That's what I said on reddit... but apparently posting the list of p99 administration members kicked out for corruption didn't go down very well. You have to trust the people in charge on a emu. There's a bunch of people in that community that have abused that trust.
If a singlebox takp server was selectable from the same server list as current takp, I would likely hop between them regularly. I just screwed around soloing with a warrior recently on takp, making sure to get it a full suit of newbie without buffs or high level help. It's just fun to start a new character and play it without any high level assistance sometimes. Maybe it would become popular enough to have constant groups, or maybe it would languish with just a small amount of us who pop in occasionally to group, but I would enjoy it either way.
One, I very much appreciate this server even as I don't play that often. My ability to focus on the game fluctuates with the availability of the sun and it being summer, I haven't logged on in months. I've never played p99 or progression servers, so I don't have perspective beyond what I read, but for me what makes Takp unique is the thoughtfulness of the devs/admins and the generosity of the player-base. This is from someone who rarely plays, doesn't raid, has a hard time finding groups, and hasn't made it to 60 yet. Personally, I really dislike boxing and I miss having melody on my bard. But, it is clear to me there wouldn't be such resiliency in the server population without boxing. It also seems clear to me that the set of rules recreating the Al'Kabor honors the original community and enhances the warm environment. The biggest concern I'd have for moving to a new single box server (a play style I much prefer) is that I wouldn't have as much faith in those who administer it to create such a healthy and supportive player-base. All that being said, my own personal story is that I began raiding on Live beginning in Plane of Time and moving forward through the next few expansions. The lure for me of any new server is being able to start raiding from classic to plane of time. Although that opportunity renews every year with the progression servers, from what I read of them, the culture is not right for me. All this to say, I greatly appreciate the norrath y'all created here and wouldn't want to leave it. But, if a new guild ever forms here starting from the beginning, I'd love to join. See y'all in the winter.
For me, if takp started as a 1 or 2 box server i would have loved it. However, i cant imagine i will ever start over new on eq. So im riding takp til the wheels come off
I imagine this is probably how the TAKP ecosystem will evolve now that the code is open source. Eventually, a core group of committed, trustworthy devs will make a cool-sounding server. Maybe it'll be two-box, maybe it'll have new content, maybe it'll be time-locked progression, maybe it'll have new content, maybe they'll port over one TAKP character of your choice, or maybe it'll have NEW CONTENT. The gimmick doesn't really matter; what matters is that people will trust that the server will be around for a while and that the staff won't be corrupt. At that point, yeah, I think most of us will dabble in or dive into the new server, but keep logging in for raids here. Which will make TAKP even more top-heavy and tough to get into for new players, which will lead to retirements outpacing recruitment in some or all raiding guilds, which will lead to guilds imploding, and eventually (after years, not months) make TAKP kind of a ghost town. Achieving AKuracy at last! Or maybe not! Maybe something unexpected will make TAKP more fun for new folks, or stickier for us old fucks, than spin-offs or Live or other emus or other games. Who knows.
Emu box limits, BTW (as far as I know): P99 red - 1 P99 blue - 1 P99 green - 1 TAKP - 3 Project Lazarus - 6 The Hidden Forest - 24 Project EQ - ∞ Kinda weird nobody has made a 2-box server yet.
20% enchanter / cleric 20% enchanter / druid 20% beastlord / druid 20% tank / shaman (or monk/shaman if monks are in a fixed state) 20% people wondering why the other 80% are leveling ten times faster than them
Nothing wrong with that, priests are strong. It doesn't really matter, grouping with other people is always going to be beneficial and helpful unless you go out of your way to do something stupid like 6 of the same class in the group, and even that is workable if it's not 6 pure melees.
Was lucky enough to join here in 2015 to see early content with self made toons, and reconnect with folks I liked from AK. This is my last rodeo, and even now I rarely suit up for the ring. Hope a 1-box server scratches your itch. Perhaps ten years ago it may have scratched mine. Good luck if you set it up.
There are a couple (that I know of): Imperium and RetroQuest/IxiQuest. It seems to be a hard niche to fill though - neither the anti-boxing or pro-boxing crowds seem satisfied by it.
