Just a discussion about the super cool Rizlona server speeding up unlocks

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Batbener, Jun 2, 2020.

  1. Batbener Augur

    After making it to level 10 on Aradune and then not being able to log in again, I moved over to Rizlona and started three boxing, assuming I would just head back to Aradune once the rush settled down.
    The problem with three boxing is multi-fold. I don't want to go back to a world where I don't have all the utilities of my three box. In fact, there is a 99% chance I'll be 4 boxing soon. Grouping isn't an issue, because I, like everyone else, no longer need anyone, but that causes the population to be much lower than Aradune, which is fine, for now. It also means I will have to try and find stuff to do in a month once I am 50 and have all the level appropriate gear.

    To help stave off the natural attrition, and to make me happy, I was wondering what actual people playing on Rizlona think about moving the unlock timer to 2 months per or so?
  2. Healiez Augur

    I love boxing, and on past servers it has provided a ton of enjoyment for me. A few things that are fun to do.

    See how far you can push your little team. Me and my brother each 3 boxed on past TLP's.

    Can you kill hate mini's with your little team at 50?
    Can you break fear?
    later on in expansions what can your team do as far as old content.
    In kunark can you box naggy or vox? What about draco in fear?

    Pushing our team to the limit was the most fun I have ever had in this game, seeing what it was capable of was pretty crazy once we got rolling.
  3. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    I don't think you'd find too many people on Rizlona that would mind an expedited Classic, but I urge you to try to take some time to enjoy things on this server. Given the hate thrown at Rizlona by Aradune players, we may never see another boxing server again in EverQuest - which is deeply unfortunate.

    Instead, try to take the time to complete some quests in each era that you have not before. Have you ever done the Classic armor quests? Give it a shot, and maybe roll a new class that you haven't ever tried out before (to get the Class gear for). Have you ever struggled with maxing tradeskills? Give that a try here. Have you farmed your Hate or Fear armor? Plenty of time!

    Try to take some time in each era to work on a quest that you may not have finished on a previous server.

    Roll up two other boxes, or join forces with another small boxer, and take down Phinigel (if you aren't in a raid guild).

    Norrath is your literal oyster, there is no more exciting way to play EverQuest in Classic. You will have to perform more actions per minute than you ever would on one Class (possibly excluding Necro, depending on your boxes). You can find an immense sense of self satisfaction, which I assure you is even better when you find one good person you can click with and work towards making your two crews operate as a team.

    Please try to have fun! As I have told many a Rizlona player so far, I am jealous of you!
    Adonhiram likes this.
  4. HoodenShuklak Augur

    3 month expacs and churning out tlps definitely help keep middle expac servers hurting. It couldn't hurt to test 2 month unlocks, but its probably not likely with the current ones out.

    If they weren't willing to tweak miragul then it should be abundantly clear that server health is far, far down the list and probably not even on the list. Future servers maybe... but not current ones.
    Raptorjesus5 likes this.
  5. Lumiens Augur

    My feeling is that DPG makes the bulk of their money off the Classic-Velious time period on new TLPs so speeding it up would not be in their best financial interest
  6. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    The rate of attrition on boxing servers is generally lower than that of Truebox servers.

    Live servers, Ragefire & Lockjaw have been pretty good at holding players that box long term.

    So the decline you may have seen on prior Truebox TLP isn't going to be the same that you will see on Rizlona in my opinion.

    Even if Rizlona starts off with vastly fewer players to begin with it will still very likely outlast Aradune as Aradune will collapse faster.

    Come next year's TLP I fully expect a new Truebox server but I do not expect a new boxing TLP like Rizlona to be opened with it, that will hit Aradune's population way worse than it will hit Rizlona's.
    Adonhiram and KimchiGoddess like this.
  7. Healiez Augur

    I really wish there was a way to increase interest in the servers more long term, but there just isnt...

