Why was pick changed?

Lol, you realize that you just said 'wrong' and then agree'd with what we've been trying to convey to you, right?

Do words actually have meaning to you?

You said that around Gates the population started to decline. I pointed out that it started to decline much earlier. That is not me saying the same thing you've been saying.

it's hilarious how quickly this change has killed my entire guilds motivation to do anything except for raid and somehow that's even messed up by your expedition cap. bravo. why don't you stop trying to fix stuff? you seem incredibly awful at it and unable to not break 6 other things that are currently working fine...

First they changed pickzones now they ruined the spell market. Great job.

I'm pretty certain that Phinigel will be the last TLP for me. The randomness, the inconsistency, the budget-like support and the unprofessional band-aid patches coming every month, it makes me question how far I'm willing to take it up the rear, by a company that doesn't even try to hide how little they care for their common customer.

You have to question yourself if the love of EQ outweights the treatment you're receiving from DBG. We're all there, we're still here because we care for the game and wish to contribute to keeping it running, knowingly that the moment we don't care to subscribe for it anymore, the game will likely decline and eventually get scrapped.

I really hate the regular doom-sayer threads, that pops up once or twice a month, but if they keep this up the population will decline. I'm looking forward to the bankruptcy of DBG, when Everquest (hopefully) gets bought by someone else, that have a better vision and interest in the well-being of the game.

I will make it easier for you.

You are the only person using a single server as an example of eq population decline. No one cares about what solely happened to Fippy other than the server did eventually decline at GoD and now it's barren. But, whatever... You are set with Raid Guilds and LDoN keeping this server alive versus a brand new progression server in the coming months.

We'll see what happens at that time, won't we?

What happened in 2004 isn't really relevant to what will happen now.

And I've never said that Phinny will be just fine with the new server coming out. I don't know yet. It depends entirely on the ruleset.

The only thing I've argued is that there is always a big decline at Gates, and that no one wants to play any expansions after that. It only takes one counterexample to prove this point, so Fippy is sufficient.

Fair enough, and I know what you're saying, but I think there is one factor that you are not taking into account and that's revenue. Now I could be very wrong, but in my opinion this new server probably wouldn't be on the horizon if Phinny could self-sustain beyond GoD.

and to clarify, self-sustain is Phinny's income exceeds it's operating costs... Which I'm pretty sure it's probably just breaking even now.

+10

The question isn't whether Phinny can self-sustain, but whether DBG THINKS Phinny can self-sustain. Personally I don't think Daybreak can evaluate that question reliably. Clearly they couldn't accurately gauge the community's interests in playing through Gates as a separate expansion--I suspect they thought they would be hailed as liberating heroes on the bundling decision, and it went very much the other way. And I think they are putting not enough weight on the importance of instancing, and too much weight on other factors, in their evaluations (see the pick changes for exhibit a--it shows that they don't understand that instances are the one thing, far above anything else, that makes Phinny successful.)

So you could be right that THEY think Phinny will flop post Gates, but I am going to continue to respectfully disagree with them.

This is the truest statement on these forums to date.

RadarX Did NOT give a reason. His punctuation is wrong, so I can see how you can get it confused. The bullet said that to prevent pick LOCK abuse (the new thing they put in) they originally designed it to force the zone to shutdown, but instead of doing that, they came up went with lock mechanic.

RadarX did not give a reason for why picks had to be changed. I gave a reason for choosing one change over another.

Pretty high praise for forums that have been in existence for quite a while. Not sure I agree with you, but thanks.

You are absolutely wrong. He gave a reason. I also believe he mistyped and put lock in because they added pick lock.

So here's the quote again with lock removed:

He puts a slash in between to mean it's 2 reasons. I'm not sure how you can read what he posted there and still think he didn't give a reason.

I'll quote the reason part again just so it can sink in.

Edit:

Ok, I see what you're saying. It's ambiguous what RadarX meant. Both interpretations are fair. Perhaps RadarX can clarify.

Assuming your interpretation is correct, it begs the question "what is considered pick abuse?"

Both of you guys are kinda splitting hairs at this point... whether either (or both, or none) interpretation is correct... the implementation is crap. It's like we're all back in kindergarten and everyone is being punished for the actions of the few, instead of actually creating a system that allows legitimate use and discourages/punishes (what DBG considers) illegitimate use. Several people in this thread (and others) have proposed significantly more viable options to do exactly this. Let's hope someone is listening.

Maybe he mistyped, probably even likely. The fact is that what he actually wrote did not give a reason. The only way it does is if you change what he wrote, as you did.

He is a professional communicator. We should not have to rewrite his communication to make sense of it. No need to make excuses for him and pretend he wrote something that he didn't actually write.

These guys wouldn't know how to code this game, in it's extremely complicated text files (read: utterly basic text files); even if the original devs came walking in the door.

The people employed at this company literally have no clue how to actually code, balance, or structure the game anymore.

I normally don't post on the forums, but this is one thing that is now directly affecting my gameplay. Back before last week, I was always able to put a group together and xp no problem, even got all the way to 48 without ever having to wait more than 30 minutes from login to starting to xp.

Last night I come back after having been gone a week. I log in, put my group together, and we head to Velks, do a cc, all decent camps taken. No problem, we'll just pick over. What's this, 40+ people and no picks? No problem, we'll head over to Seb. Same thing. GE? Same thing. Rinse and repeat until the group folds and I have to log out without getting any xp that evening.

I know this is the first time it's happened and it's certainly not a deal breaker, but if that happens often enough, I can guarantee I won't be renewing when my sub is up. Shame, too, as I was really having a blast up until last night.

Not a bad write up!

I'm convinced that the load balancing changes were implemented in order to try an kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The primary (and officially stated) reason was to stop an exploit on their live servers and to prevent the same exploit from eventually affecting current and future load balanced progression servers. Unfortunately, load balancing is what makes Phinny successful and they'll probably adjust the change if it becomes a problem for the masses.

Going by your theory, do you think its safe to say the reason they haven't released info on this new upcoming server is because they can't evaluate what will happen beyond LDoN, OoW, and GoD? In other words, this new server is probably some sort of contingency plan. Essentially, if Phinny can't self sustain they spin up a new ruleset 'progression' server, otherwise it'll be another 'event' server.