On TLPs, duping is not a problem at all

Let's be honest.
TLP is not a fundamentally stable service. it is literally a temporary server.

YES, If say a live server is a tumbler, a TLP is a "disposable paper coffee cup" which you will throw away shortly.

- Every 8 or 12 weeks, the value of your items converges to 0.
- most users leave after their favorite expansion eras, it's generally for a few months, a year at most.
- most of the time it is a game where you only raid with your guild members according to a set raid schedule.
- Toons will be merged to one of live servers, which TLPers will never play on. (Toons are to be abandoned literally)

There is no competitive content between users in EQ, so no matter how many PPs and items others have do not affect you at all. Trading is only a small portion, which you can live without, in this game.

Massive release of PP to TLP is only bad for those who want to buy Kronos with PP, and may actually be a good thing for the rest. There are things that require PP from NPCs, such as buying reagents or spells. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have more PP than before by selling Kronos?

Roll-back? What happens to people who raided during the rollback period? They're having to throw away 1/8(or more) of the raids they can, which is really really a serious problem.

You have a point, i was thinking earlier, if they don't try to fix this then at least players and guilds will probably never need to worry about reagent cost again for thhe most part.

There are also lot of customers who invest significant extra money into TLPs for an enhanced experience and im guessing this is the demographic that will be most disenchanted by this event.

The current plan seems to be "Let's not admit officially that it ever happened and see if people forget about it"

At this point it's become a rather interesting drama that i can at least draw some entertainment from seeing how it unfolds.

They (regardless of owner) have always kept this type of info in-house. I doubt it has anything to do with a "they'll just forget it" policy. Time has shown that EQ players are willing to dig up things for decades ago if they think it will prove their point. Nothing gets forgotten.

Every 8 to 12 weeks value of items DONT converge to zero.

Seriously, where do these odd ideas originate???

The economy was actually a fairly engaging and lively part of EQ's lifecycle in the earlier eras, with Luclin being near the peak with the addition of the bazaar.

Ultimately, only a small portion of a TLP's population is there to do each raid 8 times while it's in-era and then move on. A lot of the value-add is being back in that era where platinum mattered a lot and governed your capacity to interact with other players. There's something to the idea that you can't kill a dragon but you can go farm giant helmets and swap them for dragon loot with a team of people that can. There's something to the idea that instead of farming all your own tradeskill mats you have your own way to get money and buy what you need from other players. There's something to the idea that taking platinum donations for ports or KEI casts lets you build towards getting some chase items. There's something to the idea of getting super excited about a rare drop not because it's an upgrade but because it holds a lot of economic weight and you can swap it for things that are upgrades.

"Well the economy is nuked but raids still work so who cares?" rings super hollow. If they simply disabled raids 95 % of the content would still be there but people would understandably be very unhappy. A lively economy is the lens of engagement for a lot of the playerbase and a *much* more significant draw to the TLP environment than "You can do Emp Ssra back when you actually needed a team to do it". Stripping that away, especially during the particular era Oakwynd is in, is devastating.

If TLPs are just supposed to be in-era raid tours and not full-featured in-era EQ experiences then they should just do away with all the character-building aspects pre-raid and let people spawn T1 raid geared toons.

I have a feeling a lot of the more hardcore players would be shocked at how average the average player is, and just how far it is from what they consider average.

It will make things marginally less convenient for a little while, but that's pretty much it.

It 100% is relevant having a decent economy for new players Otherwise everything is wildly inflated and completely out of reach for them.
That armour piece that was 250pp is now 25,000 pp. That Krono that was 100k is now 1 million plat. That player that saved for ages to buy something legit now have to save 10x the amount.

It has a lot of people up, especially on a server like Mischief where everything is droppable so you can sell your old raid gear etc. Krono is intrinsically linked to pp and had a stable cash value in the background.

actually, it is designed to be "raid-tour". 8/12 week timer proves it.
and ppl here asking extra exp/loots understand the concept quite well.
it is not a surprise, if you know Previous version of TLP was Progression Server, which unlocks next expansion when final raid target is killed.

of course, i am totally against at this kind of service concept.

as for new players, i see no difference. new players can sell their krono for 1 million PP and pay 100x PPs for items.
basically, there is nothing stable on TLPs, even your toons get outdated every 8/12 weeks, which is quite fast speed.

