recommendation to solve instance abuse

Change it so that you can only /pickzone near a zone boundary. This way, people cant manipulate the map layout in order to just appear right inside named camps.

It doesn't matter. They need to add a big cd to using pick one. Otherwise you will still have Druids instance hopping and tracking g your name a and ph spawns.

I think this would be a step in the right direction. Of course then /pick could be used purely as a teleport - but I think the benefits would outweigh the negatives.

But if you set them at a zoneline, then it can be used to manipulate travel thru zones, (especially something like the karanas.)

Two simple solutions:

1) Increase timer on /pick - downside, still allows for mild camp abuse

2) /pick places you at succor point of zone - downside, allows people to "evac out" of a dungeon once they are finished, (mainly affects melee and hybrid). Although, with origin and all the "non-classicness" or the server, this seems like a VERY minor negative.

I prefer number 2.

better preference is to eliminate instanced zones entirely. LDON was interesting but a very anti-social expansion and you basically had your own instance to play by yourself and your group in without being part of a big world of people.

what they SHOULD do is lump together every 2 expansion releases. instead of A-6, B-6, C-6, D-6 it should be A&B-12, C&D-12, etc.

Its a very simple concept and a very simple solution.

/pickzone

put at zone in/succor point with 0 mana and rez effects

Really?

It's not being absued

Yes "really"

Instanced zones are a band-aid solution to a problem. Everquest was never meant to be a single player game, nor even a single group game. It is a persistent open world full of people. When you separate them you go against the very fiber of what this is built upon. Instancing, here, is a half-baked band-aid attempt at solving the overcrowding problem.

So when most of your group has to /pickzone just to get to the same instance, because the game put each of you in a different instance, you get to sit there for 5 minutes getting mana for everybody?

We're not all getting our own group instances. The instances are generally pretty full (at least at primetime) to the point that it's still tricky to get a camp.
The instances do depop if they've been empty for a while.

And the need to solve the overcrowding is a major issue. Ragefire has twice as many people on at primetime as any other EQ server has ever had. We're trying to cram more people into the same space (if no instances) and that needed a solution.

Is that really true? How do you know that since they do not publish population numbers anymore?

I hope it is true because it suggests a vitality that EQ needs and thrives with, but I don't sense a population on LJ even close to what EQ was in the early years. What we have is a more imbalanced and overpowered player-base so mobs are dying and farmed very quickly so there are more dead mobs but not more players, I think.

You make it sound like instancing is giving everyone their own private instance. In every zone and dungeon I have been in so far, I pick the lowest population instance. There are still several groups running around. People still run by on their way to other camps. They seem just as crowded as a regular zone on P99, if not more.

I don't know where you've been leveling, but I'm not seeing anything even remotely private about instances.

They've tweeted about it several times, but the most recent was on Thursday:

And we still had a queue last night.

As far as Lockjaw's population... Based on class channels, it's somewhere in the range of 30-50% of Ragefire's population, so it's still in the ballpark of max capacity for previous servers. (Back in 1999 and 2000, they'd split a server if it was sitting over 2000 people frequently... back when server screen showed current population numbers)

They also tweeted that Lockjaw was the second-most populated server, but I think that was Friday afternoon so I'm not sure how useful that statement is.

One can sometimes get into an instance solo, especially at oddball times. And sometimes you can do it if a zone just barely hits it's non-instance capacity and is often a pass-through zone (for example, this has happened with Dagnor's Cauldron... I think it tends to spin up an instance after a nasty Unrest train)

LJ pop is holding steady if not creeping slightly upwards

I have seen people on Twitch, as recently as this past weekend, getting convinced to come try the TLP servers. There are still a lot of old EQ players out there that haven't heard yet, and are just now returning. So I bet both servers are creeping upward.

I'm aware of that. My comment about LJ's Friday afternoon population is that a similar tweet Saturday evening would have been more meaningful to me. I think comparisons at primetime are probably better than comparisons on a Friday midday when one of the servers (LJ) was brand-new that day.

Dunno, LFGing sucked the first day - was easy on Sat/Sun - and is getting difficult again Monday morning.

Seems it's a solid population for primetime, but that it's lacking off hours players. Is my current take on it.