What happened to this server?

[Zuranthium]

There isn't enough incentive to actually PvP on this PvP server. A higher population would help but, ultimately, most people would rather spend their time in PvE until level 50 and then start with the PvP. There needs to be greater reward for actually killing players. A ranking board is necessary, to start with. I really wanted a Good-Neutral-Evil PvP server as well, there are a lot of interesting dynamics it could bring to the game, but unfortunately that's not what this server is.

[SearyxTZ]

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

There isn't enough incentive to actually PvP on this PvP server. A higher population would help but, ultimately, most people would rather spend their time in PvE until level 50 and then start with the PvP. There needs to be greater reward for actually killing players. A ranking board is necessary, to start with. I really wanted a Good-Neutral-Evil PvP server as well, there are a lot of interesting dynamics it could bring to the game, but unfortunately that's not what this server is.

I think that has more to do with population.

I'm certainly willing to fight people at my level (even though I typically get my ass kicked because I'm wearing hobo armor made out of a trashbag and a +1 magic resist ring out of a gumball machine).

Teams wouldn't really change much. It'd just be big ass guild on one side (Nihilum) versus a few normal-sized guilds on other side (Holo, FF, etc). The casual experience would be similar.


I've beaten this to death already but global channels would have the single biggest impact on the server. With the server pop being low, we need it badly. This should have been in from the start. Forum trading sucks and takes away from any sense of in-game economy. New/casual players need to know that other players exist. Higher level players need to talk trash and provide easy incentive for PvP. There is little sense of community as it is disjointed among various guilds doing their own thing and clashing once in a while.

[SearyxTZ]

Also the pop HAS been fairly stable - 160'ish concurrent during weeknights.



At the very least I think we could convert a few more blue players than we have right now. There are some strong selling points for this server -- the PvP aspect, actually fighting for raid targets instead of doing the carebear rotation bullshit, better EXP curve, more ripe server economy, etc.

If you play and post here then you need to look at this as the better of the two servers regardless of the difference in population, because it is better, and potential players damn well need to recognize that. We're not selling a sinking ship here. If you played on the old Zek servers, you already know that they are playing the stripped down dull version of Everquest on the blue servers. And that EQ's world PvP is better than the instance minigame crap in WoW and Star Wars.

[Harrison]

Use irc if you want global.

The lfg tool is on.

All cryfests for global ooc negated.

[pasi]

A steady 150 population is still the highest we've seen for an emulated PvP server. There aren't that many more people out there looking to play classic Everquest PvP in 2012. Using (Blue99 Population / EQ Blue Servers Population) as a reflection of EQ PvE and comparing it to (Red99 Population / EQ Red Servers Population), we're probably doing better than we should.

Not that it matters as the server has already launched, but the only way to poach a significant amount of people from Blue was teams (obviously, with the major issues of teams fixed). This has been beaten to death and if you care to read about, go to the back pages of these forums circa April 2011.

I haven't seen this brought up, but I think there is an issue with raid content not being scaled to population. When it takes 30 people (20-25% of the population online) to kill a raid mob, and guilds have to fend off enemies while doing so, it leads to over recruiting and the death of raid PvP. I'm not really sure if it is a good idea to scale raid content to the population, but the effects of having classic (well, P99 encounters are noticeably harder than classic ever was) encounters on a server with a small population are definitely observable.

[skorge]

Red 99 is what it is. The server will never see a "healthy" population like blue because it does not draw enough new players to it like blue has. Without new players coming to the server consistently, the server will gradually decrease in population (makes sense).

The real question is, why don't more people want to come to Red vs Blue? Go back to '99/'00. The same issue arose here. There were only what 2 or 3 pvp servers compared to 15 or so blue servers? This tells you that the average person would prefer to play EQ PVE vs EQ PVP.

It's not really the dev's fault here the population is as low as it is. Sure, the fact Red 99 does not see as much attention as blue, hurts the population but it's not the real issue.

Like I said earlier, for the server to not fail it needs to create more players, it's not doing that now. There are things you can do to help, mainly just helping out any new players you see. If they have a pleasant experience they will tell others about it (word of mouth travels fast).

[Harrison]

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

Red 99 is what it is. The server will never see a "healthy" population like blue because it does not draw enough new players to it like blue has. Without new players coming to the server consistently, the server will gradually decrease in population (makes sense).

The real question is, why don't more people want to come to Red vs Blue? Go back to '99/'00. The same issue arose here. There were only what 2 or 3 pvp servers compared to 15 or so blue servers? This tells you that the average person would prefer to play EQ PVE vs EQ PVP.

