There is a designated thread for complaining about class "unbalance". Feel free to question the "inequality" of multiboxing in that thread as well. Or you can ask Piestro to make a separate thread for that, I'm sure he'll be happy to oblige.
There is only so much a single account owner can do to convince multiboxers or people isolated in their guild to get out of their shell and make friends. There should be some form of encouragement within the content that encourages boxers and individuals isolated within their guild to come out of their shell, maybe promote grouping with others and making friends. I think OMM did that at least in some part, it encouraged many people who isolated themselves in guilds and in box crews to come out of their shell and group, but sadly it was nerfed.
Oh this is turning into a thread where we repeat the same thing over and over again like no one noticed the first few postings on it. If guild members aren't interested in grouping with you, you should look at whether or not you are coming out of your shell enough to get their notice. Also if it is so bad that no one in the guild will group with anyone outside their cliques then you should bring that up to the guild officers. Boxing has nothing to do with cliques, and cliques have nothing to do with boxing. They can work together, but they are entirely different problems. In the end, it is human nature to gravitate towards what you know and are comfortable with. Cliques are something that you can't logically think will ever go away. Boxing or not, they may have no interest in grouping with new people. If you aren't trying to form your own group, only sitting around hoping someone will include you in theirs, then you are more at fault than anything else.
I'm wondering, crazy theory here, if its people's selfishness that makes it so difficult for them to find groups that they find it necessary to pay extra money not to have to. Or maybe it's not that they are self-centered and anti-social. Maybe boxing makes it a LOT easier to deal with real issues. Surely if finding a group that would at least occasionally do what you wanted to do was easy no one would box. But they do box. The game changes? Aye, I hope it changes soon. There's this game with 5M+ subscribers that doesn't have much boxing since there's not a lot of motivation to box.
The available pool of single account owners who provide correct match-making has shrunk over the years. And the barriers to match-making have increased too, which is why most people don't even group outside of their guild anymore. And by correct match making, I mean, someone of your lvl, with your goal, with your relative power, able to compete with what mulitboxing provides, is much lower than it used to be. Since multiboxing provides superior power, superior match-making and removes social barriers, it's the preferred choice to play for many. Multiboxing is a result of the lack of correct match-making in EQ. Some people don't like to group. That's fine, but some people do like to group with others, and like to do it in an a way that is accessible, and when half your server decides to play on their own with boxes, this severely impacts single player accounts. OMM removed match making barriers. That's why I think it was so successful.
I remember grouping in CoM years ago with an enchanter who didn't have gear in half her slots, a ranger tanking and a druid healing. We did ok actually, the barrier to match making was low, the content was accessible, and we frankly grouped anyone who shouted /OOC LFG. This is how old man mckenzie missions work. This is how EQ used to be, extremely accessible, both to groupers and solo players. I find it funny when some people say that EQ used to be a challenging game. No it wasn't, the corpse runs were challenging, but early EQ was extremely acessible and extremely forgiving. Our druid was our back-up tank when the ranger died for crying out loud. Match making was much much much easier.
Match making for groups is as easy, or as hard, as you make it. You get out of it exactly what you are willing to put into it.
People seem to think boxing is some new thing in the last couple years. People used to box in 1999. It just took a nice powerful computer to run 2 chars on one machine. When I boxed back then I had 6 computers sitting on my desk (I still have pictures of the setup somewhere). Grouping was preferred and still is, but boxing is NOT new. It has nothing at all to do with server population, class balance or imbalance or anything else. It has to do with the amount of TIME I had to play. There were lots of people with multiple computers playing multiple accounts.
This sounds less and less, with every post, like a real grouping thread and more and more like a bring back OMM thread as you mention it most of your posts. This won't help your argument. It's far from the best time in EQ for groupers and "single account owners". Any two people can make a group regardless of their class now more than ever because of the introduction of mercs. Don't have a tank? Get a merc. Don't have a healer? Get a merc. DPS really low? Get a merc. If you want a druid and a ranger to group you can just get mercs to tank and heal or dps. Or you can charm with the druid. Classes used to be much more interchageable, but there is a fix for missing a role in the group now.
