The 100% anti-boxing TLP dream

I don't know about patronizing, but the guy suggesting the possibility of a single no boxing TLP ruleset server ultimately doesn't seem to be the one here that's actually "demanding everybody else play the game the way you like to play". That seems a lot more universally baked into all the counter arguments imo.

not to sound overly harsh, but id rather have boxing raiders on a raid than casual puggers anyday ... ive always seen eq much like cookies and pie et al raidgame vs groupgame. you never mix cookies and pie

the group community never meshes well with a raid scene in my experience. mildly off topic yes i know but at the same time eq provides a server for both populations, the game is what you make of it. dont like to box? dont than, and find like minded people to play with just like a raidguild will do vs a casual guild.

Most people who are against boxing just have had 1 bad experience with some botter once, or worse, haven't even HAD a bad experience and just assume based on reading forums that all boxers are evil degenerates who ruined the game...

As others have said, there's probably 3-4 bad boxers on a server; it's surprisingly easy to just avoid them and enjoy the game. Most people box because it's INSANELY more convenient. I have weird play times- sometimes I hop on at 1am to play for a few hours. If I didn't box, I'd have nobody to play with. I got a few boxes so I can just log on at whatever weird hour and do whatever random stuff I wanna do in game and not have to worry about spending my time forming a pug group or hoping there's enough people in my guild with my same weird schedule.

Most people that box are 100% happy to drop their boxes for real people. I'm fairly certain that in most cases, people like playing with other people. EQ is a social game, but boxing helps get through the doldrums. There are also times when I log on and I only have a short time to play and I have a specific thing I want to do- it's much easier to fire up my boxes and just take care of what I need to do than log in, try to recruit people for the specific thing I need at that specific time, then do it, then log off. Boxing is undeniably useful.

Also people boxes in 1999-2000 too, you just didn't know about it because it wasn't as commonplace. Policing methods are also mostly dumb and subjective and nobody should be subjected to that.

You don't know what other players are experiencing, so i'm not sure how you've formed an opinion on them. You must be very biased on the topic to be blind to the fact that people have had negative game experiences due to jerk boxers though.

I've grouped with a ton of bad boxers, so I don't even know what game you're playing. Maybe we have different definitions of being bad at boxing.

Based on my own experience, I would say the number of players boxing willing to give you a place in group is closer to around 50%. Higher if in your Guild but even then some don't.

I'm sure everyone would agree that boxing gives you an advantage and is more convenient.

on raids we have 35 to 45 people in discord who actually raid and our raids are 60 to 72 charecters,main clerics are 2 to 3 on raids the other ones are boxed we are flexible swap toon in and out as needed,for instance in fire you might have a full group with 3 or 4 boxes outside the group because one or 2 guildies in the group dont box,new players get helped to lvl if they dont box or if they box.something his rotting we ask in guild before we ooc it .
And the best thing we have fun while we raid or group with guildies in discord.

I box EQ, I have done 2+ since everquest launch, I have even spent time running 2 on P99, and I never got in trouble for it and my accounts are still good standing. I usually run 2 or 3 rarely will I ever do one of the 6 boxes unless it is a live server, TLP servers I will cap at 3 always, and always drop boxes for other people unless I am experiencing one of those I just want to be alone days, but those days I am usually off in an area nobody would usually want to group up anyways.

If you don't want boxes in your groups, then don't invite them and make it clear you don't want oog support. If the problem is RMT bot groups monopolizing camps, then a more reasonable solution given DBG's weak enforcement is something like random loot, or abandoning artificial scarcity completely and just let any group of 6 spin up an instance of any zone so they can camp wherever they want.

Or maybe actually enforcing the rules for the server. P99 can do it but DBG can't?

I've literally seen a screen shot (on aradune) of a 3boxer and the guild roster was literally showing "Main" with "Main Box1" and "Main Box2"
Not a thing happened to the boxer.

Guess he just couldn't play without that kind of support.

Were they all online? That in itself is not proof they were three boxing, I had a main and two boxes myself, however they were never all three online at the same time. Not saying it wasn't done as I know for sure there were people more than two boxing on Aradune.

You can put anything you want in those notes and it doesn't have to be true.

Good joke. I'm going to write about it in my journal and laugh later.

I can boot up 2 boxes in P99 right now and 100% guaranteed would not get caught.

Not really a good comparison. A P99 mod can ban you on a whim, an actual company tries to have some universal standard for account actions. Obviously DBG could do way better than whatever they're currently doing, but they're not going to hand out bans because they observed you for a couple minutes and it looked suspicious, they want something specific they can document like "failed an afk check".

Good point, also the fact EQ has a paid for service while P99 does not. so there's a commercial/financial difference.

It is literally impossible for them to ever actually prevent people from being able to box on any server. The Truebox servers are the best you are going to get, but no matter what changes they make there will always be people who figure out ways around it. Also, with the ability for AIs to respond intelligently to messages makes it such that it is going to become unrealistic for anyone to monitor things and be able to prove anything is happening.

They cannot see it, but since they do not charge to play, they can get away with kicking people out without having to prove anything.

P99 has no liability when it comes to wrongly punishing users. DGC on the other hand can be brought to task through mediation or through the court system.

There isn't a disconnect, the boxing raiders was an example of where a TLP server is having the issue with numbers. PUG as a thing started going downhill after DoN. From that point onwards you pretty much were needing to have a guild or group of friends to get groups reliably. Most long time players stopped trusting PUG because of it being like playing roulette, you have a better chance of losing than winning. You don't know what you are getting into when you group with a stranger, but if you know someone already in the group, then you are one step closer to getting ahead.

P99 can't do it either. People just like to pretend that they can. It is 100% impossible for the people who run P99 or any emulated EQ server to prove that they are preventing people from boxing unless they are literally only allowing 1 character total on their server at a time. They claim that they are enforcing it because it is good for their PR. Also, given the small size of their playerbase it is easy for them to kick and block them from their server, especially considering that the players whom P99 bans has no way to retaliate against P99.
As far as your alleged screenshot that you saw, it is entirely possible that the person has 3 different computer/laptop systems that they are playing on, thus not making it against the rules.

Aradune is a 2-box limit truebox server, so even with three computers 3-boxing on Aradune wouldn't be "permitted"

My read of it has always been, that the 2-box is on the same system. But that is just going from how it was described by the Dev's from its announcement. To clarify, my understanding is that you could have 2 boxes on 1 computer on Aradune, rather than having to have 2 computers.

Even still the the screenshot is not proof that a single person is boxing above the limit.

Aradune has always been two characters logged in per player max. They can have more accounts with characters on the server just only log in two at once.

No. This was actually made quite clear prior to launch, and there was and still is a pop-up notice on the character select screen each time you login to Aradune. The Rizlona server, launched at the same time, did not have any truebox rule. Aradune is supposed to have been a 2-character limit at all times, but that rule has long since gone out the window due to lack of proper enforcement.

You need to brush up on your reading comprehension then. The rules were very clear and well established.