Oakwynd may have Finally done me in.

Yeah I don't even think some of the EQ designs that culminated into building the EQ community were even necessarily on purpose. It's just that EQ happened to set a good framework that allowed players to experience things with a sort of freedom and maybe they didn't even anticipate what might happen.

You seem to be thinking in narrow terms of any particular training "incident". The fact is that the threat and danger of trains was something you could be aware of but never fully plan for. It's a dynamic and ever present danger in the world that scripted NPCs just don't provide and the fact that they are caused by other players (with malice or otherwise) makes you think of other players in a certain way which is contributing to elements of the community.

Even in your message you said "malice toward the scum that did it" is evidence that you are not immune to these elements. You saw someone training and those people became "scum" of the server for you. Maybe after seeing that you wouldn't group with them. Maybe if you are a guild leader you would not invite them to your guild. Maybe if they needed help some other time you would decide not to help the "scum" that you remembered acted like that. These are all elements contributing to layers of the community even if this particular example is negative. Nobody is immune from the impact of players who have agency in the game.

And for the record as a former GL of a raiding guild I can tell you that those sorts of bad reputations on the server played a significant role in recruiting and roster management. The reputation of my guild was very good on our server because we didn't invite players like that and anyone who acted like an a** got the boot. Certain other guilds were full of people like that and those guilds had a very different reputation. Again.. these things all fit into the community building aspects of EQ and is completely absent in most MMOs now.

Not surprised at all to hear that Code-Zero hasn't bonded with the community from trains lol. He has only ever been a bard for 20+ years...Bards are worthless with trains so no wonder. I however have played Enchanter, Necro, Magician, Shadowknight, Rogue, Cleric, and have bonded with community after so called trains happen countless times in my 20+ years of playing. Shoot its how I gained a lot of solo exp in karnors with my Mage back in the early days when trains AND corpse runs were a thing.

Here's the thing, I've played nonstop since late '99 and mained a Bard since early 2000 so I kind of think I may have a bit more of a handle on longevity in the game than TLP recyclers.

People who deliberately train are scum

Anyone who accidentally trains more than once is borderline incompetent.

If you're not willing to eat a death when you overaggro passing through a zone but instead dump your problem on other people then you have ZERO sense of community you're just a selfish jerk

Maybe I am in the TLP minority, but I can think of 743,912 better ways to build and foster a server community than training. But what do I know?

I've rerolled on Yelinak after a long layoff. Community is nice. The server is 2ish weeks away from Omens of War. Not a bad time to come join.

Well, this was another exciting thread to watch derail! For you latecomers, here's a TLDR to catch up:

• Some people think Oakwynd is low pop and/or dying. Others think it's doing just fine.
• Some think the XP rate on Oakwynd sucks. But others think it's just normal and/or fine.
• The majority of (but not all) posts seem to indicate FTE has met or exceeded expectations.
• Diablo 4 release might have something to do with Oakwynd. Or maybe nothing at all.
• Some people believe EQ servers are 100% unplayable unless they are "fresh".

(aside: I think many could enjoy freshy fun on any server, given some imagination and motivation)

• Some people believe EQ was actually better off with trains, both accidental and intentional, because they led to randomness and/or generating a sense of camaraderie or community.
• Others believe those same people above are absolutely mad as hatters, and need therapy.
• EQ is like a restaurant that servers burgers, ribs, but never, ever a garden salad.
• Yelinak is doing fine, apparently. <shrug>

Most misused or misunderstood words:
1. "Ruleset"
2. "Community"
3. "Content"
4. "Social"

It was sonys fault not blizzards. It had to do with the licenses from the store, if you bought something from the store it fixed it.

Nope has to do with everquest being sub par dumpster trash, that failed at launching a server they have done like 40 times and still failed at it. With no que numbers, and nothing but garbage to join a pay 2 win kronos nonsense game, is what it has to do with. I was letting the kronos pay 2 win cash shop slide, but that doesn't leave me much tolerance for anything else. There is 0 ques cause no one plays it lol.

There's no queues, because queues aren't really a thing after the initial 72 hour rush.

The only reason queues exist initially is because everyone wants in immediately to claim their 10 favorite character names, form their guilds, and get situated.

A few crazies stay awake for 36 hours straight in a rush to level 50.

After that, everyone settles into their regular time zones and schedules.

