In-Game Progression Server poll (Feb 2015)

Howdy folks,

Our Progression Server player poll is now live in game and asks you to select from 4 options. Below is a summary of the options that the Designers put together. Mechanics within these can be refined or changed, like using player voting to progress, but in general this is how we see the options for a new Progression Server at the high level. (They are very complicated under the hood.)

1. Existing rules:

• Server starts with only the original EverQuest zones active. Players start at level 1.
• When players kill a set of predefined targets, a two-month countdown timer starts. There is a three-month timer before Kunark and Velious can unlock.
• When the timer is complete, a two-week vote starts that will enable the next expansion. If the majority chooses 'yes,' the expansion unlocks at the end of the voting period. If the majority chooses 'no,' a new vote begins immediately.
• This progression can continue until the server is no longer able to defeat raid targets or until it catches up with live servers.

2. Slower progression

• Server starts with only the original EverQuest zones active. Players start at level 1.
• When players kill a set of predefined targets, a three-plus month countdown timer starts. When the timer is complete, a two-week vote starts. If the majority chooses 'yes,' the expansion unlocks at the end of the voting period. If the majority chooses 'no,' a new vote begins immediately.
• This progression can continue until the server is no longer able to defeat raid targets or until it catches up with live servers.

3. Locked progression

• Server starts with only the original EverQuest zones active. Players start at level 1.
• When players kill a set of predefined targets, a two-month countdown timer starts. There is a three-month timer before Kunark and Velious can unlock.
• OPTION: When the timer is complete, a two-week vote starts that will enable the next expansion. If the majority chooses 'yes,' the expansion unlocks at the end of the voting period. If the majority chooses 'no,' a new vote begins immediately.
• OPTION: Dev determines the unlocked progression based on the player completion rates.
• At a specific point, determined by Dev, votes are no longer available and progression is complete.

4. Seasonal Challenge Server

• The server starts with only original EverQuest zones active, or with content enabled through a later expansion. Players start at level 1.
• OPTION: When players kill a set of predefined targets, a vote begins within a week. Each vote lasts two weeks. If the majority chooses 'yes,' the expansion unlocks at the end of the voting period. If the majority chooses 'no,' a new vote begins immediately.
• OPTION: Alternatively, Dev may choose to unlock content when progression targets are complete.
• Players have a set period of time (one season) to complete as much content as they can. The player(s) who get the farthest will receive recognition and a prize (to be determined later).
• Once the season is complete, the server is reset and the challenge begins anew!

I know this is general, but we wanted any players who didn't understand the options to have a place to go for info. And for those who will ask, we don't have any timelines on this. Several factors are at play, like hardware, the option chosen, and other factors. That said, your participation will help us!
Thanks, as always!

Why do all of the options include voting?

I'd imagine the voting is there to prevent one raid guild from Unlocking content before the majority of the server is ready to move on.

From the forums, many people wanted a TLP Time locked (set period) without a vote to progress. Voting for every xpac is what ruined Fippy by people maliciously blocking GoD.. That is not an option to vote for. For the life of me, I cannot understand why. Aren't you guys reading the forums?

A time locked w/o voting with an approx. 3 month time set per xpac. A guild cannot rush the next release.

Thank you for the polls. Some players actually prefer a no player voting server, where content just unlock on a set timer. Because some expansions deserve a longer timer, while others like classic, does not have enough content to last 3-4 months. So a pre-determined timer without player voting may actually work pretty well, and probably should be one of the voting choices.

If these options are dead set, then my preferred would be Slower Progression. However 4 months, or even 3 months of classic is simply too long. We went through this with Fippy/Vulak, the logjam in lower guk & solb made the 3 months of classic quite miserable once everybody got to the last 10 levels of classic.

If a compromise can be made to make classic only last say, 2 months on the Slower Progression ruleset, then that would be a pretty darn good choice for a lot of progression server enthusiasts.

Nothing to address contested content like instances or increased spawn timers? I'm out. The land of one guild locking down content is only fun for the guild locking it down.

Nothing can be done about noninstanced zones. It's FFA or rotation.

They can make instances of non-instance zones and they can increase spawn timers even easier.

Too bad most people run 3+ accounts and certain guilds could easily manipulate the voting system because of this.

Oh, you want them to drag this thing out another year changing the make up of old zones? No thanks.

But if they can EASILY adjust somewhat the spawn timers, maybe. But it should be a competition somewhat.

And Holly, it's a very, very bad idea only starting out with only the original zones and several reasons posted why on many threads mostly on the TLP forum. There's not enough room. Start up to Kunark. That also should have been on the poll.

Voting and not voting are options to explore in two or even three options... The existing rule set (first option) includes voting as that's how they exist. We will get into the details once we get a sense of player feedback in the poll.

Thank you windstalker sounds like there will be more rounds of polling as yall dial it in all I needed to hear.

Contested content was a large part of what early EQ was all about. I was a customer support guide from '00 to '03 and much of what we dealt with was contested content. Sounds to me like the folks that want TLP want all the fun of original content with none of the problems. I think they should use the old buggy zone files on a new TLP server. Who remembers falling thru the world and waiting for someone to come summon you out? And dev boxes. Those were fun too. Mobs under the world killing you from below.

Yup this is a popular option, I'm interested in seeing if we have enough players wanting to launch the new server with classic + kunark. The idea is to have more starting newbie areas, more dungeons to crawl, more things to farm, more mid to higher end places to level. This will alleviate the logjam that we saw in solb/lguk with Fippy/Vulak during the first 3 months.

Those that want to race and hurry, they could, and there's plenty to farm and more raid bosses to kill with Kunark. Those wanting to go slower could do it at their own pace. I'd recommend locking classic+kunark at at least 5-6 months, this should be a good compromise that'll at least satisfy both types of players more than the either/or approach.

The two groups of players are 1) raiders that want to min/max, race, and kill kill kill. and 2) casual, core gamers, play as you go type of players that don't mind taking a bit longer, but they just don't want expansions to open too fast to make sure there are more people to play with.

Personally, I think starting in RoK so people have more starting area options to reduce congestion, unlocking based on time only. 6 to 9 months so people can enjoy the server, explore the content and learn, complete achievements and quests, and make guilds like we did in the early days.

Instanced raid content would be ideal so people can enjoy it in larger numbers, rather than one guild melting everything with their box toons and macros - especially since it will probably be the same people that ruined it for everyone else before.

Windstalker said,

I hope by "the sense of player feedback" means you won't take a month on these polls, as there is no need for that. But thank you so much Holly, you have put me at ease as I was worried we were stuck with voting and we know what happened with Fippy and voting.

Oh no, some of us want it. We like contested content, the competition, raid calls by text at any time of day or night, etc.

Throwing my hat in the no vote orogression. Expansion is beat, 3 to 4 months later next one unlocks. No fuss no muss.

I love the locked progression idea. Will you be up front about where the server locks its final expansion? Looks like you want this decision owned by the devs? Any way to give this decision to the players of the server, or are you guys planning on running several servers at once with different destination expansion locks to give us options from the get-go (if this is the most voted)?

I'm very happy to hear that more options are available once we get through this first voting stage. I voted for slower progression and ideally I'd like it to be set times.

For what it's worth, I have no interest in opening classic and Kunark together. I'd like to progress to kunark the way it was meant to be done.

Thanks for providing feedback and explanation. I feel like we're actually in capable hands for the first time in a while.