Discussion on R99 vs VZTZ **POSTPONED**

[Cid]

I have a sincere question.

Why does everyone bring up Nihilum's advantage in gear and control as the major negative of the server?

Almost every single other person either bailed on the server or got banned. I ran across continents and didn't see anyone. There are far more voices bitching about this being the main detractor of the server than there were playing prior to Kunark.
The advantages Nihilum has because they spent all that time raiding is also likely the only reason the Red server still exists.

Are you truly and honestly mad at Nihilum because they are ruining what you think a pvp server should be, or because of what they have done to you ingame? I've gotten to see how deep down the animosity against Nihilum goes.

They can be beaten. It's not a matter of leadership or whatever else, it's a lack of experience and cohesion with one another. If you have 12 people who know and like each other and have months/years worth of experience playing together, you can accomplish an incredible amount in EQ.
Along with 5 friends I made a guild on the Live servers and we took casual players with little or no raid experience and after a few months, often frustrating months, they became a well-oiled machine and accomplished more than I expected.

It takes months to work like that, and if you aren't prepared to wait that long I hear there's a WoW emu that will give you instant gratification. Everytime you guys start to get better as a unit, I log in and there's been some catastrophic event and either there's a mass exodus or the whole guild is gone and there are 2-3 new guilds.

There are a ton of new players. I know this better than anyone. Stop killing them and start training them to fight. If some people spent half the effort improving the guild that they do trying to show off their e-dicks in ooc, everyone would be the better for it. Find your core of loyal, determined and dedicated players and build around them.

I constantly go out of my way to help everyone I can, almost always at my own expense. I've PLed people I'd never met, I've given out tens of thousands in pp and gear to new players because a little help and encouragement goes a long way when that person wonder if it's worth it to keep playing. I can't help them all, or remember them all, but I doing more than my share to benefit the server.

You may dislike my method of operation, you may irrationally hate me because I am friends with Northwest and always will be, and you may even detest me because I play a halfling and midgets are low to the ground and therefore closer to Satan, but it's ok, I'll get over it.


I play on a damn dial-up connection (Who's classic now, huh?) and I have done whatever I could to improve the server without it benefitting me in any way. What the fuck have you done that wasn't in your own interests?

[runlvlzero]

I love me some good fiction.

[Handpartytowel]

just replace r99 with vztz entirely since it was better and more fun in every way.

[Colgate]

yes

[Motec]

I'd like to give an outsider, blue player perspective.

I love world PVP. I enjoy EQ PVP a lot. Lets make that clear right now.

Red 99, is full of absolute scum of the EQ community.
Before the server can get better, attitudes existing must change.

Who would want to play there, when every single thread, of every single section in their message board is filled with gifs, 9000 kill shot screenshots, random "u mad" versions of gifs, and what manner of other weird shit.

The first impression is purely of spiteful, arrogant cunts who exist there. And I know the server isn't 100% these people, but 100% of the initial impression is that it is. Why would I want to play somewhere that has a community who have absolute zero interest except for the largest possible consequence for their actions.

If you kill someone on red99, not only is YT not enough, but you need to spam the screenshot button 25x, post it on the forums, with screenshots of all the arse slapping in the changerooms, and revert to "UMAD" as only further discourse. Out of this daily occurance, half of them then continue to explain about the bind camping.

Cheating, zone line pvp, boxing, gayt pots, /anon/role all add up to a sub par pvp experience. The only people who benefit are those who actively grief others. Pvp server is not about griefing people, it's about picking a fight to take some territory, and the loser having a little candour about it. But on red99, no respect exists amongst the people who play.

Red99 no longer appeals to me (having played some friends chars there) based solely on the fact that PVP is avoided by all but griefers, because if you do want some honest fighting you end up spammed on a board, bind camped, and shit talked. Why would I want a fight, if thats not how I want to play. I dare say the vast majority of 'contenders' for playing red99 who don't currently or anymore also share this animosity towards the dickheads who exist solely for attention.

Now Red99 is obviously going to favour the hardcore in its current ruleset and GM involvement, so you always are going to attract the dick measurers, forumquesters, neckbeards and PVE statjockeys. So the next step is to change the ruleset and environment.

After an attitude change at the very core of how the server interacts with each other, the environment in which they interact needs to suit. What is wrong with the environment?

