Pretty much the title. Does pretty much everyone multibox in this game now? If so I'll pass. It saves a person time and effort leveling up sure and I know this game is pretty tough in that regard... also that it is an old game... but it is an rpg. It kind of kills it for me. It just ruins immersion for an 'rpg'. Never liked the idea of boxing.
Not everyone, but many. I don't, at least not on this playthrough, but I am in no special hurry and I am OK with LFG. Boxing is handy if you simply don't like waiting, want to be more "productive" with your logged in time, you and 3 friends want to do a raid, etc. I did it once, with 3 accounts, won't be doing it again.
Most players do but not all. You can still solo/molo or team up with other players but you might need a mercenary depending on the class choice and the difficulty of the content you want to do. Boxing does not really destroy immersion when you are used to it. It's just more challenging. The best thing would be to start with some RL friends. I recommend to play a tank or a pet class if you do not want to box. Remember that EQ is a hardcore MMO where you get nothing for free but with mercs it is ALOT easier now. They got introduced with the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. Another advice is to get All Access and play on a true box progression server where boxing is not allowed.
Plenty of single account players in EQ, including me. The successful single account player needs to join an active guild and be proactive about forming groups. It can definitely be done.
i played a tlp server from start to finish and now i am on a live server and getting into the new expansion. on tlp, especially when you get further into the expansions ( say after TSS or even a bit later ) probably 50% of the people box at least 1 character. On live ( at least from being on the AB server ) a lot less. The tlp is easily explained though, since when you get deeper into a server, there are a lot less people to group with. On the other hand, the boxers that are remaining are usually very social and helping the rest to get through all the flagging or getting xp each time when you ask.
Another thought on not boxing - if you actually sub and have access to journeyman mercs, the only thing you'd miss by staying pure molo and never even trying to group would be the group based stuff that has the 3+ player group requirement. Again, that is if you are dedicated to never grouping and staying pure solo/molo. The lower levels are deserted, but they go by so quick. I am at the first third of the Blightfire Moors part of the Hero journey, and already 27...splitting exp with my merc. By the time moloing gets stale, you'll be in the level range that is actually populated and grouping is easier. Boxing is not a requirement. Seriously.
Boxers is probably what keep the game alive................. being a good player help to get into groups . learn your class . there are many links . join a bigger guild , easier to get a into a group from guildies, they are usually looking for guildies before asking in /general chat.
Seems to me that most competent, max level players are boxing. Full-on automated botting is rampant and in the open as well. Pipe dream: 64 bit client enables multi-account play per instance. Reliable autofollow, character scripting support, etc.
I held off from boxing for a long time. In TOV I finally gave in and created another mage. I love it.
Well you can come to Agnarr. It's truebox, so anyone boxing has to run one computer per character, no virtual stuff. It's small population but has at least 4 raiding guilds, and though people box, there are always people LFG and boxers will often drop a box to let in a live player. Because we're small population we are very friendly, to encourage new people to come and current people to stay. Despite Daypaws efforts to kill us, we are invinceable At least we haven't been vinced yet.
My main is a bard. I am too stupid to box effectively, it always feels like I needed at least 2 arms more.
I run into a lot of people on normal live servers who do not box. I enjoy playing 3-4 accounts at once myself. So, sometimes I do that. Other times it is more relaxing to just play 1-2. It depends on mood. Sometimes I will power level others for company as well. To be honest, I don't really know of any MMOs that aren't boxed to some extent now days. A lot of people value their limited play time and having to sit around LFG for an hour sucks.
