Aradune Update 6/10/20

Would it really be the end of the world to just create a second server now with the same rule-set and give people an option to move? I understand you don't want to create a server that will die when the "new car smell" dies off but this is starting to get tiresome for a lot of people. Even if the population on said server started dying off in 1-2 months, you could allow people to move back to Aradune with limited inventory to help not mess up the economy.

I have 3 kids, i get little random gifts from the girlfriend to go play games for an hour or two and get away for a bit while she watches them. All i want to play is some classic EQ but keep getting met with wait times that are 1-2 hours therefore eliminating most of my play time just from the wait. Not that I expect anyone to care or respond but yeah just perspective from me as a father not being able to play...

I dont know about you guys, but I am EST, and coming home and trying to quickly get on with only 3 hours to play most of the time, it is completely unfair that i enter into a 140 minute queue, What so literally a massive chunk of players get screwed because of this and that is okay? While krono farmers slaughter the server and the people will no lives are farming the place 24/7 ,the majority of people who have lives cant commit to logging in hours before they anticipate play it is simply NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE and should not be required to play a 20 year old game I Pay for. This is beyond ridiculous and should not BE in this day and age. This is not customer service at ALL. Go look at Daybreaks BBB rating.

Agreed, that would be the least foolish thing to do, because they made every wrong choice up until now. I have zero faith. zero

I'm in a similar situation, except I'm a single father and work a lot of hours. If I'm lucky, I get 2-3 hours to play, then get hit with a 140 minute wait time. Maybe instead of letting less people play, they could increase their server capacity to handle more players? I paid so I can enjoy the game from the beginning again, go though the expansions slowly, but now it's not even possible for me to play.

I'd pay extra for a preferred customer type account where I could skip the queue. If all the want is money, that would make them more money.

This is absolutely frustrating. I have a career that keeps me tied to my office for 50+ hour per week. I literally have to log in as soon as I walk in the door just to hope I am able to play in 2 hours. Meanwhile watching the screen to hope to see me "zone" in is not what I am paying for.

Oh, and the bonus? Crashing out after you finally get in, effectively ending your playing tie for the night regardless of if you were ready or not. I'd rather take 10 minutes to zone than 3 hours to log in.

Why not just make a second Truebox TLP server, and mention from the start that it was made due to overwhelming demand on Aradune, and that the server will be merging with Aradune as soon as the population gets low enough?

The servers required to run classic EQ couldn't be too expensive to maintain in 2020, could they? Can we start a gofundme or something if it's that big of a deal?

I just came back and have been playing hard after a ~20 year hiatus. As it stands, I have virtually no chance of playing in the evening after peak hours start, leaving me to find other games to play, when I pay a subscription fee for the game I want to play... for now.

BBB is just the original yelp.

And you can pay the BBB to get stuff removed.

Until you allow us to log back in after a crash a queue is absolutely unacceptable

191 min queue is not short very frustrating and sucks can't play the game

CTD .. 195 min queue to get back in... so much for that group and getting a couple of them rezzed after a bad pull.

I have an idea. Instead of working on the issues with chat and zone lag, revert back to the ridiculous queue that's 10 times worse. Great work...

peak times.. it's 11pm on a Friday and it's been a 2.5 hour queue.

A corollary occurred to me when I saw the ominous "Average wait time: 192m" pop up this evening, and it's this: Unlike a lot of people, I have time tonight. Besides that, I have patience. More than three hours is a ridiculous queue time, but I could wait it out.

But I don't want to. It's not that the game isn't worth it; it's that my faith in the truth of that number has been eroded so much over the last few days that I don't trust it anymore. If it were just "wait three hours and you can play all night" that would be one thing, but instead it's "wait three hours and then you get to play until you roll snake eyes on a server tick and have to wait again." Every play session I've had since the queue came back has ultimately ended in a crash. Sure, some of those crashes were so late into the wee hours that I could restart without much fuss, but some weren't.

