The problem isn't Mages. It's boxing~

I was really bummed last night playing. Totally am excited to play, relive a progression like experience. (Previously I was playing P99 for a new years).

I had great experiences with the occasional mage train of macroed boxes, which I look at as sacrilege, but whatever.

Currently, I am boxing an SK and a bard. Last night I went into Highkeep as is my leveling tradition across a multitude of servers and characters. What I saw was nothing but disappointing. There is a macroed mage army at the ZL, macroed mage army in the basement, and a macroed mage army on the 2nd floor.

Now don't get me wrong, the owners of the said army's were really cool, offered buffs on their other chars, etc. and were exceptionally friendly.

But at what point is this type of gameplay unbecoming of a healthy immersive EQ experience? On live, my RL friends and I all shared 1 boxed char, a shaman. But 1 person controlling 6 chars that are macroed to keypress seems a bit much?

Coming from a non-box allowed server I can see how precious that sort of thing is. Because for me, mass boxing is really destroying the experience.

You will find that Daybreak is unwilling to have the philosophical discussion that ultimately you seek. You will have to think outside the box (no pun intended) if you want this cause to get attention.

Would not allowing boxing cause more people to play here? Or are they making that much money off boxed characters? Seems like no boxing would kill the need for instancing, too.

Restricting boxing is not in the best interests of DBG. It's not going to happen.

For the most part, these box armies will disappear in the coming months as their controllers finish leveling them, drift back to live servers or begin to realize it's not worth the cost to maintain. For now, we've all just got to live with the P2W players.

Before instancing, I'd say yes absolutely more people would be here without boxing. With it, I'm not so sure.

Yes, DBG makes way too much money off boxing to ever curb it. They even allow key-automation via [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] (as long as you're at your keyboard still). It isn't going anywhere unfortunately.

Enjoy the oay 2 win gravy train while you can!

Too difficult to measure. Not to mention any attempt to prevent boxing across the board would be met with crippling backlash--and a boxing ban on a single server would be impossible to enforce.

Now that is an argument that I don't see raised very often. People should probably have focused more on that than on the keypress duplication. Primarily because, as far as I know, Daybreak does a lot to avoid pay2win in their more recent games; which contrasts greatly with the approach here.

The problem is also with mage pets because they make 6 boxing so much easier if all you need is a key press to send in all the pets. Could you imagine someone trying to 6 box with a well balanced group of classes? It would be a nightmare without some kind of botting. I think if mage pets were balanced you would see a lot less mage armies.

I hammered the P2W aspect heavily on boxing threads. I was told numerous times how dumb I am for claiming boxing is a form of Pay 2 Win because it doesn't give anybody an advantage.

We reap what we've sown.

You admittedly box, then complain about another boxer. 2 or 6 is just a matter of degree...

The majority of boxers aren't 6boxers. You didn't see a 6box at all of those spawns, a lot of times I see someone call something a "6box" when it is not, it's just hard to see how many when chars are standing on top of each other. Most likely it was a 2 or 3box, as those are by far the most common

Boxing full groups will diminish as the server ages, and after a few years of the server ends up as dead as the other TLP's did, you are going to wish for the ability to box to get stuff done

Ah, I didn't read them all - Well, I can understand how people don't think the pay2win is as egregious in an non-pvp MMORPG, as compared to, say, buying an exclusive pay-only $50 double-damage gun in a first person shooter, or something like that in a pvp MMORPG, but, you just have to look at how you define "win". If someone defines winning as only a PvP issue, which Ragefire/Lockjaw aren't PvP, then, obviously someone who thinks like that isn't going to see it as a pay2win issue here. But if you define "win" as getting loot faster, or in some cases getting loot at all, then you can see how it is pay2win.

Imagine if everyone asking for instancing did, in fact, band together to fight for the limited raid content? Imagine if they won....what would be the response from the other guilds? People think socking is the worst thing that can be done? That it would then become a train war? Nope - if people actually fought tooth and nail for the raid mobs, the battle would shift towards bringing more and more boxes to DPS with. At first there would be so many players that trains would be quite literally useless and then players would end up bringing so many boxes that zones would crash.

And in a free2play game, I suppose people would say it's not pay2win to box either. However- some newer games will be very hard on the average PC to box on the same PC, so it would take someone having two nice gaming PCs or a very powerful single PC, which could be construed as pay2win (but paying the PC hardware makers rather than the gaming company).

I'd much rather see no boxing and people competing and racing for spawns, but that ship set sail. We've plotted a course for boxed instanced lonely boring raiding. Zzzz....

EQ is a game that relies on boxing in this late hour. No amount of "Play like it's 1999" is going to change that. We'll see an exodus of nostalgia seekers over the coming months. I play a warrior main and box a mage and cleric on the TLP. I play 5 max toons on my standard server. I don't get in anyone's way. I'll group up with people. I'll offer buffs. I don't use 3rd party stuff as I don't need it. I can't imagine how I'm ruining anyone's lands here.

So because someone pays for 5 accounts he has an advantage over you? I would say that is not true. He has to spend 5x the time actually gearing those characters as you do the 1. As for boxed groups, MOVE AROUND THEM they don't have near the mobility you do. For all that mater nuke the mobs to half then just pull them to the mages to finish for you. I mean you guys cry because you can cry. You are brainwashing yourself into thinking box groups have power over you. Yet you have the power to out play them unless well you have boxed people or are just to lazy to play around them.

Now if you referred to the play to RMT aspect, you might have a point to stand on.

But you pay 15$ every month to play on ragefire, just so you can win how YOU want to win. Doesn't mean it has to be how everyone else wants to win.

Lol and so it begins Hateseeker. See? Paying more money to have your own farm crew isn't advantageous! I mean look at Ragefire, boxing isn't hurting anything at all.

It's destroying it.

The other servers rely on boxing because they're barely populated. Boxing on Ragefire/Lockjaw is done solely for self advantage.

I do this with war, clr, enc, dru, mag, wiz (using the legal version of software-that-must-not-be-named). It's definitely a challenge. I die less, and things are easier to kill, but I don't feel I have any significant advantage over someone who joins a real group. It's time consuming and expensive buying 5x the spells, but I enjoy it all the same. I started boxing because I wanted to have my own heals, which quickly transformed into wanting my own buffs. I'm sorry mage boxes are so prevalent. Personally, I don't camp named and I don't compete with other players. I just prefer to play this way because I have very limited play time at odd hours.

I was talking about raiding, not grouping, and the war that would result as raid guilds first sock harder, then they would start bringing more boxes.

That said, "moving around them" might work in later expansions where the zones were designed with features like nameds able to spawn in multiple spots, but in Classic they tend to have very fixed spawn points. 6 mages sitting on that spot, not sure how you "move around" that.

You do have an advantage over a group of individual players. All of the content and resources are being funneled to one person instead of X number of players.

Also importantly, boxing is a significant advantage over a singe character. That is the more accurate comparison. You have a built-in, on demand group and do anything at will. A single person even playing a mage has nothing on you. Hence: pay 2 win.

You're paying to win resources and content, all while bypassing other players entirely.