Two good arguments against classic.

The thing I chafe at is this mythology that if you're casual, the expansions can take as long as they want.

Sorry.. but nope.

Casual has nothing to do with 'smelling the roses' or whatever kayfabe cliché you roll with. Being able to play casually is just that. Its less about what you're killing, but how you're killing it. If you can't buy a group, and are dependent upon one, you're screwed in TLP after the initial shine wears off. Half the people who quit during Kunark, likely do it because of the grind. I know I did, but stuck it out. Kunark made me hate this game. I literally didn't want to play after I got 60, because the only thing worse than that grind, was nothing much to do for months after it, outside of raiding.

Where's the Beef? Ya.. not in that show.

But most people who are advocating Classic Starts aren't in that boat. They roll 6 deep and could care less about making the game more accessible, because it a) means their advantage due to be willing to lash 6 computers together goes byebye and b) they realize the exact same power that someone with a two-box does on Live. The game is simply more fun Just Playing It.

Not sitting around, not mining for PC's to join you. Just getting on and playing the gd thing. I've had more fun just dinking around levelling and seeing how the modern game is structured on FV, than I ever had getting groups to Chain Gang the levels on TLP. It makes a lot of freaking difference when you can actually choose where you want to go and what you want to do, without having to wait on anybody. None of the 'you gotta make groups and only group a limited number of areas where people go and the xp is good' bs that is so out-of-date, you might as well bring out hazmat to get rid of it.

Its the one thing I dearly want for TLP. To actually have someone 2-box and have an ah ha moment that they don't need anything from anybody(especially Krono) and can Just Play the game that was made.

Like it or not, recognize it or not, this has largely moved to a single-player game where grouping with others is a choice, not a necessity. And a TLP that can support that, and allow people to play casually, without having to strain their electric bill, is going to simply annihilate any other for population. You might even need more than one to keep up with demand.

I see you're continuing to ignore the hundreds of posts by people who are casuals and do not fit into this mold you have, for weeks now, repeatedly said casuals exclusively are.

People quitting because of the grind is due to the slow xp rate on some of the previous TLPs...ya know...the aspect that makes it a grind. But we both know you're just going to ignore the hundreds of posts by people discussing that fact (and what they want on the casual TLP).

Most people advocating for classic roll 6 deep? You know this how? Aaaallllll those people are boxers? Even the dozens replying to your posts calling you out about these types of statements not applying to them? You have repeatedly said anyone who wants a classic start is a boxer or krono farmer. Over and over. Ignoring anyone that corrects you. But hey...I'll try one more time!

Go read the old posts about why people like classic. Educate yourself.

Sounds like you found exactly what you want on FV. So just keep playing there? Your posts have shown that the social aspect of having to group is not important to you and you find it annoying to depend on (note: I'm not the first, second, or third person to point this out to you).

I'm really happy DBG is not going to implement your ideas and ruin 2 new servers.

People that play casual, smelling the roses, are fine with the grind taking time.* That's the journey. What they don't like and have made very clear (such as when guilded with a mass of them on Vulak personally --this is not an "I think", this is "I lived it and was told") is when their effort is made meaningless because the next expac drops before they have done even half of the current one in era that they were enjoying.

There absolutely is an unfilled server niche to spend a long time in classic. To deny this is not paying attention [and not to me... I don't want it. Classic in classic isn't my thing --frankly I think TSS is a much better dev concept overall than classic 1-50].

An ultra-casual server is the chance to fill this need, to take these players $ for a good length of time. It's not going to appeal to most of us currently playing on progression or live because the vast majority of us are hardcore playtime with casual goals, hardcore playtime with serious goals, or limited playtime but focused enough to do serious goals like get leveled and raid with a guild a few times a week.

*Ultra casual (and pretty much everyone else) would tolerate to love more XP, that's just a tedium reduction that improves efficiency... gives the ultra casual more time to do all the other things there is in an era rather than just grind a linear leveling path.

There’s going to be so much rage when he realizes even on current live you need a group or 4+ boxes to progress once you catch up.

It would be neat to see a server with raids tuned around single group and leveling tunes around half groups. But I don’t think the older expansions could handle the instancing required. I’ve done the solo server thing on emulators before. Sure it’s fun to go do an epic and kill a couple bosses, but it’s really no different than running around old zones on live.

You take all grouping out and we are just playing a pretty crappy looking 20 year old game. (I’m sorry, classic dungeons have not aged well).

I would up XP in other zones to get the min/maxers out of LGuk. Never cared about xp/hr when you had a year to complete content. This must use optimal zones crap is a product of TLP racing.

