Strawberry's visual aid is pretty helpful, and Rijacki is on the money about the zone disruption being a huge problem. Essentially, players will sell the Krono itself, or trade it for rare/hard to obtain items. The people who have the ability and resources to keep named camps on 24-7 lockdown will get these rare/hard to obtain items and sell them SPECIFICALLY for Krono rather than Plat, amassing larger stacks of Krono. In the process they have also driven up the base cost of an item effectively to whatever plat level matches the number of Kronos they're asking for. Take a boss drop on Firiona Vie server. It might go for 15-20 Krono depending on the class and rarity. 15-20 Krono is something along the lines of 16 million plat TIMES 15-20 Krono, valuing the item well over the 100m plat mark. This causes an increased desire in farming early-era TLP loot to turn over for fast Kronos (maybe 5 krono at most but quickly farmed items) so that they can get raid-ready on live. It seldom goes back into it's own economy, while disrupting the economy of said server.
If you're asking why it "ruins the game". Well, Shady farmer and Krono distort the game and the market. He distorts the game because he goes after high value items that other players now can't get, this is especially true on TLP where these Krono farmers are 24/7 camp squatters. What he also does is distort the market, before Krono there was only a plat-item exchange, with Krono there is now a plat-Krono exchange taking place, this devalues the relative buying power of people who don't buy Krono, and everything becomes too expensive for them.
Another thing about the Krono farmers I haven't seen people talk about is how they use guilds. Most of these Krono farmers reside on TLP. What they want is high value items to buy Krono. (either they exchange the item directly for Krono, or indirectly by selling the item for plat and buying Krono with the plat). Every item on early TLP is tradeable. The farmers tend to have a large box army to farm. But still, you're not going to be able to get the best items with a box army. What you really want is the power of a guild to do the item farming for you. Several of these "guilds" on TLP only pretend to be regular guilds, many are just Krono groups. And they recruit regular people, even though all the officers are really Krono farmers. They make all the high value drops go to them, and then you see them resell those after raids. That's how they increasingly get those high value items. Many players don't even know they are in a Krono farm guild.
Krono guilds leeching off their innocent, oblivious guildmates? My god stop it. Go see the sunshine. It's obviously been a while.
Sadly, before the Krono was added, selling items for real money was not as uncommon as it should have been. From what I heard and saw on FV, the seller would have the item listed on a website for $$ amount, it would also be in the bazaar for an absolutely impossible plat price. You would pay the real money, then they would make the trade in-game or they would have you sell them flasks of water for insane plat amounts to equal the price of the item on their bazaar trader. Having a buyer of plat sell them flasks of water for insane plat was also how they facilitated that trade. The RMT sellers got more brazen as nothing was done to the point they were in the most prominent part of the bazaar. It was one of the reasons I left EQ back then. I refused to pay real money for items. However, I couldn't get a 'class-defining' item that most groups required my class to have without giving in and paying the vultures. When LDoN offered an alternative to get something comparable, I needed to have it to be able to get groups in order to be able to have a chance to get the item they wanted me to have in order to get groups. I gave up when it started to look like there was no way to play without paying the 3rd party sites. Krono... at least the game company gets some money from the exchange :/ But it can still be zone disrupting. And no, it has absolutely nothing to do with jealousy on my part. I just don't think I should pay a 3rd party to play a game.
What? You're so full of s* your eyes are brown that you needed a "class-defining" item in the PoP/Ldon era to get groups....
The main reason why it ruins a game is that attaches a real world price to everything in the game. Usually, being the most time efficient path to achieve goals in a MMO. So items, achievements, leveling now are equated to how many hours at work it costs. Same premise with the WoW token and other forms of company authorized RMT.
Yeah, they just introduced "WoW tokens" on WoW classic. I don't play much WoW but I believe they are similar to Krono. The WoW community is using the scorched-earth technique to protest, going as far as Reddit's classic WoW forums allowing members to post any hack they want to cause chaos for Blizzard.
EQ has been behind other mmos since 2004 when WoW launched I would argue their graphic enhancements have actually been downgrades as well, putting EQ even further behind. Well deserved, with how ugly Freeport is.
Thing people don't understand is that EQ Mob is static, does not do anything, less unique then compared to classic, kunark. Classic kunark mobs have a cycle, purpose, mysterious, NOT STATIC AI what it brings not just chat, uniqueness, mysterious, mobs picking a pattern, "roleplay as a chef" "roleplay as such and such" Even games like Morrowind, is like classic EQ, NPCs have routines, purpose, mysterious. Not current EQ static bland boring nothing
Adding in AI to mix things up for NPC's isn't going to fix the problems with the game and draw in new users or help keep existing ones around.
Exactly which MMORPGs is EQ falling behind which it has not already been behind for a decade or more? AI are stupid and waste of resources.
Nobody gets it right all the time, but the thing is that most players don't complain when you get it right.
No. Prior to the launch of EQ2, while it was still in early development, they promised or were intending, for there to be an AI, that the NPCs would be able to discern player classes in the way players discern theirs and to modify their attacks based on that. The remnants of that is in the commentary some of the original mobs have like, get the cleric first, stop that wizard, etc. The SoEmote with VR-like emotes based on the player expressions and stuff with voice modulation to modify the player's own voices was something tried MUCH later. Some of it worked, some of it was disastrous, some of it was amazingingly waaaaaay before its time and that's why it didn't work well and wasn't adopted by many players who just didn't have the equipment on their own side to work with it. It was at least a decade ahead of what would have been workable.
But can you switch a human off and then back on like a computer? We all know you can switch a human off but the on switch doesn't work after they are off.
Afraid to get schooled by AI about EQ logic huh. EQ what it has been the lacking that other MMOs do better, roleplaying. MMO RolePlaying Game everyone is so serious about end game raids, getting to max level getting max collections. AI is needed to bring back in the roleplaying aspect of the game.