It's wild to me that someone would publicly post something that says, "I have no idea how this or any other mmo work"

Economies are extremely important for casual and hardcore characters. You are suggesting everyone get used to buying krono to sell for plat (to the dupers) and many people just dont. They either dont have the money or don't want to spend money on the game beyond a sub or don't want their only option to sell krono to the clowns that took advantage of this. Stop trying to let Daybreak off the hook.

for me it was. . goodbye eq . im not gonna play a game that handles a thing of this magnitude with .. just a short patch..and no rollback

I didn't write this because I didn't understand the game economy or thought it wasn't important. Think about why I added “On Tlps”.

Generally, the game economy is important. However, TLP is a service that is neither general nor normal. EQ is an expansion-based service, and expansions bring significant changes in items or in-game money. The change repeats every 8/12 weeks. it is like playing a series of different games which last 8/12 weeks each. yeah, TLP is basically designed to bring massive changes in items and economy in a short period.

Do you have any aversion to RMT? The largest age group of EQ players is likely to be in their 30s or older. Back in 1999, you might have had more time than money, but now it's the opposite. Would a casual player with only a few hours a week decide to collect looted PP to buy FBSS? No, you have a lot of money and little time, it is more efficient to buy krono and pay for FBSS. And this only costs tens to hundreds of dollars at most. cheapest entertainment.

Frankly, from my point of view, it seems even more weird that people expect something stable in a super duper unstable service.

Heh how screwed is the economy on any server now? I guess there's little excuse not to do some merging now. The only reason I've seen people opposing merging is that it could possibly skew the economy of their favorite server(s).

You forget, don't understand or don't care how integral a healthy economy is to a healthy server community.
If you can dupe to buy krono, why pay real cash for krono at all?
If you can dupe to get plat to buy krono, why farm for an item to sell for plat to buy krono?
If there is no challenge or barrier to entry to obtain an item, what value is there for obtaining an item?
RMTers still have to sell their krono to someone who actually want's to pay real cash for it.
And if no one is willing to pay real cash for krono, all your powerleveling and casino services go out the window. (What other use do they have for all the krono they make?)

TLP is a PAID for service. It's not free to play, and as such I think there is a reasonable expectation that it not treated like a "disposable paper coffee cup" by Daybreak from those that spend $$ to play on it. A lot of people paying for this premium service - are only doing so to play on TLPs, and don't care about the latest live environment at all.

A few things to note:
It's not just the dupe issue wrecking the economy that gets people upset.
The flagrant automated boxer hoards that dominated numerous zones - selling AE power-leveling services, dominating certain key spawns (like epics), or en mass killing most of a zone. This culminated in a long period of time where Siren's Grotto sat with numerous of picks of duplicate, automated - 18 unguilded, level 60s killing major sections of the zone seemingly 24/7.

What's clear at this point is Daybreak is treating the TLPs as this expected windfall of revenue. They repeatedly come up with a TLP with some minor rule changes, and then cut it loose with very little monitoring. A certain number of people "come back" to play - re-activating or creating new accounts. And then a whole industry of botters come in and suck up as much gear and space as possible, to sell services and goodies for krono to these players - who have to compete for said items against them. Whether Daybreak turns a blind eye to this because of the extra $$ coming from this players, or just general laziness - I don't know.

But, this is just the latest in a long line of this kind of thing. And it's certainly a black mark coming into the 25th year of EQ.

Your understanding of a TLP economy is incredibly bad. Plat becoming nearly useless is so negatively impactful, that I don't even know how to begin to explain it to you. It's like you don't understand what the color purple is and trying to explain a rainbow.

The problem is that when plat becomes so over inflated then everything starts selling for either Kronos or is deemed worth not selling at all.

I would recommend Daybreak to take a look at persons who say it is not a problem.

Likely they might have been involved.. one way or another.

Also disallow trans away from server, as that would spread the currency problem to other servers.

Make rollback on servers who got abnormal transfers in the last 10 days, where the problem has been.

If dont,you risk breaking eq in a fundememtal way.

In which you might have eq end....