Dead Game???

Discussion in 'Zones and Population' started by ARCHIVED-mavetwhomavet, Mar 26, 2012.

  1. ARCHIVED-mavetwhomavet Guest

    So I'm new to this game - 1 week. I have annual passes to WoW and Rift and this game looked like fun so here I am playing; I like to play different games for the fun factor but anyway...
    I've noticed that my server, everfrost, is DEAD. Sure I see a few players, from time to time, here and there but is this normal? What time of day do I play you're going to ask? All times. All day weekends, weekday afternoons and well past 11pm CST. So is this "normal?" Is my server just dead? Are other servers more full?
    Just curious coming from other games where there are ppl every frickin where. Not to say that I'm complaing mind you - I get to collect more shinies and cool stuff but curious on your feedback :)
  2. ARCHIVED-Yimway Guest

    Its an 8 year old game, the majority of the player base is in top level zones and/or their guild halls.
  3. ARCHIVED-Gaealiegen Guest

    Multiple steps were taken in this game that removed you from seeing the population of the servers. Instant travel and guild halls were large portions of that. Freeport and Antonia Bayle are incredibly busy servers though. You may like it there more.
    Overall you won't see people very often on the majority of servers.
  4. ARCHIVED-mavetwhomavet Guest

    Gaealiege@Butcherblock wrote:
    But isn't this supposed to be a MMORPG??? And I've found a nice guild full of really nice peeps so moving servers really isn't an option - at this point...
  5. ARCHIVED-Gaealiegen Guest

    I would say yes, that's part of an MMO. Sony would say no. And many of their fanbois would as well.
    People will literally stand in their guild hall for hours (instanced area) until they need to go to a zone. Then someone will plant a flag so they can instantly teleport there, Call of the Veteran (instantly teleport there), or the location will be near a druid ring or wizard spire (instantly port there).
    People have become sickeningly lazy in this game. You can safely blame not seeing people on purely that. If you want to see a large cluster of humans, zone into Drunder at night. You might see a guild wander in and stand around for 15 minutes. Or participate in a Ring War, but that's about it.
  6. ARCHIVED-Championchains Guest

    It's no different from any other MMO. While leveling in WoW, the only place you'll run into people is in the Cataclysm zones doing dailies at max level. Especially with phased zones in Northrend and the Cata zones on Azeroth. And Stormwind/Orgrimmar serve the purpose of guild halls in EQ2. Just places for people to hang out until they have somewhere to go. I'm sure if there were no housing and guild halls, you'd see a lot more people around Freeport and Qeynos.
    After they changed cold weather flying to allow lvl 70 toon access, I'd fly around Northrend on my 70 Priest looking for a fight for hours and never see a single Alliance (after Cata launch of course). People get to max level and get set into the pvp/pve grind and rarely leave capitol cities unless they haven't yet maxed their daily rep.
  7. ARCHIVED-Gaealiegen Guest

    No. I played WOW for quite awhile. You can pretty much guaranteed to go any zone and find people. If you can click the bell, zone into each zone accessible by bell and find 40+ people total from all those zones, I'll give you 1,000pp.
  8. ARCHIVED-7foggynites Guest

    Gaealiege@Butcherblock wrote:
    I come from EQ1 and this was very common to sit in the guild hall when you AFK. Part of the reason was that people didn't want their buffs to wear off - so they went to the guild lobby or hall. They also used the guild hall for traveling and for putting up a flag during raids. People also liked it because your buddies tend to be in your guild and you like to bump into them. The only downside is that the guild halls in EQ1 were very plain and not much character. It'd be kind of cool if the guild hall's had had special rooms for certain members so we could visit them and see the guild's exploits.
    But you know that EQ2 doesn't have a huge population. That has an impact.
    Maybe what they need to do is allow players to make events or competitions or something. Players could show off their creations or their newfound abilities or just mingle while watching a show? Gotta be something to do.
    You know how people in RL like to put displays on their lawn or put out the lights during christmas or just in general have a place that looks good? They do that because they want passerby's to notice and also because they want to make their day a bit brighter. I wish the houses in EQ2 could be optionally built in neighorhood instances. Maybe guilds could create their own neighborhood? Or maybe there could be public neighorhoods. EQ1 has neighborhoods, but I'm ignorant of them.
    Imagine neighorhoods with particular themes. Like evil neighborhoods that use dark textures and so on... Or garden neighorhoods where everyone is required to put plants on their property. It could be a fun way to get people together.
  9. ARCHIVED-Yimway Guest

    Gaealiege@Butcherblock wrote:
    Thats a bit extreme, 40 I can find, 100 I can not ;)
  10. ARCHIVED-Sinnous Guest

    I love that idea. I would totally join a neighborhood. However how cool would it be if they could have events every now and then for neighborhoods that participated for invasions and stuff. I would love to defend my home,guildhall, neighborhood against an invasion and spawn like a named mob with cool loot(even for just appearance loot) at the end of the invasion. And they could have greater mobs based on the amount of rent status reduction per neighborhood and the level of the guild halls in the neighborhood so the invasions scale with the levels.

