Why is Red Dead?

[Zuranthium]

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

The server never had 400+ pop post week one of the server opening, and it certainly never hit 400+ after November of 2011. I think the highest it ever hit post 2011 was MAYBE 300 for a day.

The pop of the server after they introduced the large exp bonus, level range for PvP, and LNS policy began to shoot up dramatically and peaked during the first week of Velious if I remember correctly, as people wanted to try the new content. I do recall 400 people on Red and 1,600 on Blue at some point during this time, because I specifically remember thinking "nice, Red's population is at 25% of Blue's right now, not bad!" And it was quite regularly over 300 for a few weeks after the expansion and even before that on some days during Kunark era, after the server changes were put in and an influx of people were trying it out.

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

The entire history of the server was one guild choking all the content, from Nihilum, to Empire, to Apex. The only difference with Empire was that the leadership didn't care about killing every single raid mob and whether or not someone killed Phara Dar or not 2 years into Velious.

Empire 100% did care about killing every single raid mob during Kunark. The only reason they didn't during Velious is because they already had a huge core of fully geared out Kunark-content toons + the new top-tier equip was vastly superior to all other content (which is what they DID systematically lock down for themselves), and most importantly because there was too much content for the guild to actually raid with the shitty ass leadership of only ever having 1 raid force. Empire leadership didn't "care" about the other content at that point because they were scared of ever not having a massive uncontested raid force for top Velious content. It was physically impossible for them to raid anything else with this lame mentality.

I didn't play during Apex era, but considering how much numbers dropped, I'm sure that whoever was left went back to caring about Veeshan's Peak content because nobody at all on the server was even capable of doing top Velious content. So of course they will turn their attention to locking down whatever the top content is in the game that can actually be raided.

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

To the final point about this mythical contesting and competition; you don't want competition. Competition in Velious is two sides sitting at a zone line for 6 hours refreshing buffs until either one side engages a mob, at which point the other side will then engage them while they are mid PvE, or the other side loses interest. It is incredibly boring and uninteresting.

That's not true. If there was any leadership with an actual PvP mindset in the top guild, then they would actively be going after whoever the challengers were, killing them and forcing them to LNS. As it was meant to be. Empire never even tried to do that. They just sluggishly rolled around with a raid force more than 2x as big as anything else, thus making it impossible for any real PvP to happen at all.

On the first day of Velious when <Friends> had their full guild amassed in Kael for example, it would have been 100% possible to see actual real PvP for zone control if numbers were more even. Instead, Empire just rolled in with 100 people, shoving them out of the zone and thinking they were hot shit for being able to win 100 v 35.

There was ONE instance of actual PvP that Empire ever had in Velious when I played, which was a 30v30 in Cobalt Scar after raiding was already over for the day and enough Empire people were still logged on and moving through the area when a "large" <Friends> team happened to be sitting there. Empire won but probably only because of being geared better, so it wasn't even that interesting of a fight despite the even number of players. And this is exactly what killed the server. Since Empire had been hoarding all the drops, and the game is ridiculously gear dependent after original EQ, we couldn't even have a good PvP fight one time when it didn't even matter to contest anything.

Your initial point about "another guild engaging a raid force while they are in PvE" is irrelevant to begin with. SO WHAT if a group of 30 Friends people were to engage, say, 50 Empire people while they are trying to clear a trash mob in ToV entrance. That would be perfectly fine! It would present an actual challenge for Empire, which is what PvP is supposed to be, and Empire would still likely have the upper hand in that situation! But this is what Empire strived to avoid at all costs. No competition whatsoever. Only uncontested PvE content, so that they could be way better geared than anyone else and think their life matters and they are "strong powerful men" for being able to do such a thing. PATHETIC.

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

As gay as it sounds, this game would be a lot more fun if Raid mobs were decided in some sort of 25 v 25 or 50 v 50 combat with the loser admitting defeat for the night or something.

That's not "gay" at all and it was something I constantly suggested back in the day, including as a weekly kind of competition between guilds. The idea had GM support as well, but the community never came together to make it happen when we had the opportunity.

