Truebox - Fact vs. Fiction

Likely... I haven't leveled up Foruming in sometime.

Hmm. There's 2 ways of looking at this. You're absolutely correct that only 1 person in that scenario is conducting business with DBG. Only 1 entity is paying them $.

On the other hand. Supply and Demand. Assume the boxers disappear overnight. With much fewer active accounts, the demand for Kronos would go down. (unless we're saying that boxers are subscribing exclusively using real $, and not keeping accounts active with Kronos)

When the in-game demand for Kronos goes down...the supply will eventually follow suit. Because why continue buying Kronos using $, if fewer people are trading you platinum for them?

Now, who is the "target customer"? Beats me. Ask DBG. But I do feel there's a cause-and-effect relationship happening.

I reread it, I didn't miss anything its just another passive aggressive anti boxer post /duck

A. 6 accounts on a TLP 3 pay $ and 3 use krono.

B. 6 accounts on a TLP and they all pay $$

Which example paid more?

Does it matter if one person paid $ and bought 5 krono to trade to a boxer? that would be even more money than example A.

Maybe I am missing something... I'm over EQ forums today Lol.

It's hard to argue any of that because both of you are right in all of that as well. The main point of the argument was to knock the boxers off the "Holier than thou" pedestal when they say that they are more valuable (If said boxer supports the accounts with krono) 'customers' than those who actually do directly support DBG's.

It doesn't matter to DBG who pays, as long as someone pays.

Funny thread.

I could afford to box. Tried it years ago (multi-computer style) when my brother had rigs sitting in my house. I was terrible at it. Probably would be terrible even with the best add-on in the world.

I see the sell of truebox. [box armies can make early eras unplayable for others pretty easily --if others aren't willing to avoid key places]

Selos and Mangler... whatever they end up being, are very niche rulesets. Truebox probably suits the small niche thinking.

I think next year Daybreak goes wide appeal, as the existing and these two niche will be mostly monetized (past their highest population for pulling $).

They do Phinny + good XP + free trade loot and make one truebox and one not --the $ rain on them for at least a year.

Then launch something else. The easy-milk-the-$-from progression playerbase is mostly the short-attention types. What's nice about that for Daybreak is selling bags, pots etc. over and over.

They won't sell near as much if we all happily played on a slow unlock server for 5+ years.

My point being... I don't think Daybreak is anti boxing at all. They are just milking their sales hype. I think not truebox will come up again as a server offering, and I don't think it will be that many years.

I hope you're right, but it's been four years and six(?) servers now since the last one. That's a very long time to go with only truebox servers, if their intent is to keep mixing some non-truebox servers in.

How does someone boxing ruin the experience of someone who is not boxing?

Boxing large amount, disrupts the camps available to people and no Picks do not solve this.
Also changes the market for items, and makes it harder for non boxers.
There is already no GM support, aka who gets the kill get the loot, compared to how it was before.
Multi boxing easily just makes this worse.

They have made 6 TLPs with boxing enabled and now 6 with truebox. 4 of the servers with boxing enabled kept players engaged for years. So far only one truebox server has kept players engaged for more than 2 years. It will be a few years before we even know which is the more successful

People blame boxers...

...when they want to farm that loot camp whether it be single big-ticket stuff or mass of tradeskill stuff

...when they want that XP camp or zone

Meanwhile, a single high level person, or a better DPSing person or group(s) can cause the same disruption. Look, I get it... an army boxer holding down an epic spawn for months on end does hijack that for a specific server. On my old server the same 2-boxer "owned" Plane of Fear for about 3 years --you had to time it and bring a guild to a grey con zone (that's how far past era it was that this was still contested content).

However, making certain things nodrop in Pre-PoP, and other things spawnable (epic bits) would remove most of the reason people forum rage against boxers. But... that would also mean farming certain things wouldn't be as profitable for anyone else (i.e., Hiero cloak nodrop is still loot rights, but now you have a hassle selling it).

In 20 years of playing EQ I have never had a box group ks me or train me out of a camp. I have had many negative encounters with players from “top guilds” who had an entitlement attitude about content and regularly ks’d key pieces and ran us out of loot camps. Should I therefore be advocating for no large guilds?
Generally when I have been 3 boxing a camp and a box group rolls up they usually ask how long I will be there and then camp out and ask me to give x player a tell when I am finished.
I still dont see how your game play is affected any differently by a box group or any regular group.

AOC’s solve the problem of a handful of people locking down content. If they had existed 15+ years ago this would be an entirely different game. They should be on every server now

Well it only effects TLP's unless live servers want to farm older content.
Seru/emp for fast mounts is one that would make a difference, there are a few more i guess.
Abashi's etc.

You just don't play enough I guess. Or maybe you're in low value camps.

Acting like boxers don't exist is just trolling, which many of us don't really take that lightly.

On FV, you can't even raid any popular targets pre-pop. I went into VT several times... not a single named. Checked Kael for weeks, never saw a single KT (wanted to simply do the quest) or AOW. Tunare... nope... I was able to snipe Naggy once and that was wayyy too much tracking for what should be a low value target.

AOC's on FV would let players experience all of that old stuff. Craziness not to deliver it.

I’m not acting like they don’t exist, I just haven’t had a bad encounter with one. There was a boxer from the top guild on Lockjaw that would box 54 toons. He would usually get his own pick and people would stay away from that pick because he was in it. I would always check that pick because he was usually asleep, or eating and just holding the pick open so it was like my own little pick zone that everyone else stayed away from. When he returned he was always respectful and never went after whatever I was camping but I was usually done by then and left his pick.
And I do stay away from high value camps on launches. Gear in classic and Kunark is barely necessary until Velious. I’m not going raise my blood pressure over GEB’s in the first couple of months

This is false. It was false the first time it was posted, it will always be false. On ragefire right now, there are still a dozen active guilds and hundreds of individual people, many do not box, but most do. There are also several dozen mass boxers. They are there, mass boxing, because they enjoy it.

