Past EQ: When reputation actually meant something.

Remember back in the day when reputation actually meant something? I remember a day when you were stuck with your character name. If you paid to change it, your name change would be posted publicly, so guilds could do some background research on you before they invited you in? I remember those days.

I remember the days when there was an actual GM that roamed around. You know, when Sony actually had them, people knew they were around. I volunteered to be a GM once. Unpaid, but I was there to answer petitions and make the game a better place. Why can't Daybreak do that again? I would volunteer again to help answer petitions. I miss those days. DBG promised to have GMs, and they don't. Haven't seen them once. Have you?

Lastly, Krono has brought in the mage bot farmers. Last night I met a mage who camped SolA for the Charred Guardian Shield. The second the mob would spawn, even if it was in another room, her Earth Elemental would fly in and kill steal us. It wasn't until a few of us banded together to out-dps her that we managed to take back our camp, and get everyone their shield. I spoke with the mage, seeing if I could convince her not to kill steal us, and she basically told us "I don't care. There's no such thing as camps. I'll be here all day, every day". Other picks has larger bot armies. This camp is basically permacamped by bots, generally speaking. She told us she has a bot army she needs to get Krono for on Rizlona. She just made the mage on Aradune to farm for her characters on Rizlona.

Do you remember back in the day when reputation actually mattered? Being kind to people mattered? Most of us are 20 years older than we were when we all first started playing, and I'm surprised so many are more juvenile, petty, selfish, and straight-up rude and mean now, as adults, than they were then.

Remember, there are actual people on the other side of your monitor. Respect goes a long way. I know it's easy to be rude when you are anonymous, behind your forum username, or your character name, when you can just change names if you manage to make the entire server "scowl at you, ready to attack", but there are real people. I know one close friend who was bullied into suicide, and actually went through with it. It's easy to say things and not know the consequences of your actions, and more disturbingly, there are people who know the consequences of their words, and say them anyway, because "that's your problem, not mine".

I know this may fall on deaf ears. I know trolls will probably come and reply with their insensitive, childish responses, but last night, my pick-up group of random people I didn't know, beat out a mage that was kill-stealing us, all because we came together and actually stuck by until all of us had our drops we needed. My point is, there's power in reputation and respect, not hate and insensitivity. Try to be the bigger person and help people out, rather than be cold.

it's sad but this is what EQ has turned into. the owner doesn't care, they're just running it on outdated hardware to try to make as much money as they can before everyone eventually finally throws in the towel. a large fraction of the remaining playerbase are people trying to RMT kronos off the remaining fraction that is desperately trying to relive their early 2000's experiences.

memba the yankees?

Rallos Zek was the only EQ server where reputation actually mattered. Every other server had at least one "bad guy" guild.

Wasn't the criteria for the bad guys simply waking the sleeper?

I play on live servers, where reputation very much still matters.

I mean, a lot of people play onultiple TLPs... Reputation still does matter

So you and your group is getting out dpsed by 1 mage pet?

I think reputation matters more on Live servers then on TLPs because you have a long term established player base that uses social pressure to try and keep Play Nice rules alive and well. I can't say how well much reputations are valued on TLPs but with folks moving from TLP to TLP its basically a chance to start all over.

Some say RMTs are just as common as the old days on TLP. No. Far worse. Each time a TLP server comes up you have a whole server that needs pretty much EVERYTHING and TLPs are POPULAR. It is why the RMT folks move from new TLP to new TLP. But that is the price of reliving old content over and over I guess.

I can say reputation matters on Live servers. There was a fellow who ninja looted some items on a raid on the server I play on and the guy is still trying to live it down. He has made an honest attempt to do so and I would say is more mature but just the fact this is still an issue 3 years later shows that reputation still matters.

Would be interesting to play on a server that showed players your account name + all characters on your account + all guilds those characters were in.

