Is red server dead?

[cronik]

The Zek servers were a brilliant move by SoE. It shoved every problem child into one area and gave them rule sets that required minimal GM intervention. The move was so amazing that UO replicated it by opening Siege Perilous.

Suddenly all the blue and trammel shards are running smooth as silk and the asshole community is happily abusing the hell out of each other on their red servers.

I still don't get what would make someone want to run a red server tho. Like this place... It's a total cesspool full of socially stunted life-fails; who would want to take this on, and who could last more than a year or two at it?

[Xaanka]

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

Still, Red had a 600 pop before they fucked it up, i dont care to type how they did it, that horse is soup.

really the playerbase is why the population died, not the staff or velious or 3 years of kunark or anything like that.

just look at who plays still. we're all assholes even to each other. new players don't last long on red.

there's been months during kunark where i crooted more new players to the server than the current server pop, and only like 2 of them still play.

[Tradesonred]

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

really the playerbase is why the population died, not the staff or velious or 3 years of kunark or anything like that.

just look at who plays still. we're all assholes even to each other. new players don't last long on red.

there's been months during kunark where i crooted more new players to the server than the current server pop, and only like 2 of them still play.

Were you there? We had to harass the staff for a year+ me and like 2 other guys to drop xp loss in pvp, we were the minority, everyone else was telling us to shut up because we were "blue" basically because they were having fun crushing random casuals 10v3 and griefing em off the server. We were party pooping on that.

Rogean and Sirken laughed at us like "This isnt call of duty" until the server hit single digit pop at off hours. They changed it then but it was too late. Its their fault really. I clearly remember some guy on the forums during the first launch weeks going "lol? come kunark some zerg is just going to farm dragons uncontested for months?". We fucking gave em the solution on a silver platter and they chose to ignore it. It was so easy to anticipate what was gonna happen, they dropped the ball. Everything was downhill from there, the xp nerf fiasco "Pops gotta down before its gonna go up". Sirken was smoking crack. Most of the problems stem from that era. Theres only so much potential pop for an EQ emu and all the bad mistakes cut loose alot of people who were burned and never came back.

The worst aspects of the box were allowed to flourish because of bad dev decisions. Thats my point, the server is asshole heavy because they were allowed that griefy, zerg-wins-all playing field for so long that no other kind of crew was allowed breathing room to get settled. When Nihilum came in, it was low pop from then on and you just didnt have the healthy pop needed for multiple serious outfit to get settled. Smaller crews werent allowed to stop that zerging dynamic because lol this isnt call of duty. It made for a boring as fuck experience compared to Rallos. That server culture of lowest path of resistance to join the zerg du jour gelled and that was that. Nothing else than Empilicaust is ever going to come out of red.

Its just a perfect storm of failure where every individual bad factors of the server pulls it toward a downward spiral of fail. The decision to not put in item loot which makes for invincible twinks and no economy is part of those bad individual factors.

[Xaanka]

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

Were you there? We had to harass the staff for a year+ me and like 2 other guys to drop xp loss in pvp, we were the minority, everyone else was telling us to shut up because we were "blue" basically because they were having fun crushing random casuals 10v3 and griefing em off the server. We were party pooping on that.

Rogean and Sirken laughed at us like "This isnt call of duty" until the server hit single digit pop at off hours. They changed it then but it was too late. Its their fault really. I clearly remember some guy on the forums during the first launch weeks going "lol? come kunark some zerg is just going to farm dragons uncontested for months?". We fucking gave em the solution on a silver platter and they chose to ignore it. It was so easy to anticipate what was gonna happen, they dropped the ball. Everything was downhill from there, the xp nerf fiasco "Pops gotta down before its gonna go up". Sirken was smoking crack. Most of the problems stem from that era. Theres only so much potential pop for an EQ emu and all the bad mistakes cut loose alot of people who were burned and never came back.

The worst aspects of the box were allowed to flourish because of bad dev decisions. Thats my point, the server is asshole heavy because they were allowed that griefy, zerg-wins-all playing field for so long that no other kind of crew was allowed breathing room to get settled. When Nihilum came in, it was low pop from then on and you just didnt have the healthy pop needed for multiple serious outfit to get settled. Smaller crews werent allowed to stop that zerging dynamic because lol this isnt call of duty. It made for a boring as fuck experience compared to Rallos. That server culture of lowest path of resistance to join the zerg du jour gelled and that was that. Nothing else than Empilicaust is ever going to come out of red.