It depends a lot on the class. If you don't want to box, do not play a class that molo's poorly. BST, NEC, SK, Etc do extremely well with a merc. Playtime has a a lot to do with it as well. If you only have 45 minutes to play, you might want to box because you don't have time to LFG. Same with low population hours like the morning. If you regularly log in the evenings and play for several hours with an active guild, and play something like a bard, CLR, tank or any other class well, you will likely not need to box. Then for some boxing is a choice. A playstyle. I like to do quests/ACH (partisan, collections, hunter), and often play at 9am est on weekdays, sometimes for only 45 minutes and hate to LFG. I box to keep things moving on my schedule. One really nice thing for me, as I box Mag, ENC, CLR, in the evenings, I play the toon that is needed (preferably the ENC). But if the group needs a cleric, I play the cleric. Since I level my alts with my main, they are all ready to go. So no, you don't need to box, but you do need to be understanding of a group based game and what you can't do without a team.
The boxing is game-breaking. People would rather do the quests alone or with their script team and task add a new player than work to teach and play with a new player, and then they pretend that by filling the group with all of their characters they are doing other players a favor. They box so that they don’t have to split loot, gearing their army of bots faster, and then sell the augs or gear to normal players who can’t find a group or get an open camp at ridiculous prices to feed their 6 box habit like it’s a job. And why can’t normal players get a group or a camp? More than 50% of the server at max level is running enough accounts that they don’t have to join others or form groups. It was a negative feedback loop for the past 2 years of people boxing because they couldn’t get a group and it becoming more difficult to find a group because people were boxing. In comes Terror of Luclin, the most rapid decline in player population since launch I have witnessed in all of my years of playing and within 1 month you can’t even get a PuG to farm collectibles. Last summer I was showing a returning friend the newest expansion at prime-time EDT on the weekend during summer vacation and we counted 6 players across all zones. 5 were 6 boxing, two of those clearly afk, and one was 30 boxing. This is on the highest population live server, FV. At the rate we are losing players you can expect the same numbers in ToL only because the headshot-able mobs are easy and fun for rangers like when frontier mountains was current. Do yourself a favor and don’t get attached once you finish the quests and group missions, if you even want to go that far. At $55 for 1 month of game time and the newest expansion I would rate this game 4/10 for 20-40 hours of gameplay and only now at the peak population of the expansion because in 4-6 months this game will be a ghost town.
I would also like to add that I am likely the best geared, most progressed rogue on the FV server with hundreds of millions of plat and exclusive limited time items so it does me no favors to have to warn people in a game that I have so much invested in but if I were new to EQ all over again I wouldn’t play this game and I don’t think people should be misled.
This is not true. The majority of players on Luclin who box only 2-3 box. They do it out of necessity for various reasons, mine personally being my playtime primarily. The number of people 6-boxing is far less than the number of people boxing to support grouping and helping others, and the number of people AFK boxing is even fewer. Sorry if you are having a problem on your server or in your specific instances but your perception is skewed probably because you are on FV. I spent 2 hours the other night working on pottery and the entire time I was talking to a new player from EQ2 who had asked questions in general and I pulled him into /tell and eventually group to help him. I also regularly suspend mercs for players and would rather have the company. The number of times I didn't need to drop a box because the group wasn't full is vastly more frequent than the number of times I wouldn't drop a box because I was trying to complete a specific objective. I can assure you that there wasn't a line of people wanting to go back to ToFS last week with me, and I'm not going to ask for charity, but my boxes were happy to tag along. For me, boxing is about necessity, not greed, and my boxing has definitely helped more people than it has hurt by a large margin.
I recently started back on Mischief. I have 3 accounts, two I had boxed with all of the time. This time - I'm not boxing at all. Just a single character/alts on one account. Been the most fun I've had on any TLP so far. I just found that boxing often killed the fun for me and the game became like work. So due to that, I've been grouping up a lot with random PUGs and guild groups. I would say that 40% of the time or so, someone in the group has a box or OOG helper. But the majority seem to be bringing just one toon along to group.
You don't "have" to box, but if you don't you better play on a high population server and have a very outgoing personality, because you are going to need to join a guild and make a lot of friends (who most likely all run full box groups and don't really "need" you). If you do this you will find regular groups after awhile, but you have to put in the work first. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother with EQ.
