Selo server - multi guild raiding

Every guild has a brand, whether you want to use that term or not. Maybe culture is a better word? community? /shrug Chalk it up to all my years in sales coming out at a weird time? lol


You make it sound like we sit in discord crying into our beers. We play the game and enjoy ourselves. As guild leader, it's my job to explore options and try to find ways to keep people happy. This was one of those posts. I knew going in it would attract more unrelated remarks than anything but I'm just surprised we didn't get a bunch of people telling us we sucked at a 20 year old game cause we were no longer guud enough to clear old content in era. Looking at our original plan when the server launched and how may other guilds we outlasted, I'm ok with where we are at this point in time. I think most of our current member base is too. Doesn't mean we don't want to raid more than we currently do.

Most likely an accurate description. I was more looking for people playing with a couple friends here and there who hadn't even considered raiding than expecting another guild actually raiding to pop up out of nowhere. We all know who they are and there's not many left at this point.

lyacc,

[This is not a disparaging post meant to harm you, its just honest talk]

Major is all but done. It has gone by the wayside like the other 17 guilds on the old Selo guild list that no longer raid or even exists. Most died in Sept-0ct 2019. There are essentially 2 raid guilds left on Selo. Faceless, which will leave the instant another TLP is announce and CI, who will likely be the last one standing but suffer some serious attrition when the new TLP comes out.

All you are doing is trying to hang onto your guild tag and essentially holding your last remaining members hostage. You should do the graceful Guild Leader thing, cease raid operations, allow members to move to wherever they want. The server is not getting new players, the attrition is greater then the influx by a lot.

You will be happier and your members will be happier if <Major> just gracefully moves on.

There is nothing wrong with what he's doing. Is it realistic that they will pick up 2 or 3 more groups of players? Not likely. Probably not even 1 more group of people. That doesn't mean he's holding the guild members hostage. Just because there is content higher than what the guild can handle isn't necessarily a bad thing if the players are still having fun. I'm still here boxing group content as I can't listen to people scream on voice chat with their poodles barking and toddlers throwing a tantrum in a crib behind them. Heck I can't even listen to my wife (or most other people) TALK half the time. Selo was never widely expected to last as long as it did anyway. I didn't even think it would make it past the gates exodus. The server would probably be better off like agnarr is doing/did and have weekly server-wide raids for things bigger than what the individual guilds can hack. There is still a lot of toxicity out there even for a "dead server." I've been followed for several days straight by a boxer that I never seen before in a slashing type named guild. He left after I did, popped into new zones that I did, even if it was a lower level farm. I'd rather stick with a group of folks I knew was good people than jump ship just cause you couldn't destroy the end zone in the middle of an xpac. (Not saying CI is bad people at all.)

I've thought that Selo would be an absolute great place for a guild that did NOT have to stay on current content. At one point there was an artificially locked progression guild for a while. But even without the artificial rules, a guild that wanted to raid on their own pace would have a field day on Selo, a chance to play EQ in a unique way.

Taking a finely tuned raid force of 24 or 30 players is a lot more fun to a lot of players than just zerging things down with sheer force. On Selo, with faster unlocks it's easy to fall behind, but you also won't have that super bloat from level 100+ characters or gear to tarnish the progression aspect.

Ultimately, I'm not entirely sure why so many people left Selo around level 70. I thought the content was a lot less compelling, but I heard so many times that "early eq just isn't as deep as later eq!" I figured a lot of people believed that. Apparently not that many.

It would be helpful if DBG moved mercs earlier into the game. Anything really to stifle the precipitous dropoff around post-Omens EQ. No modern servers are getting through that era with a robust population if they have 12 week lockouts coupled with the barrage of new TLP launches. (Another idea that might help the bleeding is an idea like double+ quantity loot from bosses.)

Err, you will in just a few months... Level 100 isn't that far away on Selos.

Apparently <Rusty Short Sword> is flying under the radar for a lot of people. They have cleared Solteris as of last night.

Nice! I don’t think RSS is that under the radar, they’ve cleared every expansion in era as far as I know.

The 70 era (really it’s LDON to Prophecy of Ro) killed EQ Live and continues to kill TLPs. It’s a LONG period of the worst content EQ has to offer. Selo only survived because it wasn’t literally years long.

Ultimately DBG knows what butters their bread: trilogy nostalgia. It’s no coincidence that Rise of Kunark and Torment of Velious are considered two of the best expansions in recent memory, while Burning Lands was met by a more measured response.

It kills TLP's for sure. But Live was a much different experience. LDON was very well received as it offered a huge amount of content for the average player.
DON added potions and an actual task system that made quests actually doable.
DoDH offered a ton of content and amazing raids.

Phingel had 14 active guilds going into TSS, and of those 14, 13 of them completed TSS in era. As of right now 4 guilds have completed Rain of Fear on Phinny and it would probably be more than that if not for the 4 other TLP servers that have launched since Phinny. The problem is not with the content or with the players. The problem lies with DBG constantly watering down the community with a new TLP cash-grab every 6-12 months.

