Recent Decline In Population

[inyane]

pre kunark, you sat in solb and lower guk hoping for a group.
post kunark, you sit in kc or seb hoping for a group.

sure, there is chardok and HS, but those seem mostly like bring your own group kind of places.

there is no raid scene unless you are in the top guild.

so, overall, it gets kinda boring. i doubt VP, the hole, or epics will add much.

[Dantes]

IMO it's better now than it was before. After Kunark came out there were too many people online. Finding groups was more of a challenge, finding spots to exp was more of a challenge, and flame wars over camps were rampant. The career players have shot their load and now they are facing burnout. Great news for casual players. I can now find a group in Sebilis within 10 minutes of logging on.

[Deathrydar]

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

IMO it's better now than it was before. After Kunark came out there were too many people online. Finding groups was more of a challenge, finding spots to exp was more of a challenge, and flame wars over camps were rampant. The career players have shot their load and now they are facing burnout. Great news for casual players. I can now find a group in Sebilis within 10 minutes of logging on.

I think it all boils down as to WHY you play this game.

Do you play to raid and get the uber loot?
Well, if you do, then if you are one of the unlucky ones to not get into the top guild, you will be bored.

Do you play to get to the max level as fast as possible?
Why? Just why? I will never understand this one.

I will tell you that I play for the experience of the game! I like to interact with people, help people, group with people and just have plain fun!

[Taryth]

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

The argument against "MY CLASS GOT NERFED [to classic]" is that all of the reasons for change are due to research. All that research has been posted in the bugs forum. All that research is available to anybody. All that available research can lead you to understand what class you should be playing, not what you are playing.

If people quit because of the game operating like it should, welp.

I used to think this as well. But there have been changes that are entirely non-classic (such as Charisma no longer playing a role in charm, to name one), so you can't argue that everything they do is because that's the way it was in classic. That is simply not true.

Only pointing that out, not arguing against any changes. I know it wont do any good and I continue to enjoy the server, nerfs or otherwise.

[baalzy]

Charisma plays a role in enchanter charm... just not druid or necro (this is classic).

[Aadill]

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

That is simply not true.

I know. There's been a few changes that have altered gameplay significantly and not in a way that has successfully emulated classic, namely damage distribution for players and pets alike, but spells are so very concrete and some of the biggest complaints came from classes that were affected by the spell changes that were clearly documented as being like that for multiple expansions.

As far as melee changes or coding changes to proc rates, (some things that seem a bit off) emulating these as close as possible is difficult because the code has to be recreated to the best of the knowledge of the community, and as such some things don't work quite right. That's why we have a bugs forum, though.

People leaving over the former don't want to play classic. People leaving for the latter aren't trying to get things fixed. I really appreciated the work done on the melee distribution bug report, because it had quite a lot of data and historic posts pointing towards specific accuracies of melee classes. More people need to do that instead of just leave, ya know?

[Shiftin]

The raid scene issue is the most easily solvable "problem" the community has faced for a long time. 4+ guilds calling themselves raiding guilds while struggling to not exclude their casual members and spreading the 55+ population and any gear won on patch days thin isn't the answer though.

[Vendar]

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

Fippy -> Kunark

(i hate to say it but), LIES!


and deathrydar, to answer your orginal question, there were tons of people 2boxxing behind other IPs, once the lizards finished leveling, the pop went back to where it was.

coincidence? or conspiracy? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[stormlord]

When SOE was hacked we got a bunch of people. I was routinely seeing over 1000+ at peak times. You could see people posting in the forum even. Rogean upped the experience gain to grab more of them while SOE servers were down. When the SOE servers came back up you could see the gradual decline over the past week(s). Population is now 700-900, as opposed to 850 - 1100. Back where we started, roughly.

