please devs make a boxing server as a 3rd tlp option.

True box absolutely does what it set out to do. Yeah there's a few people every server who for whatever reason get a pass and get to bot with impunity, but a few bots >>>>>> the entire server just playing by themselves with automated characters

Yeah, I suppose that's why all the hardcore farmers six boxed out of the gate and then sold you plat and tradeskilled equipment. They liked the two box limit.

Why is that worse? I believe Truebox mostly does what it intends to do, as brickz mentions below a couple people somehow skate by but it mostly keeps the OW stuff "fair" for everyone. Once OW stuff stops being relevant and its all instanced and the population attrition sets in there is little to no reason to not let someone alt+tab multiple accounts to continue playing in a way that may be better for them vs multiple laptops.

I agree that it mostly does what it tries to do, its not perfect and should be dropped during the TLP lifecycle but the first few expacs it's helpful. And while automation is not allowed I don't see why people are so against players boxing a full group. Sure its an MMO but there are more ways to be social than being in a grind group with people and if playing by yourself while chatting with guildies or general so you get all the plat/drops/can afk at a moments notice w/o feeling bad then whats the harm in that?

The choice is some RMT that sometimes annoys non-boxers or a wild-west free-for-all, but yeah keep calling it "defending RMT".

/smh

Some folks can't recognise a nuance even when it punches them in the nose and says "Hi, I am a nuance!"

The problem is more complex. Darkpaw doesn't really mean no third party programs. They don't want to eliminate all third party programs. They don't want to have to define which are ok and which aren't. They don't want to have to draw a line in the sand. And they especially don't want to do that outside of truebox, where it's a little easier to take a firm stance.

And in my estimation, a big part of why we won't get more servers like Rizlona soon is because Rizlona is filled with players that continually raise the question, "Is this ok?" Clearly some third party IS ok or truebox wouldn't be a thing. EG They specifically fixed i s boxer to work on Rizlona, the day it launched. Players on Rizlona mostly want to play within the acceptable boundaries, and want to know what those boundaries are -- clearly different boundaries than are intended to exist on truebox. DPG doesn't want to answer. And I think they don't want another server filled with more players asking the same questions.

If someone was actually pressing all the keys themselves, or even using innerspace to broadcast the keystrokes, then that would be one thing. But realistically most 6 boxers on live/rizlona are not doing that. They are using m*2 to play their characters for them. Truebox severely limits this because the group that sells the most popular m*2 distro makes it not work on true box servers and 99% of people couldn't figure out how to make their own.

If it wasn't what the majority of the community wants then why didn't more people pick Rizlona over Aradune? The community had a chance to pick, and they chose Aradune far more so than Rizlona. I am not saying one is better than the other, but people have had a chance to make their preferences known, this isn't something you have to guess about.

I think if they launched those style servers again, Rizlona would be more favorable as people realize DPG can’t/won’t actively enforce the rules that it advertises.

You say this, but Rizlona is more often high pop than Aradune, and has been for a while. And a relatively comparable number of raid guilds on each server at this point. Early on Aradune was definitely higher pop, but I don't think the difference was as massive as you make it out to be.

And I think we will see Rizlona far more popular than Aradune come June.

And yet when these new servers launch, Rizlona will stay healthy while Aradune will go crashing down. Everytime new servers are launched the first one named always ends up being the more popular one. Why? Because its been pushed and pushed and pushed over our lifetime first is always better than second. Even simultaneous launches 2nd servers always have a lower pop.

Exactly, truebox is popular in the early expansions, I 100% foresee Rizlona being a higher population than Aradune soon.

I always get the feeling that 80% of conversations on rizlona are about how their server will not suffer attrition and decay because of its one weird trick. Lot of passionate agreement that this time is different and nobody will be leaving for the exciting and novel new TLP

Ragefire seems to be hanging in there decently enough for it's age. Older than the rest and has more guilds than Phinny/Selo/Coirnav/Miragul

24 guilds killed AHR on Aradune.10 have killed Quarm.

https://aradune-progress.com/

5 guilds killed AHR on Rizlona. 2 have killed Quarm.

https://rizlonakills.com/

While that is true on the face of it it depends what you mean by age.
If you mean just pure chronology how long it has been running then yeah, if you judge age based on what expansion the server is on then its a bit different & I think that the expansion a server is in has as much to do with population as the length of time it has been around for does.

That said I do think player retention is better on servers without Truebox once they move past PoP.

True, but there was also the notion that Free Trade rules circumvent the gameplay loop. I believe it was Absor that had that talking point.

Proving a point with facts.

Most people that box are pretty casual and enjoy the flexibility of the “instant” group that a box team offers. It’s really not a surprise that boxers don’t have an overwhelming desire to raid on a set schedule.

EQ has always had this fixation on raiding as a metric, but 22 years of this game and 15+ years of WoW and another 8+ FFXIV show that the vast, vast majority of players don’t raid.

From my own experience of Ragefire pre-Phinigel & Phinigel itself those two TLP at least were made up of a vast majority of Raiders.

Live servers definitely have many non-raiders but on TLP servers so far I would be willing to bet that the sheer pace of expansion unlocks alone makes them an environment that is far less conducive to non-raiders, there are a handful around but in extremely small numbers, maybe less than 1% in my experience.
That may be different on later TLP but probably not drastically so. Rizlona & post-Phinigel Ragefire might be the exceptions to that.

4 hour queues on Aradune, no queues on Riz. It was a pretty massive difference. And Riz's occasionally higher population can be taken with a grain of salt, since MOST folks on Aradune don't circumvent the truebox rules and most folks on Riz box several. Even if the character count on Riz is higher the chances are the player count is lower. Not something either of us can prove with actual numbers though.

This is a serious stretch. Riz's lower initial population has nothing to do with the fact that it was "number two" and everything to do with the fact that plenty of folks don't like playing on an unlimited boxing server. Mangler was also "number two" and was more populated than Selos.

As for the continued populations? FV loot is something a lot of people have been waiting for for a long time, and is a much greater draw than 2 box that isn't enforced. I would not be surprised if Aradune's population did take a hit, but that has nothing to do with boxing vs no boxing. Mischief just has a better rule set, and will be back in PoP in far less time than your average server. I dare say that Riz will lose folks to Mischief as well. Fewer probably, as boxers do like their boxing, but Free trade and randomized loot is a big draw.