you cant evade pitfalls like griefers running the box (which will happen if you let them just port around and one-shot newbs, that i need to point this out to counter-argument Rogean isnt a good sign in dev direction for the box) the pop will drain out fast again. New players' experience will be once again to be shit on 24/7 by vets because of the way devs set up the server, which leaves no room for unexperienced players to get good at the game and enjoy themselves while doing it.

can I get a tl;dr version of your solution to this issue?

[Christina.]

I read that long comment by tradesonred but he didn't offer any solutions at all throughout the 20 paragraphs hehe.

[Tradesonred]

can I get a tl;dr version of your solution to this issue?

Pointing out problems is the first step to resolving them. I certainly dont claim to have all the answers, but looking at it at this point, one solution would be to not launch a teams server if its just gonna be 2 months of vets shitting on people poking to see if they might like it until the server stabilizes at 50 pop in record time.

Solution if no one else provides solution to how to prevent say, a 50 druid going into blackburrow to one-shot lowbies is to run a FFA server, which is less griefy.

Approach it like young doctors would, first do no harm. If teams is going to be demonstrably worse, with no one able to solve its apparent problems, then dont do it. And if you are going to launch one despite all these issues, certainly dont put xp loss in the mix because "its not call of duty".

[Tradesonred]

If it was up to me to try to make teams work, youd get xp from pvping, with diminishing returns. That would be a start.

[Bigsham]

Dumpster dinner LOL

[Tradesonred]

For a teams server, Id restrict pvp to 4-6 levels, probably just 4. Id make massive incentive algorithm when data shows one side is getting overpopulated. Something like 15-20% xp bonus. Thats why i dont like teams, it seems like alot more work and headaches to make it work and im not convinced the team is ready to do all that. I just cant see it working, or at least more than just hopping around on a gimp leg from the get-go to an early server death.

---------------------------------------------------------------

My ideal server would be this:

4 level FFA, item loot and custom no drop loot, added to the loot tables of mobs as you climb up the levels. Make those a little less powerful that their usual dropped version, so you get better of both worlds: You can wear the custom stuff and be sure not to lose it, or you can wear the better stuff but you might lose it if you die to pvp. This is to offset the harsness of item loot. It will also add a real economy and kill RMT cuz whos gonna pay 100$ for a droppable fungi tunic. To use my example, the fungi king would drop alternatively 2 versions of the fungi tunic. The no drop one, which heals quite less than the droppable version. And the original one, which is rarer.

Make events copied from the halloween 2001 events, which drops no drop/event gear. Let the players fight over these events. For those who werent there, for example the sky would turn purple in WC and werewolves would appear, who dropped event loot.

Make these events worthwhile enough for people to port in, give interesting plat/item drops (scythes held by reapers were worth 10p). Design those events around the concept that pvp is fun and you want to incentivize it. Make insta-pumice a rare drop from those events, or something similarly cool that players will actually move there to fight over it. Make these events last hours and hours. Automate them and make em daily occurences, with more event variety added in time. Make low-mid-high range events, to segregate level-range a bit.

Fuck this duel shit. It can be fun as a side dish but without a main course its just meh. These events will make pvp worthwhile. People will have intel like oh damn theres 20ish players around that zoneline, how are we going to do this, etc... organic pvp not this game of thrones jousting shit.

=======

This would be cool as hell but more work, not super classic.

So simply, easiest most trouble-free solution is a FFA server, but without the xp loss starting out. Just relaunch red if its gonna be something less than what i layed out.
At least you wont get the shitshow we got when red launched, which was assuredly responsible for emptying out the server. Find a way to make xp GAINS in pvp a thing, maybe (exploits thought through first).

[iamnotsalem]

Yikes

[AenorVZ]

For a teams server, Id restrict pvp to 4-6 levels, probably just 4. Id make massive incentive algorithm when data shows one side is getting overpopulated. Something like 15-20% xp bonus. Thats why i dont like teams, it seems like alot more work and headaches to make it work and im not convinced the team is ready to do all that. I just cant see it working, or at least more than just hopping around on a gimp leg from the get-go to an early server death.

---------------------------------------------------------------

My ideal server would be this:

4 level FFA, item loot and custom no drop loot, added to the loot tables of mobs as you climb up the levels. Make those a little less powerful that their usual dropped version, so you get better of both worlds: You can wear the custom stuff and be sure not to lose it, or you can wear the better stuff but you might lose it if you die to pvp. This is to offset the harsness of item loot. It will also add a real economy and kill RMT cuz whos gonna pay 100$ for a droppable fungi tunic. To use my example, the fungi king would drop alternatively 2 versions of the fungi tunic. The no drop one, which heals quite less than the droppable version. And the original one, which is rarer.