    The game gets REALLY fun around the TSS era (imo) there is more class identity and some really neat AA/spells. but the servers are usually really struggling by then, A new TLP or two has opened that has also pulled players away. Granted there are usually still a few functioning guilds, but the lack of player activity does somewhat take away from the experience.
    Skuz, Raptorjesus5 and code-zero like this.
  8. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    It's not the fault of the game so much as it is the way the players evolved.

    TL;DR - TLP players are just a big ole mixed bag and many start up on a TLP with their own personal end-point already mapped out and no interest of seeing the game beyond that.

    It's somewhat rooted in the nostalgia, right along with the fond memories of the early expansions are the burning embers of hate for whatever expansion it was they left during, that could have been due to them not liking the expansion or just the fact that their guild burned out right around when they quit.

    My own time on live I started out in a family guild that steadily polarised into two sets of players, the ones who played a lot & wanted to raid a lot more & the ones who played a lot less and weren't that keen on raiding, this same thing probably happened in a great many family/casual guilds and a lot of them simply ended up folding when their raiders moved on after outgrowing their old home and the remaining casuals had nobody to act as the "core" that was keeping their guild functioning.

    EQ over time became far less casual friendly simply because the casuals didn't play enough to hold their guilds together, then when they had only a few people clung too hard to their guild tag & didn't alliance or merge with other casual guilds, so the casuals gradually faded away, that's why the pick-up-group scene died a slow steady death, too few casuals to make it work, and the raiders didn't need it as they mostly grouped with other raiders, and almost always with their own guild.

    TLP Players are all individuals with their own goals & desires but roughly fall into a few collectives, sometimes more than one of these.

    Groupers:
    They miss the old days & the classic-PoP era is where they remember being able to find pick up groups.
    They will often claim that the servers die after PoP but only because by then the raiders are PuG'ing a whole lot less and by then are mostly grouping with guildies, that's the point at which even the most active casuals are already feeling left far behind by the raiders and are spending hours trying to find groups. Fact is with every TLP the point at which casuals are feeling left behind gets gradually earlier because players become increasingly less open to pick up groups and more inclined to stick within their guilds, even to the point of sticking to grouping within their clique within their guild.

    Open World Competitive Raiders:
    Only interested in seeing how fast they can kill stuff versus the competition on the server, a bunch of these are big fans of the open world races found only in the earlier expansions & they get their jollies from server firsts & from trying to keep spawns in their own window of opportunity, they'll work very hard to try & time their kills to effectively monopolise spawns of open world raid targets within their favourable times & will do a lot of playing at odd hours to eventually achieve that. Once raids go fully-instanced their source of open world amusement has gone.

    Expansion X stoppers:
    They only want to revisit their comfort zones, old stomping grounds, the places they have memories of.
    If they stopped before <insert expansion here> was opened on live they will probably stop there on TLP too.

    Expansion X afters:
    One of the smallest population on any TLP, these players stopped playing during <insert expansion here> and have an interest in seeing what happened in EQ after.

    Krono Farmers:
    Only here while the going is good, they'll use every dirty trick in the book & every exploit they know or can figure out to make a ton of platinum & use that to buy Krono, then they use those krono to fund their gaming on the server they actually want to play on. Krono Farmers are a diverse bunch, some will be newbs to Krono Farming, some will have friends who show them the ropes, some will be working for out of game businesses/RMT. A handful are decent folks, a lot of them are cuthroats and will roll right over regular camps and take named from right in front of them & won't even care they ruined your whole day's efforts to spawn that namer, they are only in it for themselves. Usually they vanish by GoD but a few have been known to stick around for a while after, annoying the hell out of a lot of people in the process usually.

    This post dragged on longer than I planned it to, but that's my take.

    I don't think there is too much the dev team can do apart from just continuing to try and make every expansion they bring out be the best they can.
    I think there is probably tons & tons of ideas they have they wish they had time to do & the money & people required.
    I wouldn't be surprised in fact if they really wanted to overhaul the entire game, new ui, new character graphics, hell a new 3D engine, but they can't as they have their hands tied.