If your statement were true, they would have long ago been put out of business when the trueboxers all left for the first true box server. That is as active a server as there has ever been in that era of content.

Those that enjoy mass boxing but cannot afford to "directly support" the game as you call it, are able to go to the true box servers with a smaller number of accounts and do exactly the same thing they do on ragefire and lockjaw, but are able to command much higher prices in krono for their offerings. On ragefire and lockjaw, it would take a 54-man box crew most of the month to get 54 krono. In the still quiet wait towards the end of expansions on Lockjaw, some were even forced to let some accounts go dormant, because competition for krono on that server was so steep. On the truebox TLP, at minimum, you can earn 1 krono per hour. It's not uncommon to walk away from an eight hour session with well over 100 krono.

Krono is so easily obtained on true box, in fact, that a significant portion of the server launch community is players from live with no interest in TLP, people outside the game who have long left EQ, and people from other TLP's, to go and play specifically to farm krono.

We call it the "early TLP krono grind," and if you value krono at $10.00 per hour, I'm able to blow my old 175$/hr consulting fee right out of the water. Playing the first week of a TLP is easily the highest paying job I've ever had.

If concerns about krono farmers was the issue, the anti-boxer crowd would have been pushing for a "no krono" server. If concerns about competition for content was the concern, the anti-boxer crowd would have been pushing for fully instanced servers.

But instead, and as they always do actions reveal motivations, they advocated for true boxing, because it isn't about the economy (if it were you'd be pushing FV-the healthiest server economy there has ever been), it isn't about damage done by krono, it isn't about competition for content.

It's entirely a failure to keep your eyes on your own paper. Instead of just playing the game, a years-long campaign of whinging was levied against DBG, who finally gave you what you were asking for. You took most of your problems with you to those servers, and that's fine. I'm glad you have them, and I hope future TLP launches always feature at least one true-box server. But it's motivated by hate for a particular style of play. It isn't righteous. I'm a mass boxer, and I never did anything to you.

Article 33: Individual responsibility, collective penalties, pillage and reprisals. No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. ... Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishment is a war crime.

The collective exile imposed on mass boxers, is wrong. Objectively. Now, it's just a game and nothing here actually matters, but all of your rationalizations for hating boxers will always fall apart under any sort of scrutiny because the underlying foundation is just wrong.

I think there should also be servers there that allow those of us that kept this game alive while the rest of ya'all quit, to play the way we want to play.

As for where the money for the game comes from, none of you knows what you're talking about.

The single largest revenue stream for the game for the longest time was selling expansions. That's why they pushed a six-month release schedule even once it became clear they could not deliver quality product at that pace. Because virtually every account would buy the expansion, though very few accounts stayed active for very long after that. Buy expansion, pay for a month, then afk till next expansion. That's how most of their customers played the game. DBG doesn't get to book krono sales on the P&L statements until the krono is spent, so people from other DBG games farming krono on true box but spending it on other games, that money isn't going to EQ. In the actual world you live in, if mass boxers are the only ones spending krono, they legit are the only ones directly supporting the game.

The current largest revenue stream comes from station cash items. Not krono, not subscriptions. That fancy armor ornament set that was like, several hundred dollars? Two day effort to make it, paid the guy's salary for a year within an hour of it going up for sale.

What none of you seems to understand is that a very small subset of very wealthy players are dumping a ton of cash on the game to try and help keep it alive. Right now I'm boxing 12 accounts on ragefire, but I'm paying for 54. Direct monthly cc charge. I don't even buy it a year at a time to get it cheaper. I trade plat for krono, because a depreciating asset is usually well traded for an appreciating one, and the portability is nice if I ever go to a different server, but I just bank the krono for a rainy day or give it friends struggling to pay for three accounts. I also buy big bags, xp potions, and when I roll up on selos I'll probably spend several thousand dollars on various goodies because, honestly, money is easy to make, and spending it on fun is my privilege.

You lost me at Coke. Dr Pepper is where it is at.

Trust me, I know it. Just from my play style alone. When I play these new TLPs, what exactly do I do every single time? Within the first month I am buying a huge bag off the market place for my main 2 characters. Next, I am buying each of my characters (or at least 2 of them) the ability to use armor style augs. Then they release some cute illusions and I am off buying those for my main. If the illusion has a bonus effect (levi, for example) I am buying it for any char that cannot self levi. When the next expansion unlocks, I am buying Exp Potions. Then, every single time, they will release those box sets, where you buy a box and you have a chance to get a mount of an armor piece and I am buying 10 of those in the hopes I get a mount and never do. I am a sucker. But the gamble is fun, even if I always end up with buyers remorse. Every few months, at least one expensive thing will come from my collecting/hoarding my 500 "free" cash points. But things like the bag? Those never cost cash points, always just straight money.

All of this costs way more than both my use of Kronos or RL cash to pay for my accounts. And they aren't account wide so I am purchasing these items... every. single. server.

Yes and no. Mostly because most games (if not all by now) are directly tied together for their subscription fees. I can spend a krono in EQ and go play EQ2 on that same sub. But that does make another solid point. Where as I used to have to pay separate fees (at one point I was playing EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard at the same time) for each game, now I get them all with 1 single price, whether that is the price of a krono ($17.99) or the price of a credit card sub ($14.99). That krono, or that credit card payment are not just supporting EQ, but all of their games. Whereas, the in-game market place items purchased for EQ are directly supporting EQ.

I guess when I think of it that way, it changes how I feel entirely about my subscriptions regardless of whatever method I use to pay.