New November Server

With a level 85 start this might be the one time to start feeling out if truebox is needed on "aged" tlps.

It's unlikely you'll see a non-Truebox server any time soon. Just my opinion.

Unfortunately you are probably right, and once again I wont play on it. If you miss the initial rush on Truebox TLP servers your left in the dirt trying to find groups or spending excessive amounts of time building a group that will likely fall apart in 10 min anyways. I did this 0on Selos and Mangler. I got to 62 on Selos and 44 on Mangler and since I did not keep pace with the "Pack" finding groups is now difficult.

I dont understand why there are a dozen Truebox TLPs but not a TLP for the other half of the players that like to 2 or 3 box. Is my $45/mo not as valuable as the other halfs $15/mo? I am not going buy another 2 computers to play a 20 year old game, thats absurd and no other company forces its playerbase to do that.

In an Era where companies try to find a happy middle for everyone, Daybreak seriously fails to acknowledge a very large segment of its paying customers who enjoy boxing for the game it self and are not RMT knuckleheads ruining the game.

Clearly they should remove Truebox from Phinigel for the months preceding this new server as a test case for the viability of the new server.

Uh that was already figured out. (Spoiler alert: It's not)

My view is that Truebox is DBG's way of trying to close Pandora's box. It's not working to shut down the botters as we know now, but that was part of the original intent. If they release a non-Truebox server they will effectively be opening the botting floodgates and I don't think they want to do that.

I don't understand why people keep bringing up this slippery slope. Just about everyone who has argued against Truebox has stated, explicitly, they have no desire to bot content (the people that do, they're doing it anyways). We just want to be able to play multiple characters without the ridiculous lengths you have to go to now, since truebox punishes us but does nothing to the botters.

Trust me it would be infested with cheaters. TLP servers make it 100 times harder to bot/cheat on compared to non-TLP servers. The cheat program is free to download and is so simple to use you'd be a fool not to use said third party software, which nearly everyone uses on non-TLP servers. Its gross.

Never understand how EverQuest could be plagued with so many rampant cheats for so many years. Its actually almost impressive. I think so many people have grown to needing the cheats that mass amounts of people would quit if they did actually start to police the game.

They just need to have a server for all the botters to go play on where the best bots you can buy are right from the Daybreak cashshop hahaha.

Keep in mind the said cheats that allow for simple automated botting also do LOTS of other stuff that many people use and take advantage of without using the automated bot. These type of cheats also aren't as rampant on TLPs and a big reason many people choose to play there. Sure there might be a few tech savvy people that have them on TLPs but no where near the same degree as live.

Really what the devs should do is pull a lot of the most important features from the cheat program and put them in the base game.

Chief among them being the ability to stick a character to another character or NPC.

We already have follow but anyone who uses autofollow and then watches someone who is using stick knows, autofolllow is trash in comparison. Characters constantly get stuck on geometry and get lost. Plenty of games have the autoattack command function where you click to attack a monster and it makes your character run up to and then stick to an NPC while autoattacking, it’s time for EQ to adopt this as well. Offer to disable the option for those who want to chase around mobs and be more free to position themselves, but it should be a base part of the game at this point.

Also they should update the in-game macros. Allow for nested macros, let me call another macro as one of my lines in the macro. Also let me /repeat a macro, so that I can continually fire a macro off. Let me set a number of times to repeat the Macro or let me set a kill scenarios for ending a macro like my target dies or I’m no longer in combat.

I know these pale in comparison to what the cheat programs offer but just having some Base Improvements to controlling characters specifically for boxing, would be an improvement to a game that is clearly reliant upon boxing accounts for its income.

This just sounds horrible to me. I honestly don't want to play a game that has the ability to automate 6 characters to all be played by a single person. I play EQ because I want a social experience. I want each and every member of my party to be able to talk to me and take independent action. If I wanted a solo experience, I would play WoW, not EQ. However what you talk about turns EQ into a Solo Experience. I mean why group when you can just drag along your own personal party and play solo.

No just no. This is not what the majority of players want at least those on the TLP. In fact I strongly doubt there would be much multi-boxing going on, if the playerbase was large enough and fresh enough to support being able to get into full groups at all levels, quickly and easily.

That’s fine for early expansions on TLPs. But what you’re talking about is limited to the early quarter or half of EQ expansions, where there was a fair amount of pick up groups. However as you get into later expansions where you get things like zone locked progression and later on you have a large chunk of the content coming from Mercenary and Partisan tasks, the very design of these discourages pick up groups.