I'd doubt it'd matter though. In 2020 on TLP playing competitively is part of the gameplay and fun of the server. I'm a pretty nice guy but I recognize that without player contention the game is pretty easy, boring and stale sometimes the most memorable part of the night is when some jerk flexes on you and you have to ruck up to defend what's yours.

This accepted contention means that all but the most egregious offenses are part of the game and fairplay drama.

Good ol classic from back when rep mattered!

http://www.brellrants.net/images/Sanornik.doc

Asymmetric warfare in the MMO meta is great, but I feel like your efforts are wasted on what is a casual PvE game for old people with disposable income.

You going to play Crowfall?

SAME I MEMBER WHEN I WAS A FRIENDLY OGRE WHO JUST WANTED TO BUFF PEOPLE AND PLAY NICE WITH HIS WARRIOR. THEN I GOT TRAINED!!! THE TLP WILD WEST ANGERED WAS BORN BUT THIS ISNT ABOUT CURRENT TISM'S!


lets go back to 2001 when they failed to instance all content so wow never happens errrrrrr..

yes when trusting a fellow person to transfer items for you even though they were 5-50k each thats plat you know currency for all you new kids that TLP i know its not hip to say "plat" you guys all about dat #KronoLife and so am i!

a time when people pretty much everyone i mean it took so damn long to level you were bound to run into the same people so if you were an super spaz like my self you (i talk way to damn much but nothing awful i think) oh i was telling a story

screw 2001 lets go to like w/e year oow-tss was out and i was helping the morning raid people on drinal do dragons and augs runs because why not? Along with GOD things!! I was in the 2nd top guild (TC) so i had very geared toons compared to these folks and i loved helping out beating mobs.


TL DR (dont blame you) ?

I petitioned an in game issue with my guild roster and an actual GM came and fixed it a day or two later. It wasn't a critical issue so this was more than acceptable.

Thanks Bunnicula!!

They do exist, just not in the rose tinted glasses we remember. It's a different world and games are set up to run as automatic as possible to keep costs down. That's because so many games are F2P now and survive on microtransactions. Just keep in mind it could always be worse.

I remember back in the day that the top guilds on servers were all very nice to those that were not competing with them, who stayed out of their way, who didn't get into the end game.

I also remember the same "nice guys" in server first guilds turning into complete animals when a competing guild entered the zone with a target up, good luck if you got caught in between them.

I remember back in the day, that the guys who were forming into the first uberguilds (they were not a thing back in classic yet) would account share and cheat (using various programs) to lock down high value camps that they could RMT the drops (or plat from those drops). You probably don't remember this because you were "[21 Ranger] Johny Bowsnapper" at the time.

But reputations, yes, that mattered, if you were a jerk, but amazing at what you could do, you still got the top spots, the top guilds were filled with guys who would train a level 10 Druid with skeletons if it meant getting a GBS to sell. If you were a nice guy, you had a great rep, but probably couldn't handle being in a competitive guild. So you joined a 3rd string guild, a stepping stone, these tended to be filled with nice guys, and interacted down as well as allowing the more competitive players to get gear and such before moving on to a better guild. Think of this as the Minor Leagues, the guys who play for peanuts because they have a "love of the game" still.

There's just more of us in a smaller box now. And, its infectious, hard to get past the mentality when everyone around you seems to have it.

100% this. Servers weren't as top heavy back then so fewer people were seeing this sort of gameplay. The behavior today is actually less toxic most of the time, it just impacts a lot more players.

Well there is the problem. The player contention is part of what YOU enjoy about the server. Many others have no need for it and I feel very safe in saying that.

I think if Daybreak could guarantee a server with no player contention it would probably end up being filled up pretty fast.

Reminds of of Ultima Online which started out PvP. The devs argued forever everyone wanted non consensual pvp then they eventually made pvp and non pvp mirrors of each server. Everyone moved to the non pvp one.

There are servers with no player contention.


The dead ones.


If someone wants to play on a server where they don't have to contend with other players, they shouldn't play on the newest TLP servers.