Without being a dick, let me try to argue for why fragmenting the population is not necessarily a horrible thing and possibly even an overall good thing.
Inc wall of text.
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Fragmenting the servers
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I would argue that the single largest problem on this server has been extreme crowding in the high level space. (followed by inflation/rmt/duping) By this I mean that there are too many level 58+ characters with full planar+ gear.
I believe that this is evidenced by the simple fact that the biggest knock people have had on this server since I started earlier this year was that low level grouping is fun but "the high end raid scene sucks".
Under normal circumstances fragmenting the server would be a horrible idea. On a normal server (normal being proper time line), you would have a smaller population of the server in the level 58-60 range, a smaller portion of the server with max gear etc.
The thing is, the current state of the server is not normal.
Simply starting a new server in the coming months would cause a chunk of the population to leave. This could potentially result in a good chunk of 'veteran' players completely leaving the server to restart.
On one hand this would make it harder for smaller guilds (like rapture) to get people together for our raids.
On the other hand, this could also make it harder for larger guilds, like TMO to mobilize as easily for killing everything on the damn server.
The people who want to stay on this server and play velious here would then benefit from a less congested, shit show raid scene. I am sure there will still be 20-30 level 60s around to kill trakanon.
It seems like the new server would solve the congestion problem very well.
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New topic: Inflation/rmt/duping
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To address the other issues, I was going to start a new thread but whatever.
My #2/#3 issues I see as the largest on the server are linked together, the inflation/RMT which are possibly/probably linked through duping as well as simply having this server around long enough for people to kill enough seafury cyclopses to make a million plat =P.
The GMs said the majority of players getting busted for buying plat are new players.
The hypothesis is that new players buy plat so they can get caught up/ahead/whatever.
While a new server won't stop RMT, it will allow new players to be in a situation where they do not need to buy plat to get 'caught up' since the norm is that nobody has shit anyways.
It will also put a huge drain on the number of new players on the current p1999 server which would possibly put a big damper on the RMT business here.
That could then put a dent in the whole ddos thing because assuming the RMT people are ddosing to dupe, they would no longer have a reason to dupe and therefor no longer have a reason do ddos unless they just want to be assholes -- considering they could potentially get caught/jail/fined and are no longer making RMT money for the upside seems like high risk for low reward?
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New topic: When to spin up new server
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As far as when to start a new server
1) When velious is ready
2) End of August
1) As loraen pointed out, velious = spike in players = fragmenting player base less harsh
2) End of august = school starts/summer over = more players start/return to the game based on previous server cycles (from what I have been told).
I am partial to #2, but at the same time #1 has the benefit of lowering the impact of new players flooding to the server.
What I mean by this is that if you started a new server today, a huge chunk of the population would move because they are bored of content and f'ing fed up with the duping, inflated economy, shitty raid scene, whatever. The problem is original EQ could choke with 100 level 30-50s trying to exp in guk and solb let alone 300-400.
#1 on the other hand would cause people to make a tough choice. They waited years for velious, do they reroll on p1999 new or do they play velious? I myself would be torn. On one hand I would want to get in early on the new server since eventually I would see that server becoming the main server... on the other hand .. velious now vs 2 years from now.
Anyways.
Those are my thoughts on it.
If it is disjointed and illogical sorry, I am really tired =P
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Halmir - 60 Cleric
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