Can we talk about the future of P99?

[Wiltan]

I really don't get the whole "the server is dead" mentality. A couple of days ago there were two quakes in one day on Blue and still everything got dead within a few hours of each quake.

Is it just that you can't find an XP group in a leveling spot? Join a guild or make some friends, and bring your own group.

Merging Green back into Blue would just invite more toxicity and scarcity into a healthy raid scene.

[loramin]

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

I really don't get the whole "the server is dead" mentality. A couple of days ago there were two quakes in one day on Blue and still everything got dead within a few hours of each quake.

Is it just that you can't find an XP group in a leveling spot? Join a guild or make some friends, and bring your own group.

Merging Green back into Blue would just invite more toxicity and scarcity into a healthy raid scene.

I'm not saying the server is dead, but if you think "raid targets are cleared" = "healthy server", you need to put whatever you're smoking down.

P99 is extremely top-heavy. When there are only 200 active players left, the raid targets will still be getting cleared, because that's what most people will stick around to do.

But, most people would not consider 200 players healthy, as there's a whole lot more to this game (and the servers' health) than whether ToV is cleared on a regular basis.

[Wiltan]

It's the middle of the workday on a Tuesday and there are 262 people on Blue and 472 people on Green right now.

Maybe 200 "active players" would be bad, but I posit that the number of active players is much higher than that, considering that even during what should be a fairly low-population time of day/week, there are more on than what you're using as a low-water mark.

At any rate, merging servers won't make things any less top-heavy.

The thing that would bring in (or back) leveling players would be new content, which isn't going to happen for a number of reasons, not the least being a lack of dev availability. Beyond that, all I see are knee-jerk "doing something is better than doing nothing" suggestions. More quakes, sure, but that's for the raid scene, and doesn't do anything to draw in more lowbies. A change in meta, same thing. Nothing wrong with doing those things, but if it's a dead server because it's top-heavy, feeding the top won't make it less dead.

There are plenty of folks who still love P99 and are enjoying things the way they are. There are players in my guild and in our larger alliance dinging 60 for the first time ever; getting their first epic ever; seeing raid zones for the first time ever. Would it be nice to just show up at Highkeep and get added to a goblin group waitlist like olden times? I suppose. But as I said earlier, one can make friends or join a guild and bring their own group for that.

[cd288]

yeah idk where the 200 number is coming from. The pop tracker shows that Blue has hovered between 450-550 or so on average for the last few months. Now, I wouldn't call that a healthy pop but it's far and above 200 people just logging in to raid.

Not that this is recent, but there were also days in Q1 where Blue hit in the 700s. There are some rare days now where it gets into the 600s.

Servers should definitely be merged but they're not dead.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

yeah idk where the 200 number is coming from.

200 was an arbitrary number I pulled out because we could all agree 200 = dead server.

My point was, we'd still have raid targets getting downed even at 200 pop (so using "raid targets getting killed" wasn't a good metric of server health).

[Toxigen]

merge em to make raiding competitive again

or until the guild that wins most absorbs the rest of the server because rooted dragons and no fte lockouts has made for the worst fucking meta ever

[Jimjam]

When will we get xp/dps group decides what to do with loot meta?

Can imagine all the shenanigans- obviously there would be sniper crews, and that will impact the meta: a rogue snipe team is doing too much dps so the tank’s guild decides to stop chain and let the mob eat through the dps and kill the snipers before picking up aggro and resuming chan / rezzing their own dps.

[Wiltan]

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

merge em to make raiding competitive again

Merge 'em to make Blue toxic again, you mean? Best thing that happened to Blue was when most of the neckbeards left for Green.

[kylok]

Merge, or don't merge, I don't care. Personally I think the best thing for this project is a server that follows the exact timeline of classic through velious and then resets to classic. Call it a Yellow server for all I care - that could keep things fresh. Maybe do another server with a similar timeline and then reset idea, but with slightly different rules - like Diablo has done. If cost is an issue than let us know. I'd be hugely surprised if as a community we could not tackle the cost of those proposed ideas.

All in all, I'm super happy with what the P99 team has accomplished and all of the above is purely gravy for my simple wants and needs.

[Wiltan]

The whole "reset" thing devalues all the efforts folks have put into advancing their characters though.