The result--and the point of me devoting my newfound otherwise unoccupied gaming time to lengthening this thread--is that my excitement for the game is evaporating.

EQ is a game of momentum. The first few levels are rough; then things smooth out a little as more and more of your class kit comes online; then it slows down again as your level climbs and the experience curve kicks in. And that's a good thing; that pattern is what makes memorable groups stand out in our memories. It makes a productive gaming night into a story we talk about with friends, and it turns good pullers into legends.

And when it's interrupted it's all the more painful, because I should be excited about getting to play tonight, thinking "Oh man, if I can just push through and get my chanter up to 11, I'll have charm and then I can really move!" or "I left my shaman a few bubbles short of 23 last night; I've already got my dancing macro ready; it's gonna be just like 99!" or "Man, I hope those guys I met at exe are around tonight and have a spot open. That was a blast!"

But I'm not. Instead, I'm just tired. I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and my expectations about the situation aren't expectations I associate with my recreation time. Babysitting a queue is work, and babysitting a queue that doesn't represent access to a reliable game is work for no payoff. Instead of being excited, I'm much more likely to be thinking things like, "If I don't level fast enough I'm not going to be able to raid in time" or "If those guys have been on tonight they'll be too high to group with by the time I can get on."

It's demoralizing. Mostly what I'm thinking right now is "What's the point?" and I know I'm in good company. I say all this to say that there's more to lose here than just a few players whose anger will cause them to quit (rightly or otherwise). Your attrition problem isn't just an anger issue; it's also being fueled by exhaustion. I'm looking at this 192 minute timer and wondering whether I should even bother, because odds are most likely that at some point something will go wrong and I'll be disconnected, and it's likely that that's going to happen after I've been playing a lot shorter than the time I spent waiting in queue.

What makes matters worse is that I waited. I waited the two and a half weeks after launch knowing that things would be rocky and waiting for it to cool off, trying to do myself and the server a favor. And at first, my instinct seemed to be correct, because indeed for the first day or so everything was awesome. Not so anymore, and I find myself sitting here with this post open on one monitor, EQ minimized on the other with a competitor's game on the screen, my laptop idle, and a really good book on my desk. And when I think about the situation, playing on this server is kind of the last thing I want to do right now, because it just seems like so much a headache compared to all my other options.

I'm letting my sub run out in a couple of days. The situation hasn't improved since launch, and I just don't have the motivation to wait 3 hours every time I want to play. I tried. I really did. I had some fun. I don't believe I'll be back.

If the solution is really to wait for people to quit to relieve the servers, then I suppose I'm not right for this game anyhow.

I tried logging into the server at around 8 pm last night and as of 8:50 AM, almost 13 hours later it still shows me in queue? Guess ill just refresh it and wait another 2-13+ hours to hopefully play? The lack of a response around here is speaking volumes about just how much you guys care about your customers...

What is so sad about this is the fact this is a 20 year old game, these issues should not even be a thing. Daybreak has launched enough new servers to know what to expect and get it right. They should have anticipated the server loads and had a mirror server ready to go with intent to merge them at a later time. Yet we do not get that as a play base. This franchise has turned into just a money grab, if you don't like it leave, those that stick it out feeds the machine that is old antiquated servers still barely running on 25 year old tech with some slight modifications. I heard the code for this game looks like it was cut up with a weed whacker and the public wonders why these issues still exist.

Got up this morning thinking I'll have a chance to play for about 2 hours before getting ready for work. Grabbed myself something to drink, did the usual morning stuff, and started up EQ. 80 minute wait..

Well, there goes today's chance at playing. I'll try again tomorrow.

Noon on a Saturday must be another peak time, because the "might" be a queue during primetime has reared its ugly head again. 115 min queue at noon.

Something is screwed up for you as one of the guys in my group crashed out of the game around 10 pm pst last night and the queue was a hour, he got back in after that hour was up.