The great merge of 2020

[loramin]

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

You had multiple end game crowds fighting over raid spawns on Teal. Why is Seal Team now the bad guys?

Can we be honest here? There is a subset of players on P99 which are unapologetically all about putting themselves first, and everyone else last. This is NOT new: long before Seal Team (which is where that crowd seems to have mainly gathered on Green/Teal) we had "AA" Guilds, and of course TMO monopolizing everything for seven years.

I'm not trying to judge those people: they're playing a game just like I am, and clearly putting more into than I am, so more power to them. But what I will say is, for everyone who isn't like them, not having to play with those people is more fun.

[Jean-Baptiste Cutting]

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

> This should have been better communicated to the players,

Which is to say, communicated to the players. Like, at all.

Staff bashing used to get you a permanent ticket out the door.

I miss those days. It’s the one thing that is never cool to do on these forums.

[Halcyon702]

I started up on Teal and had a long list of friends from leveling and probably ran into a grand total of 2 people who I could consider assholes.

This experience of completely selfish jerks has become an everyday occurrence since the merge. Not that anything can/will be done, it becomes immediately clear why half the server left for Teal.

[dareo]

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

People have a chance to bathe, eat food, and see sunlight now. There’s no rush to get to max level, it’s entirely a player’s choice. P99’s mission statement is to create the classic EQ experience, for better or worse. There’s other emulators out there with less populations that allow a more leisurely level of play. I think what you’re proposing would run counter to the intent of P99.

The only rush to level is in order to have a chance at getting an item we know will be removed from the game. In 1999 people at least didn't know ahead of time the items would be removed. Nothing we can do about that in 2020 other than try to get there before its gone. I've now made it to level 3 in my limited play time and have come to terms that i likely wont be able to camp some rubicite or jboots but perhaps i can quest the boots later and trade for the rubi.

[cd288]

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

It could be frustration, or could be those players that were playing green/teal at the same time.

Agreed. Seems like a pretty big stretch by that commenter to say that a couple hundred people lost means people quit due to the merge. Some, at least, were probably not unique accounts and were playing both simultaneously.

Some may be waiting till Kunark to return due to the merge, sure, but not all.

The amount of people we supposedly "lost" post-merge is too small to make any conclusions about why. We also don't truly know that we lost anybody. Many people play P99 casually and inconsistently. All couple hundred of those people could still be playing (or planning to continue playing) and just all haven't logged on at the same time and/or at prime time. Only, I assume, Rogean and Nilbog know for sure and anything anyone else says is entirely uninformed speculation.

[Corbin]

I don't think it's a stretch. Personal experience suggests a significant number of players will stop playing due to the merge. My wife and a few friends we met on Teal have indicated a desire to stop playing post merge. However, this number is probably not "significant" for either success of the project or the enjoyment of many other players on Green.

Of course the "meta" on P99 doesn't suit the play style of those disenchanted folk, despite the fact they still love the old school content. So, I think long term retention of those players was questionable to begin with. We know the development cycle on live that attempted to address those problems. Too bad about the loss of charm in content design and character development which paralleled those changes (imo).

Blue sounds like it's in a better place now for these players, but it fails to offer classic progression in appropriate context (content wise) and is hardly shiny and new by contrast. I may try to get the wife to explore there with me casually[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] TAKP seems like a good spot for some, if they don't mind boxing, Luclin and POK.

I have met a lot of nice people on P99 over the years. However, the vibe and community are wholly different when you approach contested content. This is where most end up and I think the community is self selecting based upon that aforementioned "meta". The logical extension of unbridled classic perhaps?

My wife and I largely missed classic on live and this is a great place to learn about it, thorns and all. Ty all [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Jubal]

The server is at 1045 online at primetime for a second evening suggesting 30% of the pre-merge pop is missing or were boxed.

[Furitor]

First: Appreciate all you guys do for us Llandris + co. While I disagree with how things went down, I will always respect your work and time you've put into the project.

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

The server is at 1045 online at primetime for a second evening suggesting 30% of the pre-merge pop is missing or were boxed.

People can say it's boxed all you want, but half my friends list is missing and half my guild (just a casual guild not any raid guild) is missing from online.

The merge had a lot of my guildies really annoyed. Two of them I know went back to Blue (Consider Blue^tm! ^_^ ^_^ ^_^), but a few straight up haven't shown up after the merge. Our Discord hasn't been as active as last week and some of the people on there are playing something else.

Euro timezone is now even worse (I play about 5-6 hours into that zone due to my work schedule). 330~ online last night whereas the combined total I've seen the past week of Teal and Green was around 400-450 off peak (yes it does dip down to the 300s at times).

So your assumption of a 30% drop isn't far-fetched. Trolls on here would lead you to believe it's "boxed character", "green is failed because inflated numbers", etc. etc. But straight up people don't want to deal with 5+ hour waits at 40+ content even with groups popping up in zones you don't normally see them (yes CT has seen a few groups the past few nights who weren't just rubi farming).

[Asteria]

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

The server is at 1045 online at primetime for a second evening suggesting 30% of the pre-merge pop is missing or were boxed.

Good point, I suspect most of those missing numbers were boxed!

I also highly suspect at least a third of the biggest teal complainers boxed a lot on green/teal. They had a VERY un-classic bonus of pixels via double server boxing. Makes me wonder how many /listed for manastone on blue/green simultaneously.

The boxers/whiners are too dense to think the devs wouldn't figure out some of this was being done in a highly un-classic spirit.

[Jubal]

I believe there was 1380 in game post merge Sunday evening suggesting that "30% of green server was boxing" is a myth and that it has indeed been a rapid population drop.