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[Secrets]

If there's anything that I will agree with in this thread, it's the common hatred for classic that some seem to share.

I don't want to make a classic server, but the majority of people have been very vocal about wanting to play something similar to red99, and not custom stuff. As a custom server developer and supporter of custom servers, this irks me. Nothing creative can come out of EverQuest as a result, it's why I dropped my "Mythical Lands" codebase and started to work on a red classic server, because it'll actually attract people to start playing on it due to it being somewhat like classic.

I actually liked K & B PvP. I wouldn't agree with some systems, classic or not, but I have my own reasons.

The one thing that I hated that came out of K & B was the playerbase whining about dispellable effects acting as WoW-style "cleanse" spells. That put the nail in the coffin at any chance to make a custom PvP server, and even though it was one person whining about it, it sure did make a negative impact on the server. This is why we can't have nice things, I thought the idea was brilliant, it stops what I thought was the main issue with dispell.

About the attraction to my server... I really don't get it. I spent 5 hours on my server preparing it, and about 3 days fixing crash issues, and had a population of about 60 on release. That population will slowly dwindle a bit as people get bored of it/lack of things to do in classic/the half-finished DB boring them/exp rates being too high resulting in there being one pvp level (50), but again, I have made some custom servers and none of them have been that popular on release. That pisses me off. I am sure I am not the only one who feels that way.

I've yet to figure out why. Is there not enough repeatable or expansive content in a custom PvP server? I don't know at this point. Just wanted to put that out there, though.

[SearyxTZ]

Familiarity. Same reason why P1999 is so hot and custom blue servers aren't.

Most of the potential players in the emulated everquest community just want to play the game they played 12 years ago. The devs don't want to because it's already been done and you can't really put your mark on a server that follows classic (aside from doing a bang-up job of emulating everything perfectly, which P1999 has apparently done). It's asking an artist to copy a famous painting instead of creating his own, so I feel your pain there.


I don't think.... a Really Custom Server, no matter how well designed, will ever have a high population here. It won't happen.

The players who have gone through the trouble of even getting EQEmu working are few enough and most are content to just play classic.

Now, MAYBE you could get completely new players interested in custom servers, but that's not a luxury we have here. If I tried to get somebody who never touched EQ to play any of this shit, they'd just laugh at me. I wrote an install guide for TZT that is like 58 steps, requires you to pirate a huge game via torrent, rename/edit a bunch of files, download a fix for dual core processors, download a spells file, make an eqemu forum account, etc. Plenty of former EQ'ers I've told about servers here have passed on playing simply because they got stuck on the install/setup process or ran into bugs.

Compare that to any F2P MMO which has at minimum WoW-quality graphics and usually a simple download/install process.


New blood is few and far in between for this community, and you're left with a bunch of nostalgia hounds. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Hazek]

Agree with Secrets and Searyx. The install is really simple in my opinion, but most people are too lazy, or just don't care about EQ at all. Not sure why we all still love it so much, but I think its a great game.
In regards to the pvp servers...

If farming NPC's is being a bluebie, than you're all a bunch of bluebies. There are two purposes for killing NPC's, to get drops, and to attract players that can fight each other.

Do you want to farm the same old zones you've been farming for years, with a small chance of someone contesting you, with no actual reward for the victor other than yellow text?

Or do you want to farm those zones, for yellow text, item drops, and points that allow you to purchase even more upgrades that you would not otherwise get from drops? Without having to do some horrendous CR if you die. You only have to wait 30 minutes to summon your corpse. The purpose of giving pvp points from guards is to draw players to that zone for MORE PVP, not so they can get free "pvp gear" from PVE. Why? Because its easier and faster to get to someone in Freeport, than someone in hate.

Its time to make EQ pvp better. Contesting people in raid zones is so played out. Why not see who is really good at the game? How is this done? By creating more group pvp, more often. Rewarding for people with high KD ratios which is displayed by the gear they have earned (pvp points), the leaderboard, and the constant spam of yellow text.

Which do you prefer, seeing the occasional yellow text not knowing if that person is even good. Or seeing the same crew that rolled you last time, knowing that their mage who always gets the yellow text, is only as good as his team?

I enjoy both servers, and thank you to the devs for doing the work. I play on Secrets box atm because there are more people. But I dont think it will last. If you do get bored for whatever reason, I hope you go to K&B instead of just quitting while waiting for the pipe dream of red99.

[juicedsixfo]

Originally Posted by Hazek

In regards to the pvp servers...

If farming NPC's is being a bluebie, than you're all a bunch of bluebies. There are two purposes for killing NPC's, to get drops, and to attract players that can fight each other.

Right, even though now guard farming is pretty obsolete, I always thought there should have been world wide emotes on the first guard killed so people could show up. Currently there's only an emote when you kill their banker or morale officer, but as I said, guard farming has basically passed it's time as a viable way to gain some points.

