What would it take...

For a no BS TLP? By which I mean, RMT is effectively designed out, and not-totally-mentally-ill people can run around with alts and BiS gear in the "3-month" (sometimes) scheme currently employed on Coirnav? Personally I would rather pay DBG directly, RMT always feels like a money laundering and/or tax evasion scam and I feel like I may be indicted for even ignorantly participating.

What I'm thinking of is FV ruleset, full instancing, low threshold pickzones, 10x loot drops, double or more rare spawns, double agnarr xp rate, alt-fest. You know, make the game playable by normals, take all the RMT motivation out and let's just go have fun and play a video game, not a 2nd job.

What would that cost? Is that a 4 krono/month/account server? I might pay it. The risk I see is finding enough people who just want to play the game and kill bosses and do quests, rather than people who are just looking to rob each other $8 at a time. That might be its achilles heel, but I wonder if the price were reasonable, maybe it could be made to work.

It has occurred to me that there is so much in this game that I have never done, and I never will do, with the current TLP formula and player dynamic. Some of it might be enjoyable, but I will never know.

no

Let's see staff salaries, server upkeep, licensing prices let's say $150k a month for the life of your server?

I'd go ahead and send Holly your ACH info so she can setup the transfer and get you your server!

My greatest fear is that your joke is the actual answer. And I think you are probably right.

I personally don't see how a server with 10x the drops and 2x the rare spawns is even any fun. You and your box army will be ROFL-geared in like a week.

What I presume you really want is to be able to casually play without the hardcore folks steamrolling ahead all the time - to be able to "keep up".

Well, the WoW style "exp bonus" is a start but as far as loot goes, the only real answer is to have some kind of "bonus meter" that ramps up when you're not playing so as to help the casual folks keep pace.

Doubt they'll do anything of the sort though.

I expect nothing.

I really don't care what the hardcore crowd would do, even on current servers they are ignorable. I think they would get bored, nobody will be impressed with them for "winning" on such a server, and whatever records they set would probably not be seriously considered. For this very competitive crowd, victory would be hollow. But, to each his own. They are ignorable on modern TLPs and would be so on my fantasy TLP, to a greater degree.

What I do want is to be able to progress through content, get the same level of gear that they have, have the same opportunities they have, but on a time budget. I want to raid 10-15 hours a week (in Velious, this is probably all the in-era raid zones, once a week), but get the same BiS loot that they enjoy with their pretty horrifying raid schedules and OW camp fests. I want to streamline the xp/aa game to a manageable level. I want to focus on the fun parts of the game.

If such people exist, who actually just want to play the game to play the game. Maybe I'm alone. But to me the only "success" of Agnarr was proving that EQ can be fun, when it isn't a slog. Coirnav is reminding me of what EQ really is. And perhaps EQ can only survive with the RMT graft that a server like Coirnav exists to promote. I bring up a higher monthly only because at some point paying DBG more should regain them the lost revenue from this market, so they could run the server without feeling a loss. But of course, if only 10 people want to play, and can afford this fictitious monthly, it would not work out.

EQ is a sandbox. You get out of it what you put in. Quit trying to get more then the other people, who play/work/invest more then you. You say that the hard core crowd is ignoreable, then clamor that you want all that on your terms.
Everquest may just not be the game for you. That's okay.

You understand that this is a sign of mental illness right? You are confessing to having a disorder, you know that right? Keep putting your tokens in, keep pulling that handle. You didn't win? You aren't playing hard enough! Stick those tokens in faster, pull faster! One day you have to win.

Or hey, we're smart people. Maybe there's a guy who won already, but doesn't want to cash out his earnings since he'll have to file it as income. Uncle Sam gets 25% of what he "earned" right off the top, with probably a lot more come tax season. So maybe he gives you just enough to cash in that slides under the reportable limit, and while you have to give back most of it, he gives you 5%. He's still keeping the majority and just cuts you in a little bit to whet your lips, and everyone walks away happy. Not quite the same as RMT, but the actual medium there is far more tangible, and shockingly, more hygienic, making it so easy to participate in unwittingly.

Maybe I just don't want to do any of that. I'm happy to pay my heard and legitimately earned wages for time in a video game, and I want to enjoy my time there rather than "work" for it. Actual challenge in this game is pretty easy to come by at this point, particularly when you don't get your pick of classes & people. Time sinks can and should go away, it's been almost 20 years, we're good.

How does this remove RMT from the server? People will still buy items, plat, accounts.

