Why our group left red.

[Token]

Hello. I recently picked up the game again. I had a 54 warrior on blue that i played a couple years ago, did some raids, had some fun. Gave everything away when I entered grad school.
I rejoined recently and leveled an enchanter to 30 on red. I had a couple friends and a family member (3) join me on red who had past experiences on live, pre-pop. We had a blast for a couple weeks as we slowly made it to around 25. That's where things went sour.

They quit. And I've followed suit.

We were driven to quit by how impossible it became to put a group together and not have it destroyed by some shadowknight/warrior/monk/rog/druid with (to us) a ridiculous amount of gear advantage.
On a single day, I was killed 3 times in 15ish minutes while attempting to do a CR in Mistmoore (one snare, resulting in an xp death). Numerous times we put groups together only for everyone to just give up and say try again later because of the relentless onslaught by twinked pvper's.

Anyhow, I rerolled on blue and the experience is inferior in every way; the xp is slower, the camps and zones are incredibly cramped, and reputations/friendships are infinitely less important. I can't bring myself to enjoy playing on blue, so I am putting that away as well. Red should have more people than blue. Maybe at least a part of the problem is what I am describing.

We were a group of enchanter/monk/druid/necro. We had one good fight (that we lost) but was super fun. The vast majority of our experience beginning around level 15ish was facing overgeared folks. Folks that looted the small amount of coin we carried, every single time.

We made strong efforts to bring groups to upper guk, runnyeye, HHK, and splitpaw. A couple times we were successful, but most of the time it was impossible to get anyone away from Faydwer.

I've read through the forums and its been suggested tons of times that well-established people should refrain from killing "noobs" as it discourages new players from entering the server, but I just wanted to reiterate it based on my group's collective experiences.

It seems like some people get their greatest joy from being able to get people to ragequit, but its probably not good for the population overall or for the non-hardcore.
I typically would message whoever killed me and say something along the lines of "hey, you got me. Can we call a truce? I can't land any spell on you if I tried. We're just xping and Im trying real hard to to get some new folks excited to play and keep them going"

On occasion someone would help us out or leave us alone, but most the time I was met with responses like "better you leave the server now if you can't handle it" or "Call LNS" or something. I get it, I can ask permission to come get my body, but my friends and I have planned for the past 3 days to get together tonight and have an xp group. We spent an hour looking for folks to fill the group, 30 minutes waiting on them to get here, and now we're expected to pick up and move to where? its hard to convince anyone to leave faydwer.

Its a rant and I know its long, but if you've read it - the server lost 4 folks who were very excited about playing here. We do enjoy pvp. We did understand that we would die and be set back. We also knew the risks associated with dying. We didn't know that "Killing Newbs" would be as popular as it is, or that people would try so hard to cause xp deaths or that the 3 casters in my group would never (not a single time that I can recall) be able to cast a spell on the people trying to kill us.

We know that we could have sucked it up and pushed through to higher levels and that we could have just waited till we were all on and ventured out by ourselves, but we're all social people who wanted to interact with others and we didn't want to just hurry up and level. We focused on Sol Ro quests and tried to enjoy the trip.

I'm really just pretty irritated- I love the game and I think everyone here knows how exciting it is when you're able to convice RL folks to enjoy it with you. I'm bummed I couldn't keep any of them on board.

[dontbanpls]

You made the right choice ultimately. This is a very selfish community that would rather be in a Hatfield vs McCoy style feud than thrive and be vibrant.

[TacoSmasher]

replace the monk with a mage or another necro and you guys could have been pet raping everything on the road to 60. Druid would have allowed you easy mobility to plenty of empty locations when PVP got bad.


Sorry to see you go. Melees are for twinks if you are starting here in rags.


RIP

[quido]

Genuine new players should stay away from the crowded "good exp" zones.

I did.

[Uuruk]

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

Genuine new players should stay away from the crowded "good exp" zones.

I did.

Pretty much this. Level in not heavily populated spots, get to 50 or so and join good guys.

[Qtip]

Your new. People will have a gear advantage over you. This is a pvp server.

[Tradesonred]

To me that is the main problem with red. "Normals" come and go without being able to reach critical mass so theres enough of these types of players around for them to find their place on the server. There seems to be a recent influx of new people, im not so sure where that will lead.

For sure if i did not have a level 60 already and a couple of 40+ and someone explained to me the toxic dynamic going on on red with alot of the established geared vets, i doubt id start here, though with TMO and velious pop might snowball upwards. I have a feeling it wont last though as griefers just gorge themselves on griefing lulz and make 90% of that new blood quit.

I often suggested during year 1 or 2 that item loot combined with patched sets of no drops would have solved the problem of hard to kill twinks with nothing to lose but that wasnt considered (publically anyway) once the launch was live. We would have had ample time for a wipe with item loot and no xp loss in pvp from the get go, instead of prolonging kunark so much that every neckbeard on the server now has an AON.

I mean with your scenario, you guys could have dropped what you were doing and hunted some twinks for a chance at a piece of gear, which was part of 50% of my gaming sessions back on live. Now what do you have to gain beside learning how to pvp. In itself its not so bad but it gets boring after a while knowing youll lose 95% of fights and for lots of people for whom pvping for hours isnt their thing, they will simply log off instead of fighting back with terrible odds. Even if you win, the twink will just be back as much as he wants. On live when we ganged up on twinks and got ourselves a piece of gear, often that was the cue for the twink to leave the zone. Here fighting back just means you are amusing the twink, you are lessening the chances that he leaves you to your xping in rags. Your best bet is to log off and hope he gets bored or move elsewhere each time a twink shows up, hoping he doesnt follow you from zone to zone with his 8 twink alts.

Now imagine when Red99 launched that on top of all that, you had to eat xp death each time you died in PVP to a twink. You couldnt even go through the learning process of pvping without adding a huge backlog to your grind. So this isnt as bad as it was 2-3 years ago. It took a long time for the devs to realize they were getting trolled by griefers "BUT BIND RUSHING!! DONT DO IT!!" and removed xp loss in pvp. Only when pop reached 75 peak after a 600 people server launch did they come around though. Theres not a whole lot they can do now because theyve backed themselves into a corner. No wipe, ever, and the policies they had for so long empowered the worst types of players and let them be the dominant force on the server. The only thing i can think of that would help people like you is an event that twinks you guys out, like the halloween event of 2001 but hey that wouldnt be classic to do that before the end of velious, as opposed to muting OOC.

Maybe if you find it in you to slug it out till velious you might see an influx of non-toxic folks but like i said i wouldnt bet on them sticking around for long considering whos established on the server.

[Tradesonred]

And dont expect sympathy from most of these selfish assholes. With their anti-social personality disorders, putting themselves in the shoes of others is not something they practice alot.

[Bazia]

server was way better at launch

didn't have people binding at loot camps giving zero fucks about dying like now

[Tradesonred]

Yeah remember when server was hitting one digit pop numbers in the morning? Those were the days.