Email to 3000+ ex VZTZ players

[Avon Barksdale]

"I got stuck on 45 (as a ranger), groups were hard to come by and leveling was slow (even with people helping to pl). A combination I guess of rl stuff coming up and the game getting really slow. The gm favoritism was bad too. Honestly I wanted to post something but never did about how I thought they could make the server better for everyone. I thought they got way too involved in situations where it would have been more fair to just leave them alone (like trying to police training and exploiting - but neglecting to punish one side or another when there were multiple parties involved). Like, everyone has an equal opportunity to exploit, so let PvP take care of who gets the chance to do it and let it happen til a fix is patched in if you can't figure how how to punish everyone fairly. And just let everyone adjust to dealing with training and denying trains via PvP. GMs complained so much about crying, finger pointing, and rules lawyering, and how they didn't have time to deal with that, so why not just let fucking PvP take care of everything? IDK, stupid shit like that killed it for me. Forum browsing and trolling was probably the most fun part of that server before I stopped playing. Didn't help that shortly thereafter my apartment was broken into and alot of my shit was stolen (including my gaming laptop/only computer). Now I'm borrowing a google chrome laptop that only browses the interwebs. So it's kind of a moot point I guess."

I do miss the server when it was fun though, I had a good time playing with the people that I did.

Emma Watson is smokin' hot.

[Nirgon]

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

"I got stuck on 45 (as a ranger), groups were hard to come by and leveling was slow (even with people helping to pl). A combination I guess of rl stuff coming up and the game getting really slow. The gm favoritism was bad too. Honestly I wanted to post something but never did about how I thought they could make the server better for everyone. I thought they got way too involved in situations where it would have been more fair to just leave them alone (like trying to police training and exploiting - but neglecting to punish one side or another when there were multiple parties involved). Like, everyone has an equal opportunity to exploit, so let PvP take care of who gets the chance to do it and let it happen til a fix is patched in if you can't figure how how to punish everyone fairly. And just let everyone adjust to dealing with training and denying trains via PvP. GMs complained so much about crying, finger pointing, and rules lawyering, and how they didn't have time to deal with that, so why not just let fucking PvP take care of everything? IDK, stupid shit like that killed it for me. Forum browsing and trolling was probably the most fun part of that server before I stopped playing. Didn't help that shortly thereafter my apartment was broken into and alot of my shit was stolen (including my gaming laptop/only computer). Now I'm borrowing a google chrome laptop that only browses the interwebs. So it's kind of a moot point I guess."

I do miss the server when it was fun though, I had a good time playing with the people that I did.

Emma Watson is smokin' hot.

Avon remembered for coming here solo, getting to 40+ and posting many kills on his ranger while every other melee was in screamy tears.

[Tr0llb0rn]

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

Avon remembered for coming here solo, getting to 40+ and posting many kills on his ranger while every other melee was in screamy tears.

so true

solo ranger gets to 40+ np

vile and others get gear and PL and do not break 21 and /cry


xp not the problem, player motivation and a lack of appreciation for true classsic red EQ is

[Vile]

Originally Posted by Tr0llb0rn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

so true

solo ranger gets to 40+ np

vile and others get gear and PL and do not break 21 and /cry


xp not the problem, player motivation and a lack of appreciation for true classsic red EQ is

rofl... my char has bronze/banded armor bro. i got PL'd for maybe a couple of hours... read kable's post above, i am not the only one in this situation.

i have a life, a full time job, a girl friend, and i care about staying in shape unlike most of you fat nerd fucks. thank god i didn't invest more play time into my char, the box is dead as it is.

[Vile]

if the box was booming in population and everyone loved the shitty XP that would be one thing... i'd just suck it up and continue to not play... it's not that big of a deal to me.

it's just sad because increasing XP would turn the box around... the casual player base who wants to play on a PvP server is not going to invest the time needed. it's been proven.

[hagard]

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

rofl... my char has bronze/banded armor bro. i got PL'd for maybe a couple of hours... read kable's post above, i am not the only one in this situation.

i have a life, a full time job, a girl friend, and i care about staying in shape unlike most of you fat nerd fucks. thank god i didn't invest more play time into my char, the box is dead as it is.

It comes down to this, not everyone has 500+hours to grind to 50. 40hrs of work 40 hrs of school 56 hrs of sleep leaves 32 hrs of whatever time, I'd rather not waste it all grinding out xp on a box with 0population


Said that in another thread only to be replied back to by retards stating
"wut classic 2 hard 4 u"
Nothing in eq is hard but a server like this consumes far to much time.
That is the reason the server went from 600 to 15

[Lazortag]

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

i have a life, a full time job, a girl friend, and i care about staying in shape unlike most of you fat nerd fucks. thank god i didn't invest more play time into my char, the box is dead as it is.