It will devalue things enough and they become unprofitable to spend time producing. You aren't going to sell a 60 enchanter for $400 if it takes 10 hours to produce. Sure, someone out there might pitch over $20, but that won't pay mom's rent this month. I do not think the market for such things is large enough to justify doing that 20x over.

Kind of hard to lose RMT and keep/improve easymode gearing while getting people to do more content fully since half the thing with easymode gearing is ignoring the not-so-good reward content.

I don't think it is a plausible concept, but really you could pull a "hardcore roleplay" ruleset that probably kills RMT:

-no communication outside of /say (no channels of any sort)
-all drops are no drop (come Luclin all that is in baz is tradeskill mats and tradeskill made)
-one character per account

even with double current live server XP, only guilded players that work together would progress on such a server. Whether it would be fun... and/or anyone would play...

What a silly thread.

The bigger issue you are describing is Krono. Being they are account bound, no server is ever going to be "a fresh start" where everyone actually starts with zero currency of any kind.

I view things reversely. RMT helps people with real jobs and limited time stay current. If you don't have time or disposable income then you need to level your RL toon.

If you feel weird paying some nerd 20 bucks for a turn in or some krono. Maybe the game has left you, or you it?

They make Emulated easymode servers for weird fantasies like this, you know. You can go there and Scrooge McDuck all you want, while calling everyone who is not the same as you "mentally ill" like you seem to enjoy doing.

Krono is a currency, it floats both in USD (if you acquire them from someone other than DBG), but also on the servers on which they're used. On a server where items are plentiful, sensible people will not choose to invest Krono on trivial items, that is real money they could use elsewhere. It has value only when artificial scarcity is in play.

People can/will bring krono to the server I describe, I don't care, provided DBG provides the minimal policing required to deal with people who are making the game unfun by locking up camps and attempting to corner markets. I think such people would not find this server particularly profitable if implemented as I've described.

Your view is illogical and inexplicable. The purpose of a game is a diversion, if you are paying someone to play the game for you, you missed the point. Do not play that game, do literally anything else with that money. Or, as I am arguing, determine what it would take to make a game that sensible people can play and enjoy, the status quo is most certainly not it. Perhaps this game can only survive with RMT, then as some suggest, its time for me to go.

I am bothered additionally knowing that a number of people you are paying for your pixels are using this as a front for illegal activities. I am further bothered that this does not bother you, it absolutely should. I do not wish to be involved in any way. At the same time, I cannot follow the bizarre and uncomfortable logical leap that you make, wherein any of this has to do with a game about slaying dragons. It should not, how can you even think that's normal and acceptable?

I do understand, it takes some money to keep these servers running and pay developers and the other corporate overhead to keep it going. I just want to put that up front. What would it take, monthly, to make this game NOT be like that? I want to cut out the middlemen, I would rather just pay DBG, up front, what it costs, to have a decent game. Why is that unreasonable?

The purpose of playing a game is to have fun and enjoy yourself. That doesn't mean every aspect of the game you enjoy. For me I despise leveling more then once in any game. So if gladly pay for a boost of max level character so I can get right to the things I enjoy in the game.

Also finding illegal activities? Get real man. I guess if you consider the guy leveling the toon buying some weed with the money as illegal then sure.

Really?

Really. This game maintains a credit/debit system that is unregulated and untraceable, and DBG washes its hands of it by forbidding anything but use through their marketplace, rendering it a non-currency from their point of view, and no doubt, the law.

What players do however, is another story. I do not care if some guy uses his krono to smoke a bowl, provided governments do not find a way to hold me complicit. There are other, much bigger issues at stake, read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_Network

I don't want anything to do with that.

If you don't want to grind out level after senseless level on a treadmill whose only purpose could be to drive a secondary market for you to pay into in exchange for someone to do that for you, I'm with you. There's no reason you should, that's not fun, we're here to have fun. Levels should be a consequence of killing significant mobs and playing the game for fun, they should not be themselves the end-game. If Dragon Bob has a Scepter of Slaying, it should always drop. That is not to say Dragon Bob should not be immensely hard to beat, he should be. In fact I imagine the game could be made substantially harder if the developers could have made the expectation that all comers ARE in the best gear, but that's another thread. Instead they chose to make it "hard" by being very time consuming.

All I want is to skip that three paragraphs of explanation, and have a server for normals. It won't eliminate the problem, but it will make it a lot less profitable, and by extension reduce it significantly.

I <3 that you consider yourself normal.

Yeaaaaaah, because game time in a 20 year old mmo is all the rage in money laundering circles.