Multiboxing is a sign of a deeper problem with the game.

I love 2 boxing my mages. I created my second mage during the TOV expansion. Best thing I ever did EQ wise. It made the game fun again for me. I can do whatever I want and beat most of the content with my little group.

I launch EQ with the mindset of "I'm going to accomplish ___ tonight".

I think some people launch EQ with the mindset of, "who's going to help me accomplish _____ tonight?"


Rolling through content with one or two friends and we're all boxing a few peeps is very fun. Its actually quite fun Lol.

Raiding is fun and really the reason I play EQ but 6 people in a TS channel talking , doing some missions is about as much fun. I only box if A: I just want to relax and watch a movie or B: just feel like hiding out.
To say there are no groups to be had so people need to box is kinda bull, either you haven't put the work in to find friends or you stunk in the last group and no one will have you. Joining a guild, being skilled, being friendly ect all contribute to people wanting to play with you.

The game is fine the way it is and boxing is part of its charm. The world needs less content like WOW/FFXIV, not more. If I wanted a soloable experience I would go play one of those games. If anything EQ's mistake was attempting to emulate those games by removing OW raid content and introducing instancing.

LOL

Boxing has been part of EQ since day one.

In a nutshell:

Mom and dad have 1 credit card and 3 kids.

5 players, one billing source. Utterly impossible to determine who's typing on those 5 PCs.

Me boxing a 70's mage and tank to farming Coirnav for Luclin Era bow drops, or boxing for campfires on non porting classes, or even boxing a grind group for glyphs has zero impact on anyone, other than lots of bargains in the bazaar and or more purchases of YOUR bazaar offerings.

"Anyone looking for XP? I'm 2 boxing level 75 mage if you want to leech" is never viewed as detrimental is it?

The only people I ever see whining about boxing, a totally intractable situation, are those who can't, or those who just want your camp and usually will violate play nice at the drop of a hat to train people, or jump on the forums and bash them for playing within quite clear rules.

TRUEBOX only helps the people with enough money to run multiple PCs in a game which actually provided mutiple launches from the launcher.

Boxing is also good for sales. Directly and indirectly.

I have 6 accounts, I molo / duo and like buffs. ALL of those accounts and characters have mounts, housing, hero's forge bits, etc. When we reach live again (recently started back live after TLPs since VoA release)

Those 6 accounts will be buying the new expansion x6.

More players in bazaar is a sign of a healthier server and help new to the server player retention.

special mention ro Rokkin @ Trakanon, was a 1 person bazaar for a lonnnnnng time.

'wasn't intended" and "tanks can't get trinity groups" turned out to be the same thing here.

I think the point of the thread was more that boxing being pretty much the only way to level is the problem rather than boxing itself. While it's true that boxing has been around since the beginning, easy grouping was at the beginning as well. If your normal groupmates weren't online, you could go to one of many populated zones and join a camp without too much effort. It's not like that anymore. There's nothing wrong with boxing, but with boxing being pretty much the only way, the people who don't like boxing don't have many options to progress. That's the problem the game should address. Find a way so that people who don't like boxing can continue to enjoy the game. Losing customers because they won't resort to boxing is bad for the game in the long run. There's no reason to change anything about boxing, but come up with some options for people to play without having to resort to boxing. That way DB continues to get revenue from both non-boxers and boxers.

I've written before about one of my pet peeves related to avoiding poor players. And that is simply the lack of in-game mechanisms to train people how to play their characters. Hundreds of quests related to getting gear or shiny sparkly stuff, but almost none about using that new AA ability or how to use them in the proper order or situation.

IF they ever get to make an epic-3 questline, then it would be a perfect opportunity to include quest-steps, specifically tailored to a specific class, with this in mind.

I think its more about the sheer number of "things" someone needs to do to be "decent". Unless you are reading the boards looking at your class rotation and using things like parsers to measure your performance how would you ever get good?

He!! even doing that I can't match what folks from the top end guilds parse.

While I somewhat agree due to the sheer number of items, abilities and spells, I also feel like that's part of the beauty of the game. Getting to figure out the way to best use all of those things to get the most bang for your buck.