Essentializing everyone who prefers the current exp rate as having no life is just stupid. I have a life, I go to school full time, and I'm married. It just meant that it took me several months to get to 50 because my play time was significantly reduced. There was pvp at every level until 50 and it was always entertaining for me. At lower levels it was insanely difficult because Bards get their first useful offensive spell in pvp at level 12. But that was part of the challenge, having to adapt to not having certain spells I'd learned to depend on on the blue server and on other red servers at higher levels. This wasn't a server where I could just hide in Qeynos and grind to level 50, avoiding pvp until I have my best spells, but instead a server where pvp was everywhere and I had to deal with it constantly. One time I was so paranoid of getting rooted mid-kite that I bribed Casey 50 plat not to do it. I had to get creative and use the only weapon I had (money) to avoid a confrontation, because I couldn't possibly beat a druid 1 on 1 and I outleveled the rest of my guildies by a lot, meaning I couldn't call upon their help. Laugh all you want, but you'll never see anything like that on other pvp servers. Even if red99 were to get closed down tomorrow I'd still remember it as the most fun I ever had on a pvp server.

That's basically my defense of classic exp/why not everyone who prefers it is a no-lifer. The main point I want to make though is that the server was still very fun even though it took me months to get to level 50, not that the exp is fine and nothing should be changed. Because honestly, I sympathize with the fact that melees are fucked on this server because of the low population and no one to group with. Granted when the population was 600+, or even 200+, melees couldn't use this excuse (and most people who were quitting because of "slow exp" were just shit at the game), but now that we're consistently in the double digits, I can't see why anyone would roll a melee here. And if you don't have the ability to roll whatever class you want, then that's even less classic than boosting exp.

If I had it my way, I'd boost exp temporarily by a lot, advertise it well beforehand so that everyone knows about it, and have the VZTZ crowd sign a contract saying that they were too dumb and unskilled to handle classic exp [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

[Avon Barksdale]

Originally Posted by Tr0llb0rn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

so true

solo ranger gets to 40+ np

vile and others get gear and PL and do not break 21 and /cry


xp not the problem, player motivation and a lack of appreciation for true classsic red EQ is

I wouldn't call it "np." I grinded my ass off and my job didn't have a whole lot going on in winter months (whereas I put in 27 hours this week already by last night and I'll be on overtime Thursday-Saturday).

That being said, the biggest problem as I saw it was how GMs handled drama. The fact that this was (I hesitate to say "is a server") a PvP server should have made it so much more enjoyable for them to moderate than blue. Don't want to deal with players crying and shit? Ignore it and they'll learn to shut the fuck up. PvP makes everything essentially fair, other than class balance/lack thereof. One person trains? So can another. In a raid situation you can spam pumice/CC that fucker before he drops a train on your raid and just get him killed. As a GM, if you don't want to read a bunch of crying and pore through fraps and SSs and whatever, then just don't police training. People will learn to adjust and deal with it. What they did instead was throw themselves into situations they were adamant about not wanting to deal with, how the fuck does that make any sense? They're "volunteers" right? They said it so many times. They must be "volunteering" because of some sense of satisfaction they thought they would get out of it. Amelinda, for example, I'm pretty sure was in it to help people with rezzes after server crashes (a noble cause), put on GM events (which also would have been fun for BOTH players and GMs), and just generally interact with the player base, show up and toss illusions on people or whatever. Instead she got sucked into the drama. Fucking stupid. Ignore drama, do the things you "volunteered" to do. And because GMs were so pissed about dealing with drama, and players were so pissed about how GMs dealt with drama, there was a distrust between the two parties which resulted in features requested by the player base to be largely ignored/written off. The only thing they ever did afaik is increase xp, which didn't help anything. If more than 50% of your population wants yellow text, yes/no on xp loss, leaderboard, whatever, give it to them. It won't be the "perfect" server in all likelihood for any one person, but if you can keep the majority of the people happy with your features, then everyone will stay because they have things they want and a healthy population of other players who have things they want with whom they can play. I remember Lazortag making some retarded analogy about "If I'm selling lemonade, don't tell me to sell Iced Tea" or whatever. And being the brown-nosing nerd that he is, the GMs ate that shit up and loved it. So let me explain why that shit was retarded. Nobody was selling anything, it was being essentially given away with tips accepted. Why would someone give something away? The only way I could rationalize that is out of a desire to make people happy. So then if a large percentage of the people enjoying your free lemonade brought up that they would further enjoy a little more sugar, how is "FUCK YOU" a reasonable response? Not to mention if P99 red actually were a lemonade "business," congratulations, you're broke now cuz you ran that shit into the ground.