People want to keep progressing their character and doing new content, so if I’m done with half a zone, done a few Mercenary tasks and a few Partisan tasks, I’m not inclined to invite an LFG person because they cannot request the tasks I’m working on because they’ve not done the prerequisites that I did the day or week previously. Many of the tasks I can not even request a second time to repeat them for a new player so instead I’d basically just be walking someone else through a task that is much worse EXP than just grinding out because there’s often a lot of running around and I wouldn’t be getting the exp from the task at completion. This is just the way they designed the later half of expansions, where they had a large chunk of their population already boxing one or two characters.

People who are continually recycling servers may be the majority who want a social PuG centric TLP experience. But anyone playing on Live servers or anyone sticking to one TLP server through all the expansions is likely to pick up some amount of boxing as the expansions are designed for linear progression with little reason to repeat content.

Just like they set /autofire on special attacks like Backstab/Flying Kick/Frenzy to require level 61+, I’d be fine with them setting a stick command for follow or NPC follow, and certain hotbutton repeat / nesting abilities to be tied to some level or expansion. But people need to understand that there are three different games at play here. We have Early/Recycle EQ players, we have TLP stick to one server players and we have Live EQ players. What you think is detrimental to the early/recycle EQ players is absolutely crucial to the stick to a single TLP or live server players.

People are already using 3rd party programs to achieve all this stuff and there is basically no enforcement on it unless it’s flagrant bottling and even then that enforcement seems rare. Give people the ability to more comfortably box from the base game in later expansions and on live without having to seek out 3rd party programs.

I have to imagine a lot of people seek out these programs when they are boxing to not have so many times with a box getting stuck in a wall while autofollowing or to handle characters with 40+ activated AAs more effectively. But the problem with players doing this is they realize these same cheat programs can be used to get them experience, Tradeskill drops, spells and named kills all while they sleep. By offering some basic features in the core game you may prevent people from seeking out cheat programs in the first place which lead some to automate characters.

You may be right as I have not played EQ past the current DoN content on Selo so I can't say what the later game content is like. I will say however, if it does get to the point where I have to try to play 6 characters all at once, I won't be playing EQ, I will just go back to WoW classic and play a game designed to be played mostly solo.

Honestly I was looking forward to the new server, but it is sounding like it isn't going to be remotely anything like the game experience I came looking for after nearly a 15-16 year hiatus from EQ. Hell the only reason I am playing a game as old as EQ is that nothing else offers the same social, group-centric game play experience.

It's a conundrum:

• Truebox was implemented in order to shut down 3rd party programs, especially the main botting program.
• Honest people true box.
• Dishonest people figure out a way to cheat on Truebox servers.
• Truebox isn't working as intended, but to reverse it on new servers means admitting defeat. I don't see DBG doing that.

Autofollow is better than it used to be but still blows. I wanted to pull my hair out doing Pillars of Alra tasks with a 5-box crew.

First, you already are.

Second, he's not talking about automation. He's talking about QoL fixes. Once you get to about Seeds of Destruction you start getting a lot of activated AAs... like a dozen or more useful ones for some classes. Take monk, for example. I have 5 hotkeys, all full of /alt activate commands. I hit all of these keys on perhaps every 3rd mob for various reasons. If they were all on one, or if I had the ability to call one hotkey from another, I'd be more effective. And that's just one of 5 characters. You don't like it? Too bad, that's the world you live in.

It’s not just a zone like Pillars with vertical water tubes, lifts, portals and tight stair cases.

Simple geometry anomalies along a wall often get a following character stuck. The Pillars lining the walls in sepulcher, the walkways in Sarith, the tight turning staircases in Resplendent. All of these I’ve had my one boxed alt get stuck on regularly.

I don’t disagree that it’s improved. But if you watch people using cheat programs and the way their characters follow and the way they follow NPCs, it’s clear there’s a better option out there. I just wish it was part of the base game. These aren’t overpowered changes that would impact balance it would just be a lot more pleasant and less stressful to box even just one character.

Not true at all.

This is the exact reason thousands of players reroll on the new TLP every year or so.

Everquest is already that game, up at least til Underfoot or so. Playing 6 characters is not hard--without automation. You just have to set them up right.

Playing 4 toons decently, clicking 1 to 3 macros.... vs automated software that others are using is like using an abacus vs a ti89 calculator.

Let's stop pretending that even the best macro setups compete, let alone compare, to macaroni quest. Most warm body raiders dont even match up to decent macaroni players.

I will be playing on this server unless it is true box. No thanks to that disaster. I only wish they were starting a couple expacs earlier.

True box was never a plan to eliminate botters. It was to satisfy the whiners that wanted everyone to only play one character so they could LFG for hours. And they got their wish. How did it work out for ya? You are still LFG and complaining about boxers. Same ole, same ole.