Well for a start the game is played solo by all, because they go out of their way to avoid said pvp. So remove the ability to be anon/role completely. Going anon only solves one single purpose in EQ and that is to raid PVE in relative secrecy of location. Why encourage secret PVE when instead instead you should be encouraging interdependency, communication and a forewarning of griefing.

People play solo because they cant who all X and have a chat, get groups happening.
People play solo because they cant keep an eye on where people are. Your 'friends' list (cunts who want to grief you) is useless as you dont know where they are.
People play solo because you have an equal chance of being PK'd on interaction as you do of grouping, because the only people left on red are the aformentioned fuckwits and PVE'ers, or PVE alts.

The environment is punishing on red of those who want to level, group, develop friendships, guilds and a have fair fights. Why should the environment be punishing as the basis for all interaction, its a PVP server. The player and his interactions with other players should be punishing based on a choice made. Right now that choice is made for you by the attitudes of the players here and the rules in place that allow griefing to thrive above all else.

The rules in place at the moment favour a better geared gank, than a game of cat and mouse to slug it out when you can track others across zones on /who. It removes a lot of the thinking involved in staying alive which is just as important as the fight itself. Existing and thriving on on a PVP server should involve a lot more to winning (or not dieing) than runspeed, zonelines, clickies. It should be intellectual, requiring strategy and thought before you even have to fight. Being able to see who you can go after, and vice versa enhances gameplay and introduces interdependency in the community.

The fixes I think you'll see proposed will revolve around removing power from a guild of players who PVE. Fuck that. They earned their spot at the top because they played the most and had the aspiration. The fact they just turned into TMOred is only because they also absorbed every retard with a dialup and pentium II or better to play.

I read with great interest, and played around on red at the beginning with all of the fun drama some of the notable names and the shit that went on. Then it...didnt stop. Every day another circle jerk UMAD post, 4000 kittens through the boards, the absolute most mundane shit talk possible. PVP evolved through the vocality of a minority into the actions of a majority. Soon everyone was being a fucking douche, in the space of a few weeks I went from enjoying the server to bailing simply because the foul attitudes streamed down. Those without humility and respect spread like a virus. This forced people to drop all morals and cheat like motherfuckers, again just destroying the integrity of the server. More than once I hung around people who instasuccored to zone line etc. What the fuck is the point of playing a high risk game like eq, when PVE death is trivialised by cheating and PVP death is punished by ridicule.

Dont know how it's like now without the anti cheat code. But from browsing the forums daily it certainly looks like nothing has changed, and a FUCKLOAD of people have bailed on the project. Infact, P99red is a complete failure.

TOOPS sleeper SERVER HAS MORE ACTIVE PLAYERS. Thats how bad red99 is.

I would play on a red99 that had a few key changes.

Attitudes:
1. Remove all pictures from signatures on forums and any gifs and avatars from appearing in the pvp section of forum.
2. Make forum based infractions affect login server, and vice versa. Clean up this mess.
3. Encourage interdependency and affiliations. and I'd like to hear the communities thoughts.

Environment:
4. Basic ruleset change to teams. The far more experienced pvp guys from sz will likely provide a synopsis of advantages and how to best divide for gameplay benefit.
5. Remove anon and roleplay. Encourage community and intellectual, alert play.
6. Allow training in solusek b, perma, sebilis, VP...basically anywhere there is a raid zone. Fuck PVE'ers, batphones etc. Train the living shit out of eachother.
7. Group XP bonuses. double them.

General changes:
8. I like the idea of a soft re-launch, but only if you implimented the kunark launch era 'classic trivial loot code' and had those items dropping off level appropriate NPC's under level 50, to bring people back to the game.
9. XP bonus...more. If XP is lost on death still, up the rate. Or griefers win not only at being cunts, but by driving people off the server.
10. Introduce rez xp gain from pvp deaths. Same reasoning as above. Let the server environment support the less than neckbeard 12hr a day players. why would someone who plays 4 hours a day want to play here when they lose 3 hours of it in two PK's at 10 at night?

But my most prudent point is about server staff interaction. Have some GM events ffs.


I could go on a fair while, but I think it's important to note that the vocal minority helped completely fuck this server, and the vocal minority destroyed the attitude on it from before it was even launched on the forums.

The vocal minority are made up of your playerbase of 30-50 active P99 red players. So how about you tell them to fuck off and listen to the advice and ideas of those who WANT to play there and wont because its filled with fuckwits, and has a ruleset and governance that promotes PVE as a means to PVP end, not the other way around.

