New trend with all games?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by CatsPaws, Nov 4, 2020.

  1. Nadisia Augur

    Because, for many people, boxing is the only thing that keeps them hooked, subbed, and why they still play the game.
    In our case with my husband, this is the way we like to play.
    We do live in Europe, but always played on US based servers, so most of the time, if we want to play during our daytimes, the population is low.
    Our schedule is also really weird, lots of breaks and AFKs, so it's not really fun for other people to play with us and ... wait.

    We also love boxing for the personal challenge, and because it's fun ... unlike some people seem to say.
    It's another playstyle.

    And also because we want to play with the people we love to play with, and not being forced to play with annoying ones.
    It was really the case on WoW, LFD with their automatic system : a group of idiots.
    2nd time ? Another group of idiots.
    And so on, with sometimes, here and there a nice player lost in the pile of scrubs.

    We don't want to play that way.
    We left WoW retail for many reasons (stupid evolutions, kindergarten, bad decisions, toxicity) , but there was still a chance for us to come back on Classic, from time to time.

    Now, with their new decision, it's over, for good.
    When we want to play WoW, we'll play on a private server, or restart our emulated local servers.
    And if one day, DPG decides to do the same thing, and turn everything into truebox servers, we'll do the exact same thing.
    (and to be clear, most of the time, something around 11 month per year, we do pay for 6 accounts, sometimes seven, with reccuring subs, and without kronos. We do play for fun, not to farm plat like a 2nd job)

    And there are many other reasons why boxing could be good, at least not bad: lot of boxers are very helpful, some boxed characters can fill some empty spots in a raid, from time to time, and so on.
    code-zero and Tegila like this.
  2. Tegila Augur

    are you serious right now? i know more female players than males lmao. lots of mothers and grandmothers or just single women who no longer are being made to feel "wrong" for wanting to enjoy gaming bc theyre a woman. And a part of that could be the lower system requirements and older playerbase. I like to build computers myself, but a lot of mothers and grandmothers either dont have the urge to do such things or dont have the spare money or just plain cant justify doing s, but they can still play EQ. Theyre not surrounded by teenagers and the type of chat seen in much younger playerbase games. The number of women in EQ has grown as far as Ive seen over teh years, not shrunk lol

    i still dont get what your first paragraph, about women, has to do with your second and third, are YOU saying women are less technically inclined? or less motivated? I mean many have different priorities as I said, and because of that are more likely to have lesser machines to play on, and i wil lsay women are less apt to enjoy playing with the types of personalities dominating most "younger" games, but that has nothing to do with boxing or some technical barrier.

    And the "norm" does not require anyone to run 3rd party SOFTware not hardware lol. hardware is the computer, software is the program you run on it.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  3. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Because people getting groups is a good thing.

    The whole argument that boxing is bad for a game hinges on the unfounded premise that boxers isolate themselves from the population of non-boxers. Proponents of the one player/one character playstyle push this notion to further an agenda.

    The problem with this notion is that it simply isn't true. ALL of the boxers I know run a hybrid playstyle - sometimes they box only with their toons/mercs, sometimes they drop mercs or boxes for other players, sometimes they play one character in a group or raid setting.

    By the same unfounded argument, people who solo/molo are also bad for a game. Solo/Molo players collect all the XP, money, and loot for themselves. Thereby damaging the economy and other players. Which is, of course, a completely false, ridiculous notion. In a game that, by design, allows solo/molo play advancement, the game also allows a group to collect the same types of rewards to share ONLY AMONGST THEMSELVES.

    I support the notion that boxing and multiboxers do more good for the game than the one player/one character playstyle. Boxers spend more, sub more, complete more quests/missions/progression, Baz sell more, and generally know more about various classes and their group and raid synergies than people who cling to the one player/one character playstyle.
    Tegila, Nadisia and Nennius like this.
  4. Tegila Augur

    yeah idk where that idea came from. Im a woman, i run 4 accounts when i get the motivation to go do something lol, and when my buddy's on we pick and choose (we have 2 overlapping classes we pare down to a group when we play) and ive built all but the laptop of the 4 machines i run, and dozens of other machines before and since. The whole introduction of gender roles into this discussion is ridiculous.
  5. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    Much like the rest of Strawberry's posts... it's all nonsense.
  6. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    The 19 active female players in my guild disagree with you.
    Tegila, Nadisia and Nennius like this.
  7. Nadisia Augur

    Lol, I missed than one :D

    /raises hand
    Hey, Potatoeberry, here I am, Kayleigh, 39yo, proud mom of 2 adorable girls ... and 6boxing.
    And I'm boxing since Luclin era, :p
  8. Strawberry Augur

    Right, I believe women are less technically inclined to run multiple PC and to partake in boxing.

    I believe the increasing technical hurdles of boxing and the decrease in actual socialising explains what I perceive to be an Everquest demographic that is far more male slanted than it used to be.

    Developers who want to be maximive their playerbase to stay economically viable, should take these factors into account.

    Boxing becoming the norm on a server creates technical barriers and limits your potential playerbase. It also makes the playerbase less diverse, which is a bad thing for socializing and the health of the game.
  9. Strawberry Augur

    To add, this is not about gender, this is just about the fact that certain groups of people, including women, but also men, are put off by the idea of having to jump through technical hurdles to enjoy a game. Boxing is such a technical hurdle, Blizzard realises this, and they realise it limits the potential playerbase and limits the extent to which they can reach new players.

    What I see in EQ is a demographic that is far less diverse than it used to be. There are lots of technically skilled people who are great with technology, running multiple computers, 3rd party applications and all sorts of shortcuts to progress in the game. A demographic that is overwhelmingly male.