    Just an idea.
  11. ARCHIVED-CoLD MeTaL Guest

    mavetwhomavet wrote:
    /who all <class name>
    yields less than 25 people consistently on my server jut about no matter the time/day. Yes, i know a lot of people are hidden from that, but that is still extremely light to me when it used to be the 100max.
    You are several years late for lots of people running around doing stuff. Mostly SLR is about all that is in chat.
  12. ARCHIVED-Championchains Guest

    Gaealiege@Butcherblock wrote:
    40 would be no problem. You could likely find 10 in Butcherblock, 10 in Enchanted lands, 10 in Thundereing Steppes, Zone into Neriak and there are always several people at the crafting stations, then hit Freeport and Qeynos and you'd likely be over 50-60 players. I could do a lot with 1k platinum.
  13. ARCHIVED-Sinnous Guest

    I'd say on Freeport there are probably 20 in FP alone at crafting stations and broker. Usually some in Neriak, and I always see the random group or person here and there.
  14. ARCHIVED-Gaealiegen Guest

    You can't zone into Freeport AND Qeynos both from the bell on any character.
    On my server though, both cities have less than 10 people in them at most times. Right now a /who yielded myself in Freeport.
    Zero for enchanted lands, zek, and Feerrott. Six in everfrost and 11 in lavastorm.
  15. ARCHIVED-Finora Guest

    Instances everywhere in EQ2 people just tend to stand around in instead of standing around on top of the banker like they do in WOW. Some stand around in there houses, some stand around in guild halls, some stand around in the battleground lobby, the occassional few still hang around near Qeynos Harbor docks and a few more around the Freeport docks.
    EQ2 obviously doesn't have the population of WOW & the majority of the population Eq2 does have is near level cap. Level cap players have almost no reason at all to go into lower level zones or even cities. Even low level characters have almost no reason to go into the cities unless there is an event going on. There are banks & merchants all over the place outside of cities that are more convient.
  16. ARCHIVED-Encien Guest

    It will be if this next game update flops.
  17. ARCHIVED-Novusod Guest

    Another thing to consider is large content update is coming and people aren't hanging arround in the old zones anymore. There are quite a few people on the test server lately so the game is far from dead.
  18. ARCHIVED-JJDillon Guest

    The game has become very top-heavy. There are few actual new players as opposed to new characters -- the new characters mostly being alts of established players, people who know how to maximize their ascent to level 90, when they start playing the 'real game' (in their opinion).

    There is a ton of rich, fairly deep content in the old world. But for the reason I stated, it's not being used or being underused badly. EQ1 had this problem, and their response was the 'Drakkin' expansion where they simply ignored all the old content and made a new set of linear zones that would take a character from Min level to Max level without ever having to see the old world. A 'golden path, if you will. I thought that was a huge mistake, and very disrespectful to the game as a whole.

    Put simply, we need more players. A lot of them. Far more than I think this game can attract. Failing that, server merges in a big way. Large populations would only be a hardware issue, not a player issue as at the top level, 95% of the content or more is instanced. But at least then, there would be more people available for grouping and questing in the L1-L89 game. Also, the dreaded dungeon finder needs to finally be cross-server'd and its algorithims for group makeup worked on heavily.
  19. ARCHIVED-retro_guy Guest

    Not dead, but not thriving sadly.
    I've played since launch and this is as empty as I've seen the game.
    Oasis is one of the higher population servers but when I play, late at night, it's pretty dead. Although RW still rns and there are groups running. But it's clear that people are not about, and it's beginning to really concern me.
  20. ARCHIVED-Katz Guest

    mavetwhomavet wrote:
    Wow and Rift don't have guild halls with all the amenities in them you need. Don't get me wrong, I love the guild hall, but it does mean that you don't have to go to the other areas for banker, broker, crafting, traveling, etc.
    As compared to Rift....EQ2 has a lot more levels and zones so the population is spread out over more space and levels. As compared to Wow....well, as far as I know, no other game as the population numbers of Wow.