Thresholds for a new pick should be reduced

Not that it changes the broad point because WoW was obviously more succussful, but you're numbers are off.

1) WoW numbers were always inflated (as it relates to revenue) because they had millions of accounts paying almost nothing from Asia, but those were still players so for population it was true, but they didn't really have the 12 million accounts worth of full priced subscribers like they acted like they did. I don't think they published real numbers after wow contracted with how many of those subs were the subsidized asian subs when they were at their lowest?

2) Everquest had 500k subscribed accounts at its peak during LoY expansion

1. I never spoke WoW peak numbers at all, I was talking about the low point, they've recovered some since.

2. I was wrong about the EQ number, seems it was 550K subs at it's peak, which actually makes the other point I made about how much it has lost since that point even more severe

Overlord is a significantly longer than 5 minute timer.

90+ people in Gloomindeep is preposterous.

Also, right now, my guild can't access guild neighborhood as instance will not spin up.

They are sucking at this right now.

The Overlord is a 10 minute respawn, the longest in the zone. He's the boss, and the last step in the quest line, so this is reasonable. Everything I've said about grouping up applies here.

And I would bet at least half of those in the OW zone are AFK.

Because neighborhoods and housing don't unlock until HoT. GoD gives you the standard guild lobby. Are you sure you know how to play? The tutorials may be helpful. There is also a tutorial NPC in PoK once DoN unlocks.

Everyone (mostly Waring) needs to stop white knighting against obvious mistakes and/or bad design/choices. The fact that phinny had a system in which 1 person could create a new pick is not really relevant, other than to show the limit that Darkpaw has.

Fortunately, there is a MASSIVE middle area between our current thresholds to on demand.

An example is Ocean of Tears. OoT is a huge zone, so its given a 60 person threshold. The issue is, there is basically nothing in OoT. There are 1-2 xp camps (undead and goblins), Jboots and a couple epics. OoT should not be a 60 threshold. By comparison, a zone like The Bloodfields has basically 1-2 xp camps and a few epic fights has a threshold of... 20? 25?

There is a false equivalence is zone size and pick threshold, because most of the devs do not have a deep experience of this part of the game. This isn't really bashing them, most of them probably dont want to play this old af game outside of work.

Yes you are bashing them.

Here's a clue: The server resources consumed by a new pick have nothing to do with how many XP spots and cool items you want. The resources consumed are entirely related to the ZONE SIZE. So a major factor in how the devs have tuned the pick thresholds is... wait for it... ZONE SIZE. You may think there are only 1-2 good levelling locations in the zone, but the truth is there are a LOT of NPCs in the zone, and they're spread out everywhere. On every island coastline. In the water. And then there are the boats. OoT is one of the biggest resource hogs in the game. Others have proposed, more logically, that the zone be split, but I don't see that ever happening due to it being a major development effort. Some things from the Classic era are what they are, you have to live with them.

Are you taking the stance that the current pick thresholds and zone resource usage is the best we can do? That moving a zone like OoT from 60 to 30 would cause apocalyptic destruction?

It's not just your hotzone. It's 20 other player-favorite hotzones. If they changed one, they would have to change them all, and the servers can't handle it. Actual trial-end-error testing a few years back revealed repeated server crashes. Unlike most of the complainers on here, I actually trust the devs to have made the best player-friendly choices they can when it comes to tradeoffs on thresholds. OoT is probably the worst case you could argue for, since its resources are so huge.

Also bear in mind that there are a lot more RMTers boxing 30 than there are boxing 60.

If you paid attention, you would see that I am not arguing for OoT, just using it as an example.

If you want to take the stance that the devs have made the best possible choice, that can be your stance. It's wrong, just based on their lack of testing. There was also a time when a large portion of this forum was on the podium spouting, "Live servers getting AoCs would be too much server load, absolutely not".

Not my recollection. It was certain devs (most specifically Prathun) who kept claiming that AoCs would be a server performance issue, and various players on the forums (including yours truly) arguing that didn't make any sense. After Prathun left, the subsequently-evolved team took a fresh look at that and without fanfare we got all existing AoCs on Live. There was much rejoicing. It is in part because they made this key change on their own initiative that I continue to believe they pay attention to the TLP pickzone demand, and have made their best determinations about threshold numbers.

An AoC instance only requires a small fraction of the server resources it would take to make an entire zone copy. You're only getting one raid encounter in each, with non-essential NPCs you might see in the OW version stripped away. In a pick you get the entire zone, bar nothing, which is why you can't really compare the two. In addition, AoC usage is actually quite small on all servers. On TLPs it's all raid activity, they aren't used for levelling. On Live servers it's really only being used by achievement hunters. This factor makes a big difference. And if you don't think Live servers have performance issues, try reading any of the dozens of threads in the Veteran's forum about raid lag.

It is much easier to get those items then it was in the past and you don't need to get them in order to play and enjoy the game. Considering that they have worked to reduce the number of picks that are up at any given time by ensuring that they shut down there are problems with having to many of them up. Not everyone needs to get the jboots in classic era.

Neither of you have any concept of the scope of these changes, because you do not play TLPs. So you are essentially doubling down with the same experience as the dev team and it shows.

The scope of the changes? As soon as they change one zone for a camp they are going to get requests to changes other zones for a camp. Back in the classic era there are plenty of zones that have a limited amount of camps that can be easily monopolized by a small number of people. With the addition of picks they have already made the items easier to get and they are items that you don't need and are just desired.

Yes, for sake of argument, lets say its 20 zones that are changed to accommodate epic quests + xp camps. And lets presume worst case scenario that they are tweaked in pick threshold that results in 100% uptime of a second zone.

You are going to sit there and say the game absolutely cannot handle 20 extra picks of a zone.

Or for the sake of argument we can presume that the number of open picks was causing issues which in turn caused them to make changes to limit the amount that are opened by forcing them to close. As others have said there is a cost to open each pick and you are talking about a larger zone. I am not saying the game can or can't handle any number of picks but I am trusting the devs to make the decisions. Once they start making exceptions for a single zone they are going to get requests to make the same exception for almost every other zone. There are always desirable camps that people can't get because of the limited number of picks and that will never change.

Please be civil and constructive in your discussions.

I would just like to point out a few things

• Items like this are not required to play and enjoy the game
• You can a similar or better effect from other places
• They have worked to reduce the number of pick zones that are active, they are not going to change it so more can be spawned for a trival item like jboots
• There are other possible changes that could increase the ability to get the items that don't involve pick zones.

There is no need to focus on one and only one possible solution to your perceived problem

And derailed. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?help/terms