    But by doing that, you put up barriers to other groups. Including women, men who are not technically skilled, etc.
  10. Duder Augur

    So you're speaking for the silent minority of players? From what do you derive your statements? WoW boards? Stick to "me" and "I" statements because you are making yourself out to be a fool.
    Celephane likes this.
  11. Strawberry Augur

    I'm not speaking for anyone. I am saying that a game that wants to remain economically viable needs to be accessible to a broad audience.

    By allowing a playerbase to use technical means to bypass gameplay mechanics, to the point of it becoming the norm, you greatly limit your playerbase to a group that is very technically skilled, and missing a lot of opportunities to attract a broader and more diverse demographic.

    I see an EQ demographic that is very technically skilled, but not very diverse. I see a game that has become less accessible due to those technical barriers, where boxing has increasingly become the norm.
  12. Duder Augur

    You sure are speaking for people. Making definite statements about what certain demographics are capable of and how they are inclined to behave. You have studied the EQ audience? You are an expert? Attempts at disinformation are strong in this one.
    I_Love_My_Bandwidth and Tegila like this.
  13. Tegila Augur

    guess whawt: most of the people youre having this big discussion with , who box and/or hydra/truebox..are women, as you might see if you read all these responses.
    code-zero likes this.
  14. Tegila Augur

    oh and btw: boxing eq takes lower technical specs than 1 instance of pretty much any other popular game still in existence, including your beloved wow. the windows7 requirement they implemented a couple years ago was an artificial technical jump, but only in OS. a machine now has to be capable of running windows 7 and have all its drivers available, but an xp, or older, machine with 3-4 gigs of ram, and even zero graphics cards, is perfectly capable of running the game, just the launcher has put a hurdle in via the win7 req. EQ's existence is kinda the lowest common denominator in MMORPGs today, and its not so common. because of the lack of increased tech in teh game (something someone brought up as possibly caused by boxing..maybe it was you, maybe itwas someone else..idc...) it IS more accessible to a LOT larger group of people who dont have access to better computers or technical knowledge. you seem to be ignoring this fact. sure, minecraft is (visibly) an 8bit game, and thus can run on anything EQ can, but that is a much younger audience in general. Skyrim? as was brought up earlier? i couldnt play Skyrim on 90% of the machiens ive played EQ on since Skyrim was launched. I played modern (architecture not c urrent expansions) EQ, as in SOF+, on pentium 3 machines running 2gigs of ddr400 ram, on a 40 gig 5400 rpm harddrive and nvidia 8400 video card was overkill. the game could still be played on that, it has the same engine and graphics as it did then. Tech is NOT a barrier whatsoever in EQ, software knowledge could be IF yo uwere inclined to use 3rd party...but it is most definitely not needed, even to box.
  15. Strawberry Augur

    You can start by not acting like a doltish character. Everyone knows that certain demographics aren't as technically skilled at computers as other and we know certain groups enjoy socializing in games over progression.

    Boxing becoming the norm has done three things that have impacted EQ's demographics.
    1) it has put up technical barriers
    2) it has negatively impacted the social fabric of the game
    3) it has increased the cost of playing the game

    These represent technical, social, and economical breaklines in society, and they greatly impact the diversity and potential of the playerbase. And I believe this is a very bad thing for a game that wants to remain economically viable.
  16. KrakenReality Augur


    What?
  17. Benito EQ player since 2001.


    This is really weird.

    You've swung from feminist to misogynist.
    Nadisia and Sissruukk like this.
  18. Nadisia Augur

    And here we go again, the fake argument about the technical hurdle ... :rolleyes:

    1st, nobody is forcing you to multibox.
    2nd, what hurdle?

    Yeah, for sure, for the average WoW population, these so call super-uber-thorycrafters who can't even use a preformated text tag and insert their links in between 2 backticks (Alt+96), and use some insanity like the «Type _http h tt - and remove all the spaces and copy it in another tab», it's prolly a hurdle ...

    Or all those who can't even click on the .exe file to start their game instead of using the crap Bnet launcher when it's struggling.

    That's prolly why they ruined the gameplay of most classes, and reduced it to : spam 2 keys, and look, press on that one, it's flashing !!!
    WoW is too hard /nods
    And in many aspect, some WoW addons, like WeakAura, commonly used are way more complicated, in depth, than setting up a mutibox team.

    And what about the ton of assistance addons, WeakAura, TomTom, Gathermate, TSM, and so on. They should remove them, or will remove them, all of them, because some people don't know how to use it correctly?
    I won't even talk about the PvP addons, using the WoW API.

    It's way too hard ... Yeah, if you're lazy, it's hard.
    A computer is a tool, learn to use it correctly, and it's not hard.

    I don't even talk about programming, just use it correctly.
    My 6yo daughter can prolly use a computer way better and faster than any of these «ban multiboxing because it's not fair and too hard» whiners.
    Tegila likes this.
  19. Strawberry Augur

    You can attack me all you like.

    But an MMO that relies on socializing and interacting with other players needs a diverse demographic to be healthy.

    When boxing becomes the norm, you put up technical barriers, barriers that disproportionally limit your potential to attract a viable playerbase. And yes, technical computer barriers disproportionally limit your game's potential to attract a female audience.

    When running multiple computers becomes the norm, you put up economical barriers, that disproportionally limit your ability to attract players with lower incomes.
  20. Sissruukk Rogue One

    Now you are just sniping.
    I_Love_My_Bandwidth and Duder like this.