[stormlord]

Originally Posted by wehrmacht [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I found people to fight on Sullon Zek 10x easier during PoP than during Velious.



Horrible idea. Removing the element of surprise and giving everyone in the game GM ability /who makes PvP worse. You never have to say "Darn I hope guild xxxxxxx doesn't zone in and attack us while we're doing Trak". It turns into "Ok guys, guild xxxxxx is zoning into Sebillis in 34.1 seconds, everyone stand here and attack as they zone in".



That's pretty much exactly how SZ was close to the end of Velious. Nobody from the good or neut team ever dared venture into Sebillis. Never saw any neuts or goods attempt to xp in Karnors either.

Only dungeon you could find neuts was Velk's lab and the goods were either hiding in some obscure spot of City of Mist or out in the middle of nowhere in some outdoors zone. So yea, even with 1000+ people online, PvP was almost impossible to find because there were just too many big outdoors zones you could hide out in and do high level xp in such as burning woods, wakening lands, cobalt scar, emerald jungle, trak's teeth. If you didn't play a porting class you're gonna be walking for hours looking for where these people are hiding.

Even if you spend hours running from middle of nowhere XP hiding spot to the next, when you finally find someone in a place like City of Mist, if they don't have a 70%+ chance of beating you, they're all just gonna gate before you actually get to them. So now you just spent like 4 hours searching through zones in 3 different continents for nothing.

Unless you plan on having 2000 people online, adding more zones to Kunark is just a bad idea since Kunark is about the maxmium number of zones a PvP can handle in the first place. This is why I say integrating content past Kunark into older zones would probably be better.

What has always baffled me about pvpers is how they want to take away things that encourage PvE players to come to the server. I played on Sullon Zek and loved the challenge, but not everybody did. I played on SZ primarily for the PvE. Most players are PvE. So I think I'm part of the majority, mostly. But I'm very hardcore and like my game to be hard so in that sense I'm part of a minority that's a subpopulation of the majority.

Anyway, if you take away all those zones that spread out people then you take away options. With no options a PvE player is a sitting duck waiting to be killed. That's when they leave the server and you guys rape each other because your population left. What makes this even less reasonable is the fact that Sullon Zek was already too hard for most. Heck, Rallos Zek was too hard! Since most players are PvE then it stands to reason that any amount of open PvP, 4 or 6 level limit or no limit at all, is discouraging for most players out there!

No matter what you do on a pvp server you're going to have a limited population unless you have a game that can appeal to PvE players without compromising their fun. If PvE players can choose not to participate in the PvP or they have an equal chance at competing regardless of how well geared another player is (or how much they play) then population will be strong.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that if you make it easier for people to PvP then you're not going to tap into the PvE players out there. A PvP-centered mmorpg is a niche at the present time. Leaning in the PvP direction will have a dramatic impact on your population. You do that at your own peril.

If you make pvp fair for all participants, regardless of time played or gear, and players can choose to avoid pvp, then you will be able to succeed in an optimal manner. Alternatively, if you just simply lean in the PvE direction then you can pull more of them in. For example, by giving PvE players more options to avoid PvP. Instances were the crown jewel to avoid PvP. Large numerous zones is another way - although less effective than instances - to avoid PvP. The difference is that instances completely remove PvP while large numerous zones just reduce it and give PvE players more warning - like to /camp or track or gate or port or etc.

In the years that I was playing on Sullon Zek I usually only went to zones I had a deep knowledge of. This allowed me to escape PvP in a lot of cases by exploiting this knowledge. I also could track them so I knew when things were bad. Quite a few times I didn't even need to camp. It was a skill all by itself knowing how to avoid PvP. You would go to ANY zone in the game even if the gear was obsolete. That's why on SZ everything was so expensive. Items didn't mudflate as fast on that server. And even if PvPers owned the latest expansions or the best items, it didn't matter, if they couldn't catch you! That was another reason I liked it.

The worst pvpers were the MQR's that cheated because they wanted PvP so bad. But make no mistake, I fed off the challenge. I liked the atmosphere. I look or desire for hardcore stuff like that even now.

And yes I got killed probably several dozen times. I killed maybe a dozen in my whole career. There's nothing like being a noob in blackburrow and a level 25 comes in (nancy or someone - in 2001-02) and kill you over and over whenever they get the chance. AFter a while, if you talk to em (don't be an ass), they might leave you alone. But anyway it was in those beginning stages that I started to thrive on the challenge.

The most evil thing I ever did was snare a noob in the commonlands. You really learned on SZ quickly whether you were truly meanspirited or not. You also learn who is your friend and who is just using you for kicks.