I personally understand why it is on the early tlps...but once a server dies down in population which tends to happen in the oow-tbs era I don't know why it's kept at that point but as I said before I'd be fine if they wanted to be safe and remove it around SoF or SoD.
I think that's when we got mercs, but by then server was dead. I really think we need to move j1 mercs up sooner or remove truebox. Either would help, but the earlier mercs, even j1, would help those soloists who simply are left out to dry, especially if their friends have been slowly dropping off.
I wonder if the reason they don't do it is because each new TLP launch is a guaranteed cash cow with an exception or two along the way. If people had a reason to stay on the server and not start all over yet again, there will be a portion of that revenue lost. I know some people enjoy the classic-pop gameplay and treat TLPs as event servers and the kronolords will still flock to new TLPs (does this type of player even buy bags or potions? or just krono fuel their accounts and farm more for their stockpile?). I'd like to stay on a server for the long haul and now that I'm on Rizlona that may actually happen, we'll have to see. My knowledge of classic-pop is the strongest, GoD and OoW not as strong but better than the rest. DoN to Underfoot is fuzzy and anything after that is not in my realm of EQ experience. I'll never be running a full raid worth of characters, so I'm not sure if Rizlona will have enough raiding type guilds to go the long haul.
If I had to hazard a guess I would say there simply hasn't been demand until recently. The oldest tlps were not truebox, then there was phinny who always had a decent population and perhaps a majority of the old non tlp hoppers. And the problem we seem to all agree on is the difficulty in retaining players after the golden era of 65 and under. As more and more servers hit that the issue will gain more traction, however. There are plenty of players that want to actually progress rather than groundhog day. So I think the reason it hasn't been addressed is because they probably put little if any discussion into it. Hopefully they do consider it for future tlps.
I did reach out to Dreamweaver & asked if he would speak to the dev team about this idea of dropping Truebox on older TLP to let them know we have asked for this. He got back to me to say he will ask & let me know what they say about it. Dreamweaver may well post a response here himself but if he gets back to me first about it I will update this thread with whatever response I get.
Oh for sure, if (when?!) they remove it I fully expect at least 1 post where someone says their entire EQ experience if ruined because they joined Phinny 4 years ago solely for truebox , half the time I can't even tell if these posts are serious or not. Awesome! Can't wait to hear what they have to say =)
I missed a lot of EQ. I played from Original+Kunark until EQ2 launched and moved over to EQ2. I also did not raid at that point in time. So with coming back to EQ my goal was to find a forever home. Preferably a TLP where I could start from ground zero, see some of the old content that I remember while in current era. Find a guild and progress with them hopefully until the end (or until Pantheon). I don't find it interesting to solo/molo from 0 to 110 or whatever live is at currently. Which is why the TLP is a better proposition. As far as True Box goes. I don't know about the middle of the late stages of the game.
I came onto the forum recently with Aradune's launch. It makes me laugh at all the rage that is here. There are definitely Trolls here and this is the most action they see all day.
I can legitimately see and appreciate the person's point of view that removing truebox and the associated macaroni rule could ruin their experience. For example, I had a friend who tried out Lockjaw and after going to a few popular spots and finding largescale raids running fully automated, it really cheapened the experience for him. Is it the reason they quit? I can't know, but it's certainly a deterrent. And that's the big unknown... will truebox pave the all clear for macaroni afk play... and if it does, how prevalent will it be? On Selo, I really doubt it would be a huge deal because the population is quite low, but maybe Mangler (or any TLP) will be rolling into these later expacs with a more robust population. If GM's couldnt care to look at the SG literal 100 man crew that ran on tlp after tlp... it's a forgone conclusion that multiple iterations of this will ruin some players' experience. This, likely, is mitigated if truebox is removed quite late, but if it's removed early we all know kronolords will capitalize.
For sure, I dont knwo the state of Selo but it's my understanding Phinny and Coirnav only have 3 guilds left. If a server were to make it to PoR-SoD wherever they decide is a good spot with 15+ guilds you have the potential for trouble however that would be seem to be rather unlikely since they release 1-2 new TLPs a year and none of them have anything really special to keep a large bulk of players. Phinny/Coirnav/Mangler/Aradune clone 2.0 will just see everyone jump ship again in my opinion. Also if someone with more exp in the late game expacs can fill me in, it's my understanding there isn't much left for krono lords to bot open world anyway, I think the last thing worth contesting that I can recall was goats in GoD and maybe the raid mobs in Devastation OW during PoR, but even those were only for rushing to finish the expac, not farmed every respawn. So is there anything else OW that a bot army would find locking down worthwhile, or would they just continue to skip to the next new TLP. Anyone from Ragefire/Lockjaw got insight in how those armies there have fared after the last 5+ years?
Its probably the same situation on ever server without truebox, a few huge box armies (some are static afk farming teams) but the majority box 2-5 additional characters at most & while many on live use 3rd party programs to help them the majority don't abuse those. With the older TLP they have such low populations anyway the impact would likely be small & the incentive for RMT is very low due to those low populations anyway.
I feel like the argument against this is that this is the ruleset we signed up for and they do not want to change that ruleset. They have stated this a few times in the past that rulesets are not something to just be changed on a whim. My counter to that is that these servers are not static paintings on a wall. They are living things that change all the time and the rulesets should adapt with the server and players. The rulesets change constantly anytime there is a major patch. Necro/SK dot revamp, Enchanter Charm changes, TL in combat, and many more changes that I am sure made some people upset and others happy. Yet we are still here playing. I don't believe players want these rules to be static nor is it a healthy thing for them to stay static. There is a ton of upside for everyone if this was removed at a certain point. Hopefully we can keep the discussion going and get some back and forth on why this should or shouldn't happen.
Truebox is for nostalgic purpose. At a certain point it becomes detrimental to a server to keep truebox on it. I shouldn't have to take up more real life real estate in my home, add more heat to my gaming room, and spend more money on cheap PCs to be able to give DPG more money to play this game. I don't want to dedicate so much real space to have fun in a virtual world. Remove truebox after a certain point, maybe with LDoN or before. I'd open 1 to 2 more accounts immediately on agnarr if they removed truebox.
Great point, core class/game mechanics are changed constantly for better or worse. Removing truebox when it has served its purpose falls almost entirely into the "for better" column.
