Viability of a no box server

Unless camping a difficult name that couldnt be slowed or without proper tank (sk/warrior/paladin) in classic, a single druid or shaman was sufficient to sustain a group in classic. I'm surprised anyone that played classic would think otherwise.
We talking pure old school vanilla classic? Remember when clerics had no HoT? No slow, no debuffs, no regeneration, no snare. In classic, a good shaman or druid could be the defacto main healer and reliable crowd control along with dps.
Back when stat buffs mattered it wad a no brainer. Even after that I'd take a shaman over a cleric in group play any day of the week. If you need cleric healing in group play, you are playing exclusively post Velious or attempting an extremely inefficient experience per hour camp.

You think it would take a year? The server would be in PoP within a month. Exaggerated. But don't underestimate the non-dirty non-casuals.

Well, technically, a paladin could heal a group in classic, and in fact this sometimes happened. There were some level ranges and camps where a druid or shaman could be roughly as effective as a cleric. But the combination of cleric HP/AC buffs and healing effectiveness/efficiency was pretty hard to beat. You were taking a step down with a druid or shaman, though sometimes it could be worth it in easier camps.

As for clerics being boring, this was true for raids. CH chains were the bane of clerics' existences. During all of the cool fights, you essentially turned yourself into a human bot. In group play, however, I always found clerics to be fun. The really boring class in groups was warrior, unless you were also the puller.

Anyway, I hold out a little hope for the no-box server. I've been skeptical of the classic server concept all along, and the TLPs haven't done much for me. However, I'm intrigued by the idea of returning to a game that actually forces interdependence again. This runs against the grain of modern MMOs, and it would be interesting to see it again. I'm not sure that's its going to work, though. There are too many people obsessed with playing games in God Mode.

So my first reaction was that I'd probably create a cleric on the no-box server. This would be a server about grouping. I guess I could find five friends and get them to play mages while I play a bard. Then I could go kill all the raid bosses. Or I could get five extra computers and five extra internet connections, and do it myself. Naw, I think I'll just try grouping.

I suppose I just saw more druids and shamans out play clerics in my day. There wasn't too much for the cleric to do outside of healing and once in a long while buff sequence. The other two classes, we're busier than pre /melody bards if they were doing it right.

You're not wrong. There was a lot more for druids and shamans to do, but if they were the primary healer in a demanding group, mana became an issue. Back in those days, most groups were a LOT more conservative in terms of how fast they would pull, and they tended to avoid the tougher camps. If you got into an aggressive group, a shaman or druid would have to forego a lot of the other spells, which made them into less efficient clerics. And then there were the rezzes, which were a huge deal in the pre-merc era, especially when you respawned naked. Today, players are far more aggressive as a matter of course. All the way back on the first prog server, you saw ordinary players heading for the camps that used to scare people. Would you want to take a group to Efreeti without a cleric? You could, and I'm sure people do. You'd rather do it with a cleric, though.

I box efreeti with a shaman and a bard, the only thing that causes issues is rotating mage armies.

If you were a shaman and oom back in the day, you better darn well have ATLEAST less than 30% life.

It would be interesting to see how fast people blow through content when they cant mass box though. Id imagine still quickly, but maybe not as quick.

Lol thats what i was thinking.

Would restricting the new server from Krono trading prevent destructive boxing? Or is it not possible to do that? It seems like most of the complaining comes from people who can't camp for certain items because boxes are hoarding them all for Krono selling and then using said Krono to fuel their accounts.

I think in theory a "nobox" server would be amazing! However as OP presented there would be a multitude of issues trying to enforce it, and as a post mentioned, you would have a lot of toxic players. This is not anything to do with the players mentalities themselves imo. It stems from the fact that EQ, especially early on, just does not have enough to do. Who has more time to post in general or get bored and frustrated? The guy trying to manage the tank, healer, and puller in the group, or the wizard pressing 1 a couple times a minute?

