Relaxed truebox - if you're against it... why?

You obviously didnt play aradune lol

One of the best parts of being a grownup is using money to my advantage in a hobby video game Lol.

The only time I was MORE happy to see a TLP launch than Rizlona was Fippy back 120512 years ago. But I box because I know how the road looks at the end of the block, I don't go to the first house and turn around again.

That server is literally still progressing. Every classic starting server is going to have people box camps and RMT. Just the way it goes but at the same time all the content is accessible to you still because they instance everything plus /picks.

-I gave up tryin' to make people do things a long time ago. If some smooth brain wants to spend 12 hours a day automating things in Lguk I'll throw him a Krono or 2 and go do other things in the game with the time I didnt spend sitting at some inane exp camp.

They were a minority. I answered why I'm against relaxing truebox as the thread asked. Why are you trying to whatabout with Rizlona? Nobody cares that 100 people played there compared to 1000s on Aradune. The stricter box servers always dwarf the relaxed servers.

i'm all for boxes... all the boxes people want.

reason... i know so many boxers, and they always help me and my guild do stuff that we would not be able to do without them. They allow us to easily do epics for people, backflag new guildies, or just help out with a quick quest.
Most of them also offer you a spot in their group if they aren't doing anything important.

and lastly, people will box no matter what, so why make it so hard for them? it certainly won't hurt those who abuse the system that we have strict truebox rules.

/blink

It is illegal in Cali to have volunteers provide work for your company. Guides will never be used for actual policing of other players. Guides to run the occasional social event or help answer in game questions for new folks? Doesn't really give the player any actual responsibility, they are just playing the game.

Weaponizing of reports is likely the primary reason why folks will never get a no-box server. It is naïve to think that all is fine because the CS folks just get to the bottom of things and ban the actual cheaters. First it assumes that humans are infallible, which we all know is untrue, but even if they were perfect, the time it takes for CS to wade through the sea of false reports to find the valid ones increases the time, and therefore cost, of maintaining that CS team exponentially.

For me, boxing adds to the social aspect of EQ rather than detract from it, allow me to explain:

I play on Agnarr. Regardless of what you think of a server that will not see any further content, Agnarr has an active and engaging community. That said, there are times when grouping can be difficult for individuals. When the server is largely asleep or a third to half of it's population are raiding, grouping would not occur without boxers. There are few of us that can solo the most popular places to exp, either to level our endless alt armies or pile AA onto our mains. It's there and then that the boxers save the day. While soloing those spots isn't truly viable, a duo or three box team can breeze though it. These teams are very welcoming to the individual player, to the point of kicking out their boxes as new people arrive, or ask to join, or seek a group in general chat.

Beyond that, there is Kunark, Velious and some Luclin content unknown to many, and again its here that the box teams shine. I know of over a half dozen six box teams that will happily start a raid to include people that want to tag along. It generally take s a six box team to down Seru or do the Cursed Cycle, and the people that have the toons and boxes to accomplish it, are always offering spots for the single player to join them.

My overarching point is that "boxing" is not the problem. Boxing is just a tool. Its the execution by the individual boxer that is at the root of most of the issues people seem to have. There are always going to be a minority of people that will abuse a system for what they perceive as a gain. So really, it's not boxers or boxing that is the problem. It is the activity and behavior of some people that is objectional. You may be able to have action taken against a specific activity, but you will never be able to regulate behavior. Some people just plain suck.

For full disclosure, I two box. The person I tend to group with most three boxes. We generally start our groups alone, but tend to finish with three or four other real people in the group.

1 account = 25 yrs of game play. TLP's will have to adjust to classic EQ's and unlock expansions at the normal rates. Guilds will become 200+ members being able to split raids @4. Smaller guilds will continue to diminish, and the servers just die off requiring a merger around POP era. For someone who has been here since Alpha/Beta i can tell you with these rule sets on TLPs it will be a small fringe minority that would want the classic EQ with 1 account enforced. Even back in the day people started to play 2 boxes approved for raids. It was because we could never get enough recruits, up to par fast enough. I am not saying anyone's ideas are bad, just you can't expect a new 25 yr server to survive these days.

Boxers on Rizlona were a minority compared to boxers on Aradune. Ok man, just say you have a blind hate for anyone who plays more than 1 character.

