re-roll Yelinak

This is true. They all have variety of successes. People just need to hate on something. It might be true the AMUs are lower than normal but that's to be expected. If people get tired of dealing with botters, they leave or they bot but that's part of the problem you'll never have an accurate count of AMUs because box accounts are always gonna muddy the waters.

I personally don't love nor hate Yelinak. But I am noticing the consistent Nickle and diming that DG is doing by hiding it in clever features like "perks" and increasing the sub fee slightly. Or a $234 dollar friends and family package with basically no real details? Kind of sus to me. And its the state of the game and how bizarrely they just allow things to happen and class changes.

Anyway just my two copper. I wouldn't over think it to much.

This isn’t really true at all. People have always been ge really positive about the new TLPs until this year. This also marks the first standard TLP to not maintain high population within the first week let alone first month.

You guys want to just defend it - the point is that DPG failed to get the community pulse, made undelivered promises about better connecting with players - and this is the result. A new TLP that is clearly weaker than any prior while the last TLP that is 1+ years old continues to outpace it.

Great if you like it however stop pretending that this has been the normal experience. This round was botched.

Dive through some of the old posts, this is blatant untrue. Every TLP has had lots of negative posts about it.

I think it was still the right move, (Vaniki is far less populated then Yelinak, so would that not be the server that was failed and should of been altered?)

Having a base TLP like Yelinak isn't the worst thing even if it isn't as strong as the standard TLP launches, because if it was just another Mischief clone then whats the point? Yeah it's population would probably be a lot higher, but it would of just been taking those numbers from Mischief/Thornblade.

Let Mischief be unique, give it a chance and reason to maintain its population farther then most TLPs make it.

Every Dev team claims to have their hand on the pulse on the community and most flat out fail, how could anyone expect confidence when the only DPG enforcement is on the forums. the only dev team I saw that comes close to great communication and regular updates is Squenix, because the dev actively streams and plays with his own community is Yoshi P.

Yelinak was a good choice there is a community that just wants a no fluff server. But even a zero gimmick server needs QoL fixes. Especially when the community is so vocal about it. Like additional class/race combinations. Or more classic accessible zones like Stonebrunt or The Warrens. Granted the servers full of scared little boys, anything outside CB, Ro, UR, MM, Guk and The Hole they're gonna burn up. But it would still be nice to have these places.

Yeah, this is a good point. While both servers seem to have massively missed the mark - Vaniki rarely even hits medium population. At least Yelinak can hit high population ~75% of the time. What an overall fail of a new TLP launch.

Imagine setting the strategic direction for a game and accidently striking gold one year and then immediately nosediving the traditional product into the same old direction that has been leading to the slow demise of the game. All while reading nonstop comments on official and unofficial forums of people asking to replay mischief again across the early xpacs or some minor tweaking on that clearly successful ruleset.

Hopefully the missed financial expectations will at least spur them into finding a way to better connect with the playerbase or get new leadership over the product development.

Yelinak isn't a failure but keep beating that drum. For every Mischief there is a Miragul or Vaniki. If they never tried anything new then every TLP would be a Phinny clone. Actually, we'd have never even got Phinny if they never tried anything new. This expectation that every server will be bigger and more populated than the previous one is whats wrong with the world in general. Continuous growth expectations are unrealistic and unsustainable. Its this mindset that has gotten streaming tv basically back to where cable was 10 years ago with >$100 sub just to watch the 4 shows you like. Or why almost every software is now a sub service instead of just buying the product.

I don't get why you care. What is it with you? Why are you so desperate to call Yelinak a failure?

This game really isn't growing. It's just very similar population, but slowly getting spread out more and more as the years go by and more TLPs are available. There are only so many annual re-rollers to populate the new servers. People are choosing to stay on their respective TLPs. We now have what, at least half a dozen TLPs that are roughly the same ruleset? Why would everyone just leave their server for another copy? The population is getting spread out like a pancake. It's pretty obvious why Yelinak wouldn't be the most populated server ever, except Wade_watts apparently has negative analytical skill.

@Wade_watts do you really think Mischief would remain as populated as it was if a carbon copy were released this year? Hell, Thornblade is literally the least populated TLP ever for where it is in the TLP lifecycle. If your golden ruleset cannot even sustain 2 high population servers for not even a year, what do you think adding a 3rd will do? It will just siphon a good portion of Mischief and you're left with 1 high population server and 2 low population servers. That seems like a pretty big friggin failure to me. How does simply displacing a population from one server to another a good business strategy? You're migrating the same exact revenue and adding nothing. Brilliant critical thinking skills you got there. How do you get through your daily life?

