Six months before Kunark is insane

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Seems entirely logical to me that a company thinking of opening a new progression server would like to gage input by all those who could feasibly be expected to be among those who would be in the pool of players that want to play on said progression server.

Capitulating to a player created campaign and bunch of shotgun side riders telling me my company is full of idiots who have no inkling how to conduct a poll or hire the expertise to do so, well, that would irritate me at least slightly. It would also motivate me to dis the discontented noise and wait for sure and see what the subscription numbers are at week one, month one, and at least into the third month.

Then I'd make my own decision based on input from my staff of how effective that first poll was IF and WHEN I decided I might run a second poll. But I'm just another paying player, not the owner of DBG.

I think 1400 people online would be a very good number. If you think only 1400 will be playing I seriously doubt that. TLP servers have traditionally shown to have very high interest all the way trhough Planes of Power. If that holds true on Ragefire that means high populations for the next two years of Everquest. P99 pulls in about 1100 people online on decent weekends and they are spread through both Classic and Kunark and there are lots of people in most zones.

To compare 1400 people on live vs the same number on TLP with just classic open is like comparing apples and Toyota mini vans it's not even close to the same thing. Classic EQ has something like 65 total zones including city zones. Our biggest problem is we are more likely to have 3000 people online instead of 1400. At least for the first month.

You mean the part that I was saying to Tachyon who's represented that same point over a half dozen (might even be a whole dozen at this point - he does it ALOT) times on these boards now and keep ignoring the reality that F2P and P2P aren't remotely similar?

When I repeat myself to the same person over and over I do get punchier (part of why I realized early on I shouldn't go into teaching)

Only part to you was "I personally don't mind 6 months for most expansions - Velious+ are all 6 months friendly in my book - Kunark is borderline.

But to say that Classic is fine without alt'ing (which many don't care to do) is abject lunacy that involves a complete disconnect from reality. Or you expect people that play less than an hour a day to be what the server should be planned around."

Only part that's remotely insulting - is me saying the statement isn't accurate (although in a colorful way) - it wasn't leveled at you. And even gave TWO OR's as outs.

I can respect that point of view, but it seems logical to me that a company of this size shouldn't run their business based on the style of feedback, but rather on the content. If everyone (I know it's not everyone, work with me here) says "Yu guyz suk, gimme Kunark kwik!" they shouldn't just say "Hey screw you !" Instead they should say "Hey screw you !" and then do a re-vote to double check their numbers. After a couple of months, on the server in question, as you said.

Six months also gives incentive for the latecomer, and you know there will be alot, to get in on the game at the ground floor.

If you actually paid attention to the requests almost no one is saying "poll again now!" they're saying give it a repoll a couple months in (week 10 is the earliest I'd suggest personally [2 week poll so they could reduce it to 3 months] - anything less than that I think would be foolish myself). Additionally these were fueled by Aristo himself stating they're considering the possibility of repolling to adjust the Kunark unlock if we're finding things uncomfortable.

Maybe things will be comfortable and we'll all change our minds about our worries. I'd love to find the server comfortable for 6 months of continuous play personally. I'm dubious I'll be comfortable past month three (and month three will primarily be tradeskilling mind you - for people that don't do all the tradeskills like I - two months probably would be their equivalent limit) - but we'll see.

Additionally note most people that are "complaining" don't want all the locks adjusted - just Classic and a few seem to consider Kunark a possibility for adjusting as well - but beyond that everyone seems fine with 6+ months besides a few outliers.

And again, we've seen precedent with polls like 51/50 winning by a large margin and then being incredibly unpopular that people tend to vote in polls they've got no interest in.

That is a valid reason that I'd neglected to account for - not sure how the gains from that would compare to the losses from people running out of content however. They're both two figures that are very hard to define the size of.

(And of course SoL when AA should minimize losses since it becomes a very long grind to "max out" seems to be a point when returning people would probably slow)

I say stop these dang polls-- period. Just go with the timeline as written and automatically advance. Just say no to uncertainty.

The uncertainty thing bothers me as well.

6 Months is going to feel like 6 years for those level capped and farming all 5 raid targets in classic soon after the server opens.