Lol.. is that the new sell job? That there are 'hundreds of posts' by people you deem casual when you haven't the slightest idea if they are? I see half a dozen guys I wouldn't call casual in the least looking to brigade me down, trying to telling me what casual is.. and claiming you can solve that issue by simply giving the casual server faster xp. In their mind, a casual is just a hardcore(them) that plays less.

Playing casual is just that. You log on, you do stuff, you log off.

The You Do Stuff shouldn't include going LFG for hours on end.

Digging a ditch is a grind too. I wouldn't put it in a video game. MMORPG's thrive the less they look like a Skinner Box.

Depends on the direction they go! Its certainly an option.

In 2019? In EQ? At least you said something correct. Don't get me wrong, I love grouping with people... but the chances they're doing what i'm doing, particularly on the same time schedule, are non-existant. That leaves PUG's and those only coalesce around very particular areas of the game.

Remains to be seen, but by all means keep hoping.

I've played Live up to 110, i'm well aware of whats required at the highend and I know how EQ goes. If its something I wanted to do, i'd do it. Just having too much fun not.

And also, if you realize how they tend to work the game, they'll probably put in an expansion to start trivializing that progression with the next xpac to start to soft-reset everyone for the next stage of the game. At that point, you'll be able to carpet-bomb 100-110 with out-of-era gear. Either way, riding the end-game isn't really an option for the time being. I don't have the time.

Edit: misread your post my bad.

He definitely does not understand how the later xpacs work. It's sad.

More sour grapes from bads. Stop asking for silly things like starting a TLP at lvl 70.

Sounds more like one of the best hardcore servers you can make. Lets keep you in Classic for a year and see if you quit. If you don't, You're Finally Hardcore!!!! It can also be the Ultra-Casual Server because you can logon every now and then to see if its out of Classic, then log off. The more Ultra-Casual you are, the less times you logged in.

Right.. because you imagine they'll pay the sub no matter what...

I find that outlook highly suspect.

The simple fact is that if you mark this game by appealing to people who have to login religiously for hours on end, you severely constrict your potential player-base, and as a result your potential income.

If, however, your server appeals to those people without a lot of time... who just want to login whenever and get something done and have fun while not treating this like a second job... you might get far more subs than you can imagine without really have to spend a lot of resources(because they don't play that much).

That last part is the calculus to your basic math. We know what the impact of a new TLP with a regular setup is, lets find out what the impact of actually appealing to the people that don't currently play this game(but have played in the past and would like to) is. They have one chance to get it right with the 20th.

I've told you the secret sauce.

Either they give it a try, or they simply send EQ sailing into the night with two Classic Starters.

Honestly, you could very well be right that the latter is what we get. But we'll see.

You assume that trying to get players from 1999 to 2004 want to play in older expansions. Some might want to play in newer content with updated graphics since they are probably playing games with updated graphics. I've seen many posts from players who quit during that time that don't like the old graphics and want a graphics engine revamp.

Realistically anyone that cares about the graphics would want an entire rewrite of EQ in a modern engine. It’s not like newer expansions are cutting edge, just 15 year old graphics and not 20. But 99-04 is the largest pool of available players to try and get back. So it makes sense to target them the most.

Honestly, i'd prefer they never, ever touch the graphics. The issue here is that people that say that are referring to the detail of the imagery. Part of the charm of EQ is that it was based off the Quake Engine, which provided for the ability to do far more intricate 3D than found in modern engines, which in a 3D world tend to emphasize detail and often fall backwards into flat area zone creation. It looks very pretty, but its a lot more limited in what can be done with it.

A lot of it is subtle.

An example of this is The Library from HoT, where you go up a floor and completely around a long route, and then have the ability to jump through holes in the floor and you're back at the entrance. Another example is something seemingly simple like Levitation, which opens up a can of worms when it comes to floating off a building across long distances.

At the same time, the last time they decided to do this, they went the full Beimeith and ran into a wall of unintended things that broke that they weren't expecting when they revamped the main engine of their program.

As in, there is code to actually AoW pin mobs in a corner. They were picking pieces of Geometry calculations out of their rear-end for a while.

Also, given a strong axis, every character not only has a specific height, but an agro radius that is highly dependent on distance calculations. All that changes when you shrink. It simply takes one item the graphics engine doesn't have to break the other code like a piece of china.

There is AE code to not hit players behind walls.

Players are coded to have to have line of sight to the mob before they can cast detrimental effects on the mob.