    I do think they need to do something a bit more imaginative than recycling old zones with some new stories dressed over the top though, there's a lot of things in EQ they could mine for new expansion ideas, places hinted at & alluded to that have never been realised in game but which may even appear on maps but also some of the stories that never got finished & were left half done.
  9. Papasears1982 New Member

    What's the point in playing a mmo if your just going to box your group? Never understood it...
  10. Lionari Elder


    So I can play whenever I want. If I log on in the middle of the night, I can still XP and get things done. It's not like we play by ourselves all the time. The most fun I've had in EQ is getting 4 - 6 boxers together to kill raid mobs. Or getting 2 - 3boxers to help each other with epics.
    Raptorjesus5 and Skuz like this.
  11. code-zero Augur

    Why do you limit yourself? I will never understand that. I regularly two box, occasionally 3 box but always group with others who may or may not box. One of my characters, not my main, has a friend list and gets invites to group regularly. Now THAT is both weird and hilarious since those people apparently don't like the guy who plays my main character and I avoid discussing that with them since it is so weird. Of course that tells me a lot about the average players ability to spot boxers anyway, they have no idea that the wiseguy who's pulling and the laid back DPS are in fact the same person :p
    KimchiGoddess and Skuz like this.
  12. Arkeal_Rathe_Bots Lorekeeper


    While your sentiment is understandable I do think there needs to be SOME restrictions to boxing limits on the TLP's otherwise its a waste in DBG's eyes is it not?

    if the server dies once everyone get's their bot armies high enough and get bored then what is the point? there isn't anything there that you cant do on live at that point.
  13. Protagonist Tank


    Every time someone says the population on Riz is great, I petition for the forums to auto-insert this quote.
  14. Healiez Augur


    There have been multiple times in my boxing life that me or the brother will drop one of our boxes for a random person lfg. Usually its a couple of hours in and they havent realized that we were boxing. They just though 2 of the toons were really quiet I guess.

    Even on this server when we each two box we are generally more then happy to bring in other players to group with, especially cause we can only box 2 a piece that leaves 2 open group slots
    Skuz and code-zero like this.
  15. Gio1999 Augur


    That's because there's 2 very different populations at play - the people on Aradune want to relive early EQ from a social and game experience standpoint before it jumped the shark. It starts getting a little goofy at shadows of luclin.
  16. Healiez Augur


    Would love to here why people think the game took a huge downward tilt during shadows of luclin. Except for vex thal being borderline miserable at first, its a pretty bawler expansion.

    Have tried to bring this up before but most responses are LOL CATS ON THE MOON....
    KimchiGoddess and Skuz like this.
  17. Aneuren Tempered Steel


    My honest counter - the "true" population of any TLP server is the crowd that stays past the release of the next server. All of the players that leave at that point, were never truly there as part of the server - they were only there for the Classic rush and they do not care about the rest of us. Those of us who remain behind pay a steep price for their abandonment, and are left with far less tools to compensate.

    Of those players who remain, on first Phinigel and again on Mangler, I have met far more that acknowledge that truebox is only harmful. A great many of the people that beg for truebox for a server, do not stay long enough to understand the ramifications of their demands. These servers do not die because boxers get bored. They "die," though I would hesitate in ascribing that to post-Fippy TLP server, because of server attrition and the inability to replace, or compensate for, those players who abandoned them.
    Skuz likes this.
  18. Lumiens Augur

    Some of us wanted to get away from all the botting and mass boxing via VMs on Mangler. It's been an amazingly better experience on Aradune. I've only encountered one 6 boxer so far, which I petitioned, received a response back from a GM within 30 minutes and have not seen online since.
    Skuz likes this.
  19. code-zero Augur

    I think that really goes back to the complaints about the boats not working. Luclin brought easier travel with it. Nevermind the long runs to the wizard spires sitting on a boat playing gems and talking to whoever else was taking the trip with you had an appeal to a certain sort of player
  20. Ayoheee Augur

    Think they're mostly just terrible players who were terrible when they had only 2 buttons, when AA introduces two *more* buttons they're roasted.
    Skuz likes this.