Got my friends together after almost 20 years - and now we can't even play.

I'm playing 3 toons on Rizlona and enjoying the hell out of it. I met someone via a streamers discord that is also playing 3 so now we hang out and level up together, instant group whenever we log on and ability to get stuff done if there's only one of us on. I highly recommend the extra account.

Because live sucks. The TLP let you pay classic with an entire community.

"the other brand new server" is a TLP from what I understood.

Your friends can start on rizlona. Boxes don't make it worse. It's fact that a group of 6 can out perform a person boxing 6.

Why do people want to do group content without boxing anyway?

Think about it, mostly group content, outside of leveling, is farming gear.

Outside of that is raiding, which should be what everyone is interested in.

If you are on a boxing server but in a raiding guild of all real people, what's the difference?

Are your friends willing to camp items for you for hours and hours at a time?

That's why boxes are useful so you can get your main geared up to perform in raid, and farm other stuff that would be hard to find friends to help you find.

I don't get the beef against boxers, it's completely unjustified.

nope. No truebox.

Because people confuse boxers with botters. There are a few toxic people that set up 24/7 bot crews to farm the money camps and people extend that to all boxers, even though the majority of them don't remotely do that.

I legitimately don't understand why folks looking for "the classic experience" don't play on Project 1999 instead. There is nothing classic about a TLP -- they are just Live servers with some red tape on the doors and restricted loot tables. Oddly enough, the fact that P99 is hosted on a 3rd party cloud solution makes their servers significantly more reliable than DBG's.

They really shot themselves in the foot when they promised to never interfere or shut P99 down.

Why do people keep throwing that out like it's a legit option? I mean sure it's *an* option but if you don't want to be on a non-truebox boxing server and you specifically wanted to be somewhere that was 2box only via truebox with a GM than no other server available is actually what you're looking for. Stop pushing this "go play on Rizlona" BS to people who WANT to be on Aradune. I took the plunge and am playing on Rizlona but I am cognizant enough to realize a large number of people do not want to, they want Aradune for the ruleset.

I'm a boxer. I 3 box on Mangler, I can up to 4 box if I really wanted to but I don't. I have the accounts for it though because I like to be able to res all my other characters should I need to.

That doesn't meant I wouldn't like to play on a server with a GM presence that only allows 2 boxes per person. That means if I was that person and didn't want to be around people 6+ boxing on a regular basis Rizlona would not be where I want to be. Aradune would be where I wanted to make my home.

You can't just disregard peoples preferences and upset with the fact that yet again DPG failed to deliver on something.

I'm currently playing on Rizlona because Aradune is a hot mess. Am I liking the fact that I can 3 box and run 2 on one computer and 1 on another? Yes. (I know I can run all 3 on one but it's easier in oh crap moments to just stab the heal button on a second keyboard). Would I rather just be playing two on Aradune and hope that the botters get banned for good, yes.

Stop telling people to play on Rizlona when that's not the ruleset they want. Some people like me will say forget it and play there anyway. Others simply don't want to, they're allowed to feel that way. It's deplorable that they can't play where they want to play. It's deplorable that I can't play there either.

DPG isn't publishing their server capacity numbers but I can tell you from experience that at roughly 12pm EST on Thursday, the day after the TLP launches there were 2,543 people in all the general chats combined. That doesn't account for those who may not be in them but I can't imagine the server capacity is over 4k if it's even that. This is a huge failing on DPG and they're doing nothing to rectify it except for waiting for it to all blow over. Waiting for people to give up. Waiting for them to be called back to work. Waiting for the demand to lessen on it's own. That is a tragedy and speaks volumes of what this POS company that many of us will *still* (myself included) hand our money to is like.

Because maybe they want to play past Velious? Like how is this even a post? LOL.

The biggest problem with the false dichotomy, and some of the things that are posted on these forums, is that they carry with them the severe chance of misinforming naive posters that do not understand how flawed the information really is on these forums.

To the OP: you and your friends should give Rizlona a chance. Even if you could successfully log into Aradune, you will still encounter box armies. The difference between the box armies on Rizlona and the ones on Aradune is that the box armies on Aradune are largely there to make a profit. On Mangler, we have a boxer that clears Plane of Time, in era, twice each week with two separate box crews. He charges 20 krono and up for the loot that drops. He also boxes LDoN raids and sells that loot as well. He may take enjoyment out of the fact that he can do this, but let's not pretend his first concern is anything other making money.

