Kill Stealing is now 100% acceptable. Thoughts?

That is not very important anymore in low level content, and for players that can box high level content. The modern social structure is also a very different one than in the old days, and does get transfered from RL into the game.

Could be abused easily, especially by botters. Loot would be multiplied unreasonable often, which would totally ruin the bazaar prizes.

Sadly kill stealing in form of a DPS race has sometimes to get used, because there are perma campers that are unwilling to share anything. Toxic behaviour has many faces.

This would solve a long list of problems, and has been suggested a number of times before. In the SOE era, I could buy the counter-argument that it would entail the use of technology beyond the scope of a game development team, but now I don't think so. If they can roll out a 64-bit game engine. amd a DX11 upgrade, and a new UI... Oh wait...

Virtually all modern online service games, MMO and otherwise, use end-to-end data encryption.

Which does assist my theory that TLP servers are Daybreak's Krono selling machine. When new TLP server do get started, it are always two, and one is meant to be the designated loser, to make one server overcrowded, which does mean more competition that does lead to KS, toxic behaviour, and more Krono sales.

It is about money, and that isn't a bad thing. Everything is a LOT more expensive since COVID and maximizing profits is vital to keeping the digital doors open. And I still don't care about the TLP servers except as comic relief and a means to keep the non-TLP servers alive.

good fun with mem wipe then

No. It would be perfectly reasonable. The only small adjustment I'd make is to have named spawn a little less often but it would be huge benefit if the open world was more of a shared experience with incentives for working together.

Of course, I'd also bring back heroic adventures or whatever you call them with a chance to spawn named to acquire similar rewards or even just solo tasks that give decent rewards. EQ needs a lot more variety in these expansions. People fighting over a single named and kill stealing is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

Instanced zones, also in the form of HAs, or just adventures (easier), are a good idea. Make them an AllAccess or perk feature, to finance the extra server costs. Players that are running a subscription do deserve something better. The random zone-wide and expansion-wide loot from RoF was also interesting.

I think it's important to remind everyone that EverQuest was designed to have gamemasters. Gamemasters in simultaneously worked to enforce the rules (Play Nice Policy), adjudicate spawn contestation disputes, run live events, and do some customer service tasks like surname changes.

While highly derivative, World of Warcraft was designed not to have active gamemasters. This is why WoW has a first to engage NPC tagging mechanic, no real camps that drop predictable items and private instances exist. Camping makes no sense at all.

Removing EQ's play nice policy and getting rid all of the active gamemasters to save money would have worked if the designers had changed the other existing mechanics to account for their removal.
If they had done this, the entire nature of EQ would have been changed to be more like WoW.

EQ was famous for its social nature back in the day where people respected camps and knew there was consequence when bad actors broke the rules and the social conventions. A player's reputation meant everything. Today Norrath feels like the wild west. Might is right. That's not the Norrath we remember.

Many of us till this day extend the courtesy of doing "camp check" when we visit a dungeon. Of course it's optional but by being civil and leading by example is one way we honor the Norrath we knew and loved.

This is how Guild Wars 2 works. It's kinda cool because a friendly player coming to help is almost always beneficial. And if you're in an event a bunch of players joining in will not only increase the odds of success but often increases the potential reward.

The downside is that it kinda waters down the social experience when players can anonymously assist you and are largely blocked from harming you. Other players are almost like NPCs you don't need to talk to or worry about. Conversely in EQ you are all but required to communicate and build relationships (good and bad) with players. This being a huge part of EQ's staying power is why this concept should be at the forefront of MMO design for even PvE games like EQ.

To the OP, the possibility and legality of Kill Stealing is an essential part of EQ. When some jerk comes and KS's you, that frustration isn't fun, but the subsequent interaction you have with them, the tattle-telling you do to their guild and any downstream ramifications including them being gkicked, forming a KS-friendly guild or otherwise becoming a pariah are part of the fun.

end-to-end encryption is useless when the enemy has full control of the hardware and the decrypted data at one end.

"Game Master Today at 11:51
Greetings Adventurer,

I wanted to get back to you involving your incident related to a "kill-steal" today. Unfortunately, this is not a violation of the Rules of Conduct."

With this in mind, how about incorporating this into missions and raids. Two guilds or groups doing the same raid or mission compete to see who gets the loot. Like mini guild wars. It would let the folks who love to brag have more opportunities to argue about trivial things and see who has the bigger, err, raid force or group.

Make it into an value added experience.

I'd have to disagree with most of your suggestions here.

First, if you do the level limit thing, it would interfere with how I play: one character, max level, no personas or alts. I don't want to use personas or alts.

Second, if you do checks on, say, players vs kills, it could look like I am doing something despicable and nefarious when I am clearing half a zone in one large pull for 4-5 hours on end farming mats.

We should all be grownups and police ourselves. I don't move in on a zone like that unless someone is not there, or not in the area I plan on farming. If someone shows up, I ask what they are looking for, and where they intend on setting up shop, and make my decision to stay or leave based off of that (often times, though, I'll just leave just to make sure I am out of the way).

And who do you think is the enemy?

Camps were 100% enforced. Had a guildie getting a warning and then a suspension for it. Obviously that has changed, but they were an actual thing.

Great question.

/cue X-Files music

I believe that refers to a rhetorical cheater.

And as mentioned, when the decrypted data exists on the rhetorical cheaters machine encrypting it for the journey in does nothing but add a layer of code for encryption and decryption.

And as I think you noted. They don't have a good track record on such a large coding project these days.

Clearly never raided "goats" in Qvic or any PoP boss...or any pre-instanced open world raid target.

I often remind people that camps don't exist. Usually when someone "thinks" they are camping an area that also includes quest NPCs. So I come in and kill 5 NPCs out of the way that aren't being kept down by said group and aren't PH's for any named and get the obligatory hate tells about "camps"....

I could take a few actions, I could continue on my questing and ignore the tells or /ignore the player, my usual route....but depending on how nasty the tells were...I may decide that I want to kill those mobs the rest of the day.

Isn’t it obvious? They don’t want to provide CS because it’s cost money. They rather waste it on already failed projects or upcoming DOA projects.