TAKP Luclin release date announced

[fadetree]

Yeah, it's an interesting point. Part of the issue I think is that there's been kind of a sea of emulators out there. I never seriously played any of them besides P99 and TAKP, but from what I gather they were all pretty heavily modified and/or were from an era after PoP when many people, myself included, stopped liking the easymode direction that EQ had gone.
So, there was a lot of built up desire to experience EQ as it actually was during the era when most of us thought it was at it's greatest. I actually tried Dalaya and like 1 other one for a brief time, and they were unrecognizable as EQ beyond the superficial setting, and I did not enjoy them.
So when P99 started up it's goal matched a whole lot of people's desires, and its brilliant execution and attention to detail really made a name for itself. People could log on and really feel like they just logged into live in 1999. I personally think that it was not so much the 'no boxing!' that made P99 so popular (although it helped) as just that it was done extremely well and appeared at the right time. So a population built up, and developed it's own cultural views on many things, including boxing.
I think that if P99 had started with limited boxing at that same time, it would not have prevented the player base growth in any significant way. That's just an opinion. But now there's a really strong cultural bias against boxing on P99, and that's fine. I like P99 a lot. But I also think there's a lot of people who liked PoP a lot, and who liked boxing as a fallback to standing around LFG on a short play time frame. A lot of us are much older now and don't have hours and hours to play.
I guess the 'bot armies' thing was a problem in live, although I never noticed it much, but that was supported with ShowEQ, external macros, and no limit to the number of boxes. If Live discouraged boxing, it was in word only, I never saw anyone I knew get in trouble for boxing.
So I guess to look at the emu landscape and say 'wow, boxing kills servers' based on the 1 example of P99 is not a completely convincing argument. P99 has many other things going for it, including the time at which it got started, era accuracy, and excellent devs and regulation, which are also missing from a lot of the other emus both past and present. You could as well say "wow, not sticking to accuracy and not running a tight ship kills servers'. Also keep in mind there's a limited number of people who are even interested in EQ compared to the general population, and P99 has a large part of them already invested in it.
I think that once TAKP drops luclin and starts working on PoP, the population will slowly ramp up, especially as more people start to confirm the things about TAKP that attracted and keep me playing there.

[fadetree]

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

Yeah, it's an interesting point. Part of the issue I think is that there's been kind of a sea of emulators out there. I never seriously played any of them besides P99 and TAKP, but from what I gather they were all pretty heavily modified and/or were from an era after PoP when many people, myself included, stopped liking the easymode direction that EQ had gone.
So, there was a lot of built up desire to experience EQ as it actually was during the era when most of us thought it was at it's greatest. I actually tried Dalaya and like 1 other one for a brief time, and they were unrecognizable as EQ beyond the superficial setting, and I did not enjoy them.
So when P99 started up it's goal matched a whole lot of people's desires, and its brilliant execution and attention to detail really made a name for itself. People could log on and really feel like they just logged into live in 1999. I personally think that it was not so much the 'no boxing!' that made P99 so popular (although it helped) as just that it was done extremely well and appeared at the right time. So a population built up, and developed it's own cultural views on many things, including boxing.
I think that if P99 had started with limited boxing at that same time, it would not have prevented the player base growth in any significant way. That's just an opinion. But now there's a really strong cultural bias against boxing on P99, and that's fine. I like P99 a lot. But I also think there's a lot of people who liked PoP a lot, and who liked boxing as a fallback to standing around LFG on a short play time frame. A lot of us are much older now and don't have hours and hours to play.
I guess the 'bot armies' thing was a problem in live, although I never noticed it much, but that was supported with ShowEQ, external macros, and no limit to the number of boxes. If Live discouraged boxing, it was in word only, I never saw anyone I knew get in trouble for boxing.
So I guess to look at the emu landscape and say 'wow, boxing kills servers' based on the 1 example of P99 is not a completely convincing argument. P99 has many other things going for it, including the time at which it got started, era accuracy, and excellent devs and regulation, which are also missing from a lot of the other emus both past and present. You could as well say "wow, not sticking to accuracy and not running a tight ship kills servers'. Also keep in mind there's a limited number of people who are even interested in EQ compared to the general population, and P99 has a large part of them already invested in it.
I think that once TAKP drops luclin and starts working on PoP, the population will slowly ramp up, especially as more people start to confirm the things about TAKP that attracted and keep me playing there.

