Please change 2 true-box limit to 6 true-box limit on Aradune

With all due respect, if you were paying any attention to what is going on elsewhere in the game, you would already know there is a status to the relaxed Truebox rule. Devs have stated that they will evaluate how well relaxed Truebox works on Vaniki and Yelinak and then decide whether they will be comfortable applying that rule to the other TLPs. It won't unlock on Yelinak until OoW, which is a year out, so the decision won't be forthcoming for a while yet. There's no point in continuing to bring it up for further debate here.

As for suspensions, you have no first-hand knowledge of how many people have been suspended, or for what reason or reasons. None of us do. Yes, there were malicious petitions when Aradune was still brand new, but there is no evidence of that happening now. The consensus view is quite the opposite, that suspended accounts are being selected by some automated system, which may not be perfect, but it certainly isn't malicious. You keep using the term "overall health of the server" with no definition of what that means. You imply that suspensions will reduce population, but why should they? It's seven days unless it's either a repeat violation or something more egregious than this 2-box rule. If some people quit over that, well they were bound to quit anyway, I suspect; the hard work period of the server hasn't even begun yet.

As for your repeated request/demand that I debate the merits of the rule with you, in who knows what fashion, I have already said (in the other thread) I have no intention of doing that. I don't answer to you. Please stop speaking to me like you work for the company. If you sincerely want to debate the merits of the rule, reach out to one of the CMs and see if they can help put you in touch with the producer. You're not going to get what you're looking for here.

With all due respect, if you have no intentions of arguing the merits of the rule, or lack thereof as the case may be, why do you choose to participate in a thread which is designed to do exactly that which you refuse to do? A more cynical person could surmise that perhaps your goal might be the derailment of this thread and others like it so that you may silence those who not only disagree with you, but also outnumber you by a large margin. But I don't feel that is what you are doing.

I am fully aware of the status of Truebox and the discussion of changes to it. It is why I have chosen not to start a thread concerning that issue. In giving you some background to allow you a deeper insight into where I stand on the 2-box limit issue, it seems I may have confused you. For that I am sorry.

It is clear that there is no point in further engaging in discussion with you as you have made up your mind to not discuss this issue. I am struggling to find a reason that you would even post in a thread such as this if, by your own admission, you do not wish to discuss it. I apologize if anything I said made you feel as if I were speaking to you from a position of authority, it was certainly not my intention and I am very confused where you got that idea. Perhaps with all the insults and personal attacks happening on these forums you are unaccustomed to reading a thoughtful post.

No reason for you to waste time with a rebuttal to this post as I will no longer engage with you since I feel it detracts from the issue at hand.

I wish you the best, sir, and I hope that we can just agree to disagree and move on.

Two guys walk into a bar. (Oh wait, I already told that joke...)

Six guys walk into a bar. Bartender looks up from his newspaper and says, "Good evening gentlemen, what'll it be?"

First guy answers, "Well I'm not sure we're all gentlemen, devs changed all our body types to human, and we can't really be sure who is who anymore. But we'll have whatever those first two guys had." Bartender pours each of them a shot of chocolate whiskey.

Second guy says, "I'm not sure why we're all here, this place looks pretty deserted." First guy answers, "We'll check it out anyway, remember we're recruiting." Second guy says, "I do see a woman sitting by herself in the back. She could be looking for a group. One of us should scout her."

Third guy exclaims, "That's why you need me! I'm your wingman! I'm the one who has been watching all the chat channels in case a GM should send us a /say or a /tell. By now I know everything there is to know about chatting." First guy says, "Alright then, give it a go."

#3 walks up to the woman's table, pulls up a chair, and sits down beside her. She gives him a cold stare, waiting for his inevitable opening line. He makes eye contact, takes a gulp of his drink for dutch courage, sets down the glass, and asks,

"What are you wearing?"