It's not really the dev's fault here the population is as low as it is. Sure, the fact Red 99 does not see as much attention as blue, hurts the population but it's not the real issue.

Like I said earlier, for the server to not fail it needs to create more players, it's not doing that now. There are things you can do to help, mainly just helping out any new players you see. If they have a pleasant experience they will tell others about it (word of mouth travels fast).

You mean corpse camping, bind camping, and being a fucking massive douche is bad for the server? No way. I think griefers bind camping people for no reason need bans. They are ruining the server, too.

[Hovis]

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

We average about 150 players a night, and have maintained this average for months now. The server peaked at around 650 people on opening night, but most of those players were from blue, and didn't really plan on staying very long. I know that some were players from blue who DID plan on staying but just ended up disliking the server even more than blue. Also, a good number of players (both blue and non-blue) were probably cheaters who got banned early on. The fact that we started so high is what motivates people's view of the server having declined a lot, but that's silly because most of those players were just not realistically going to stay. It's not as if we lost 500 players. We maybe lost about 100-200 active players who would have considered staying on the server. Is this bad? Yes. Is this unsalvageable? No.

The reasons for the more serious players leaving are pretty varied. Some people left because they felt the exp was too slow, others left because they got griefed off the server, and some left because of the relatively low population (low population begets low population)/lack of global ooc. I don't think these are very good reasons for leaving, but those are the reasons people have given.

Some of this could have been prevented, some of it couldn't. If guard assist was in from the beginning I'm sure less people would have been killed at the docks/bank/etc. But I tend to agree with Finawin that the real problem is the players who enjoy griefing. All the dickheads who (a) killed someone next to the guards, (b) spammed root nets or other stupid rechargeable items on players, or (c) did anything that they knew shouldn't have been in the game just to get some small short-term advantage over other players - these players are partially at fault for the declining population. Unfortunately this isn't something the staff can change now - even I think most forms of griefing should be allowed (what fun is being anti-grief if there are no griefers to police?), and you can't fix people who are just assholes. The players can police this kind of behaviour themselves though. I got several Blood Money/Fish Bait members to detag back when both those guilds still existed, just by doing things like perma-mezzing them or charm-KSing their mobs and saying "I'll stop if you detag" or whatever. On some people this doesn't work though - I'm convinced that the players in Holo/FF right now have something irreparably wrong with their brains that causes them to grief no matter how much it's an inconvenience to themselves or their guilds' long-term goals.

Anyway the point I wanted to make was that getting back the players who left is really tricky, and instead we should focus on drawing in players who haven't played yet. I think one step towards this would be cleaning up these forums. For the people who play here, stop posting inane, nonconstructive criticism of the server and the staff. For the people who don't play here, shut the fuck up about how great you thought VZTZ was, or how bad this server is, when you have no idea what you're talking about. If you don't play you should be able to express your opinions on what might make you want to log in - you should NOT be able to spam the forums with "wipe it clean" type posts like Steaks, Darwoth, Purist, and other terminally stupid posters have done. Like Amelinda always says, we're all on the same side, so let's work on getting the population higher, and not posting stupid shit that will just drive away more players.

(TLDR: you can probably just read the first and last paragraphs to get an idea of what I'm saying)

this is just a bad troll right? lmao

[Hovis]

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

Red 99 is what it is. The server will never see a "healthy" population like blue because it does not draw enough new players to it like blue has. Without new players coming to the server consistently, the server will gradually decrease in population (makes sense).

The real question is, why don't more people want to come to Red vs Blue? Go back to '99/'00. The same issue arose here. There were only what 2 or 3 pvp servers compared to 15 or so blue servers? This tells you that the average person would prefer to play EQ PVE vs EQ PVP.

It's not really the dev's fault here the population is as low as it is. Sure, the fact Red 99 does not see as much attention as blue, hurts the population but it's not the real issue.

Like I said earlier, for the server to not fail it needs to create more players, it's not doing that now. There are things you can do to help, mainly just helping out any new players you see. If they have a pleasant experience they will tell others about it (word of mouth travels fast).

spoken like a boss, i like it

[icreepin]

I have had a chance to read a few of the threads on the forum. Sullon zek had the same issues in EQ cause the rule set was so defined. Not saying that that is the issue here since i havent played but i do know that how you treat new players will either make or break any server or game. The thought proccess that its a pvp server so the weak will just be made to submit is something that every player will learn in time. so far my experience has been a positive one since i had questions and people have helped a lot with answers and advice and i havent even started playing yet.