I seriously worry about the population of both Mangler and Selos. Mangler will be hitting PoP this March, and Selos will hit SoD following a SoF that many people on Selos will not see completed in era. All of these things coupled with a new TLP launch will almost certainly lead to a sharp decrease in population for both servers. I have seen it on Phinny and I am sure it will be seen on both those servers.

Unfortunately people will always flock to a new TLP at launch for a few reasons. Ease of making Krono being one of them and also because they assume (correctly) that those servers will have a large population and therefore a booming economy to facilitate the buying and selling of said Krono.

Launching new TLP's obviously is a problem for server pop. But do you really think people would stay playing if those TLP's hadn't launched? People move to the new TLP because they find more enjoyment from that then doing the content you were in. Even if there was no new TLP they would eventually find something else more enjoyable to do than that content.

Yes, there’s a Krono resale market, but let’s not be shortsighted enough to point the finger at that entirely when p99 has more online players at any given time than all of the post-Velious TLPs combined have during peak hours. Part of it is nostalgia, but mostly it’s just that EQ through Velious - arguably through PoP - is a totally different game, and is essentially unique on the market today. Look no further than Miragul’s numbers a week in versus the latest milquetoast classic start TLP.

Modern EQ is a horrific rat’s nest of mechanics with a worst-in-the-market user experience, which is why Miragul lasted all of 48 hours. People logged in, saw a default UI that looks like it tried its best to ignore everything Blizzard did to revolutionize UX in MMOs, flipped through pages and pages of hotbuttons, AA, spells, and bizarre gear, and rightfully gave up, going back to the far more intuitive and playable start where 12 AC and 2 Stamina is better than 6 AC and 0 stamina.

To answer your question, yes. I think that there would be more people playing on older TLPs if a new one was not launched every 6-12 months. It would be foolish not to think that. Some of those people left Phinny because they assumed a lot of others would as well. Perception is everything, and the perception is that when a new TLP launches, it draws a larger population. It is, in essence, a self fulfilling prophecy. When Mangler and Selos population plummets here in a couple months after a new TLP launch, it will only spread the TLP population more thin. It has to end somewhere.

There is nothing I can do at this point for Phinny. Most of the people still there are going to be there through to live. They are invested at this point. It will probably be the only server to make it to live with a decent population honestly. Both Mangler and Selos are on track to have less than half of Phinny's population by the time they make it as far. I just do not want to see this happen to any more servers.

A new TLP will not significantly impact Selo. The people who it would impact already went to Mangler.

The truth about Selo is:
- Most people only want to do in-era content. Blame FOMO.
- Most people can’t put forth the time to remain in-era on Selo.

It’s very telling that there are only two in-era guilds on Selo (FC, RSS), with one of them fielding 2-3 raids nightly (FC). It’s a very tightly knit group of extremely hardcore players. There are some “hardcore casuals” still dangling on the ledge (CI), but they’re on their death bed due to leadership hubris (refused to merge with Major). I assume FC will take the Priests/Bards and RSS will take the rest.

There are still a few randoms seen wandering around Selo, but most are long gone. Miragul gave them an even playing field to “catch up” and play modern EQ, while Mangler gave them a place to go if/when they wanted to return to old EQ. There is no good reason to play on Selo if you’re shopping for a new server.

It's not an either/or. Phinigel's attrition has very closely mirrored Fippy's, albeit with a bigger base to start. Fippy didn't have to deal with competing TLP's diluting population until very late in progression, when the server was already down to a single guild. I don't think there is much reason to believe Phinigel's population would be significantly higher now if no other servers had been released. Players likely would have still left and just moved on to other games instead of other servers.

Selo does offer the casual player something, it’s just not in era. You can catch up quickly, play old raid content without motm and with AoCs, and just be casual. I’m imagining the people that dabble on Vox for a few weeks/months but don’t commit hard. These players don’t stick around long-term usually but it is something the server offers. Phinny offers the same, just a bit further ahead currently.

Spoken like a true outsider.

You are right, Fippy only had to deal with a much greater toxicity than we have seen on the newer servers. When the community is as toxic as it was on Fippy, you are bound to have higher attrition. My guess is that the toxicity had just as much of an effect on Fippy as the new TLPs launching had on Phinny, which still puts Phinny in a better spot than Fippy, since it was effectively dead long before the current era on Phinny. One guild doing content on a private server is effectively dead.

Either way it is speculation on both our parts. I happen to think more people would be active on phinny had it not been for other TLPs, and I am probably right. You are the person who added the "significantly more" part, which was never a part of my post. I wish that you would at least have a better argument and not try to pull a strawman. I never stated the population on phinny would be that much higher had it not been for other TLP, but I did say that there would PROBABLY be more people and that is an almost undeniable fact.

I guess I have to ask you at this point if I have offended or maligned you in some way, since every post you have replying to me is contradictory. I assume it again goes back to the assortment of reasons I laid out in another thread that you conveniently never replied to. Its pretty telling.

Laughed at this as you really have no clue what you are talking about.