To many players, it's only natural to increase your characters power. What better way to increase your power than to control more characters?

EQ was notoriously hardcore and the power of mobs grossly overpowered. It's natural that a player would want to turn the tables to his advantage.

Multi-boxing gives players increased agency. It's just that simple.

No one can reasonably stand against the practicality of boxing At this stage. These types of games paint themselves jnto a corner every time. We need people to group, we need groups to progress. But lvls keep increasing and new zones keep coming out.

You cant just hold on to your group design philosophy and ignore populations that can't facilitate forced grouping. Pop is spread across 1-100 levels.

What grinds my gears is when mmos try to fix this problem then players complain about the scaling, about the lvl adjustment about any attempt to fix the problem.

We can't find groups but then no mercs, no boxing, no lvl scaling. but then players still want increase lvl cap, new zones each expack and devs are supposed to magically balance the population grouping problem.

What they need to do is find a way to make older expansions more solo friendly since they are essentially solo experiences at this point. Expansions are released tuned for full groups with raid gear from prior expansions, but that population moves on eventually. Someone doing the expansion years later is going to be doing it alone geared with world drops and bazaar deals.

My suggestion is to have an AA which makes expansions easier the older they are. The older the expansion, the more powerful the AA. Perhaps this AA could mitigate incoming damage and increase damage dealt proportional to how old the expansion is. An old expansion gets a lot of help, a newer one gets less. The newest 2-3 expansions get no help since there are lots of people actively in the zones. Have there be some tradeoff for using the AA, like exp and loot is reduced. This way if someone wants to do it old-school for the full experience, they can do that. But if someone wants to solo through it, they can activate the AA and get through it themselves.

Obviously this is making older content easier, but I'm not sure how much that matters at this point. When years-old expansions are deserted, it probably doesn't matter in the long-run if people do them on easy mode. This would help keep EQ's population numbers healthy by retaining customers who would have otherwise quit. A solo slog through deserted expansions is not much fun, and they may not find boxing fun either.

I like your idea. I'm sure there would have to be caveats of some sort.

Your solutions are accurate and understandable. They make sense and just about everyone agrees that they will possibly get new players to try the game.

However, most of you are failing to understand one major issue with what you're proposing. And that is the entire design and gameplay of how Everquest works from the graphics, to spell casting, movement, interrupts, monster movement is what makes Everquest the way it is. It's what keeps players here playing the game. Most don't want the game to change that dramatically and by changing fundamental ways the game works most of the existing player base will leave.

There are other things at play with what a lot of you are proposing. One of those things that is most don't understand why they don't like multiboxers in the game world. When it is analysed most players don't want multiboxers in the game because they don't like competition. It's that simple whether most admit it or not. There are a lot of people that complain about multiboxers using reasoning that goes against grouping. They want multiboxers not to exist but they want groups to exist of single players. However the reasons they give also apply to groups. For example, the major reason that most state they don't like multiboxers is "advantage". It is implied that the advantage is against one person that isn't grouped. However the same "advantage" applies to people that are in a group because they have an advantage over one person that isn't grouped. There are many other things to discuss along these lines but it would be a wall of text that most wouldn't read nor understand so stopping now...

Possible solutions:

1. Allow hiring more than 1 merc at a time. If I can hire 5 mercs, then most people wouldn't need or want to box.

2. Programmable mercs, or mercs that can follow some simple instructions.

But even with the current state of mercs that are kinda dumb, if I can have 1 tank, 1 melee, 1 caster and 2 healers, that should allow me to play most content all by myself, with almost no fear of dying. (when the tank dies, just zone, ... or how many mercs you are willing to try to keep you alive.)

Or I'll have 5 melee dps mercs... because I'm a necro and can solo anyway without them, they will just help me kill mobs faster.

/merc passive all
cast snare, cast dot, cast dot, run,
/merc attack all

You can’t build a MMO dependent on people being social, when they pay to avoid being social.

I always thought they did an outstanding with the 12th anniversary Whirligig Flyer quest/mission. Everybody could cooperate and everybody could participate in obtaining the reward but nobody needed to be grouped or even in the same mission.