TL;DR: GMs made the server a bad experience for themselves by complaining about having to deal with drama, yet dealing with it anyway instead of letting PvP handle that. Because the server was a bad experience for GMs, they made it a bad experience for players and it died.

[heartbrand]

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

I wouldn't call it "np." I grinded my ass off and my job didn't have a whole lot going on in winter months (whereas I put in 27 hours this week already by last night and I'll be on overtime Thursday-Saturday).

That being said, the biggest problem as I saw it was how GMs handled drama. The fact that this was (I hesitate to say "is a server") a PvP server should have made it so much more enjoyable for them to moderate than blue. Don't want to deal with players crying and shit? Ignore it and they'll learn to shut the fuck up. PvP makes everything essentially fair, other than class balance/lack thereof. One person trains? So can another. In a raid situation you can spam pumice/CC that fucker before he drops a train on your raid and just get him killed. As a GM, if you don't want to read a bunch of crying and pore through fraps and SSs and whatever, then just don't police training. People will learn to adjust and deal with it. What they did instead was throw themselves into situations they were adamant about not wanting to deal with, how the fuck does that make any sense? They're "volunteers" right? They said it so many times. They must be "volunteering" because of some sense of satisfaction they thought they would get out of it. Amelinda, for example, I'm pretty sure was in it to help people with rezzes after server crashes (a noble cause), put on GM events (which also would have been fun for BOTH players and GMs), and just generally interact with the player base, show up and toss illusions on people or whatever. Instead she got sucked into the drama. Fucking stupid. Ignore drama, do the things you "volunteered" to do. And because GMs were so pissed about dealing with drama, and players were so pissed about how GMs dealt with drama, there was a distrust between the two parties which resulted in features requested by the player base to be largely ignored/written off. The only thing they ever did afaik is increase xp, which didn't help anything. If more than 50% of your population wants yellow text, yes/no on xp loss, leaderboard, whatever, give it to them. It won't be the "perfect" server in all likelihood for any one person, but if you can keep the majority of the people happy with your features, then everyone will stay because they have things they want and a healthy population of other players who have things they want with whom they can play. I remember Lazortag making some retarded analogy about "If I'm selling lemonade, don't tell me to sell Iced Tea" or whatever. And being the brown-nosing nerd that he is, the GMs ate that shit up and loved it. So let me explain why that shit was retarded. Nobody was selling anything, it was being essentially given away with tips accepted. Why would someone give something away? The only way I could rationalize that is out of a desire to make people happy. So then if a large percentage of the people enjoying your free lemonade brought up that they would further enjoy a little more sugar, how is "FUCK YOU" a reasonable response? Not to mention if P99 red actually were a lemonade "business," congratulations, you're broke now cuz you ran that shit into the ground.

TL;DR: GMs made the server a bad experience for themselves by complaining about having to deal with drama, yet dealing with it anyway instead of letting PvP handle that. Because the server was a bad experience for GMs, they made it a bad experience for players and it died.

Great post. Loved the part about the lemonade stand.

[Harr1son]

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

I wouldn't call it "np." I grinded my ass off and my job didn't have a whole lot going on in winter months (whereas I put in 27 hours this week already by last night and I'll be on overtime Thursday-Saturday).

That being said, the biggest problem .......

I read that. Just had to break it down into 8 pieces and come back and nibble here and there but yea.

ok now so it's summertime 2012 end of the world. End of teh box. Strange urgency and discontent with pretty much god damn mother fucking everything, has spoiled the dinner. ya'll actin like there has to be some profound 'change' before people can play EQ. some ppl waiting for kunark, some for population 200, some for rogean to send them a personal message saying I will get to looking at your

FUCKING CRYING AND PERSONALIZE THE SERVER FOR YOU

instead of just getting online and playing. the box is fine. the trolling is just way out of hand. if people weren't so fucking god damn distracted with forum drama, and wanting shit burger kings sized, ya'll grungy mother fuckers get to play a HQ free server and now you want some dessert before you finish your dinner, because you feel entitled by your eons of everquest grindage.

josh you need to shut the fuck up. VZTZ was the shit, and your ass couldn't hang in any competitive environment besides winning the most insanely idiotic shit ever said in everquest history

Holobads you need to stop thinking you're gonna just walk up and dominate a Box, because you have a lot of PVP experience. The game is still easy and a bunch of bluebies can still win it because thats what the game was initially coded over, who can sit together and steam up ventrilo while u buff and get ready for raid mob.

They want loot. they got it. you want PVP, and loot, and a revolutionary custom fleshlight everquest box fine tuned for your ultimate glory. its 13 year old game. stfu and play. ya'll some noobs.