I've never been bothered by boxxing all that much. On EQ Live I knew some people who boxxed and even group with em. I only think it'd be a serious problem when people use third-party programs to automate everything. Otherwise, they're limited in their effectiveness to control a large group. But if boxxing is allowed then almost everyone will box, since p1999 has very low system requirements. This could easily lead to a situation where nobody is grouping for most of the game, except in the later stages. Why group when you can just make a box? And wouldn't this overload the server with toons? If 1000 players are 6-boxing then that'd be 6000 online players. I don't think the content was made to support that many. Wouldn't it look weird if every group or pair of players was using /follow? Or wouldn't it be weird everytime you send a /tell to someone that there's a long pause because the other person didn't notice it until they brought up that client? Etc Etc Etc.
There're lots of little things that would change how the game plays and the impression it gives. When people can solo either by boxxing or because it's built-in then it becomes common to go out on their own. The thing that makes EQ1 different is it wasn't a solo-dominated game; you had to group. So people couldn't be anti-social. Now, I'm not saying soloing is bad. I've soloed a huge amount in the mmorpgs I've played. I tend to like it because I can go afk whenever I want and do not have to meet the demands of others. But I'm not kidding myself that allowing boxxing or making a game extremely solo-friendly is not going to change things. Anybody who thinks it won't change things is not thinking about it. It definitely will. When you can play most of the game on your own, you come to expect it and there's no real reason to be social with others. And the quickest way to kill a community is to kill the skills of interplayer communication. If players are all busy doing their own thing and not talking to each other, they won't have the necessary social skills. By this I don't mean they can't communicate as people IRL.. I mean the tools and means of expression in-game. Like how to /tell or how to /say or how to hotkey something or how to do all this quickly when a group is under attack. I'm speaking in a generalized manner. Communication is complex. It's not as simple as typing "/say Hello!"
There should be solo and group games. I think some games should also be hybrids that offer both. Not every game has to be the same. We shouldn't expect that every game can meet our individual needs either. There's a plethora of games out there for us to choose from. A person that looks can normally find something that suits their particular needs. Unless you've invested a lot of time and money in a game, I see no substantial justification to complain when it fails to meet your specific needs at some juncture. And lets say it does. Nothing in the EULA says that a game cannot change. Sure, it hurts sometimes, but that's life.
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