Even I was tempted by fippy. It will get luclin/pop/etc. It has a full population compared to this server and the experience gain is different in a wild way. In fact, I actually like the idea of more people = faster experience. Too often in past years while playing EQ I would decline inviting someone because they were gimp and would slow down the experience rate. Or I would not invite them because they were a class I didn't need, like a redundant class. It doesn't mean you don't still make comparisons and pick a rogue over a ranger, but it means that if there's 1 person in the zone /lfg and if you have room it makes all the sense in the world now to invite them, regardless of conditions. So with this change you worry much less about their class or gimpness. The only downside is that soloers are going to have it harder. If they could make a few changes that make soloing still viable in the new environment, it would be a real sell. For example, perhaps soloers could gain experience from one another in different zones if they're in the same group. The problem as I see it is that the soloing classes were designed for a game that had a different experience system. If you do not compensate the mechanics then changing the experience system will break the solo classes.

Anyway, I think that our population is real low and classic->kunark->velious requires a large population to stay floating. On the plus side, the chat channels and other things we have coming will help a bit. But I don't think it's enoguh if our population doesn't get upwards of 1000-1500. When players are spread out in classic and kunark and velious zones the pain will really start to be felt. It's even being felt now. But it's not all gloom and doom. For example, all of this top heaviness is going to lead to a lot of items being banked. This means an economy rich with wealth for new players that enter the game. The only problem is that if these veterens aren't playing then these items are locked away on accounts that're not active. Another bonus of this top heaviness is that high level players can buff new players with ubber sh** that was meant for a level 60. On a level 1 it's like being god for a a while. But the question is whether all of this makes up for the fact that top heaviness means less people at the lower levels. Finding groups has always been important in EQ and if people can't find them, even super buffs and cheap powerful items might not make up for the empty feelings and the tough gameplay. If you look at live, it's pretty clear top heaviness wasn't enough. That's why they added spires & books, rest regain, pots, bazaar, mercenaries, changed experience curve for lower levels, defiant armors, etc. All of that was just meant to compensate for less people at the lower levels and increased levels/aa. Another factor that must be included in that mess are the huge numbers of zones that spread out people. If no changes were made then new players would face a huge obstacle to playing.

I also think this server being a emulator is a limiting factor. We can't openly go to everquest servers or forums to advertise. For example, if I made a website that has help information about EQ, I could very easily go to the forum for EQ and post about it. But if I wanted to post about p1999, I'd probably get blacklisted or have my post removed because emulators are not something SOE wants their players to know about. The sad thing is that's where our audience is. The rest of them could be anywhere, but they've probably moved on if they don't already know about us. I do expect to get a trickle of other new players from the free-2-play universe. There's always somebody googling to find a new game to play. But in my humblest opinion, the real sell of p1999 is the nostalgia and memory of this world that lives on in older everquest players.

[Duie]

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

The raid scene issue is the most easily solvable "problem" the community has faced for a long time. 4+ guilds calling themselves raiding guilds while struggling to not exclude their casual members and spreading the 55+ population and any gear won on patch days thin isn't the answer though.

I agree that this is a very easy thing to fix... thing is, are you guys willing to kick your casual members to the curb and accually progress to the new content as the did on live? VP not out does hamper this , ill give you that .

It would be a lot easier to come up with a solution with 1 or 2 hard core and the casuals being able to do the old world scraps until they are accually ready to advance....... Idea world granted.
On my guild on live you had to have full planer before you were even able to app after kunark. something like this could benifit both parties as well as keep people intrested. problem being, is either one is willing to do this.... the answer so far is no.

3 day spawn on Trak.. lets hope Epics come out soon followed by VP so you guys can advance past all this stuff.

PS. I have been on both sides of the fence playing EQ . I feel that a better way for raiding to be done would benifit the comunity as a whole and would also keep people intrested in the game longer. This is not a Slam on TR or Ascension as id probally be right there with them if real life allowed it .
They will be a point on this server where something will have to be tried or we will just end up with 300 to 400 people guilds all cockblocking one another. The trend has already started tward that.