How to Get more New Players?

[Briscoe]

Originally Posted by Telados [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do you think that if there were some way to legitimately identify unique new players and hand them trash gear in ec - that owuld help get new player faces?

I tend to not bother with handing out new gear to newbies for this reason. A few weeks ago I was sitting in EC and I shouted that I was giving away an Essence of Dol to the first newbie monk who hailed me. In a matter of seconds, some low level monk dual wielding Knuckle Dusters runs up to me and hails me. I can't even give away some trash gear without someone who is already twinked trying to take it and squeeze out a few extra plat.

Furthermore, to add to webrunner5's post, I'm not a big proponent of handing out free stuff anyway. I joined this server without any friends, and leveled to 20 on the Qeynos side of the world when the population was low over the summer and I was often hunting by myself. The idea of running to EC and begging for high level buffs and gear never even crossed my mind.

Some of my best memories on this server involve me being a poor, undergeared newbie scratching and clawing for everything I could get, such as selling rusty weapons to buy leather armor for myself, stockpiling gnoll fangs to turn in, or camping and soloing Dyllin Starsine at level 16 to get my ToV (I still remember my heart beating when root broke and I was afraid I would aggro the red-con smuggler!).

I did receive a free Savant's Cap as a newbie (thanks Soedar) and a couple hundred platinum when I was in my 20s (thanks Delearium), but other than that I worked my way up the regular way and it was a lot of fun. Any newbie would gladly accept any handout, but I just can't sympathize with the mindset of, "I'm new here and don't know anyone, so I need high level buffs and gear to level up."

[Tecmos Deception]

Originally Posted by Briscoe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Some of my best memories on this server involve me being a poor, undergeared newbie scratching and clawing for everything I could get, such as selling rusty weapons to buy leather armor for myself, stockpiling gnoll fangs to turn in

This.

On live and on p99 both, starting from scratch was some of the best, classic EQ fun possible.

[Duckforceone]

well i do like the helpful community here... when i started i was given some plat for spells and bags, so i didn't have to struggle so hard... later on i was lucky with a few good items given to me as well...

and all of that generosity, while not humongous, still made my experience starting here that much better and easier to get into the groove again.

and i am paying that back every day, trying to buff lowbies with sow, doing heals when i move across someone soloing and other stuff. Even giving out 5-10 pp of my low plat amount to newbies starting out, so they can get their spells and bags.

I do play several alts that do it the hard way, without twinking. But i really like my first character to not struggle as hard.

[tersoth78]

I am a new player on P99. Started about a week ago. I dont see a need to hand out stuff to people. My druid felnok and enchanter tersoth are both level 7 and I have grinded out a few hundred plat by selling furs and silks to buy a couple lowbie items. I have had fun doing it. The challenge of the game is what makes it. You start handing out gear to people who just want to fly by the game you will not keep them long. Once their level catches up to the twink gear and the challenge is suddenly back most with that mentality will leave anyways. That's just my newbie opinion

[myriverse]

Originally Posted by tersoth78 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am a new player on P99. Started about a week ago. I dont see a need to hand out stuff to people. My druid felnok and enchanter tersoth are both level 7 and I have grinded out a few hundred plat by selling furs and silks to buy a couple lowbie items. I have had fun doing it. The challenge of the game is what makes it. You start handing out gear to people who just want to fly by the game you will not keep them long. Once their level catches up to the twink gear and the challenge is suddenly back most with that mentality will leave anyways. That's just my newbie opinion

This, except about a month ago. You don't really need to group or have plat to be a newbie. After just a few weeks, I sold enough furs and used tailoring skill to make enough plat to buy a weapon and armour that are probably above my level's need. The community has been nothing but helpful from my POV. I don't go asking for help, but some people are willing, and it's appreciated.

[Sithel1988]

groups are not hard to find. it is not hard to lvl. morons keep coming onto forums saying these things cause they cant use /who all or walk to another zone to find groups. people who make a char in qeynos and think thats what the population is like.

[EchoedTruth]

I agree with letting people make their own way. There are always exceptions, however. If I see a cleric/tank class I will always try to hook them up as this server needs as many of those as possible, and soloing with them is tough.


