Conclusions After a Month of Play

My husband and I decided to subscribe for a month of play on Phinny. We started shortly before Kunark came out and our game time comes to an end on the 24th.

This server got a lot of things right. When we loaded in it was a huge rush of nostalgia and from talking to others in game they felt exactly the same. Some things were different from a "classic" experience, but I understood from the beginning that this would be the case and was not disappointed.

The best part about returning to a server with such a healthy population was the groups! We grouped with a lot of really wonderful people as we leveled. It made the experience much faster and more enjoyable and allowed us to explore areas we had never been before. Sure, there were bad eggs every once in a while, but the good ones far outnumbered them.

However, as we leveled there were also some glaring issues with the server. Number one for us being harm touch. There was an entire section of Kurns that was often empty due to the mobs HTing for more HP than your non twinked appropriate level character would have. Also, even if you did have enough HP to survive, there was always the risk of getting an add with HT. As we leveled we would occasionally find mobs for quests that we would be unable to kill due to their ability to harm touch. So far from reading replies on the forums DBG doesn't seem to think that this is an issue. The people playing on Phinny pay a monthly fee to play this game, I feel like there should be more interest in our needs.

My second issue is with the krono trade. I have no issue with krono itself being in game, but for me people perma camping quest npcs, key mobs, and highly sought after drops really goes against the spirit of the game I remember. Bring krono into any situation in the game and people get mean. Kill stealing, leaders taking loot to sell, and training? (also, DBG doesn't seem to care about any of this?!) Come on.

In the end the experience was fun but we will not be resubscribing. We had a great time, and I wanted to say thanks for the fun times to everyone in the community. You guys are the reason I considered staying, but ultimately I am putting my money where my mouth is and hoping to see improvements from DBG in the future.

While I can understand where you are coming from, many mobs and camps were perma-camped or close to it in classic as well, so I'm not sure it goes against the spirit of the game you are remembering. There is definitely less GM involvement though (perhaps an understatement ), so I can understand why the trains, kill stealing or loot stealing would be a concern of yours.

Did you try joining any guilds? Generally speaking most guilds are pretty helpful in obtaining groups and gear, and it's much more difficult for members of the same guild to do some of the things you had issues with. You might be able to enjoy the game a little more if you are surrounded by like-minded people who you have a good time playing with.

As far as the HT issue, it doesn't appear a fix is coming anytime soon. There are a number of zones that do not have HT mobs, which is the best workaround at the moment.

They have at least addressed the HT issue, and a "we honestly dont know how to fix it" is better than ignoring the problem....

As for Krono, that is the future of MMO's it appears. WoW has adopted a similar system, as have other games.

WoW's system is infinently better than EQ's free trade system.

pretty sure the double HT bug issue is more "this is a low priority" rather then "we have no clue how to fix it" thing

Training and kill stealing seems to happen a lot less at max level. Hit the level cap, join a raiding guild and never worry about open world mobs again. All open world raid spawns will probably be removed next expansion too so that will help keep a lot more subs.

I thought it was more like, someone had a look and couldn't make head nor tail of it, so it was put on the back burner in favour of more important things like fixing instances.

This is what Roshen posted about it:

as for her second point, while i do not like Krono either I can live with them.

all the things she complains about happened just as much in 1999 as it does now. people would ninja loot items off Dragon Raids and sell them on E-bay, train you for camps and Kill stealing was even easier back then because it was the person who did the most damage would get the kill, not the group total.

I just think you hear more about it in todays game because of the universal chat channels we did not have back then so it seems much worse now.

Just be happy that this game even still exists with it's bugs and that selling a few extra Krono helps them keeps the lights on. For me personally, I've still had more fun in this last year on theses new TLP's than I have had in any of the new MMO's released in the past decade.

Citation?

Krono is just an abstraction of currency into 'real' currency. It is literally no different than people farming CoF back in the day and selling it on player auctions or eBay. All DBG/SoE has done in this case is given a new name to this exchange rate.

What Krono does is let you store this active exchange rate as an in-game item. Before you had a choice: Store your EQ wealth in USD or platinum. Krono is just an intermediary that literally represents both objects. However, since platinum inflates at a much faster rate than real life money, Krono (just like USD) is a preferred object to store your wealth in, as it's 'value' in game increases. What is actually happening is the buying power of platinum is decreasing.

Krono, just like platinum, can be bought and sold on 3rd party websites. The added benefit here is that Krono's value is tied to the subscription service. Before, in order to play 'for free' you had to sell platinum for USD and pay your credit card bill with that money. Today, you can just buy a Krono.

The one thing that I do dislike about Krono is your ability to easily transfer wealth to new servers. There are certain things (tradeskills) that require raw platinum to level up, and being able to come from X server, generate 10kpp effortlessly and then be able to have max level without any work is very annoying to me. Please note this was entirely possible before by just, buying platinum on 3rd party sites - it's just effortless now.

His wishful thinking.

Tulgin doesn't need to cite sources, his word is law. We all greatly respect the voice of the anonymous troll named Tulgin. His insight into this game is invaluable.

as far as he's concerned, eq should become a wow clone and open world spawns should no longer exist.. among other things.

yeah came back about 3 weeks before kunark opened, tried raiding a bit, and while it's fun and I did like it... I wanted to play phini for the more social aspects of being able to group again and not deal with mega mage armies/bot crews/non-instanced raiding/one guild trying to control a server etc... to actually have fun leveling rather than treating as a grind job to get to raiding faster. went from 9 to 50 by grinding and helping lower guildies. realised, nope, I wasn't having fun grinding to raid levels, I liked helping the lower levels more, helping people get stuff for their epics etc.

kronos really don't belong on these servers, but we have to live with them, but I don't miss the constant plat seller tells either... I have encountered some who will not sell to you unless you have kronos, forget plat, that really sends a msg how the game has changed.

What exactly was permacamped? I only know of a couple of camps sub-50 that drop anything worth a krono and they're not really the kinds of places a normal level appropriate group would go so I'm really curious.

To all you complaining about Krono, please go read my earlier post. Krono only affects a very small minority of situations. For the most part, Krono is just an abstraction of value that has a direct correlation to a set platinum amount. Their liquidity is very fluid and within a couple hundred pp their tolerance for liquidation is near instant. I.E. If the 'going rate' is 4500pp you should be able to sell one for 4300pp almost immediately and buy one for 4700 almost immediately. They are literally just a representation of an exchange rate that exists whether you want to believe it exists or not (platinum = USD).

Except you forgot to mention, the moment you attach a krono price to an item, you instantly attach a set (USD $17.99 per krono) amount to the said item.

Would be nice to see a TLP with no krono but that won't happen.
Sold a early BCG if I had to sell it using plat no one could afford it, but thanks to krono I was able to ask for a wicked amount because I know quite a lot of people had them for trade.