/pick is the second coming of Everquest

In my opinion, the biggest mistake that the MMORPG industry ever made was getting rid of contested dungeons.

We all know why the design decision was made; to battle perma-camping and allow more customers to experience the content.

The problem is, the industry in affect ripped it's nose off to spite it's face. Contested dungeons was the bread and butter of Everquest, and whether you want to believe it or not, Everquest is the reason WoW ever existed. The whole MMORPG industry owes it's success to the early years of Everquest.

Ever since WoW came along, all MMORPGs have had instanced zones where you start at point A and kill to point B. Then you get tokens of some sort that you take back to town to turn in at the prize booth for gear. It's the worst game design ever made for MMOs. Seriously. It's the Chuckee Cheese of MMO game design.

But, it was the only way that game designers saw to battle perma camping of named mobs.

Then someone got the bright idea of /pick for the TLP servers.

With out a doubt, /pick has made open-world contested dungeons a thing again. This is how all dungeon zones should be designed going forward. Never again, should any game designer use the Chuckee Cheese method of dungeon instancing!

God bless /pick! All is right in the MMORPG world again!

If only they would have thought of that 10 years ago...

and yet WoW is the biggest MMO of all time... what 10 to 11 million more a year than any other MMO at its height? Seems something was right about instancing...

troll grade: -1

I think there's room in the world for all types of game play, but /pick is certainly another in the long line of innovations that the Everquest developers have given us that have been an unequivocal positive.

This is not to say that /pick doesn't need some adjustment, but it is absolutely a blessing.

Some zones (RE) most often don't have picks because, even though they have things that many people want, they are camped by the smallest number of people possible to extract the value from the zone. The result is that camps in these zones remain unavailable to most people.

what I would like to see is an adjustment in the /picks such that once a zone reaches some percentage (80 sound okay?) of its ACTUAL capacity, it spawns a new pick that remains open as long as the pick maintains a percentage of ACTUAL capacity (40%?) is filled.

Some definitions for clarity.

Theoretical Capacity: The number of players that a zone can theoretically support assuming all resources are being used. This number is useless.

Example: Lower Guk has like, how many camps? Hamlord, Frenzied, Exe, /Sup, BR, King, Minos. plus a couple of others. Could probably theoretically support ~50 people.

Actual Capacity: The number of players that a zone actually does support. An easy way to find this number would be to take (i) the average of populations of SPAWNED picks OR (ii) if there are no picks most of the time, the average population of the main pick.

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A question. What would people think about zoning into a zone in the lowest-population pick rather than the "main" pick?

The "Chuckee Cheese" of MMO game design wasn't just to combat perma camping. It was also a way to reward all participants equally for their contribution.

I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying it was done for more reasons than you gave.

I think that would be a great update to the /pick system.

Also, I think that there should be 2 more rules for the /pick system:

1. For the next 5 minutes after you zone out of a dungeon, you should automatically zone back in to that same pick of that dungeon if you go back in
2. If you die, you should automatically zone back in to the same pick that you died in until you zone back out. Then it goes back to rule 1.

WoW could have had way more than 10 million subscribers if it had not gone the "Daily Instance Run" route. Most everybody I knew that played WoW hated the instance runs. It was the most boring game play ever.

1. Join queue
2. Get pulled in dungeon instance
3. Race from point A to point B just smashing keys
4. Five minutes later, the dungeon is empty
5. Zone out to where you were before joining the dungeon instance
6. Go to step 1

That is exactly what drove me and all of my friends away from WoW.

I couldn't tell you one memorable moment in any WoW dungeon from getting any drop. Not one. They were all unmemorable.

But, I can remember the first time I saw Frenzy spawn in Lower Guk, and the first time I got my Flowing Black Silk Sash.

Rare mobs with rare drops are part of the allure of Everquest. With out them, there is a lot missing.

and yet... still the most popular and highest $$ of any MMO ever in the history of history...

I get what your saying, I have a ton of memories from EQ back in the day too but we are a HUGE minority when it comes to MMO's

There is more to WoW than just instancing (although I think generally the instancing in WoW is a major benefit). But the game styles are different such that a dungeon-crawl style of instancing doesn't really work for most of Everquest's dungeons. Most mobs in a WoW dungeon are about the same level and they are designed for one group of fixed power to be able to plow through to the bottom in one push. In everquest, obviously, a group that can make use of BR will not realistically push through all the way to the ghoul lord in one crawl.

Everquest doesn't need every group to get their own pick, because groups don't consume dungeons by the pick. Instead groups consume dungeons by the camp. This creates a system where several groups are in the same pick each consuming their own camp (and for some drama flavor, sometimes stealing from each others' camps). The vast majority of Everquest players see this as value added because it creates a sense of community.

In the popular (exp destination, like Guk) dungeons, its vitally important to set the balance just right so that dungeons feel full BUT everyone can find what they're looking for.

In less popular zones (item camps, like RE), community is much less important. Sure, its important, but no one goes to RE, the zone of the fabled AFK mage, looking for a vibrant chat. The picks in these zones can (and should) be easier to spawn.

Edit: changed "cannot" to "will not" to avoid trolls.