Rizlona currently has more active subs than Aradune does.

Rizlona and Aradune are the only 2 servers you can even compare this to since no live server has boxing rules and no other TLPs have simultaneously launched with diametrically opposed boxing rules to even try to evaluate this.

I don't think I've ever been vague about my stance that boxing is bad for the game and ruins servers other than providing funding to keep the company lights on. Not sure why you're shocked by this obvious revelation.

Well based on your post history you've posted:
4 times in the last 2 days
1 additional time this month
2 posts in Aug 2022
2 posts in April 2020
then nothing back to 2018, so you'll forgive me if I don't know your obvious anti box stance

Active subs and active individual people are 2 entirely different things in that respect.

I mean you do have the notable long time success of p99 to directly counter that claim. Regardless what a small subsection of super active/vocal pro-boxing posters on this board, who in most cases obviously never spent any significant time actually playing on p99, has to say about it in the process of trolling/derailing every thread whenever somebody brings that fairly indisputable evidence up.

I personally have zero doubts that if they gave the TLP split option of one server with relaxed truebox, and 1 server with no boxing, the no boxing server ends up attracting the most total individual players. And it likely wouldn't even be close. Now whether that actually makes more money, or isn't all but guaranteed to collapse in on itself after the first year, is an entirely different debate.

Agreed and well said. Also agree that it wouldn't even be close. I also think the no-box server would obliterate the box server. I even think if there was like an additional $20 or so one time "unlock", let's say for a "super premium server" that it would still have a larger population. The best thing it would do, though, is end the conversation with people that obviously have plenty of subbed accounts to login and agree with themselves on these forums.
Enforced single box is not difficult to enforce when only 1 box is allowed because it's trivial to determine if two or more accounts are played by a single person (and that's even allowing more than 1 per IP since that metric is useless anyway with vpns). This is why you will never see a named camp in p99 boxed. Possibly they can get away with in in obscure and different locations but it would never fly at camps that anyone wants which is why it's not worth doing.

You think a one time $20 fee is going to pay for the multiple CS bodies that will be needed just to police this one server? Every suspected boxer would have to be checked manually. People would weaponize reports and report folks for boxing just because they wanted the camp those folks were at. It happened on Aradune. DPG has seen what happens on a 2 box limited server, they know what their ability to police it looks like. They know they can't support it. If you want no boxing P99 exists. It is not a viable ruleset on an official server.

You think a one time $20 fee is going to pay for the multiple CS bodies that will be needed just to police this one server? Every suspected boxer would have to be checked manually. People would weaponize reports and report folks for boxing just because they wanted the camp those folks were at. It happened on Aradune. DPG has seen what happens on a 2 box limited server, they know what their ability to police it looks like. They know they can't support it. If you want no boxing P99 exists. It is not a viable ruleset on an official server.

Truebox is evil per ai

Absolutely, but what do you think EG7 cares more about? Total unique humans? Or total subs? As far as they care Rizlona makes them more money. Maybe aradune made more in its first year than Rizlona, we don't know that, but if the trend of soft ware as a service has shown, companies care about recurring revenue more than 1 lump sum upfront.

I would guess the actual tally math between the 2 probably gets a little muddy and isn't as straight forward there. At least given how utterly saturated the game is with pre-existing krono at this point, and which we can probably safely assume isn't being counted towards any internal 2023 revenue projections.

If new direct krono sales and cash shop purchases is the real needle mover factor, I'd take a no-box server to outsell a relaxed true box one as far as new krono goes. Likely by a significant amount as well after a relaxed truebox ruleset ultimately plays out to be an even worse driving idea to reignite interest in the game then Yelinak and Vaniki were last year. Now cash shop sales I'll take the box server all day.

I do think you hit on a good general point with the first year factor though btw. I mean how much does a post first-year venue projection of a server really matter to them within an business model where they ideal want to see a large % of the previous TLP population jump over to the new one? How much do players not making the jump actually hurt the next server cash grab bottom line projection? Now that I completely don't know what to guess

There are ways around this. That law is a non-issue.

It is an issue for DPG, or they would have done it already. Every MMO company would be utilizing free labor in their games if they could get away with it. Do you really think any MMO company worth their salt would be paying for something they could get for free?