Its just a perfect storm of failure where every individual bad factors of the server pulls it toward a downward spiral of fail. The decision to not put in item loot which makes for invincible twinks and no economy is part of those bad individual factors.

oh yeah I agree that the staff have fucked the server up in the past, I'm more talking about after all of that when server hit peak pop and the community shit all over it running every new player off the box. you could say the damage was done beforehand and be right, but the server had a second chance and we blew it. by we i mean everyone. staff fucked it up by banning blue xfers around the same time, killing off any hope of an influx of new players and more or less hammering the last nails in the coffin we built for ourselves.

[Tradesonred]

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

oh yeah I agree that the staff have fucked the server up in the past, I'm more talking about after all of that when server hit peak pop and the community shit all over it running every new player off the box. you could say the damage was done beforehand and be right, but the server had a second chance and we blew it. by we i mean everyone.

Yeah by that point the assholes were crushingly dominant and they just did what they did but in an alternate universe where devs listened, theres an 800+ player red server where maybe things turned out different.

[Xaanka]

totally agree w/ that sentiment. staff fucked up a lot. we're kind of responsible for the staff not giving a shit about us ex: griefing off every guide they train for red.

edit: which led to deru being forced into doing CSR for red, subsequently driving the staff voice of the red server insane & off the box forever

[cronik]

I've noticed the same on pretty much every UO and EQ private server. The devs that are active enough to run a successful pvp server tend to cater to the hardest of core players. They talk to and get feedback from their poopsockers, and think those guys know what's best for the server.

The flaw in that is it has no place for new players. Poopsockers are already established, have guilds, and aren't interested in making it easier than what they had, which is a fallacy since when they were leveling they didn't get griefed by twinks. So new players have tons of obstacles to overcome and have to do it in a toxic environment where the establishment is deaf to their feedback.

There's so much content you're often locked out of as a new player that it's hard to invest the kind of grinding these old school style games demand. Yes, you can try to join the dominant guilds on the server and suckle at their teats, but that goes against why most of us are interested in red servers to begin with.

We're interested in rolling with some of our bros, having a shot at decent loot, and being fairly competitive gear-wise with the rest of the server. We're not interested in fucking DKP or giant assed Zerg guilds... That's bluebie shit... Fuck off with that noise.

[cronik]

Of course all that being said, I couldn't imagine any box running successfully for years once it hits velious/Luclin.

Other option is keep it kunark/classic and eventually that'll run its course too.

So the "successful" servers like this one cater to their poopsockers. You might not get NEW players but the old ones will stick around longer.

[iruinedyourday]

idk, I think red is working as designed by the great brad MQ.. I mean compared to live blue servers, the red servers had the same % of players and low pop.. its just that there were 100,00 players, so that small number was up to like 2-5k..

Here its 130 out of 1300 online players? thats not bad.

A lot of players are just afraid of the hardcoreness that is red

I hope the recycle server is teams, and after it resets you can transfer characters to red or blue.. I think that will slowly turn a lot of our population over to red.. I think that a lot of folks here intend to play on these servers, indefinitely.. unless rogan and nil rage out and shut them down, but I can see them keeping them up indefinitely.

That means one day, red server, will have a solid 1k pop.... one day.

But for now, we just have to settle with our small #'s and superior playstyle skill and knowledge of the game /flexred

[cronik]

Dude this server is never ever ever gonna be 1k. Ever. No server in the history of ever has ever recovered after getting to this state.

It's dying. How long it stays where it is depends on how hardcore the core is, but ultimately what most of us like is fresh starts/server launches. It's why talk of discord got so many jazzed up, and ultimately let down. Also why so many from here are playing magebox.

Some other server might come out that's just perfect(unlikely), but no way is it this one. Every pixel you earn here will only be useable on the people already around you, or their alts. If you're hoping that you can gear up and eventually have a leg up on, well, anyone, then you better be in Empire and you better hope they don't actually wake the sleeper.