personally i like the idea of a 4 month expansion time that would start when progression targets are achieved. things to keep in mind: a boxable server will have boxers on it. if they unlock times are to fast the boxers will end up on the true box servers all the sooner as well as a person boxing will need More time to gear said toons not less. nice long unlocks is what i like i also like the idea of a no vote unlock _discuss_
No. Too long. Anything over 84 days is too long. Every time anything longer has been tried, it has not gone well. Even more so if the server is classic start. We need to get to instancing way faster than it would take on a 4 month + vote server.
4 months is too long, especially if boxing/botting is allowed. Box groups will rip through content in a month, maybe less.
I think the opposite is true. When you have a limited amount of content, (and the current pickzone limitations limit content severely) box groups will be competing with one another in a way that isn't good for anyone. Push through these eras asap so we can get to content where this will no longer be the case.
If the goal, as suggested from another thread, is to make it to live, Then 4 months unlocks are a death sentence. There are expansions that are worth 84 days of playing - and there are some expansions that basically can do with one month as they do it on Selo. Sadly though, I doubt they will ever make a TLP that dynamic.
I think the devs probably have enough hard data (they might not knowing how archaic some of the tools they work with are) to be able to create a server with expansion unlocks that better reflect the amount of time it took for most raid guilds to beat the final encounters & gear up sufficiently. So expansions don't necessarily all have to fit a 8/10/12/16/week or vote schedule, they could modify them so that the expansions unlock pretty much in the way that guilds "complete" them & farm enough to be able to tackle the next expansion - of course that data is only as good or bad as the guilds they look at & could cause some issues if they go too hardball on it. I think Phinigel's 3/2 scheme is close to being ideal with Selo being a little too fast for most even with the extra xp/faster unlocks & Ragefire / Lockjaw being too slow for most even with it being non-truebox.
Whatever choice is made, I strongly recommend against having a vote or any unlocking that requires defeating an expansion’s raid targets. As servers mature, raiding gets more and more challenging with (1) more complex raids and (2) fewer dedicated players. This is a death sentence for a server as people lose interest when there is no new content on the horizon. If unlocks occur on a set time basis rather than beating content, it creates an incentive for folks to continue investing in their characters and playing the game even if the overall server isn’t raiding aggressively. Also, it makes the particularly difficult raid expansions such as Underfoot and VoA a lot more manageable. So whatever timeline DBG chooses, make unlocks strictly time based.
