Global item rarity needs to be looked at

[falkun]

Hence why I generally camp the items I need, or wait for supply to outpace demand on the items I've purchased.

[Raavak]

The real problem is how easy it is to level. It should be 10x as hard and it should take the average daily player-type-person at least a year to go from 50 to 60. If there weren't so many 60's floating around there wouldn't be as much farming.

[nilzark]

Something will have to be done as all the players will eventually leave out of boredom. Progression servers are a good option, but what about adding a little content with "events" - rare items could be dropped then as well - and they will stay rare because devs will control the drop rate through events. Something like that can still be considered classic because back in the day EQ Live did occasional events.

[Nirgon]

Well the real events would be if they did do a relaunch (don't delete the old aka current server obvi..) to get all the live GM events scripted and ready.

Werewolf invasion, shield of hatred in nektulos, shroud of earthen shadow for hole etc. I'll dig all that up after the other stuff gets banged out.

[Ele]

Another issue at play here is the server population. On live, the some of the servers peaked anywhere between 3000-4000 players during primetime at the high points before server splits started occurring. Having that many people spread out across Vanilla/Kunark and into Velious spread out the loot much more than what occurs here with a 300-500 peak population. Sebilis is overcamped with 5 groups on this server, on my live server Sebilis would have 80-100 during prime time with each group getting 6-12 mobs to camp. XP was slower as a result and loot was much more spread out and not concentrating in the hands of a few hundred people.

As was already stated above, the larger population and thus fewer mobs per a person resulted in slow xp and most people not attaining 60 until well into Velious, if not Luclin, the old AA or XP discussion was hotly debated.

Yet another issue is people know where to go and what to camp this time around. Information about strategies and camps was slow to release during the classic era, and much of it was rumor and innuendo with people being enthralled with this new fantasy world and getting caught up in the mythos instead of the game mechanics. Most of that is gone in this day and age where people can just jump on the wiki or other walkthrough websites and know exactly where to go, what to do, and what to kill for their loot. Circlet of Shadow is a great example of an item not greatly known during Kunark, and was not farmed into oblivion on live and thus fetched hundreds of thousands of plat for the pre-nerf version after they stopped dropping. Here, people knew from day 0, where it dropped, how to get, and have farmed them non-stop and gotten it to the point that anyone can get one for 700-1kp, or just wait in Droga for one to rot.

[azeth]

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

Another issue at play here is the server population. On live, the some of the servers peaked anywhere between 3000-4000 players during primetime at the high points before server splits started occurring.

Yikes that is far from what I remember. I'd say tops 2500 ppl before splits. That's actually kind of wild to think about regardless of the 1500 person difference. When I played, P99 averaged I think 700 people and it felt like a pretty busy server.

[Ele]

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

Yikes that is far from what I remember. I'd say tops 2500 ppl before splits. That's actually kind of wild to think about regardless of the 1500 person difference. When I played, P99 averaged I think 700 people and it felt like a pretty busy server.

The few servers that did peak that high didn't stay that way for an extended length of time. I agree that most peaked at 2000-2500 during prime time Kunark/Velious era. A sudden influx of people to raise the population to 2000 here would be insane considering the overall power level of individual players on this server with the trickle down effects of cheap gear from CoM/Seb/KC flooding the low level markets.

Throwing most people playing on this server back into the 1999/2000 fray in a normal xp group would likely cause them to gouge their eyes out at how slow the xp was due to the amount of people inhabiting each dungeon. Just in LGuk dead side on my live server for example had the following individual camps for a group of 4-6 during prime time: Lord and/or AM (held as one or split into two camps), frenzy, sent, GIBS, spider/bat, safe hall, ritualist, ass/sup, exe, cav, sav. You could walk through the zone without seeing a single mob spawned. Here, if one group isn't doing the entire dead house (ass/sup, cav, sav, exe) then the xp sucks, but on live the population just didn't support one group to monopolizing the area during that era.

[Hailto]

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

The real problem is how easy it is to level. It should be 10x as hard and it should take the average daily player-type-person at least a year to go from 50 to 60. If there weren't so many 60's floating around there wouldn't be as much farming.

I think its funny that only people who are currently level 60 ever say things like this.

[falkun]

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

I think its funny that only people who are currently level 60 ever say things like this.

Agreed, but when it takes 1/8th (or less) of an expansion to reach max level, we are approaching WoW leveling rates. Releasing content faster than it can be absorbed is the basis for all MMOs, including Everquest.

The reason the economy is crashing is that supply has outpaced demand. I personally don't care much about the economy, but I can see how those who spent 200k+ on a fungi are pissed. But people with that kind of expendable income should have been able to farm their own fungi anyways. But that's not the fault of drop rates, thats the fault of the maximum leveling rate and the lack of content at the top.

Artificially lowering drop rates is a bandaid for the economy, and only works to drive demand up for the "have nots". I still don't understand why, in 13 year old game where everything is understood, that people wish to create "haves" and "have nots". We are playing this game to experience the stuff we missed from Live, to relive the pinnacle of MMORPG-dom. Why do there have to be "haves" and "have nots"? Its virtual currency, the system would not crumble under communist views here.

[azeth]

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

I still don't understand why, in 13 year old game where everything is understood, that people wish to create "haves" and "have nots"..

Well you can't deny the loot pinata basis of most MMOs, EQ specifically. At some point we're debating human nature here.

I played only through the beta, but The Secret World is a decent example of an MMO that has Story/Puzzle Solving at its core versus "loot".

edit: i prefer loot [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]