People need to have the guts to say how it actually is. Yes you can group. But you need to be willing to admit that there are a lot more barriers to entry than there used to be that severely limit those opportunities and accessibility. The barrier to entry in early EQ was shouting /ooc LFG, and unless you had a terrible reputation, most people got a group in mere seconds. Go try this now and tell me nothing changed. It is also extremely dishonest of people who multibox (not directed at you) to say that these barriers of entry are not there and that's it's simply a social issue. People who multibox actually do this to circumvent match making and do their own match making and by doing so they avoid barriers to entry.
Boxing is not new, but it would be truly dishonest to say that boxing has not increased significantly.
No, no they didn't. It was luck of the draw, in any given zone, even populated ones, you usually had a 50/50 at best of find a group who had a spot open for you, otherwise you went to a different zone and tried again. Nowadays you put out a message in general chat, and then *any* group in *any* zone that fits your needs can reply. That's one less barrier than before. Some people box because they don't want to group, no one's denying this. Removing boxing will not magically make these people want to group, this has been pointed out multiple times, you'll just suddenly get a lot more necros and mages on every server. Most boxers are happy to group with people that fit, they'll just tailor their boxes accordingly. This has also been pointed out multiple times. When you're applying selective blindness to a good deal of the thread, you are in no position to make claims regarding other peoples' honesty.
Most? I remember vividly when a warrior entered SS (sanctum somnium) and asked in /ooc if anyone had room. There were no less than 4 multiboxer groups in the zone. Not one dropped their mercs or alts. I eventually pulled outside of the group to give him a spot.
So one memory discounts everything. Got it. I vividly remember when a Dwarf Cleric ooc'd that he was giving money and items to new players years ago. That must mean all Dwarven Clerics give out cash. I and many many other players on Povar invite people into the group when boxing and I only have one box. You know what is truly dishonest? Pretending this whole problem is all the fault of boxers.
Sinestra, are you saying that "most" boxers drop their alts when someone is LFG? If you are I'm going to call you a liar. The only time this happens tends to be within guilds, but most boxers never drop their alts for single account owners who are LFG.
I box. In fact, I six box. I also give away, for free, tons of loot and spells. I even coh you with a mage to my group to give you free gear. I do this for two reasons; 1. I think it is healthy to get gear in the hands of people that will pay subscriptions because they are having fun and getting gear they have trouble getting on their own. 2. I'm a nice guy, who in order to accomplish No.1, stops his gameplay and whizzes away 15 minutes to make sure L 100 Tier 3 group gear doesn't rot (or lower level loot if I'm aug hunting around EQ). I have lots of reasons why I box; none of which are anyone's business. The main one is, just for context, I can start, stop, afk, slack and do anything I damn well please, whenever I damn well please. If I couldn't box, EQ would be short six accounts and "tons of gear" wouldn't be entering the game to any qualified toon that is monitoring the general channels. Restricting boxing would just be silly.
Personal experience says otherwise. See, the fun thing about the personal anecdote game is that everyone can play.
Going back to the original question a second, there is no doubt in my mind SoE listens to everything. It's just a matter of what they have the time and resources to implement. I cannot imagine what an undertaking it is for the Devs to work on code created in 1998 that has been poured over with 20? expansions since. There's such a multitude of headaches with that. I myself need to be less critical of every little thing that is implemented. They can't hit a homer every time at the dish. As someone who has played this game since May 1999, I believe this company cares about it's product and it's player base more than most MMO games. Look at the new FF14 beta for instance and how plainly obvious they are trying to kill FF11 in the process. Does anyone really believe with EQNext on the horizon, this is SoE's goal? Because I don't. They can't possibly keep such a mix of veteran and new players since FTP all happy. It's not possible with the before mentioned resources. Enjoy this game while they are able to support it, continue to send in feedback and maybe we can get a few more years of fun out of this product.