I am not picking here but I cannot remember a single time a guild got together for a raid and was looking forward to going through a crap storm with another guild to get to the objective. What the reaction to such was always "damit those guys again" and the mood generally deflated. Same goes for any particular "camp" cannot say I ever felt glad to have deal with the crappy behavior of others.
My problem with WoW was not the mechanics of queues for semi-raid targets but the thrown together nature of it and the large percentage of those exhibiting generally childish (even for a child) behavior.
System itself was pretty successful and made limited time pay off very nicely.
No one played WoW for immersion anyway to any extent.

Roughly how many people is "me and all my friends"? like 5? 10? Even if it was 100, that is about %0.00001 of the WoW population at its peak. I don't think you are exactly qualified to make a statement like "WoW could have had way more than 10 million subscribers if they did X or Y" simply because you and 10 other people didn't like it.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who like(or liked) the WoW style of play much better than EQ. It is pretty ironic calling WoW the most boring gameplay ever, and using EQ dungeons as a counter point. You literally sit in one place for hours on end, killing the same few mobs over and over. Trust me, there are plenty of people who would consider that boring - with or without /pick.

Don't get me wrong, I love EQ and the open world dungeons and less theme park feel - but those of us who enjoy this sort of thing are quite the minority.

This would have the added benefit of spawning additional picks. Example, The Hole often looks like this:

The Hole: 62
The Hole 17: 30
The Hole 22: 38
The Hole 13: 44

If those spawning in were put into the lowest pop pick (under the threshold) then it would look like this:

The Hole: 40
The Hole 23: 6
The Hole 17: 42
The Hole 22: 42
The Hole 13: 44
In other words, a new pick would open.
Sure, there are issues to be worked out (keeping groups together, people needing to be in the main pick for whatever reason, etc.) but I like the idea.

More than you will ever know, but if it makes you feel special to assume that you know everything about someone on the Internet, knock yourself out.

You obviously did not participate in the TL vs Citizen wars during the SoL era. The most memorable kills on the life of the server came not as a result of the actual raid mobs, but the interactions between the two guilds:
I was in TL during the era

Memorable Moments: Dima ordering Citizen to train us with the High Priest adds to get a foot up on the engage of High Priest and losing the DPS race anyways, as we managed to lock down all the adds with just myself chantering, 2 paladins offtanking, and 1 shaman healing.

Seru, Take 1 - Darkblood, Citizen and TL attempt to DPS race Seru. With adds being pulled into the fight from all 4 entries into the Seru Room, Seru wipes all three guilds. Darkblood bows out. Citizen and TL recover from the wipe, and Seru is engaged by TL. In order to prevent Citizen from stacking up all the patrols around the Arx and training us with them, TL leadership elects to train themselves with the patrols around the arx in a controlled fashion while fighting Seru. Citizen attempts to Memblur-Killsteal, still loses the DPS race.

Seru, Take 2 - TL and Citizen are racing through the outter arx as Seru spawn and March command is called simultaneously by both guilds. With both guilds racing alongside each other to teleport up to the arx, Citizen full stops at the clickie-port up to Seru's Arx: Throndor sees this and alerts guild in ventrillo that Citizen is "not porting up with us, something's going on we should not click up" The realization is made too late, TL clicks up into all the patrols in the arx AND seru on top of the port-in locale courtesy of Thingtoo. TL wipes, and citizen strolls in on top of their dead bodies for an easy win. Well played.

Then there were all the battles over EMP. With TL's chanter team overcoming the challenge posed by Citizen dispelling mezzes throughout the fight, only to cry foul 3 EMPs later when their chanter team is unable to overcome the same interference by TL after Citizen finally wins the DPS race on Blood of Ssra 3 weeks before PoP launch, prompting GMs to relocate TL out of the zone and triggering the respawn of EMP specifically for Citizen after they wiped and lose the 30 hour poopsock on EMP.

I don't, which is why I asked. The point was that it is statistically irrelevant when it comes to the WoW population.

This is precisely the kind of ish that makes people not want to raid. Good riddance.

Maybe I read the OPs post wrong, but I think he was praising the /pick instancing instead of the complete instancing of dungeons. I think he was stating that he wished they would have come up with the multiple instancing availability for contesting a dungeon as opposed to completely separate instances for an entire group.

That's just my understanding of it.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. If 18 year-old facerollable content that can be done with 3 groups in-era is already maxxing your feeble abilities to their limit.

I think that's correct. There are just a lot of trolls who can't PvP in game while they're at work so they try to PvP on the forums.

Edit: See the post immediately above this one.

The rare mob rare drop model does not even fit into most people's plans much the same way winning the lottery is not, odds are just so heavily against it as to be easily eliminated from any plans.
So guess what happens in mass appeal game? (hint most all mmos) instancing.
What EQ gave you is a combination of both models, a compromise if you will.
I just do not see what you are on about here.

Instances of zones, which the OP does not like, is one of the only reasons many of us came back to play on phinny. The opportunity to actually to experience the game your paying for. It in no way impedes you from experiencing what you want. You can battle everyone for the base zone mobs if you want. And, I agree that pick i a great thing too. Take away the true box code and remove keys for zones and I think you would have the best server ever. I wont even ask for normal exp.