Make events copied from the halloween 2001 events, which drops no drop/event gear. Let the players fight over these events. For those who werent there, for example the sky would turn purple in WC and werewolves would appear, who dropped event loot.

Make these events worthwhile enough for people to port in, give interesting plat/item drops (scythes held by reapers were worth 10p). Design those events around the concept that pvp is fun and you want to incentivize it. Make insta-pumice a rare drop from those events, or something similarly cool that players will actually move there to fight over it. Make these events last hours and hours. Automate them and make em daily occurences, with more event variety added in time. Make low-mid-high range events, to segregate level-range a bit.

Fuck this duel shit. It can be fun as a side dish but without a main course its just meh. These events will make pvp worthwhile. People will have intel like oh damn theres 20ish players around that zoneline, how are we going to do this, etc... organic pvp not this game of thrones jousting shit.

=======

This would be cool as hell but more work, not super classic.

So simply, easiest most trouble-free solution is a FFA server, but without the xp loss starting out. Just relaunch red if its gonna be something less than what i layed out.
At least you wont get the shitshow we got when red launched, which was assuredly responsible for emptying out the server. Find a way to make xp GAINS in pvp a thing, maybe (exploits thought through first).

Didn't read past "custom".

Thanks for caring though.

[Danger]

my copypaste answer for custom anything

I'm all for semi-custom solutions to issues the original EQ devs did not address as it relates to PVP (Rogean can't stop talking about it) but deviating too far from classic is more of a turn off to many than the original issue you endeavored to address. Where do you stop? Soul binders? Mercenaries? Porting NPCs? Hell, why not just eliminate corpse runs entirely? But I digress, I may not be as much of a classic purist as old Nirgon but custom content to this degree is too much of a departure from classic EQ or Project 1999's interpretation of it IMHO.

[Heywood]

Yikes

[Bigsham]

Dumpster dinner lol

[Bigsham]

Any update on pvp movement? No one give a shit ?

[Danger]

https://i.imgur.com/oBOSKdL.png

[magnetaress]

https://i.imgur.com/oBOSKdL.png

That is one sexy dude, 10/10 would camp fungi tunics with him.

[Bigsham]

Huey lewis and the news, schnarfs hormone pill and taps submit

[Dulu]

Any update on pvp movement? No one give a shit ?

~300 people active in the discord. Someone gives a shit.

[Bigsham]

300 children in discord K no one gives a shit got it

[Danger]

just need red 2.0 before the corona virus really takes off so if im locked in my house in my bio containment bunker during the coming pandemic apocalypse i can fight over manastones with the other survivors.

https://i.imgur.com/9uOLhuW.png

[Gustoo]

Screens pretty small.

I have a friend, he been sleeping on the XXXXXL bean bag in front of his computer for a while. I pray for him.

[erta]

Thanks you for sharing, it's extremely cool to review a short article of somebody that's good at cooking, that's a wonderful professional. Incidentally, I'm very pround to tell you regarding specialists that produced this system. Here you can take rewards and also make more money. Inspect https://spinsdeposit.com

[Amyas]

How do we know teams would have a sustainable population?

[Christina.]

just need red 2.0 before the corona virus really takes off so if im locked in my house in my bio containment bunker during the coming pandemic apocalypse i can fight over manastones with the other survivors.

https://i.imgur.com/9uOLhuW.png

Is this your picture lol?

[Quest2b]

Why not make red the same as green? every so often it merges into blue and resets, i would love to be able to play my 60 cleric on blue rather than have it sit and rot on red.. Make items like manastone Nodrop on the reset so blues market isn't flooded with items that have been taken out. It's hard to make an assumption about the population after a "week" if it's never been reset before. Everything merges with blue at some point.

[magnetaress]

If we get merged to blue we should all stay PvP flagged

[choppedandglued]

Why not make red the same as green? every so often it merges into blue and resets, i would love to be able to play my 60 cleric on blue rather than have it sit and rot on red.. Make items like manastone Nodrop on the reset so blues market isn't flooded with items that have been taken out. It's hard to make an assumption about the population after a "week" if it's never been reset before. Everything merges with blue at some point.

WELL THERE is that issue with you leveling up off super XP on the red server.

[Christina.]

WELL THERE is that issue with you leveling up off super XP on the red server.

What's the Issue? .... Side note, leveling on RED99 wasn't easy as you may think.

[Gustoo]

Lol at people talking like getting from 1 to 50 is the hard part.

On red even with 100000x more exp there is literally zero moments you can do anything with ease. Unless you're just roadkill you're constantly in a pvp defensive mode. At the very least you can't afk and permanently own a camp just by sticking to an egg timer.