Two cents inc, they should poll the server after month 2 and ask if Kunark should be open at the start of month 4. Put the two extra months at the end of PoP or something.

Well assuming that F2P only doubles the population (in EQ1 they quoted it tripled EQ1's population - but likely that's tapered from the first effects and they've made no more recent quotes) - that translates out to only 700 players.

Yea, for most of us it's a drop in the bucket. For some people it's not - heck, I've got one friend right now that was playing Beta but won't be playing Live at first at least - simply because he can't fit it in his budget. Money's easy for me and you - but it's not for everyone out there.

Well there will be uncertainty, future polls and lack of automatic advancement. Remember that expansions will need to be voted upon to open.

(Which FYI is a second line of defense if they do shorten the timeframe to Kunark - if they shortened it to 3 months or whatever and the majority didn't want Kunark yet, the vote would keep failing every 2 weeks until they were ready)

There is something to be said for a longer time in Classic as well, more time fighting over more limited content is more time to come up with workable compromises and etiquette, identify the bad apples out there, and more opportunity for the majority to get to the level cap to increase end game pressures overall. Workable raid rotations don't happen without some kind of community pressure or being driven by the dominant guilds looking to avoid conflicts themselves, (usually because they don't want to spend hours of their evenings fighting off another guild or two interfering constantly for upgrades less than half their members need)

You'll see more examples of war happening during times of famine than reasonable agreement.

But I hope you're right. My expectation is until we get something like VP + Trak that the topend can hold exclusively without threat of incursion that negotiation will be impossible though. But hopefully I'm wrong.

Hope you are wrong but I don't see it.

OP is right it is insane .

I think the key question is this: A typical Live server in 1999 didn't have 12 raid capable guilds usually, and it appears we will have at least that many. Can anyone provide a logical explanation showing beyond all reasonable doubt that every single Live voter was aware of just how crowded it's going to be in Classic? If not, then reasonable doubt as to the poll is established.

At least for the raid game, I believe a lot of you think that after 3 months, the top 5 raid guilds are going to just stop until Kunark, giving the bottom guilds access to candyland for 3 months. But what's more likely to happen is, during the early months, one guild gets most of the raid loots, with 1-2 others picking up scraps. The top guild might pull back after 3 months til Kunark, or they might not- some of their players might pull back, but they could start recruiting and take players away from the casual guilds to replace them. And if that happens, that means the guild will retain enough active players to remain viable all Classic long.

Even if the top guild does pull back as a whole, the next 2-3 guilds that weren't getting enough will take their place, and end up raiding for the whole 6 months. And the casual guilds who were sitting back so far in the hierarchy that they were never even getting raid loot, will only move up 1-2 slots. We have at least 12 confirmed guilds, the back 8 will likely not see a raid mob for the first couple months, and then if the top guild or two pull back, that leaves 6 guilds still not likely seeing a raid mob. Finally once Kunark arrives, pressure releases a bit due to the availability of more raid mobs, but not until Velious will the bottom 3-4 guilds start even seeing Classic raid mobs.

Hate: To be fair - a large amount of the "super long" people don't care about raiding or raid guilds. Some of them consider raid guilds actively detrimental to the game.

So the core premise of your argument is going to miss the mark with many of them. =/

Well, remember, they stated if the expansion opens earlier, the unlock of the next expansion won't be accelerated. Velious isn't due to release for 1 year, if you open kunark early, you just have a longer unlock for the kunark expansion. If Classic is changed to 3 months, Kunark now becomes 9 months.

I voted for 6 month unlocks and Classic + Kunark at release. If Kunark and classic had been released at launch, it would have been 1 year until Velious.

The one thing that nobody is really counting for is the incredible size of the membership that the top guilds on this server are projecting. TL is boasting 200 + registered members. Even if they lost half of that to attrition, which I think is a bit high but we'll see, you're looking at 100 characters excluding boxes. The kind of loot distribution that kind of force requires is immense and loot distribution will be absolutely necessary to keep the peace in a raiding guild that large.

And that's just one guild. I don't foresee any of the hardcore raiding guilds pulling back even after release of the next expansions. The loot distribution required is going to be immense.