A lot of guys a lot more pvp experienced than me can probably comment on some item restrictions or removals that also should exist as a means to encourage the newer/lower serverpops.

[Motec]

Also boxing could be a cool option. Can someone explain what the negatives are?

[Colgate]

you have incredibly thin skin

no wonder you hate red99

[runlvlzero]

Actually Motec the dickslapping is the only reason people play here at all. If we treated the game seriously we'd burn out extremely fast and never ever try coming back. It is candor that you are ranting about. But not the typical kind of candor your use to. The worst thing is to make a post on these forums and be completely ignored, or not even reacted to at all in game. Thats like the lowest of the low.

[Motec]

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

you have incredibly thin skin

no wonder you hate red99

Not really I dont think. But compared to you lot at the top end of red, yes I do. I really dont have the time or patience to put up with forumquesting in equal parts dedication and timesink as playing the actual game.

And your server population seems to think that a good proportion of other folk also feel similar or could agree with some or a majority of my points considering the very broad stroke I just brushed.

When it comes down to it, there's a few of you with no jobs, no life, and have been committed to this game for years and are in a vicious cycle living vicariously through your characters triumph. Maybe the same cant be said for the majority, and that majority has spoken in droves of footsteps out the door. People just dont want to put up with that kind of shit, I'd imagine the average age is 28-35 here and most guys I know just cant be fucked anymore.

The vocal atmosphere is toxic, and if population numbers and empirical evidence based on a fairly logarithmic trend of people leaving and forum description of the high end play is accurate then I'd be fairly certin in saying there is a problem that needs addressing. Root cause analysis is something I dabble in (and get paid a lot for) and if I had to put my finger on a cause it would be the players being forced to play that way, due to the environment and ruleset they are shoehorned in to.

So I digress, I dont think I'm particularly thin skinned. Just certainly not at a level of ambivalence tending towards narcissism and straight out misanthropy that is abundant on red99 towards your fellow players. It's as if there is an end in sight to the server and double parking on your neighbours car, cutting off your friends in traffic and speeding somehow gets you to a podium, when in reality the server has potential to be one really long drive thats enjoyable by a majority not a minority.

Why make player attrition the key attibute, where survival of the fittest the name of the game when that very specific gameplay actually shortens the life of a server; and more importantly it makes being better than everyone else at PVP an inconsequential achievement when your playerbase is 40 not 400. Isnt being the best the whole point of a PVP server, when you can dictate on your terms what you want by killing others? Why go so much further and drive them off the server in the process.

When's all said and done, at this rate nihilum, and a few individuals can admire their crowns while the tumbleweeds fly past; because no manastones and rubicite dropping is going to encourage people to go through all this shit again when the core problem isnt addressed.

[runlvlzero]

The banter is really not the primary problem with the server, its how people cope with how broken the pixels are and how jaded they are. To some degree your right. But honestly. Even on my cleric, I could stand to be in the same zone with the "other side" and we could get along like pals.

The game is stale and certainly the endgame focus on raiding rather then gentlemanly or sportly pvp is not helping though. Even things like the BoTB are colored by it. But this comes from a long standing bravado and machismo that was earned by the participants. If I participated in a BoTB my name is not so well known that I would be trolled or flamed into oblivion on the forums... (Not that cleric BoTB would have any meaning).

But people like Nizzar... (I use his name, because well, he has many gifs, and animations devoted to him) well. They are very much celebrities for all the shit talking and underhanded competitive tactics they used in the past, and present.

So when they fall. They tend to fall harder then your average joe.

The other side of your rant could equally be applied to "bluebies" who come on the board with an opinion contary to 14 years of elf simulator experience and cry about some aspect of the game which needs to be fixed, but is not broken, or go against the opinion of vocal veterans and tend to get roflstomped or laughed into oblivion (hey drakar, item loot is boss, try it before you knock it). But thats life... then again for every douchebag theres at least 10 who try to be cool about it. But hey I am pretty chill and I even loose my shit at some of the retards on these forums a lil (not really) hardly the worst I ever do is call people childish names and /ignore them

So what your seeing in hostile flamewars is really a symptom of deeper problems with the server. I would say playing on the box for awhile and getting comfortable with the way the game works here would illustrate the deeper issues. You cant just log in a few peoples toons and play for a bit. You have to devote time and energy then see how the pieces of the puzzle fall together.

You will understand why people forumquest so hard sometimes then. I say sometimes, because theres exceptions to the rule and I think some people are genuinely nuts =)