Spells have a range, that changes with items, that determines how far they can be away from a mob. In order to do that, the code has to have exact knowledge of what exists within the game world and where.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Its not just swapping out the game engine for better graphics and calling it good. People do not realize there is a level of complexity and interaction with the game world that few games can rival, and it all currently works seamlessly and makes for a house of cards that can and would fall apart if you simply tried to drop-in a new graphics engine.

And if they have to do that, they should probably use that money to just create a new game.

I don't think EQ was based off the Quake engine as that was not released until 1996.

Only initially. If nostalgia is the only thing they are after, well, pretty quickly they learn you can't repeat your experiences from fifteen years ago. The ones that stick around enjoy the gameplay as it is, now.

^I like Machentoo's point. Phinny server is taking more players at once farther than progression has ever managed, even if it dies out tomorrow it will go down as a masterpiece.

Isn't "initially" the point though? The return only to quit group does most of their quitting in classic and Kunark. If the initial period of the game is longer, do they stay paying & playing? Ultracasual with long unlocks can answer that question with no real harm to other servers. Speeding things up will not keep these players, they will quit faster if they even come back for the server.

If ultracasual isn't targetting these players who is it for? Seriously... if you break down the current server offerings and what playstyles they allow one of the only missing things is "go slow in the earliest stuff with some other people without fast travel shrinking the world".

The server ultracasual playing long unlocks is most likely to chew population from is P99.

As others have pointed out, live allows ultra-casual play. Unless you get into a big casual guild you will be doing that alone because you will never catch up... but that is the cost of not putting in the time to play with the population. Many casual players don't care for raiding or endgame, or the cutting edge content population, that is their preference.

The notion that enabling true casual limited playtime people to be instantly at endgame with population... is literally /testbuff. Those people are already playing on test. Or they put in a bit of time (at some point) and are on FV. That's a tiny sliver of population this "easymode progression" concept the forums are being carpetbombed with might catch. Not enough to bother with in my view.

I do think both new servers will be niche. I think that is intended. I also think the hardcore one is a harder concept to dial in successfully...

I think Sethiroth's argument is nearly perfect. Casual players want to experience raids. Casual doesn't mean "hand everything to me I want instant gratification." And this is what people are getting confused on.

I'm a casual player, I work 40-60 hour weeks, I have two kids and a wife. But I still squeeze in 2 sometimes 3 raids a week and on the previous 2 TLP's I was one of the top geared toons on the server for my class. Granted it took an extra month or so to get to that point.

But instances made that possible. Sticking to one toon made that possible. The exp grind for me wasn't a big deal but I could see casual players wanting it sped up a bit.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what defines ultra casual. Probably FV loot rules. I wonder how shortened instance timers would play out as well. If there is a flood of raid gear into the market, items will go down in price. Hmm.. idk, these two servers have so much potential it'll be interesting to see what DBG decides.

posting error

posting error

- EXP in every expansion is slow... just compare exp gain to how much exp you need to max level/aa.
- This is a multiplayer game, make friends, ask (or pay strangers) for ports.
- Sounds like balanced Risk vs Reward. If you don't want to risk the challenge of corpse runs, you can group in places that are less challenging.
- Ok. Lots of things are difficult to obtain, Rare drops off rare mobs in difficult camps isn't exactly an unheard of mechanic. The game was designed so you had things to work to get.
- Your Newbie armor quests point is vague, are you saying that they shouldn't be in game at launch for a TLP, or that they haven't been getting included in TLP launches? The appropriate answer is those items are better than many classic era raid drops. They were not part of the original game at launch but got added later to help new players catch up. They were subsequently removed from TLP launches.
- This will not change... if you make a Krono=no-trade server then people will revert to the classic plat sales format. items will still be expensive, you just need 10-20kpp for items instead of 1-2kr. Even later expansions, Krono remains a alternative to Plat. It's like having Gold Bars instead of paper money, you can always exchange it anytime you want.
- There are no game managed point based options. If you want point based options to obtain gear, join a DKP raiding guild. Classic EQ/Verant let the players decide how they split loot out.
- There are only a handful of "Must have" epics. Most are convenience or DPS items, of which those are mostly all replaced in Velious/Luclin. Those "Must haves" are things most any guild will help get it's players, You don't have a raiding guild refuses to help a cleric get their epic. If you do have a raiding guild that won't help with that, then maybe it's time to look for a better guild.

Sure, there are reasons not to play classic-luclin... But there are reasons to play them as well. And I certainly wouldn't argue with one of the two servers starting at later expansions. I also wouldn't complain if they continued to make every TLP they ever create start at classic. (I might complain at another 6mo unlock server starting at classic...)