Many of the boxers on Rizlona are there because they enjoy boxing, it is their preferred style of play. There is something uniquely challenging and fun about playing more than one character. But if you and your friends are your own crew, you don't need to worry about forming up groups. And there will be less competition for camps on Rizlona then there will be on Aradune - just from a pure population perspective. The boxers that are there just to have fun are not as toxic and you will encounter a largely less toxic environment. I have many friends that are playing on that server. They are good people, and I've heard nothing but positive experiences from them.

If you can enjoy your own self-sufficient group, there is no reason to suffer in queue for Aradune under the false impression that you won't run into box armies there.

I removed the bulk of what I quoted to avoid post length, that being said you do have a point. The thing I have found with playing for a little while on Aradune and then playing for the rest of the time on Rizlona is that the RMT botters are definitely rampant on Aradune. Rizlona does seem way more laid back and chill in that regard. The box armies I have seen are generally a single group of 6. I'm playing on Rizlona and enjoying myself thus far. Do I wish I was on Aradune and that the RMTers and rule breaking boxers weren't there? Heck yes. But even if I play when I can get on Aradune the other two downsides will be there =/ GMs mean nothing from my experience with obvious scripted players on Rizlona.

Because the OP said he was here specifically for "reliving the classic experience" didn't mention he wanted any of the caveats. Add in the fact that, last I checked, you don't have to wait 3 hours to play -- it seems like a solid (free) alternative for people looking for a faithful representation of classic.

I appreciate your kind words. And let me add, I am not suggesting it is ideal to have to settle if a person truly wants to be on Aradune. I more wanted to point out that people on these forums use "boxers" as a very blanket term, but there are vastly different kinds of boxers with vastly different kinds of motivation.

I am truly interested in your adventures on Rizlona, Kimchi. My in game name is Aneuren, and you can send cross-server tells with a ;tell mangler.charactername. I would very much be interested in just hearing what your experiences are like on Rizlona over time.

You know what, I completely agree with you, far too often people say botters when what they mean is boxers, people who play to the rules and play multiple characters without automation.

Rizlona has been decent but again not where I actually want to be. I feel like it's where I'm spending time until I can play on Aradune without waiting forever to log in but we'll see.

On Mangler I'm Jasmine, you might recognize the name because quite frequently I spam that I'm doing newbie buffs for free in PoK and absolutely refuse donations for buffs and ports. Would love to hook up with you sometime!

People need to think a bit futher into the future and what their actual plans are, you mentioned P99 was not an option because people want to play past Velious. Fair, but if you intend to go much further past GoD a quick forum search would show you that you actually DO want to play on the non-truebox server and if you don't want to alt tab nothing stops you from true boxing on the non-truebox server. Also don't forget that both TLPs have GMs and both TLPs thats only for 6 months (so before Velious even launches).

Suggesting people who want classic to play Rizlona is not an insult or intending to be condescending. If Classic is what you want thats a very viable option.

Except the vast majority quite obviously want classic with boxing limitations per the rules to 2 boxes each not people freely boxing as many as they please. Otherwise Aradune would have zero queue.

P99 is not a classic experience either. Super easy for rogues to backstab on P99 compared to a real EQ server. That's just one of many differences.

Come to the Dark Side.

OP says he got his friends together to play.

Why does it matter what server?

There's a perfectly fine server available with no que time and it's very stable.

Why do people have a hatred for boxers?

Why do people think aradune will be the non toxic non boxing server when it's obvious the cheaters hackers exploiters and botters will ALL be on aradune, because that's where the krono is to be made.

It's a matter of being ignorant.

Why does everyone expect everything they want to be suited towards them. Most class channels had 350+ people and I know a LOT of people leave them so even more of those classes were online. Do the math.

BTW I never crashed once, no one i've ever been grouped up to 43 atm has ever dropped to desktop. Maybe you have hardware issues.

This will also be the death of Rizlona because, being all access, it requires either krono or subscriptions and I think people are crazy if they're paying over 50 a month to play an MMO and where are the excess krono going to come from. I know a lot of people have some saved up, but a lot of people don't.