This server was advertised as a 2 box limit, truebox server. There was no advertised phase out for this rule. In line with other servers, the rules should not be changed. There are many servers where people can box 6 or more characters with Trueboxing, keep Aradune as it was originally advertised, as has been the norm for previous TLPs. The whole point of advertising the rules is so players can create a character on a server with some ability to trust that what they have signed up for won't be changed on a whim.

I have yet to hear a reasonable compromise that beats relaxed truebox with a 2 char limit. That's the winner. Make it happen.

I'd start up again on Aradune if the 2 Truebox rule went away. With less and less people on the server, /lfg is non-existent. It'd be nice to log on and be able to know I could actually get something productive done.

This is a classic case of the minority just being the loudest on the forums. The VAST majority of players on Aradune want the 2 character limit removed. It was a good rule in the beginning but the server has evolved and the rule needs to change.

Why would you pick the 2 box limit server? It had more cheating than Rizlona from the start.

Vast is pretty vast. If you can share links to the surveys, polls, or datasets behind this? That would be fantastic. Would be happy to help double-check the work. Make sure their weren't any math errors or whatnot.

As has been stated before, when the two servers - Aradune and Rizlona - released, Aradune was simply the lesser of two evils. People were fairly confident that Rizlona, a server without Truebox, was going to be a nightmare so they picked Aradune instead. I'm not sure why this is so hard for anyone to understand. Given the options at the time between what many considered to be a possible wild west scenario on Rizlona - akin to what it was like on Ragefire in the beginning - or holding our nose and rolling on Aradune, despite the 2-box limit, people picked what they considered to be the best option unless they wanted to wait until the next year for a new set of TLP. Taking into account that many were stuck at home, laid-off or otherwise had a lot of free-time on their hands due to pandemic restrictions, I think any reasonable person can wrap their heads around that logic.

I had friends on this server, as I am sure many others did, that I wanted to play with. Since I don't box and never plan to box more than one additional character, the rules didn't bother me, though I will say I think they could have had a bit better foresight and picked 3 as the limit considering many tasks and missions at this point in the game require a minimum of 3. What does bother me is the manner in which the rule has been enforced throughout the course of the server. Had there been more consistency and accuracy in the enforcement of the rule, I probably would not now be advocating for a change to the rule, since it has no impact on me personally.

I think this is probably the most obtainable solution. While I feel since their version of relaxed Truebox allows 3 clients per machine, it would only make sense to increase the box limit to 3 for consistency and ease of enforcement, I am not sure that kind of cold logic is something that will prevail.

I very strongly disagree with this characterization of the server launch. Rizlona was not a nightmare at launch, literally nobody predicted it would be, and the general consensus was that its launch went 100x smoother than Aradune. Many, many players were pleased at having a non-Truebox TLP option, the first in several years. You can't compare either of these servers to Ragefire, its ruleset was radically different. I'm not saying there was no Kronolord activity on Rizlona, but it was much less than on Aradune, because a lot of those idiots figured out that the market for their wares would be greatly reduced when anyone who really wanted to could simply farm items for themselves. By contrast, the RMTers were all over Aradune, because they could see a major competitive advantage in the economy if they multi-boxed vs. those players who were "dumb enough" to abide strictly by the 2-box rule. This is never mind what the automated bots were doing. To rationalize pure $$ motive as being somehow pandemic-related is borderline offensive to me.

Rizlona is, by all accounts, a "chill" server. Its economy is very different from that of Aradune, for the simple reason that more boxes = more plat generated = inflation. Econ 101. The spread in pricing has prompted the RMTers to dig their trenches deeper on Aradune, something we've already seen described in the previous thread on this topic. So, now they want to make a two-year history of bad behavior somehow legitimate by applying a retroactive server-rule change. Why you are endorsing all this, when you freely acknowledge that it doesn't affect you personally, has so far escaped my understanding.

