Two-Boxing

[Danyelle]

I never said that I was for or against i, though. I simply was stating that using the "ban boxing because boxing being banned is Classic" argument is stupid because it is, in fact, not Classic. I never stated I was pro or anti-boxing though.

In fact I'm in the middle ground. Letting free boxing is indeed bad, but cutting it out completely can be just as harmful. Especially in this situation.

Let's put it this way. On one hand, if you permit free boxing, you have people rolling up however many toons their computers can handle. For some they may barely be able to handle one account as it is, others may be able to load up around 30 at once. I personally can load 12 if I manage it right. There would be some differences. For example, without MQ2 availability, boxing all those toons would be hard as hell if not impossible. Although, arguably, by being able to load them all in it may encourage them to try to use MQ2 regardless of rules being set against it or not. Also Titanium handles like shit with modern PCs. While Underfoot or Live clients etc can load up that many, Titanium may cause issues with it. Cutting that number in half. Either way you look at it, once someone gets 6 toons in he/she never groups again. This breaks the "multiplayer" aspect of Everquest and destroys the game's foundation.

On the other hand. We have people backed up for like 4 freaking months waiting on IP exemptions just so they can play with their children, spouses, or friends/room mates. I don't care if it's a free server or not, that's unacceptable. Especially considering many people have donated, in many instances, several times. At that point, for them, it's no longer a "free server". Whether it was by their own will or not, you owe those people good service. 4 or so month backups on IP exemptions is not good service. No corporation would be able to get away with something like that, why should this be any different? I obviously realize that you have a lot of other things on hand to deal with. But if you can't keep up with that kind of thing you have 3 options. "Hire" more staff, enable limited boxing, or remove IP exemptions altogether. It doesn't seem the devs wanna go with option 1, and option 3 would piss people off lowering the pop even more than it already is. That leaves you with option 2. I can promise you this delay in response time is a large contributing factor to low and declining server pop (in addition to things like response time to petitions, time between content release, and massive petty trolling feuds between top end guilds and players that never get resolved).

The best course of action, in my opinion, is to enable 2-3 toon maximum accounts up at any given time per IP, and then do away with IP exemptions entirely (and revoke IP exemptions already handed out). This will permit people to come in with family and friends under the same roof and get right to playing, as opposed to waiting an eternity. It will still leave room for grouping. It also covers things like "I don't ever have enough time to sell in EC because when I'm not doing real life things, I'm out xp grinding or raiding" or "I play at night/am in a different time zone when few people are on and can rarely find a group" or "I just had some asshole steal my stuff while trying to do an item transfer..." either because "....he was a thief and /ex'd" or "...because he found the stuff I dropped and picked it up" etc etc.

Besides, if there are indeed that many people strongly against it, I doubt those people would box even if it was permitted (if you do, that's kinda hypocritical don't you think), which means that the only people boxing would be those few NOT against it. People using the raised IP limit to play with family or friends under the same roof aren't really boxing and don't count. So I fail to see how that small number would cause any harm, unless you all would give in to the tempting evil vice that is "boxing" the minute the IP limit got raised, despite your firm stance against it.