Agreed.

Except this is 100% the strat for the truebox clones. Its too bad the bag and krono sales for a classic start are so good, the company is just cannibalizing its other servers into the ground

Pretty much nailed it here.

Phinigel was very successful because of what immediately followed it - Agnarr & Coirnav.
Mischief is successful because it has no competition.
Rizlona has no competition.

If you copy a ruleset, then you get re-rollers in abundance.

Vanilla ruleset has a reroller demographic - Phinigel, Mangler, Yelinak
Oddball (or perhaps speed-run) ruleset has a reroller demographic - Selo, Vaniki
Mischief which is arguably the closest to a casual/slacker ruleset probably also has a reroller demographic and were a new TLP with that ruleset opened a whole lotta Mischief players will jump off onto it right away.

Those are kinda like the 3 TLP "fandoms" right now and shiny new versions of each will steal players from the old server if they are too close together, gotta have some distance between them.

They absolutely are, but there are more total people who prefer non-FT to FT. That's why you had Mangler, Aradune, and Rizlona all at consistent medium-high populations, thriving together in harmony, for a year before the launch of Mischief/TB. We can't even have 2 FT servers without one being a ghost town 9 months in.

However, bag sales should have zero impact on server transfers. Devs are 100% capable of having multiple new bag sales on existing servers. That's literally a non-issue.

The primary culprit are the annual reroller crowd followed by the kronolords/bots/RMTers who follow the annual rerolling casual players like a fly to dung.

Most players have no problem with ocassionally getting stuff wrong, most of the frequent posters at least have put their hands up on multiple occasions.

But some posters are determined to double-down on their misinformed perceptions & "alternative facts" because their ego is too fragile to take an L even once, they aren't possessed of enough intestinal fortitude to admit to being wrong, like ever.
I've known people like this in real life, every single one of them was a huge pain in the britches to put it mildly.Best ignored usually.

Surprising how often I forget that.

Clearly many of you have no idea what this plan is. The TLP side of the business is about (or more than) half of the total EQ player base. 80%+ of the audience for this type of EQ is re-rollers who enjoy the first few xpacs, get bored, and roll again. They buy bags, Krono, marketplace items - they know exactly why they are here and they enjoy it. While some players want to get to live - it’s a fraction of the player base and not the most lucrative.

This is a business looking to make a profit. Success short and long term comes from making marketable products that people enjoy playing. A healthy TLP launch includes a traditional server (classic start, time locked, etc) that can achieve and maintain a healthy population. Vaniki is forgivable - they tried something new. It was a swing and a miss and really demonstrated how out of touch with the community they are - but at least they tried an original idea. It also shows that the massive success of Mischief was luck and not a well executed plan derived from a solid community connection.

By a very real measure - the server not even able to maintain a high volume of players within the first week, I certainly deem it a failure. The frustrating thing as a player is that it was expected and obvious before the server even launched. The forums were literally filled with posts asking them to reconsider. Yet, here we are. Acting like it was a success or met expectations just furthers they problem with their inability to connect with the community and produce a product that resonates. I’m posting because I want them to be successful. Hoardes of people posting before the launch was apparently insufficient - I’m hoping that calling attention to the failure will help them learn from it.

P.s. - I’m also posting because mischief brought back a lot of players that gave up on DPG and EQ. I had tons of friends come back to the game and have a blast. I met a ton of new folks that had a blast but don’t connect with coach beyond GoD. It brought new life to the game so much so that it’s likely the most popular server this far into its schedule of any other server (save the boxing ones). It made EQ something traditional yet new and because they refused to capitalize on that consumer optimism, many many players have again punched out of the game. Sad really.

I hear Brad's ghost is hiring for Pantheon Immortal. You might want to check it out.

I wish they would just release a FV style tlp that doesnt allow kronos. Then we see how dependent tops are for kronos farmers. And maybe this would end the debate.

That isn't possible as krono are an account level feature that are tied to all the games that Daybreak offers.

The only way I can see to solve the krono problem is making it account bound and untradeable.
There is no reason they ever shoulda been tradeable.
This has been an issue in other games too and it seems to be painfully obvious, however its worse in other MMOs as now people use it as a P2W by buying carries through raids for loot or achievements.

Right right, just my rant. People always complain about this or that. Ive been playing on Vaniki and absolutely love it. Ive did 4 basic TLPs including Mischief. I think this was a good go at it. I always wanted to start at GoD and move onward. I had to stop really playing back in PoP for RL reasons. I would like to go at GoD+ raiding style.