Also, trying to use the pandemic as an excuse is unfair and hurtful, for reasons I've explained before, and it's also false history. DBG granted unrestricted free access to all servers, including all TLPs, for a 30-day window early in the pandemic; this was >before< the Aradune/Rizlona server launch. Anyone who suddenly found themselves in a home-restricted situation, and who was potentially interested in starting or returning to EQ, had ample opportunity to check out the options available at no cost. At the beginning of that window there was a measurable spike in population across all servers, both TLPs and Live. At the end of that window there was an almost-equal drop in population, which I suggest meant that anyone who intended to play EQ extensively during the pandemic had already made their choice prior to this server launch. So, I would respectfully ask that you remove all pandemic references from your argument(s).

Is 2 box active on aradune ?
Or is it a futur project.

for everyone who continues to point to the FAQ for Aradune, and saying that the 2-bos rule is laid out there so that it should never change, I encourage you to actually read the whole page. https://www.everquest.com/news/eq-tlp-aradune-rizlona-2020

"Dedicated GM - Rizlona and Aradune are GM dedicated servers, this means they will be more visible on your server and petition queues will go direct to them. It is possible that there will be instances where other GMs may assist when available but most will go to your specific GMs. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more about your server's GMs!"
is a direct quote from that page, THAT was also a HUGE draw for many people. In that post there is no discussion of time-frame, or how many, or for how long. Yet here we are, a year and change down the road, and we no longer have dedicated GM's. Should we bring back dedicated GM presence? should we have had them for the life of the server? because as the rule is written, yes we should have had them for the entire life of the server. This is a rule that was UNIQUE to both Aradune and Rizlona, yet the "rules should never change ever" crowd is silent on this. Do I believe that having a dedicated GM presence for 2 servers for the entire lifespan of that server is reasonable or even possible? no not really, but it was an Aradune DEFINING rule, a rule mind you, that changed over the life of the server.

"Boxing any more than 2 characters will result in the following actions taken against your account. First Offence: A written warning from the GM. Second Offence: A 7 day suspension of account privileges on all Aradune related accounts. Third Offence: Permanent ban on all Aradune associated accounts."
Also a direct quote from that page, I have not seen nor heard of any individuals receiving a warning for boxing more than 2 people. Just because I have not heard of it doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but the fact that I have not heard from anyone about receiving a warning seems suspicious. It seems like this rule is skipping the warning part and going straight to the suspension part. Everyone in this and other threads talking about how boxers should be banned also has clearly not read the server rules, because if they had, they would be asking that the rule be enforced as written, warning first, then if the infraction continues, a suspension.

My overall point of this is that rules HAVE changed, a lot, for lots of servers. That is a good thing. It is a good thing that mischief random loot rules were refined over the life of that server. To argue that rules were laid out, and we all agreed to them, so they should never change is a weird hill to die on. There have been great comments and posts from people trying to have a discussion about this topic. Then there have been others who have gone to name calling, or outright dismissing someone without taking an honest look at what was said.

EQ is a flawed and often frustrating experience, but I continue to enjoy it mostly for the people I get to engage with and share accomplishments and a world with.

Umm... the "rules shouldn't change" crowd has NOT been silent on this, I have personally posted a response more than once before. See the quite above where it says, "Stay tuned". There was in fact a whole lot of discussion about what resources the company could or could not commit to this. The dedicated GMs were promised to last for SIX MONTHS only. After that, both of these servers would revert to sharing the GM pool with other servers. At no time in their life have either of these two servers gone without any GM presence. This isn't even a server rule, any more than how much memory the server uses is a server rule. Resource allocation is by its nature a variable thing. All of this rhetoric about how the rules have already changed, because X Y or Z, is just part and parcel of the cheater's rationalization. I would also disagree with your claim that GM support was a huge draw for many people. The outcry during those first six months of server history (search the forum) wasn't over there not being enough GM-triggered suspensions, it was because there were too many.

