How is boxing a grp of toons, a game design flaw?

Link to discussion?

Did I say that? Or was I saying that people are forming groups with existing friends and guild mates and not adding people not already in those groups? You can remove boxing and mercs from the game but that doesn't mean that those groups will now invite people not in their current circle of friends into the group. Not being able to box doesn't mean they will invite the random lfg person to a group.

Yes. You said this:

You know when you're on a bus or subway, and no one is talking. Everyone is on their smartphone, or just sitting there quiet.

There are probably a lot of people who would like to strike a conversation, but no one knows who is in the mood to talk. So the end result is that no one says anything.

But then you got to some southern country, everyone talks on the bus, people are making jokes and having fun.

This is how I see EQ. EQ used to be the place to sit around in Pok, to get a group going, to run around to catch a mass-group-buff, the environment was conducive to grouping.

The fact this changed, and making groups has become a drag, and no one feels like starting one, is not the player's fault. The fact people box is not the player's fault, it's a reaction.

It's the EQ environment that changed, developers are in control of that environment. Like I have said before, these are gameplay issues the EQ design team created.

I would not necessarily say that servers have a cap per se, outside of that first TLP week like you say. However, if 300 humans are six boxing, then the population is 1800 and DBG thinks that is a healthy and active server. Is it, though? Compared to a server of 1700 humans playing one character, I believe that is a far healthier and more interactive and social server. In both cases, both servers look good and active. But one is better than the other as far as groups go.

Do you have the links to the server caps or devs on server merge?

How do we know that they can’t sort real players from boxes by looking at such information such as owner name, payment methods, contact information, or IP address?

It is clear to me that you all need to get out more.

It doesn't matter if they can tell which accounts are boxed and which not.

Most EQ zones are not instances, and they simply have population caps, zones are designed for X players and if you started merging all these servers you would run into gameplay issues.

There are MMO that have like 1 US and 1 EU server, and thousands of players, but all the content is instanced, so they can merge everything.

The new people who are folks who used to theorycraft on Pantheon. Then you have the ForumQuesters like me. You also have people who think WoW and FF14 are terrible games so EQ has to fit their vision.

I went for a hike in North Karana. I get out plenty.

Where was this stated? Link please.

It's common sense, zones can only accommodate a certain number of players. EQ zones can only hold so many mobs, this is clear when you start doing mass pulling in a zone and crash it.

How is it any different whether that player is a real player or boxed? Both “take up” the zone.

Bazaar and Guild Lobby can accommodate 300+ Players.

What is the cap and where was it officially stated?

sure, and they have 0 mobs

My friend, this is my last reply to you in the thread, you know very well EQ zones can only accommodate a certain number of players before the mobs run out. You're arguing because you're bored at this point.

To answer the question...

I believe that a MMORPG is intended and designed for people to socialize, interact, work together and use teamwork skills to accomplish things in game. One person playing 1-5 other toons besides their main could defeat that philosophy and, therefore, be a game design flaw. Because, of course, one person doing content with six toons defeats the "vision" of six individual humans with one character doing everything the first sentence I wrote spoke of.

Having said that, EQ has changed over the years- content, gear, knowledge, skill, technical real life hardware, etc. And the players have also changed over the years, me being the perfect example. For 20 or so years, I was a single magician. I saw that when I wanted to do something specific in game, I could not do it. I reached out to others, and they had already done it or they were doing other things or were not online. And while I helped others at times, I found the reciprocation to not always be there. And I found a pool of players to dwindle to the point where there was not players to group with. So I gave in and made a box bard. Now, outside of missions I can do what I want in the group game, when I want. If I don't want to socialize today and I just want to be by myself and camp a named or two, I am able.

But, of course, that goes against the idea of the MMORPG. I should want to group with others, and socialize, and work as a team. But because I **can** do everything save for missions by myself, I don't need to.

So yes, boxing does not promote socializing and cooperation and team building with others. But boxing does allow you to accomplish things in game at your own pace, your own time, your own leisure. And that is a nice thing to have. I no longer consider EQ a MMORPG, I just consider it a G.

What is wrong with /pickzone?

Yes, I have said it and I will say it again that boxing does not prevent people from getting groups though it may make it harder. Just because someone doesn't drop a box or merc for you to join the group doesn't mean they would invite you even if there was a spot open. What is so hard to understand that people won't suddenly get more groups just because people can't box anymore as they will still tend to stick to people they want to group with.

When I ride the bus I don't want to strike up conversations with random people and I am not the only one who feels like that. Sure in some areas of the world they do that but not everywhere.

Aradune TLP launch had major Queues, and major complaints.

At some point during that launch/queue phase the server cap was stated as being around 6000 after its softcap was raised in an attempt to reduce the queues, but over 4000 it became super-lagged out & the game was all but unplayable so they had to soft cap it back to 4000 for performance reasons - at some point it was also mentioned that Live servers run on different hardware that has a far lower player hardcap - I recall 2000 as the softcap but I may be wrong on that.

Eventually the devs allowed players on Aradune to transfer off to Rizlona as the queues persisted for weeks, and a lot of players simply quit, angrily & in disappointment - both measures eventually reduced the queues.

And no I am not trawling through the ocean of posts around that time to pull out direct quotes.