Originally Posted by Aenor
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Living out in the country temporarily and Windstream DSL blows... can't stay connected. So I will be continuing my teams prep in a month when I get a new spot closer to town.
HOWEVER, I think the current pop woes result from multiple factors, not just xp nerf and ban wave.
I quit live pre-Luclin. Classic and Kunark with a dab of Velious is the entirety of the game to me. Once you get past the excitement of Velious release, as far as I've always been concerned, that's the life cycle of a server.
So let's look at how Project 1999 handled the critical first two years of the PvP server's life cycle.
1. The server released and Rogean abandoned us like so many Oliver Twists to go play Star Wars. Please Rogean, may we have some more?
2. Nizzar, identified by Uthgaard as a known, previously-banned RMTer from blue, was allowed to lead a guild on Red.
3. Nizzar's guild then exploited dragons.
4. Another guild (unknown if led by by known RMTer) exploited dragons and Rogean magically appeared out of thin air to disband the guild and perma ban its leadership.
5. Please go back and review item (3.). Notice that there's nothing about any action being taken against the known RMTer's guild.
6. The known RMTer, with the competition's momentum thus killed, then proceeds to spend the next two years zerging all of the high end content, maintaining Nihilum's guild bank and selling the unclaimed spoils on various RMT web sites.
7. Two years go by with no significant change to this arrangement. Thousands of dollars in RMT transactions take place.
8. As Velious release approaches, staff announces plans for a teams server, but does not intend to maintain three separate servers on a long-term basis.
9. XP is nerfed and ban wave hits. After allowing Nizzar to dominate the server's economy through the entirety of the server's critical first two years, when interest is at its highest, Rogean suddenly decides to do something for server integrity.
I suppose there are several ways to look at this (and feel free to correct any factual discrepancies in my timeline). From the perspective of the current Red server, it's too little, too late. The crowd that always shows up for a new server launch is never coming back (they may come back for teams, but they're not coming back to the current server).
From the perspective of teams, this is great! With a level playing field on a new server, the crowd will be back. Players will be hesitant to participate in RMT or associate themselves with known RMTers, knowing that the staff is now taking action after allowing it to run rampant for two years.
TLDR:
Rogean seems to be paving the way either for a teams server where he will attempt to not repeat the mistakes that were made on Red99 or he is paving the way for phasing out PvP from P99 altogether. I won't be surprised in the least if, after the dust settles from Velious release, they announce that they have changed their minds about teams and it's not going to happen. The current PvP server would then become a ghost town and eventually taken offline.
So that's my theory. Nizzar may be banned but he's probably still living off the proceeds while those who kept his lights on lost every account he touched.
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04-02-2014, 09:58 AM
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