Hello all, Very simple thread directed to those affected by the issues at the Antonius Bayle server. Many players just want to play the damn game but are very disoriented with the current situation. Please let us know if you doing the transfer to Vox or not so we have a better picture of what's going on.
Very few AB players will move to Vox. And pretty much all, or close to all raid players are not moving. Moving to Vox would be an incredibly dumb thing for the raid guilds to do, it's that simple. The "offer" of a free move to Vox (but we have to pay to return to AB if it is ever fixed) is really insulting. So I think you can expect that hardly anybody from AB will be moving to Vox. People are quitting EQ rather than move to Vox.
I have a character left on Vox. Yeah, it's a quiet place. A tight-knit guild that relies on itself could do quite well there. If you rely on the greater economy then yeah I can see a pitfall if not enough others come over. Vox would be pretty easy for newcomers to become the majority population on though, a USA-based Euro play dominated server. The other aspect is... call the bluff and all of you move to Vox. What would make sense to me is offering the free moves to Vox, with a stated "we will open up free transfers from Vox back to AB for a short time if/when the backend fixes occur and succeed".
A move to Vox is not an option, I have lots of friends in other guilds some of which aren't playing at the moment, unless we all move together none of us are moving at all. Therefore sticking with AB until the new expansion comes out, if AB is not in a fit state to play by then I will be looking for something else to do with my time. Which may entail moving on mass to another game, so we can still play together.
I also doubt many players will move to Vox. Makes no sense for Euro guilds to move there, if there is not a Euro population you could recruit from. I guess players will quitting rather than move to vox. Happend already...
For me, I would not move ever to VOX, the reason is that it would require my guild also to move since i raid. Second lov population on VOX. I would lose my entire network.. And would have to pay to come back.
As Adroxia said: Hardly anyone will be moving i think, at most some players that have no real ties to the AB community might. Some raiders are very vocal here on the boards, but so far no (raiding) guild has given any indication of willingness to move - much less so to Vox. Just think of the practically non-existant recruitment pool. This would have made so much sense, yes. It might be too late for that now though - this would have been welcomed a few months ago. lol... far too negative! That's the spirit! solidarność !!! And i am happy to say: IF (yes i know, it is a big "if") things stay the way they were yesterday, then the immediate crisis could be considered overcome. So there wouldn't be much reason anymore to move anywhere in the first place.
I don't think that person was insulting Vox. They are saying they would rather play another game than to uproot themselves than to move to another server.
Not so sure, there have been many calls that if forced merge were to take place, for it to happen with The Rathe, and not with Vox. Some of the reasons listed (not necessarily in this thread) is that because Vox doesn't have any rated raiding guilds. In other words, no one to poach from should a guild decide to move over to Vox. But my reply wasn't specifically toward Zaph, it was toward all AB that have come here and bashed Vox, when Vox did nothing to AB, other than being on the receiving end of an ill-conceived decision by the folks at DBG to offer something to bandaid the problem going on with AB. I am just tired of the constant put downs of Vox, and the talking about us like we are some sort of diseased inbred cousins when we are being referred to by our AB brothers and sisters. Treat us with respect...we have worked hard to do so for you. If we could fix your problem, we would. But we can't. We have worked hard to support your decisions to stay, and to welcome those who have decided to come over. Again, lay your frustration at the feet of DBG, where it belongs.
You seem to have some paranoid emotion that we are all talking about Vox and putting Vox down. Nobody is doing that. If any other server was offered in the same way, the answer would be the same. This is not about Vox. How much more can we make that clear. An offer to move us to another server for free, destroying our guild structures, our membership, and all our friends and connections who may not move ... well how can we ever accept such an offer? The Vox part is irrelevant to us AB players. The offer is simply insulting - they will move us for free to another server, as individuals. And then one day if they fix AB, we have to pay to move back. Can't you see that no matter which server was chosen, that offer is a complete /rude to every AB player that cares? This has nothing to do with Vox, its population, or the guilds, or anything. No euro raid guild is going to move to a server with a tiny non-existent euro population. No euro group player is going to do that when most of the server plays at different times. It's just utterly stupid to choose such a move, unless you're a complete solo player with no interest in anyone else. It's no surprise hardly anybody is choosing to take up this offer. It's really not about the destination server whichever it was. Even the Rathe server only came up in desperation, it's still an impractical option. So really, don't think any of the AB players really care about Vox - we don't know the server, we have no desire to move there, or frankly any other server unless the entirety of the AB server moves as one. That is all.
Androxia, Then I am either having a bad day, or something. But from the outset of this thing, yes, there have been people that have been putting Vox down. If I have insinuated that this is the general attitude from all of AB, then my apologies. However, there are those that have claimed that Vox was dead (it is not) as being a reason for not wanting to go. There are also others that have stated that because Vox has no ranked raid guilds that they will refuse to go. Then others have the position of "anywhere but Vox." So, no, I am not being paranoid. Look, I have been in this discussion from the start, often dispelling myths about Vox. But I have also been working hard at supporting AB with their stand to make DBG do the right thing and fix your server. It is the right thing to do. And I will continue to stand by AB and hope that this happens. But what if it comes down to a server merge with Vox? Will the Euro community refuse to come and establish themselves on Vox and turn it into a 24-hour active server, just because there is no large Euro population there already? What about those people I listed above, who state reasons for not moving over are due to no ranked raid guilds, or are in the "Never Vox" camp? If they refuse to log into Vox after a forced merge, won't that tear the guilds/community up as well? In other words, there needs to be some serious discussion for contingency plans made should AB not be fixed and you are forced to move to Vox (or another server, but probably Vox). While it is noble and right to make your stand, you don't want to be caught if the rug is yanked out from under you. So, yes, it IS about Vox at this point, because that is the only option DBG has given you right now.
