Quote:
Originally Posted by loramin
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
I know this is a crazy idea, but maybe Red didn't fail because it lacked character transfers, or because it lacked *your personal pet PvP rule here*. Maybe Red failed because it's toxic community scared away most people who tried it, and many of the people that continued in spite of it were the types that enjoyed/increased the toxicity, making it more toxic over time.
Maybe that prevented the population from ever growing beyond the people who enjoyed/could tolerate that toxicity, and so maybe the way to save Red isn't to imagine new server changes, but rather to figure out how to make the community itself more inviting. And not just in the "this is Derubael's pet project for the week" way, but in a way that sustainably discourages players from just making other players' lives miserable and instead encourages respectful/competitive (and in my book, fun) PvP.
Maybe ... but I'm sure the kind of people who enjoy griefing (which I would guess is a big chunk of Red's current population) will tell me why I'm wrong and why what Red really needs to grow is MORE grief.
P.S. For the record no I didn't play PvP on EQ in classic, except for taking a toon up to like level 20 on Sullon Zek. But I did play mainly on a PvP server in WoW (and played tons of battlegrounds on my non-PvP servers), and I enjoyed it, so I'm not some MMOG PvP hater.
|
Ah as I read that I could tell you had not played red here and made the same misconceptions that many do here. Let me begin by saying of course the vocal minority of Forumquesters created a level of toxicity which was newbie unfriendly, we as a community have to be accountable for that but to insinuate that mean spirited banter is the only issue that plagued red is being myopic.
Mechanical changes such as (early on in the server's lifecycle) taking exp loss upon a pvp death, implementation of the global ooc which allowed toxicity to spread game-wide, yellow text which caused a name-and-shame element to pvp (all of the preceding were not classic, btw) inhibited player growth and retention.
Hell, I remember 12 people I was leveling with quitting after they throttled down the exp rate, that caused more player bleed than any toxic griefer, whom were allowed to wear epics and kill players at a 8+/- level range, which was later changed.
These are just a couple of examples, there were also a lack of any CSR for like 2 years (an environment not even the blue raiding scene could have endured, think of all the artificial rules and rotations required to keep blue going) so my point is, yes, the red community has some rotten and loud members, but you can't in any seriousness claim there wasn't serious structural problems and neglect from almost the very beginning. Don't get me wrong, I know the staff does this all for free, and I'm grateful, but I'm also just trying to paint a more accurate picture of server history.
tl;dr muh toxic community isnt the only issue that hurt red. mechanics and policies were at least as, if not more damaging.