[Schaduwridder]

Try to condense your posts to a few sentences or no one is going to read them.

I wont be reading that wall of text.

( nothing against you personally I left empire the day I got my wizard epic too : )

[heartbrand]

Your facts are bogus so there’s really no point in me breaking down your argument. Pop literally never broke 300 during Kunark. It barely broke 200 on opening day.

[Zuranthium]

You weren't even playing, you were "retired" at the time with your full BIS Kunark gear already, how would you know? It's quite telling that you are skipping over everything to try and argue one single semantic in the first place. The point is, the GM's put some effort in to make Red server better and it WORKED, but was ruined because of terrible leadership and overall mentality within the community (and then further made worse by Velious being inherently more imbalanced).

I'm not sure why you feel compelled to defend Empire, I can even find a quote of you talking about how Empire was more neckbeardy than Nihilum if you want. Empire was garbage dude, just like every other intentionally one-sided guild was. The only difference was Gongshow superficially seeming nicer, but that was his entire act - his method of securing power for himself. He wasn't at all a good influence on the server, not to mention a far worse raid leader than Nizzar. Plus, despite him seeming nicer, there was a period where he eventually started talking about chaturbate more than the game, which got disgusting and irritating. That right there also tells you how boring and empty the game was, thanks to people like him being so single-minded and selfish, turning the server Blue and worthless.

If it wasn't for Plane of Mischief giving me some fun times I probably would have quit the server again after just 2 weeks, instead of after about 5 weeks that it took me to get completely bored, despite a whole new expansion being released. That's another thing too - Plane of Mischief was the ONE area where we could have had really good, constant PvP with <Friends> on a smaller scale, but Empire couldn't even be bothered to PvP there. They just logged off when a zone wasn't 100% completely on lock down for them and didn't give a shit about anything but tediously rotating through all the big raid targets in easymode.

[derpcake2]

it seems unrealistic to have reasonable continue playing people on a server which staff can't even stand

[Jazzy]

Love these essays on elf sim

[White_knight]

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

The pop of the server after they introduced the large exp bonus, level range for PvP, and LNS policy began to shoot up dramatically and peaked during the first week of Velious if I remember correctly, as people wanted to try the new content. I do recall 400 people on Red and 1,600 on Blue at some point during this time, because I specifically remember thinking "nice, Red's population is at 25% of Blue's right now, not bad!" And it was quite regularly over 300 for a few weeks after the expansion and even before that on some days during Kunark era, after the server changes were put in and an influx of people were trying it out.



Empire 100% did care about killing every single raid mob during Kunark. The only reason they didn't during Velious is because they already had a huge core of fully geared out Kunark-content toons + the new top-tier equip was vastly superior to all other content (which is what they DID systematically lock down for themselves), and most importantly because there was too much content for the guild to actually raid with the shitty ass leadership of only ever having 1 raid force. Empire leadership didn't "care" about the other content at that point because they were scared of ever not having a massive uncontested raid force for top Velious content. It was physically impossible for them to raid anything else with this lame mentality.

I didn't play during Apex era, but considering how much numbers dropped, I'm sure that whoever was left went back to caring about Veeshan's Peak content because nobody at all on the server was even capable of doing top Velious content. So of course they will turn their attention to locking down whatever the top content is in the game that can actually be raided.



That's not true. If there was any leadership with an actual PvP mindset in the top guild, then they would actively be going after whoever the challengers were, killing them and forcing them to LNS. As it was meant to be. Empire never even tried to do that. They just sluggishly rolled around with a raid force more than 2x as big as anything else, thus making it impossible for any real PvP to happen at all.

On the first day of Velious when <Friends> had their full guild amassed in Kael for example, it would have been 100% possible to see actual real PvP for zone control if numbers were more even. Instead, Empire just rolled in with 100 people, shoving them out of the zone and thinking they were hot shit for being able to win 100 v 35.

