[guineapig]

The boats were always a huge time sink like so many other things in EQ. In some ways it added to the "realism" in the sense that travel to other continents took time. I get it, it made sense. Huge time sinks are not what made EQ an epic game. I hope we can agree on that.

It also added to the whole need to organize and socialize when planning out the evening's activities, be it quests, grouping, whatever. In my opinion porting is still useful, (particularly when looking at the size of the main continent alone) but this added even more value to porting.

All that being said, the current population is so small that expecting to be able to buy a ride when you need one is not always going to happen, it just isn't. If I was playing a druid wizard with 2 hours a day to play and trying to reach 50 before Kunark is released I'm not leaving my group to port a stranger. I'm a nice guy and all but sorry, the fake money isn't worth my time.

There are indeed quests that were created with the idea that having to use boats will make it take longer (Stein of Mogguk among others), thereby increasing the value of the reward. To that I say this, so be it. Let the value drop on the Stein. I'm saying this as an enchanter by the way. The same thing happened on live albeit much later. Many of the other quests are for class specific items that aren't usually sold anyway.

I would much prefer the translocators be there all the time but in the interest of keeping the classic feel I voted for the zonewide shout instead. In all honesty nobody should be made to do nothing in a game for 20 minutes when most of us barely have the time to log in an hour or two a night. At least with the shout you don't have to be sitting on the dock (no I am not interested in fishing). Also back in the day people did indeed /shout when the boat was coming as a courtesy, at least on my server they did.

In short, please use the zone wide shout idea if the current setup is here to stay. At least give us that. It doesn't make the wait any less, it merely simulates a larger server population.