TL;DR: GIVE STUFF TO CLERICS AND TANKS CUZ SOLOING IZ HARD AND WE NEED MOAR HEALZ

[Gadwen]

Not too long ago a friend and I decided to install the original Diablo and play some multiplayer on battle.net. We had a blast for a few hours, until some guy joined our server, decided to be "helpful" and dropped all sorts of amazing gear for us to take. The excitement lasted for about 5 minutes, and then we both said almost simultaneously "this just isn't fun anymore". That sweet gear ruined half the point of the game.

If you want to help low level players the best thing to do is just be friendly. Give them some buffs, offer to BUY those bone chips or bat wings or Shiny Brass Shield. Sure it may still be charity on your end, but at least the player feels like they accomplished something, and that's the strongest quality EQ has to offer. Too many handouts can take away from that feeling of accomplishment, and without that you might as well be playing one of the many other garbage MMOs on the market.

[Trevalon]

I just started on P99 a week or so ago so I guess I can say what my experience has been so far.

The Good:

1) I have found the community to be pretty good as a noob. Most higher levels have been quick to offer free buffs for me whenever I am near the tunnel and this has helped a lot with getting through some of those early levels before you group.

2) I love the classic feel, but then again that's why we are all here so this is a given.

The Issues:

1) this server is a tuff server to start out new at this point. At some point in the past when the server was on a more level playing field I think starting out new and fresh was probably not that bad, but everything I can see so far is the server is populated by high levels and their twinks. This makes it tuff on people who are starting out new and people don't want you in groups because your rogue doesn't have their epic or your warrior doesn't have full crafted+ and a Jade Mace/Lamentation. This essentially means that all new players are somewhat shoehorned into playing casters just to be viable with all the twinks.

2) Hybrid Penalty. At first I was going to play a bard as a grouper because I am not a big fan of soloing and part of the original EQ experience is about grouping and meeting people (which I love). Then I learned about the 40% bard exp penalty and that when I was trying to find groups on my bard I was turned down multiple times because they didn't want to A) deal with the penalty and because B) I wasn't twinked enough to make up for my penalty. This made me just quit the bard and opt for another class outright because I don't have time to deal with BS so I'll just find a class that groups easier (Although after asking numerous people I was told bards find groups super easy and are always wanted..hrm).

3) Grouping exp. So I made a new class that is more group friendly and have since gotten into a few groups. Unfortunately grouping exp is really terrible in comparison to solo experience. Why would anyone ever group instead of solo for exp purposes (if their class is capable of soloing) - There is pretty much no incentive to exp group on P99 and I find that to be a huge huge shortcoming of the server.

The thing is, I came to this server to relive a classic experience. I find that classic experience everytime I walk into Freeport, Commonlands, or any other zone that has been revamped on Live. I feel that each time I feel fear in dying because of Corpse runs and exp loss. I feel the classic feeling when I see the EC tunnel spam of all the items sold. I feel the classic with the slower exp and I like it.

Those are the things that make the server classic to me, but leaving in glaring design flaws in original Eq just because it "was classic" seems to me to be a real flaw in the server as a whole. Why keep stupid things like the Hybrid penalty in the game when it makes no sense that it was there in the first place to rational people AND the makers of the original game. Why punish grouping when you can encourage it as Sony did? Because it was classic? That seems like a very poor argument and one that ultimately I think hurts the server for people coming in and turns alot of people off to this server. I have tried to get quite a few of my friends to come play with me but none will because of dumb decisions like this. If I know a handful of people personally then how many others are out there that feel the same way? I dunno.

OVerall I love the feeling of the server and the community seems ok enough, but the design choices of the devs have me questioning whether this is a place I want to stay or not. Doing stuff that makes no logical sense just so that you can say: "Well that's how it was in classic" seems pretty dumb to me and as someone who took way too many history classes in college it's really sad to see mistakes of the past being repeated for no good reason at all.

P.S. To the original post: If someone walked up tonight and gave me 500p I can't say that it wouldn't help to make me want to play more :P lol!

[OMGWTF420]

when i still played regularly i would make trips to places like gfay and bbm to hand out noob gear, it seems like it was easier to find "true" noobs in those places and i always believed handing the gear down was a better practice than trying to make a few pp in the tunnel.

that being said i cant count the number of "omg can you help me with some noob gear or starting plat" tells i would get when i was just hanging out in the tunnel, those people never got shit, a "true" noob to the server would never randomly send tells to people for hand me downs, the funny thing is most of these people were female human monks with names like sugartitss or nicebooty