There was ONE instance of actual PvP that Empire ever had in Velious when I played, which was a 30v30 in Cobalt Scar after raiding was already over for the day and enough Empire people were still logged on and moving through the area when a "large" <Friends> team happened to be sitting there. Empire won but probably only because of being geared better, so it wasn't even that interesting of a fight despite the even number of players. And this is exactly what killed the server. Since Empire had been hoarding all the drops, and the game is ridiculously gear dependent after original EQ, we couldn't even have a good PvP fight one time when it didn't even matter to contest anything.

Your initial point about "another guild engaging a raid force while they are in PvE" is irrelevant to begin with. SO WHAT if a group of 30 Friends people were to engage, say, 50 Empire people while they are trying to clear a trash mob in ToV entrance. That would be perfectly fine! It would present an actual challenge for Empire, which is what PvP is supposed to be, and Empire would still likely have the upper hand in that situation! But this is what Empire strived to avoid at all costs. No competition whatsoever. Only uncontested PvE content, so that they could be way better geared than anyone else and think their life matters and they are "strong powerful men" for being able to do such a thing. PATHETIC.



That's not "gay" at all and it was something I constantly suggested back in the day, including as a weekly kind of competition between guilds. The idea had GM support as well, but the community never came together to make it happen when we had the opportunity.

Hmmmmm....I think you've got a bad recollection of what happened.

That 30v30 in CS happened after a raid when Friends was going for the CS dragon and they just miss timed their raid as Empire tumbled out of PoM via click out. At the time I dont think they realized that was a possibility as they had not made it to PoM yet.

Friends never really went head on as a guild either just picked people off and pvped on the sidelines, think Grobb was the only time??????

I think empire only hit 100 on velious opening day maynr a week after or so too...most of the time it was 60-80 of an average od 250 pop during firsr few velious months.

Empire didnt do Kunark content for ages because why would you???? Only sick minded people would do all of velious and Kunark. I remember ninja looting gore at raid for a tash orb as the only time in the 5 months I raided velious with empire...and doing VP like twice??? And gore was killed to do a bard epic... think we did tslendor once and trak once? Twice?? And golems/vp got swallowed by friends for months and months.

For someone who basically played in Empire for the parts you talk about you sure didnt vote with your feet and deguild if these are you genuine feelings.

Also it wasnt friends who went to Kael it was TMO, empire went to VP and wiped with like a bazillion people because all these nubs kept training themselves; TMO couldn't drop Vindi or what not and Empire rocked up after cleaning the VP mess up and did a bunch of merbs including Wuushi.

You might wanna fact check yourself Z-man.

[heartbrand]

His facts are completely wrong. The only thing I’ll bother responding to is empire being more “neckbeardy” than nihilium. We spent more hours per week raiding in empire because there is significantly more content in Velious than Kunark. Nonetheless we still only raided three to four times a week and left tons of targets up. Had Nihilum been around they’d be raiding Velketor religiously, and have a 7 day raid schedule.

Raiding sucks in general, it was just more bearable in Kunark because you could clear all the raid targets in the game in less than 6-7 hours.

[Tassador]

I wonder what happens on blue that keeps people playing velious year 5. I got bored in live after year 2 and basically played little to no eq until red99.

Eq folk for the most part want to hold on to every little thing. Online hoarders. How about instead of wipe just ban all chars and lock kunark and velious content for 2 months lol.

[Tune]

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

Right before velious launch and through early velious, server population was at an all-time high; around 200+.

I went to Red as a pretty big skeptic and had some of the most fun I've had on Everquest.

What happened? What caused the server to fizzle out?

GMs?
YTs?
The Leaderboard?
<Empire> leaving?
Serverwide Chat?

Discuss.

200+ population is not even high

there is no one reason red is dead, people just eventually bored of logging into that (always fighting the same people, mobs) and u eventually get a lot less new people to replace the old.

blue has a strong casual population, because most people like pve more, and that is the "life blood" of that server. Always new people coming in, and it takes them longer to reach endgame.

you guys shouldn't be complaining tho, play another game, do some RL. this box might pick up, but if it doesn't, u should appreciate the good times you had on the box. I have been here from the beginning and I have met so many cool people, some i liked, some not so much. The rivalries and battles were great on here, hit and miss yes, but when they lined up I had a lot of fun.

Take this with you to other games.