NEW 99 SERVER!!!! YESSS

[Weekapaug]

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

No point arguing with you. The ruleset I suggested simply corrects the problems with the vanilla SZ ruleset, and the devs have stated they have no interest in simply porting over any of the classic PvP rulesets. They are committed to making a Teams PvP server that can actually be successful at this point in time, and that requires at least a small bit of customization. If you don't think that's a good thing, that's your opinion, and you don't have to play there. Most people aren't so incredibly anal about sticking 100% to classic, however.

You seem to have a fetish for a totally classic experience, so nothing short of a time machine will ever satisfy you. Good luck with that.

You apparently missed my entire point.

First, it's not that SZ was classic per se. It's that it worked. SZ ruleset was largely a response to what had not worked on the earlier zeks. They tried narrow level limits earlier, for example. It got abused and people used it to grief. So on SZ they opened the whole range up and that, along with training, helped balance it out. No one is suggesting it was perfect, you still had griefing, and no matter what anyone tries there will still be griefing here, but actual history has shown that the more little tweaks and rules you put in, the more they get abused. This is not theory. This is what actually happened.

Second, it was wildly popular, even amongst people who had never played EQ PvP before. People played it. LOTS of people played it.

SZ did not suffer because of it's ruleset. I don't know where you get that from. SZ suffered from later expansion content that worked against the nature of that ruleset. The server was intended to have teams controlling areas of the map. They even had a status map on the main site showing who owned what at a particular time. It worked great at the time, and was a very fun part of playing there. This was, however, later undermined by the portals of luclin and the clicky books of pop.

Then there were external factors, like Luclin. SZ was released in the summer of '01 and Luclin got released a few months later. Lots of people went back to their blue servers because they had older blue mains to take into the new era. Simultaneously, like within a 1 or 2 week period, DAoC released, pretty much a PvP game that appealed to a lot of the same people that SZ did, so it took a hit from that, too. There was another much anticipated pvp game that came out around this time, but I forget the name and exactly when that was. But you see my point.

But the ruleset was completely sound. I played there for the first few months before heading off to DAoC, myself, and when I came back played my blue mains in Luclin, but while I was there it was fantastic. Somebody in another thread said they played there up to GoD and it was, largely, just fine. That was around the time EQ, in general, took a hit because GoD wasn't popular, and EQ2 and WoW released. There had never been an EQ before to last 14 years and people thought it was getting old, etc, at that point and a lot started moving on. That affected all servers.

Any problems SZ had were largely due to bad timing with later expansions and external factors. But the ruleset was, largely, sound.

My problem with going off to the races with customization is that's not EQ. That's EQ EMU's and you don't get all that many people who want to play them. P99 appeals to the broadest base of players because it is the closest thing to actual EQ we've seen yet.

Your mantra that this is some "classic fetish" on my part is ridiculous, but I guess you can keep repeating that along with everything else you keep repeating over and over and it will somehow become true. It's not. It's about SZ being the pvp server that worked and appealed to the most people. Exactly what we want with this new server.