The effects of relaxed true box on Mischief and the next TLP

While I understand the draw of forcing people to play together for the sake of maintaining a strong community, the reality is that many folks would not be able to keep up at the current expansion cadence without some level of access to boxing. This becomes particularly relevant when you have drawn out quests for BiS items and even more so when your effective inventory size doubles around the time augments become accessible outside of raid content.

Early expansions I can see the draw for anti box rule sets, but for the reasons above and the previously mentioned attrition that occurs - it actually forces people out of the game because they find they don’t get enough accomplished when they can log in outside of established raid times.

There ARE solutions to this, but it comes down to how far development can go to remove the randomness / rarity of both raid and non-raid items people will want / need. Later expansions DO help with this already, but at that point boxing almost becomes a necessity to even complete anything.

This is the stage of the server where it's hard to find groups regardless of truebox or no. People are caught up, they are raid logging or just getting quests done and doing personal progression or farming.

OP sounds like they would be happier on one of the servers like quarm, but just realize that when you take away boxing you turn EQ into 1 big LFG waiting room and you are 100% reliant on others in order to progress.

I'm all for Relaxed trubox, but it has opened the door to 3rd party program using automated boxers. If you go through any old SoF zones and walk around you'll come across 2-3 afk botters in every zone. Even Lichen Creep has afk botters in it farming the shaman weapon. It's blatantly obvious by just watching them for about 15 seconds. Or the wonderful moment when you're fighting something and their robot puller runs up and stands directly on your mob for a few seconds then runs back to their predetermined location.

Boxing doesn't necessarily ruin the game for me, but walking around seeing a bunch of 3rd party program using cheaters go unpunished does. I know even my guild has quite a few people in it who stopped grouping and just afk bots for their experience.

The relaxing of truebox has little to nothing to do with botting. People who are willing to take the time to set up bots do not mind one bit having to run those bots on multiple computers. The bots were there before truebox was relaxed, maybe you just didn't notice them as much, but they were there.

Its also severely hypocritical of you to complain about all the cheating that happens and goes unpunished, and in the same breath talk about knowing people within your own guild that are cheating. You could report them if you are so sure they are botting, right? Help make sure the cheating does not go unpunished? Perhaps not...

How do you know I dont? I report people all the time when I see them AFK botting. I don't think it's hypocritical at all, but last I checked I don't think DPG accepts discord voice chat as a reportable offense. Just because I'm in a guild with someone doesn't mean I'm best friends with them and my thoughts on cheating changes. But thank you for your sarcastic, assumptive response.

And yes, botters were there before truebox was released. However, truebox opened the door for many people who were too lazy or didn't want to set up multiple PC's or VM's to do it.

If you don't think botting has increased dramatically over the past few months on mischief, you're deluding yourself.

Like Atomos said earlier, I haven't noticed too much difference; at least from no true box anyways.
People who box still box; it is just on the same machine now.
There are probably some people that box a few more accounts now that they don't need all the hardware, but I don't see it being that big of an impact on anything.
This is just my opinion though.

I think it is a combination of other things; this expansion we are on, the release of LS (players going to Live to play it), and it is the holiday time of year.
Isn't this month usually the slowest time of year for players?

Baz is pretty full most of time.
550 to 650 traders the other day before servers went down.
Chat channels still over filled.
I see toons everywhere, and I play alts ranging high 60s to 85.
I know these aren't conclusive answers, but they are indications all the same.

About the only thing I notice is how slow the lag pile is at random MGBs in the GL, but I feel that is do to the lag pile splitting/shifting again.
I've noticed more and more MGBs right outside the GL in PoK, and at the small bank.
No idea why...I always preferred the big bank area, but it is what it is.

Seems like you are more aligned with p99 philosophy than the offerings here.

I'd actually like to see the boxing rules done away with, period. It's clear there isn't the effort to do any serious enforcement on this issue. Time and time again, you see it on Oakwynd (and prior servers) with big boxing crews dominating zones, clearly running automation and nothing is done. All the restrictions really do is to hamper players who play by the rules - and when those rules are relaxed you are seeing the effect. Players really do want boxing at the end of the day.

Asking for Everquest to monitored and "specifically attentive" is a non-starter. The level of abuse on this particular issue has gotten worse over time, not better. It's clear the TLPs are a money making opportunity for certain groups that can farm items en-masse, run AE groups, etc. Asking DBG to spend a bunch of resources on policing this issue probably defeats the entire point of running TLPs, which is after all to make money. And besides, this isn't Daycare.

No, I'd prefer they get rid of these rules and just level the playing field with the people that aren't interested in following in them in the first place.

I would like to see a new tlp with no Krono. It is subbed only and has actual guides taking action.

Did you go through the "proper channels" and report them? Heh. I bet they do this 24x7 and answer GM tells too. Oh how has technology advanced in 20 years...Come to Oakwynd, and unless you are blind you can see bot armies err truebox players

Sounds like you would be happier on an server like p99 or quarm.

They are cool but the nostalgia quickly wares off when you realize that guilds just dominate xp camps for their friends and other guild mates and you end up LFG for countless hours on end while trying to slowly solo whatever mobs you can find.