Still seems like a lame excuse as PC game companies get blamed for things out of their control all the time.

I played heavily for months during the last four TLPs, but I also quit during the first bonus exp weekend on Oakwynd.

I took off a week PTO to play this server, but I didn't even make it to level 30 before losing interest this time around

I'm glad that I didn't buy bags this time around like I did for the last four TLPs.

Imho - EQ just isn't EQ anymore with the FTE ruleset. I think the lack of any sense of danger is what makes the ruleset mind numbingly boring.

When i initially tried EQ in 2000ish , it got me done almost immediately because it was so slow and repetitive.
I went back to it much later and found a profusion of content and quests that were interesting.
It tried Oakwynd for a few hours and same outcome happened, i quit after getting really bored.
I am wondering why people are enjoying classic Everquest experience, which is so devoid of content.
There are so many good RPG those days, that i don’t feel Classic TLP is worth my time.
I might have an other go a bit later, with Luclin or POP.
For me, this has nothing to do with the rule set.
I just feel that I prefer Live Everquest experience, over the classic one.

I've somewhat played on every TLP since agnarr, except for selo and oakwynd. I won't touch that pile of.

. I 100% agree. I’m one of those people.

Exactly this. On Aradune I took just over a week as paladin then rogue to level up. On Michief I leveled up a wizard and mage in a few days. On Yelinak I took 4-5 days while moving playing a cleric. On Oakwynd I took almost 2 weeks to level up to max.

Why the disparity? Because I didn’t feel like rushing. I took things easier and balanced my real life well with my game life. Did I have trouble finding groups? Nope. I rarely waited longer than 15 minutes, doing not much more than /LFG on.

And you know what else I did? Killed dragons and gods and levels on Vaniki for a title, a teleport, an illusion, a weapon ornament, a pet illusion. I claimed the bag I had bought last year. I bought this years bag package. I purchased the latest EQ expansion despite not playing on live anymore. I upgraded my main account to have the perks.

So despite people like me not being 50 in a few days like I normally am, I’m here for the long haul (unless of course 25th has must-play rule set). And I’ve used my wallet to show DPG my level of interest.

Seems like people are purposely being obtuse. It's not that training = building a community. It's that the player freedom in the game gives players choices and those choices define the community. There is a reason every MMO since EQ has been bland, boring and homogenous. They have all designed out the "flaws" of EQ and they are worse for it. Modern MMOs are so sanitized that the experience is predictable and forgettable.

That is personal opinion at it's finest, I have enjoyed zones that are normally a disaster due to people just training the entire zone making it unplayable.

I like the change honestly.

The ability to train an grief others isn't a good thing. There is a reason most MMO's remove the ability for players to do that and a large part is because players don't want it to happen to them.

I would HIGHLY suspect (based on Dev/support comments in the past) that the reason the queues are implemented at server launch is due to the load on the login server, not the game servers. So the 'launch day' queues have nothing to do with the overall player numbers, just that ALL of those users are hitting the login server at once.

The login server is likely not scaled to handle droves of users all at one time, why would it be? Aside from server launches, it probably handles a steady flow of login requests day to day with no reason 98% of days to have it scaled for the same capacity that game servers are.

Like in a Windows AD architecture. You don't scale up domain controllers like you would SQL servers. Domain Controllers are going to handle authentication, maybe DNS/DHCP, group policy. You 'touch' it for a couple seconds and done. Not like a SQL server that's busy with thousands of transactions a minute or even a second. I mean our domain controllers where I work are probably 64GB of RAM/2 CPU or similar. By contrast our big Oracle Database servers have multiple Sparc CPUs with 32 cores and some over 2TB of RAM. Major difference in scaling there

oh please, there is no "classic experience" anymore... unless you have a time machine to go back 20+ years and relive it

TLPs are not a recreation of classic EQ, its just a krono treadmill and the game is completely different in TLPs than it was in Classic.., its not even close, so to call it a Classic experience is disengeneous at best

its more likely they're just smart enough to realize its not a good long term business model.. you can only sell crack to the same crackheads for so long before the market dwindles.. Everquest isnt bringing in new players, especially not on a TLP

you can literally copy/paste most of these thread titles and arguments every single year at the release of new TLPs

There is only so many ways you can make the same 25 year old content fun and exciting to play