Using the idiom "hill to die on" only works if the rule is actually changed. And yes, it would be weird, because if the rule is changed, the players who wanted that rule will just quit Aradune and play somewhere else. And then if the server still fails, who is actually dying on the hill?

Honestly, take out the true-box part of Aradune; limit it to 2 boxes per person still. The fact that I have to have my work laptop on whenever I play is insane. Just have it so I can run 2 instances of EQ and play my 2 toons. THAT SIMPLE DBG!

Personally I'd like to see relaxed truebox come in at the least, the pro's for this have been explained well enough in this thread and others.
I do wonder what the genuine number of "extra" subbed accounts would be if they relaxed the boxing rules in any shape or form, vs the number of "lost" accounts from those who would quit over this.

Hard to tell really, I suspect that some of those calling for 3 + boxing already do so and wish to add legitimacy to it, no one would openly admit to that though so it's near on impossible to parse.

If it ever came down to an actual vote (not that it's likely) I'd say 3 box and relaxed truebox would be the way to go, I personally doubt many would box 6 or more. (that don't, or haven't already done so)

As servers are released and the pool of players dwindles, boxing, alts and mercs keep people playing and logging in, reduces raid logging and keeps the game fresh IMO.

Selfishly, after all the work I've put in to my main char (300 in all tradeskills, hunters done from classic-PoR and working on TSS and all sorts of other stuff) I don't have it in me to roll anywhere else and start again, and as a Euro time based player my options are more limited than most, so I'd like this server to go the distance.

I do believe that a decent % of the server population feels at least strongly enough that some change would be beneficial to the health of the server, even if the finer points of that cannot be so easily agreed on.

As such, it at least merits examination and discussion from the powers that be.

People won't be 6+ boxing?
Log into Yelinak and see how that's working out.
Read the threads on this forum about how nobody can get epic drops because automated bot armies have it all locked down.

Let's not ruin Aradune at this point.

I don't think comparing Aradune to Yelinak is particularly relevant as they are in completely different eras?
It's not like we didn't have very similar/the same issues during that era from solo and duo players, guilds and of course those who did/do box more, I'd suggest that's as much an early TLP cycle problem as it is a boxing issue
But as you say. "At this point"
When attrition is real. And only likely to get worse, unless for some unlikely reason TLP's get merged into Aradune.
The incoming player is rare now. Far more likely is that you get returnee's.

But are you suggesting that if the boxing rules were relaxed in any way that lots of single or 2 boxers would jump to 6?
I did advocate 3 myself, IF any change at all. I'm just saying that I believe that would be enough for those that wish to box more, without overdoing it. I also believe most that wish to 6 or mass box probably already do, or play elsewhere.
I'm not convinced personally that people will jump to 6 or more, though I can only of course speak with certainty for myself.

But, lets take this scenario and say for arguments sake the rules are altered and people do start 6+ boxing, what is it you imagine would change for the server?

In previous era's I would very much agree that they are potentially harmful and occasionally distasteful.
I guess we all saw what happened with M'shas in Qvic, and other places like Sirens, Cazic Thule and I'm sure many other places we never dreamed of.
TSS onwards however I'm not so sure.

In current era and going forward, I choose to believe that opening up more content to most players by relaxing boxing rules a little would be of overall benefit to the server.

Though I wouldn't go as far as the OP with 6, as I think 3 + potentially 3 mercs or 3 other chars from other people is enough, duo is often to little from previous experience.

If we aren't going to change it to six, or just get rid of the Truebox entirely, can we change it down to one? I am tired of getting reported when I'm on autofollow... I don't really pay attention to tells/say when im messing around grinding spells, and one of these days that GM is gonna catch me while I'm medding and /gasp afk getting a drink or doing work on the other screen, and i'll end up banned.

I would like to see the 2 box limit increased to 3 or 6. As the population declines and groups become harder to find, it becomes less appealing to log in just to sit LFG for the limited time I am on each night.