The time of classic EQ that everyone remembers was cool but it's over and we live in a different world now.

People have jobs and responsibilities but still want to experience EQ, that's why boxing is critical.

Basically if you are against boxing you lack fundamental understanding of how this game works and envision a world where everyone has unlimited playtime and is willing to sit with you for 10000 hours so you can camp an item for your character.

I am not against boxing I am against automation. Played on Rizlona, some very nice folks there and I understand why it is done. I even did a duo box in the past. The issue is the automation for me.

No...

Grouping in Mischief was slowing down pretty good by OoW. I left 1 week before DoDH came out, and came back to 2 weeks into it. I was off of work and I spent a lot of time logged in during off hours and primetime. The LFG tab at most had 1-2 people otherwise it was empty. I left my lfg up, talked in general and over a course of a week I got 2 groups. One was half of a group that broke up because we couldn't get more people and the 2nd time was a full group the tank died getting to the zone then disbanded.

Mischief only has a "high population" because of the insane amount of boxers on the server before the relaxed true box. And the casuals that are like a revolving door that gets on by stuff play for 2 hours, then log.

Well this is why I state they need to improve the UX. The original formula only works when people group up. If they cannot they box, so it is the design not the players. The game is at its best at launch of a tlp and thats about it.

Plenty of talk against boxing, but I've done every mission and probably 3/4 of the hunters and have yet to be impeded by someone botting/boxing. In fact I've had a more peeps boxing help me and make the game more enjoyable

I would like to experience a server that has absolutely no boxing, and no krono functionality.

In order for either of these to be successful though, let alone both on the same server, you would have to go back in time when gaming expectations were different, when the gaming community was different. We communicated differently with each other using less effective/efficient tools, and many of us played the game differently than we do now.

So while it is nice to think about, it would not be popular.

That 98% of you who don't play with families? That number is much lower -- you have to include more than just single gamer households: many of us share the same internet through not only individual homes, but through duplexes, trailer parks, schools, university, dorm, business, cafe, libaries, etc. Your risking the disconnect or flat out denying connection to a lot of people by 'enforcing' login per "location."

There is no time in which boxing hasn't been part of EverQuest. An uncle got me into EQ when I was a teenager back in 1999, that uncle was a very hardcore, like 8-12 hour a day player back then, I was much more casual.

By the time Kunark launched he had 4 computers in his den, 4 big 21" CRT monitors and 4 keyboards. He was not tech savvy and didn't even imagine there could be an easier way to box, but he was playing 4 at a time. By the end of Kunark he had Epic 1.0 on the CLR and Warrior in that crew.

He had a close friend who also boxed a few characters the same way he did, between them they could have a full group at any time with just the 2 of them. At least a few other people in their raiding guild were boxers as well. That's literally at the very beginning of the game's history.

By the time Luclin came around boxing was prevalent throughout the entire game. Remember the design of the Bazaar actually encourages you to have multiple accounts, since being able to sell there ties one up. I'd say by the end of PoP most people I knew either had at least 1 other account, or had at least tried out running a 2nd account--many were running 3-4 accounts or more.

This exactly. Allow is boxer and ban macaroni quest.

I can get behind this once the backend is encrypted and all API is removed.

I was hoping truebox when it came out was going to get people to play together more. But instead you have a bunch of plat/Krono farmers running around with 2 groups worth of boxes. So people went out and got potatoes to run EQ on. I have been trained so many times buy that one box that hits a wall or does that running in a circle and loses bard invis cause they are trying to find a named they can poach. That was probably the #1 topic about a month after Mischief came out "What POS computer can I get to box with?"

I just wish they would perma ban people running 3rd party stuff if they are a habitual offender. Once or twice a year they clean up and people get a 7 day ban. Than they are back to doing it again, because what's a 7 day ban when they are making tons of $$$ doing RMT. I know a guy that boxes 12 characters from the back of his semi... Yeah cause having 12 computers in the back of one is legit...

This is what I'm asking for and I just read posts from four other people all asking for a no box TLP server. It's the future for the game's long-term success or it will die with the boxing krono farmers. I want to actually group with other players and actually have a guild. The way the game always was before the boxing ruined it. Right now they have this flawed idea that removing true box is a good thing as the servers progress. That's why I don't play on any TLP servers. It's the opposite ofa good idea. That's exactly the opposite of what makes a good server. If we knew there would be no boxing on a server we would play there knowing that we can form guilds and that nothing is gonna change. We'd know that krono farming boxers aren't gonna ruin the server and it would be the most social TLP server. People would want to group and guilds would be important like they always were before boxing ruined it. We need a TLP no box server like ASAP before long-time fans like myself just give up on EQ. The only problem with the game right now is boxing. It makes grouping and guilds irrelevant and that was always the key thing about EQ that made it fun. Without players grouping and without guilds being needed the game is trash. It will be reserved for boxing krono farmers until it dies. The only reason I'm not subd is that all of the TLP servers allow boxing. It's really a shame that this has gone on for soo long. Right now is the time to create a no box TLP and I guarantee the devs wouldn't regret it after they saw what happens and people like us are there playing and subscribing.