How to Get more New Players?

[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!

[Malone88]

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

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.

I've been on the server for about 2 months and my experience has been quite different. Groups take anybody, twinked or not, hybrid or not, because they just want enough people to kill effectively and be safe. The only time I've seen someone refused is because their level is too high or too low. I tried to get a group last night in Unrest with my Enchanter, but their was a bard and two rangers there already. Go figure!

Solo vs Group experience probably depends on what you are killing as to which is faster. If your group is killing yellow/red cons, the experience is fast. One thing I know for sure is that soloing always SEEMS like slower experience because I keep looking at my dam EXP bar every few minutes, whereas in a group, the action is fast and furious usually.

I agree with other posters here. Earning your own gear piece-by-piece is what drew me to this server in the first place. Its a nice feeling of accomplishment replacing some cloth crap with a decent piece of gear that you looted yourself or bought cheaply after farming HQ skins or Bone Chips or whatever to buy it.