Please consider limiting how long a player can remain logged in when afk. Trying to do tradeskills or anything else in PoK is miserable due to the lag there. I know you can do them other places but this is where the vendors are. I would bet that 75% of the people logged in at any given time are afk for 2 hours or more.
In the settings menu you can find an option to hide AFK people, pets, mercs and such. It hides their character model and leaves the name tag. Even if not to prevent lag, it's really nice to hide mercs because who wants to see a bunch of mercs doing nothing?
I agree with ^ you can change your settings rather than 75% of the players getting bumped offline cause you have lag? There is a timer in game for a sequence that affects your merc setting that is tied to auto AFK so I think what you want would interfere with that: In your options if you scroll down to the left side and check the box to "auto afk on" then you will go afk after a period of time. And then if you have the box checked for the "auto merc passive" it will go passive when you go auto afk.
A whole lot of the lag in PoK is sort of outside player control. Ngreth several years ago completely fixed PoK lag for two glorious weeks by removing all the redundant tradeskill vendors and guildmasters. Players exerted their collective will to force their return, re-ruining PoK for the rest of forever. Yay for player agency.
All the tradeskill stuff could be moved to a second tier of PoK with a direct zone connection that is called Plane of Crafting. It could be just a zone copy or a smaller variant of PoK without the library and the good and evil areas. Having two or three of the same class trainers is also to much (good, neutral, evil). However it would change PoK drastically.
I like that idea, I tried to make my beehive house my crafting place. The problem with that is all the vendors in pok by the small bank are not there. There is not a banker (besides my time limited AAbanker) in my beehive. If you could do that it would be great. Heck use the OLD bazaar, its already a model made. Just toss in some vendors (include that genie guy in stratos so i dont have to keep going there) . The most important thing about this MAKE A DOOR FROM INSIDE YOUR GH TO IT!
That's a good idea - I would prefer that the spell vendors in the library itself become a separate zone and that the class trainers are removed (or reduced to one per class - these could be special grand masters that transcend race and good/evil). Or maybe it's just ONE skill trainer that transcends classes as well! I was one of those that was very disappointed by the PoK change that was made several years ago and would rather see the vendors in the lower part of PoK left alone.
For those that have ever done TS's in Beta, there is a Craft Hall model that exists. Removing a few vendors in the main entrance and replacing them with the necessary TS vendors and porting that into live would solve the lag. Making it a non-merc, non-mount, buff-stay/non-buff, non-combat area would accommodate what players are looking for. Making it a non-buff area would discourage afk people.
I never do TS anywhere BUT PoK. Never had an issue with lag. It's probably your particular server that's the issue, not PoK, per se. Try the settings mentioned above, see how that works out.
Trainers do my characters no good as they maxed out long ago. Each has loads of training points and nothing to spend them on. Maybe eliminate all the redundant trainers and move the remaining trainers to the library. Adding a plane of crafting also sounds interesting.
On your server, is the PoK where everyone hangs out waiting for MGB buffs? It probably helps if those players are waiting in the GL rather than PoK. But I'm not sure how you'd get players to move from PoK->GL. One thing that might help is to lower the clip plane. The less the game has to render, the better the framerate. I don't think they should boot AFK players since there are lots of advantages to being logged in 24/7. One reason is that it helps the revenues of EQ. If people have to go through the hassle to log in every time, they are more likely to not bother and move on to other games. But if they are logged in 24/7, it's trivial to hop in and out whenever they have time. They will play more and be more likely to keep playing and stay subscribed.
What about a "Hall of buffing". New zone. Vast circular hall with pillows, couches and bars. Doors to Bazaar, POK and Guild Lobby. Main features of zone: Non-combat.Buffs do not count down.Extends buff range enough to cover zone.Extends buff duration by one hour.No NPC/Vendors/Trainers/Bank...No Trade Skill containers. If you wish to do Trade Skills while in the zone, bring your own container. If you have a combine that requires more slots than available in your portable container, too bad. POK is one zone away. If you don't have the portable container you need, too bad. Would boost the market for portable trade skill containers. The ability to go into offline mode here would be nice. Could be considered "Green" as it would allow players to shut down their computers while collecting buffs. And in the center of its spherical vaulted ceiling, hand a big disco ball
Yes Bernel, POK is the buffing zone. Between GL and tree on top of hot zone guy. Yes, moving the buffing activity out of POK would help. I have one account and login every play session as I leave my bazaar character in offline mode. It is only a hassle when the login server is acting up.