Oh, and the handful of the people who camped the shit out of them day in and day out are now on VZTZ anyway, so it actually worked out great. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Originally Posted by Hazek

Or do you want to farm those zones, for yellow text, item drops, and points that allow you to purchase even more upgrades that you would not otherwise get from drops? Without having to do some horrendous CR if you die. You only have to wait 30 minutes to summon your corpse.

As much as the nostalgia hounds hate the idea of porters, to me they make perfect sense. You can get to PvP faster. On K&B when there's yellow text it also has the zone name. Nice, let me port home, and hit up one of the four options the porter has available so I can port in somewhere close and run my ass over there, instead of realizing it's a continent away and just staying put.

And again, the corpse summoner with a 30 minute timer. I think it's brilliant. You completely null all those rules about corpse camping, loot and scoot, bind rushing, whatever. No rules, if you don't want to risk getting camped or killed again, wait it out. To me there's nothing blue about that.

In the end, to each their own. I agree with the sentiment that starting up a new character has a certain rush to it. Some of us just enjoy rerolling, plain and simple. It provides new opportunities.

edit:

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

in all honesty though K&B was pretty legit and w/o guard farming/bluebie action and all that it has a lot of potential because you HAVE to pvp in order to get better gear, but having safe zones in AT ALL = no thanks

Well, technically above 40 there are no "safe zones" in the sense that you're untouchable. You can sit in your city and do whatever it is people do, but if some players of an opposing faction showed up, you could still be killed after they made it through the guards at the front. So people can sit behind guards and be "safe" in their city but that's it. You can only stay in Nexus/Bazaar/Shadowhaven for 10 minutes and you're kicked out.

[fiegi]

What kind of population is Kings and Bandits sporting now a days?

[juicedsixfo]

It's been around 10-30 the last couple days, with some of that being two boxing. The population is definitely hurting, but I think it will make a comeback, slowly but surely.

One of the things that "hurts" the population is that it uses a custom login server because it uses a modified eqgame.exe. So curious users don't have the option of just clicking play from the server list and giving it a shot. But really, in the long run I think it will help the server because it gives Image much more control on monitoring hacks. Nostalgia all you want but people will get tired of MQ2 users.

[SearyxTZ]

One of the things that "hurts" the population is that it uses a custom login server because it uses a modified eqgame.exe. So curious users don't have the option of just clicking play from the server list and giving it a shot. But really, in the long run I think it will help the server because it gives Image much more control on monitoring hacks. Nostalgia all you want but people will get tired of MQ2 users (no offense to Secrets who I believe intends on also moving to a custom login server in the future).

It's already convoluted enough getting in to a normal emu server, so yeah I'd say any additional overhead on logging in and playing is going to be a deterrence. Not to mention that most players do not trust far enough to download and use an .exe file from the interwebs -- when Voidd released his custom patcher thing, nobody downloaded it because of distrust.

Bad idea all around, there. A custom spells file download is about as far as anyone should reach.

And I believe Secrets is working on a different type of anti-MQ.

[juicedsixfo]

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

And I believe Secrets is working on a different type of anti-MQ.

I heard it's also a modified eqgame.exe using a custom login server. People use MQ all day on the emulated servers, and it's not really that much of a problem until it comes to PvP.

K&B is in for the long haul and I'm thankful for that. Good luck to VZTZ as well.

[SearyxTZ]

What someone really needs to do - if it's doable - is make a smooth install package out of Titanium (or SoD - whatever).

So that it's newbieproof and automates all of the file modification/editing shit. The goal would be less clicks and less steps to getting in and playing + some kind of standardized setup process for any of the eqemu servers.

[Secrets]

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

It's been around 10-30 the last couple days, with some of that being two boxing. The population is definitely hurting, but I think it will make a comeback, slowly but surely.

One of the things that "hurts" the population is that it uses a custom login server because it uses a modified eqgame.exe. So curious users don't have the option of just clicking play from the server list and giving it a shot. But really, in the long run I think it will help the server because it gives Image much more control on monitoring hacks. Nostalgia all you want but people will get tired of MQ2 users.

Personally, I think the best option would be to put it on both loginservers like PEQ does. I don't think image trusts Rogean with his playerbase, thus, he's on another loginserver. A majority of people do trust him (p1999, ez, peq, thf, funhouse, storm haven) and a majority of people will play just due to seeing it on the list. I guarantee you'd have more people playing on K&B if it was on Rogean's list instead of their own login, not because one is better than the other, but because one is more popular and more accessed than the other.

As for the eqgame checks... that's at the worldserver level, not the loginserver level... store CRC32 and freeze people who dont have it past level x, simple solution imo.