The issue with a nobox server doesnt just start with the legitimate lack of characters to keep a healthy population going, it starts with the simple statistical issue that someone playing and managing 3-18 characters will more times than not just be a better and busier player than the person playing and managing one character. Notice i said most times. I for one will always play a single character better than I can play 3, however it takes much more effort to play 3 decently than 1 superbly. Playing one character in classic EQ is like playing tictactoe. It is simple, limited, and at the end of the day, you barely feel like you accomplished anything.

Now before anyone jumps on that last sentence, let me be clear when I started playing EQ yearrrs ago i did not feel that way at all. However after playing hundreds of other RPGs and MMOs, coming back to EQ makes me most assuredly believe that to be the case. Sorry, its just the way it is. 2 boxing is how everyone should play EQ, whether you are a 6 boxer or have never boxed in your life. I strongly believe it is the most appropriate way to the play this game.

I wonder about not only the viability of the no-box server but the impact of this release on the current TLPs.

While I think that some people who (rage)quit from RF/LJ will return for a no-box server, I think it will also pull people from those two servers. Will there be enough people looking to start over again in the winter when we just re-started on the current TLP? Will that result in 3 lower population servers instead of 3 well populated healthy ones? They couldn't merge RF and LJ at that point, because they will be at different points in the population (RF could possibly be into Luclin while LJ is still on Kunark.)

I'll take a low pop no-box enforced server vs. our current population where everyone seems to box tlp servers. My personal own opinion.

you could have that on vulak!

if by low pop you mean ghost town.

I would be curious as how quickly an unfettered no box guild can make it through the expansions. That would be one hell of a special ruleset server.

It would be enough to prevent those legal and illegal 3rd party programs from working on new server. I think most people do not have problems with regular boxers. I highly doubt they would be able to disable multi-PC boxing anyway. I personally do not care if they disable boxing completely, just having a server where you have to make a tracking class to be able to track mobs would make me happy.

Your router or modem has a primary IP address, it's possible already in non official EQ to simply change the SQL database from NO to YES to only allow one connection per IP address. Even if you use another computer you will be blocked.

This is why you need to pay money, buy a VPN server account. Then use a second computer and run the VPN software, this makes all internet data travel through a remote computer before it hit's anything so it will appear like you are connecting elsewhere.

The bad thing?

The fact that this is doable to bypass IP blocks.

The good thing?

It costs money, usually $10.00-$20.00 monthly per VPN account. Most users will be unwilling to spend additional money for this.

Can people use a phone and WIFI? Sure, but that has costs as well and at most only allows 2 boxing.

My over all Opinion?

Yes, let's do this.

Note: You do not NEED to have two computers for VPN. I have already ran VMWARE multiple versions of windows and VPN software to obtain multiple IP addresses on the same computer. It causes some issues with fast speed in games so I do not recomend it.

So, I know what I am talking about here.

I doubt they would restrict by IP address, there are too many households with multiple people playing EQ.

Ultimately the solution that DBG is working towards has very little to do with preventing boxing on a server, therefore people are taking this entirely wrong. DBG is working towards a restriction that will only allow one client to run per computer. Thus having many characters controlled through a single interface will be eliminated.

Yes this could be worked around using Virtual Machines so that one physical computer could still run multiple accounts that would still require people to manually swap between the different accounts to control each character. So you MIGHT see the extremely dedicated run up to 6 characters, but I really wouldn't expect to see any of the 1 man Army's of 18+ mages running around using that which must not be named to replicate single commands against all the different characters. And honestly noone is going to care about that one person boxing his group until that person does so to the detriment of everyone else by locking down an efreeti camp or other high value target for days on end, as soon as someone sees that I expect the reports will be in and the issue will be handled.

The biggest question is why are people wanting to box on this server to begin with? Just to puff your chest out and say see I can do it. With all the other server options to choose from why do you feel the need to invade the one server that doesn't want it? That mentality I don't understand.