Sadly the answer is very simple. If AB is not fixed, and they still refuse to move the entire server as a single community, then many will quit EQ. Or at least the raid guilds will cease to exist, maybe the 4 guilds might merge into 1 if enough still care. I would love them to properly merge the entire server with Vox, that would work, we have said it would work, they have still refused to do it. This is why it's nothing to do with Vox - it's entirely to do with moving the community together. At this point, we have zero options - the Vox option is not an option, for all the reasons dozens of us have explained. So we all are staying on AB, and letting the server and community die week by week at the moment. All of this could be solved if they move the community as one, as has been said multiple times. If they fix it soon, it may recover. It also may not. But if they do not fix it soon, then the euro population of raiders is going to shrink way more than it already has, and probably a whole lot will not bother with the new expansion and will seek fun elsewhere. It's sad, and I speak as a player since March 1999, but this is a complete joke right now. And no, it's not about other players, it's about the lack of response, the lack of serious options, and that it took 9 months before they truly acknowledged this and maybe started to do something about it. That trust in DBG is mostly gone right now, they are going to have to work very hard to get some of it back. The omens are not great.
Now going to give a few numbers.., and I can only take Magelo to crunch. There 3 level 105 warriors, best hps: 178k, ac 15621, second best is hps162k, ac 13782, third 162k hps, ac 13006. About 20 warriors on AB are better in stats than the best on VOX, and then add 10 more to better than the last 2 on VOX. Clerics even worse, and seems same for rest of classes. There some WHO have not registrated on Magelo, but I am going to take these numbers, and lets say there 2 raiding guilds, and each got 5 warriors. Thats 10 persons: As I see, those more or less got type 2 Group armor from EoK. So any guild, if any, would have to fully equip those persons for like 6+ weeks, and with a new expansion coming out, there would not be time for that. It would be a impossible task to do so, also in regard to AA, 9 persons on VOX got above 20k aa, so people big lacking there as well. So if my guild leader one day came and say, transfer your char to VOX, then my first thing would be log on my account and cancel it. For Me, and I know 95% of the people in guild, its no choice. Now before you say: You rude, then ask yourself, you running around, you meet a totally stranger, who then asks you: Please help me and get me some new equipment..... Would you do that ? I wouldn't, I would not spend resources and my time doing so. But I would do that any time of the week for a friend. I raid with people I know, who I am good friends with, or people who are friends of my friends. When we get new people into the guild, it is some we have an idea what they are about, and they likely have grouped with some in the guild b4, and they already good equipped, so not a 2-3 months project for them to catch up.
If... If the main problem is that AB is in Europe and that causes issues with aspects that are in USA... Why not just launch a new server called AB USA and move everyone there?, with the statement of "Moving AB euro community to their own US based server. This is to eliminate that variable from the performance issues. Moving forward we will solve performance issues that remain (if any) on AB USA" Now, with modern tech... not sure we have to have a Euro-based Euro server really? But let's say we do: "Our ultimate goal is to move AB back to Europe, once we have tested various proposed fixes and issues with our European servers, we will launch a temporary AB Test server. If that succeeds, we will then move AB USA back" ...and (or alternatively) I would add: "an NPC has been added to AB server's PoK. Hail this NPC for a special token. This token allows that character a free transfer back to AB, allowing cost-free opportunity to try out the free transfer to Vox. Reasonable or crazy ideas? I dunno.
So, you are basing everything on Magelo? First, I am probably one of only a few out of my guild that use Magelo out of my server, and if you look at rogues on Magelo on Vox, it would put me as numero uno...and the only level 105 on the server. Which is far from the true status of rogues on Vox. Second, while I am still working on maxing my AAs (as I only started again in February after 6+ years off, and I don't grind 24/7 AAs), many, if not most, in my guild has 20K+ AAs. Third, the rest of your post is: It would be too hard work to bring people up to par to raid new content coming out. This makes me chuckle. While we aren't EoK raiding yet, we aren't sitting back saying, "You know, there is new content coming out, and we haven't caught up yet, so why don't we just give up on it, because we are behind the curve of everyone else." Nope, we are working our way up, bit by bit. And, yes, we may never be on par with what your standards are, we aren't sitting around doing nothing. Our guild, in particular, was actually looking forward to AB folks coming over...not so we could poach them for ourselves, but so we could learn to be better, to do better, and to reach more content ourselves. We were looking forward to having people that knew the content to talk to, to learn strat from, to help guide our family along the way. But what you are saying is basically...don't waste my time. And for your information, yes, we on Vox are pretty helpful to strangers. Our guild is pretty helpful to strangers. We take new people in all the time, especially returning players, and show them the ropes again, help get them gear, get them grouped up, etc. This is one reason why I don't grind AA all the time, because I am usually helping someone out with something.
What they should do is just create a new live server, give everyone the option on AB to move to ANY server, if you dont choose, you automatically end up there and they shut down AB. DB should also at that same time allow anyone on ANY server a one time free xfer to this new server. That would create a healthy population and a new place to play and form guilds. It worked with Stormhammer and it worked when they popped Morden Rasp. Sorry if I hijacked OP! Looks like it already was though!
Many thanks to everyone who took the time to answer and much respect to all the people from Vox... Sorry you were pulled into this mess.