Okie dokie.

[loramin]

You are both correct, and again I'm not trying to pick on TAKP or anyone else, except to be like "you guys could be so much cooler and more successful ... why don't you want to be cooler and more successful!?!" [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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

Okie dokie.

Originally Posted by fadetree

I actually tried Dalaya and like 1 other one for a brief time, and they were unrecognizable as EQ beyond the superficial setting, and I did not enjoy them.

Totally; like I said people want to play the EQ they remember.

Originally Posted by fadetree

I personally think that it was not so much the 'no boxing!' that made P99 so popular (although it helped) as just that it was done extremely well and appeared at the right time.

I agree there's no way to suss out exactly what percentage of P99's success came from what. But I do think it's very difficult to argue with this statement: "P99's success came primarily from the fact that it did an excellent job of reminding people of live" ... and a key piece (who knows what percentage) of that was actually having (like live EQ) other players playing the game with you, instead of with themselves and their two alts.

Originally Posted by fadetree

I also think there's a lot of people who liked PoP a lot

I do too, and so do many others ... which makes it all the more incredible that even though just about every other server offers PoP, it's the server that doesn't which has 10x the population.

Surely part of that is the incredible customer service (and staff in general), but I think you're really missing something if you ignore that P99 has actual people playing with others, and other servers have boxers.

Originally Posted by fadetree

You could as well say "wow, not sticking to accuracy and not running a tight ship kills servers'.

Amen, and I'm sure it does. There's more than one way to fail a server [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Originally Posted by fadetree

I think that once TAKP drops luclin and starts working on PoP, the population will slowly ramp up

And this is where we simply disagree, and we'll have to wait for time to prove who's right. If you're right and empty-feeling servers aren't the problem, TAKP will take off. If I'm right, and the most important thing to people is playing on a server that resembles live (and that means boxing at levels of <10%) then it won't matter what expansions TAKP adds, because it won't solve the fundamental problem that their server isn't like the ones everyone remembers.

[fadetree]

Fair enough, I guess we'll see.

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

If I'm right, and the most important thing to people is playing on a server that resembles live (and that means boxing at levels of <10%) then it won't matter what expansions TAKP adds, because it won't solve the fundamental problem that their server isn't like the ones everyone remembers.

You don't know what the actual boxing levels were, neither do I. 10 is probably close enough during certain time frames. What we disagree on here is what causes the subjective 'this is like live' feeling and what could spoil it. That is for each person. There's a common subset, and there's things that bother specific people. I do not need to have very low levels of boxing to trigger my 'this is like live' feels.

Anyways, really good discussion and we'll see what we see.

[fadetree]

No, I never played on TLPs at all.
I don't understand why limited boxing and people who don't want to box can't co-exist.
I personally draw the line at instancing. That's a personal preference and was part of why I quit Live when I did. I understand that's basically the same decision as people make when they say 'I draw the line at boxing', but the difference to me is that I don't have to box if I don't want to, but instancing is a inescapable part of the environment.

[Irulan]

a two box limit would be better, it would stop crazy AUTOMATED farming of lower level content a bit

[fadetree]

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

a two box limit would be better, it would stop crazy AUTOMATED farming of lower level content a bit

Automation is not allowed. Haynar will ban you. But yeah, I'd be ok with a 2 box limit.

[Linkamus]

TAKP is the most accurate emu for the 2002 era. It's insane what nitty gritty details the devs fix and massage to make sure it's as accurate as possible. This is why Luclin has taken so long to arrive, and it will have been worth the wait.

[Linkamus]

If you're in the fence about trying it, I'd suggest reading through this:

http://wiki.takp.info/index.php?title=Server_Comparison

[Linkamus]

Automating for exp is a permaban on first offense.

"If you are caught macroing, running bots, macroquest, etc., for tasks such as getting XP. The penalty on first offense will be permanent ban."

https://www.takproject.net/forums/in...warning.10983/