"Ultra Casual" server

Fascinating discussions..

See I think a lot of your list is outdated.

Everyone plays for gear, casuals want a casual server so that during their limited play time... they can accomplish things, like getting gear.

Peeps been selling phat lews since day 1 and always will, nothing new

Boxers sitting at competitive camps... I'm confused did this not happen on Phinny, Agnarr, and Coirnav? Its gonna happen on both new servers. Its either a boxer, or a group of peeps.. Either way odds are no one outside of premade groups who do this ever server are getting Yellow shoes or Fbss without paying krono until at least month 2.

Keys.. its all instanced... nothing to block?

AOC's are already in. You can go raid anything you want, any time you want to.

You're last thought is the important one. Truebox needs to be the lure for casuals, it doesn't work as a deterrent. As someone said, how hard is it to fire up a lap top?

I don't think the anny servers are aimed at grabbing a big population of currently playing players at all, certainly not as the bulk of the population. I think both niche rulesets are about capturing some specific type of lost subscriptions.

Helpful poorly made diagram:

Ultra-casual -----------------------------majority of current servers----------------------------Hardcore


The vast majority of population preference is in the middle, and already playing. Phinny nailed it... and tweaking Phinny clones a little bit to hardcore or a little bit to casual is the best $ bet as far as big population for longer timeframes --as long as you don't launch them too close together.

They don't need the niche servers to be big population, they are a public relations bump to string the population along until next year when the current progression server base is late or very late in era on all the existing servers. Sure some of us might part time play on one or both of these, or even switch over... but we are the most likely to hop off for the next green pasture server the year after.

Next year, the big population is ready for the next Phinny (or two... they could do one truebox and one not, or one free trade loot and one not).


Meanwhile, if Ultracasual has 6 month, 8 month or even 1 year unlocks it will hold that barely logging in but paying to have this snail of a server going population... and probably hold that $ return into Luclin. That's free money by just making it slow (and not mass boxing, racing unlocks, votes, etc.).

I am really interested to see how they craft a hardcore ruleset to have population and/or efficiently make them $ for its peak wave of population.

Coirnav felt like the string the population server. They used no imagination and still conjured up a decent population.

I caution asking for a long unlock server with truebox.. That server will have a very dismal population if the hardcore server also has truebox and all the niceties of Phinny.

Has anyone else noticed that only hardcore players want slow unlocks for the Ultra Casual server? I wonder why....

Beyond amusing that you quoted me in this context. I am very far from being a hardcore player.

In another thread someone said the insightful thing along the lines of:

-you can have hardcore playtime.
-you can have hardcore motivation.
-you can have limited playtime.
-you can have limited motivation. (or happiness in slowly doing in-era content if you like the sound of that better).


A long unlock, otherwise Phinny (throw in more XP, and/or free trade loot if you must, and/or more spawn rares and so on or none of them --doesn't matter. The unlocks, truebox and AoC is the key to ultra casual) will work (as the other person posted) for any combination of the above except the hardcore + hardcore. Long unlocks would (and should) be boring for someone that is highly motivated to complete content and has lots of playtime.

And they are making a hardcore rules server... which should be ideal for only the truly hardcore + hardcore playerbase. A playerbase that has been decently served by the 3 month unlock servers anyways...

Why is casual associated with long 4-6 month unlocks and slow xp?. Wtf does anyone want to spend 2 years getting through PoP? Slowing things down makes it feel like things can't get done in a short playtime. Slow unlocks and slow xp make the game feel like a crawl, discouraging people from playing Alts burning out when 3 hours of playtime only nets 15% xp after finally finding a group and a camp. Threads complaining about slow xp are a dime a dozen, threads of people quitting because xp or unlocks are too fast are virtually nonexistent (for a fixed time unlock tLp)


Casual to me means convenience. More instances, faster xp, shorter unlocks, shorter timers, FT, boxing, not having to deal with campers and trains, getting a group going (normal or boxed) and being able to jump right into the pool, etc.

Lol.

You want long unlocks and fast XP on the Ultra-Casual server, because the casual players will still need about 6 months even with fast XP( you don't want super fast xp either).

IMO fast XP and short unlocks should be the hardcore server; thise are the ones that want to race through content, not the casuals.

I also believe going forward for all Progression servers LoY and LDoN should be released at the same time, and just be counted as 1 expansion.

The hardcore server needs to be VERY interesting. If the only difference between them is longer unlocks, wait for all the "Play on Your own server" "hardcores are taking over our server" threads.

Add in FV loot, and super short unlocks. Hell take off truebox too.

Casual server with 6 month unlocks would be the place where people who fall behind the hardcore server reroll. Maybe a guild or three decided eh, we don't really like this kinda server. They can reroll without being crazy behind, Long unlocks and fast XP.

Yeah I agree the hardcore server needs more than just unlock difference. IMO the Hardcore server should have slightly faster XP than the casual since those that server is targeted towards doesn't care about the flowers. The Casual server just can't have Phinny XP rates; maybe Hardcore have live rates and Casual have Agnarr/RF rates.

I believe the Hardcore should also be a racing server with a week or two from content beaten to next expansion unlocked; the reason for the delay is so that one guild just can't slam through the content real fast leaving all the others with no hope of catching up. If you don't give other guilds a chance to stay caught up at least they'll just leave and the server will die pretty fast.

As for things like FV loot and Boxing code I really don't care about either; especially if both servers have AOC, so the servers can have them or not won't affect my decision to play.

XP should be the same on both servers.

As far as I have ever been able to determine from past TLP's the call for slow unlocks was always motivated by those people who were always left behind being upset that others were outstripping them and "not playing the game the way it was meant to be played"
The fact is with good exp even 12 week unlocks would be great for those players if they were rewarded by the level change "ding".
No one really wants to sit on Orc Hill for weeks on end or spend months in Crushbone. I understand the frustration when you are left behind in a zone with only a few other people and due to short play time you find that the few laggards aren't there at the same time.

Which is why it may be a good thing they are releasing two different types of servers; those that want to race through the content can play on the hard core server which will probably have short unlocks, and those of us that like to take our time and enjoy ourselves can play on the Ultra-Casual server with long unlocks.

Which is fine, but if they make them both Coirnav 2.0 XP levels, they may as well not even bother.

That is the ONE thing pretty much everyone here has agreed upon wanting, quicker XP.

No, you are very subtly wrong here

Hardcore players race through the content faster than casual players, true, but that’s not the same as saying content should be easier and quicker for a hardcore server. The race itself is what defines the term hardcore.

The hardcore server should then, by its very definition, be competitive. How is making everything quicker and easier creating competition?

There was one crazy person that said they love slow xp and want more of it. Can't recall which thread though.

Think it was the guy who sells power leveling services.

Because if you have the Ultra-Casual XP rates at Agnarr or Live, and the Hardcore server at Phinny XP rates then all the hardcores will just play on the Ultra-Casual and then constantly whine because of the long unlocks. If you have both servers with the same XP rates (or hardcore a little faster) then the hardcores will play on the hardcore server where they can race each other and be happy.

Ultra Casual server: you go up one lvl a week whether you login or not. All spells are not only free but installed automatically as you lvl. Epic quest items are given you one a month once you reach lvl 46

Honestly i could see ultra casual as bumping characters up to the minimum level to group with the highest of the expansion after PoP or something for an easy catchup system + fast xp.