Yeah, I think in a one- or two-box server, it might be nice to allow an extra toon for 2 minutes every hour, or something. Lessen the incentive to load a friend's toon via VPN for buffs, rezzes, ports, etc. Just make it legal so you don't have to police it.
Maybe non-combat zones allowing multiple logons? Maybe pok, Bazaar, Nexus. That would also help keep the item economy active with a Bazaar bot, but without the awful constant auctioning in ooc that I hated in the old days that wasted so much time, and make item transfers super easy.
Yeah, 1 + a bazaar locked toon like here could alleviate some issues. Give you a toon to use to transfer goods. Turn the bazaar into a trade and social hub. Keep the economy trucking by having a much more robust bazaar than a 1 box limit would allow. I'm a takp lifer, but the above sounds more appealing to me than a strict 1 box limit.
My thoughts: - I single-box all the time on this server and it doesn't bother me. In many ways, I'm more effective because I'm able to optimize my dps, etc. better than someone 3-boxing. - I think a single-box-only server at this point in time would struggle to have enough active players. Back in the original EQ days, one could spend forever trying to find a group and the servers had a very active player base. - Implementing mouse wheel is huge and could bring in a good amount of players to a new "takp-style" server - Single-box plus bank/baz toon makes a lot more sense than a single-box-only server. The qol from being able to transfer gear between chars, etc. on your own is huge. - New takp-style servers must be Mac compatible. If not, then they should not have "Takp" in their name. - And finally, implement Ossein or bust.
I think there are two distinct classes of things being discussed. One is doing something custom/different, adding/editing items, changing a number to be bigger or smaller to tweak something like less/more kiting/charming/shakerpage/AE/AoE/whatever. I think that these things are so minor as to not matter but there are a few individuals who it's very important for and we tend to assume that if it's important to ourselves, it's important to others too. Regardless of whether it has value, these are low effort things and not particularly interesting to me. The other is house rules, like each person plays only one character, and every 43 seconds they are disconnected if they don't face north and Hail, and if they go into bazaar they can only browse the same race vendors, etc. Personally I'm not a fan of being told how to play and maybe it's because I work on TAKP but I don't see the point in simply disabling a part of the game and then calling it better. It could be a novelty to try it out with some friends, or fun for some seasonal temporary play I suppose, but I wouldn't call such a server a long term home. It's all subjective of course, and if people want to make those kinds of house rules and there is a group of them who want to play that way, who am I to argue? That's kind of the point here with open source though - you guys can all make this work on your computer and invite people to play, but it does take some effort and it's really hard to do alone. I've already heard from several people who have made it work for themselves. Like <Vintage> back on AK, who imposed their house rules on themselves, you may see other alternatives popping up. The TAKP base we released is the result of all the years of you guys playing here and bugs being found and fixed. This is really valuable because the kind of testing that we receive from players here is the best kind, they're legitimately trying to break the game, so you know you're getting battle tested working code to start with.
Also, hit up Zaide if you want to single-box with other single-boxers. He recently joined our server and has a lot of clout in the EQ world. So, I feel like we're going to be seeing a lot more new players due to his recent streams. He's stated that he wants to start a "perma-death,self-found" guild with the intent of raiding all of the cities and killing their leaders, which sounds like a lot of fun.
As others have said, I'm unlikely to explore a "TAKP similar" unless it had new content. Having started here in early Velious, I'm not sure I would enjoy starting over, although if it had PoP (or more) spells at launch that'd tip the scales a bit!
I coded a little bit and built zones on a MUD (basically text-only EQ) a billion years ago as a kid/tween. I built a couple zones from scratch, but man it was a lot of work, even without any graphics or pathing. Eventually I started revamping old zones that MUDflation had made obsolete over the years, which was way easier since I pretty much just had to tweak mob stats/abilities and reitemize. Hardly a new idea - Sony et al. have done this for decades - but revamping some old dungeons with custom content could be really cool. I doubt this would fly on TAKP itself with its AKuracy mission, but could be a nice draw for spin-off servers. Tune Najena difficulty and reward for Time-geared groups. Make Splitpaw an endgame raid zone. Or w/e. It'd take some coding, but you could imagine zone-by-zone box limits. Let people load their portbots and buffbots to get to the dungeon and prep for the crawl, but make 'em single-box for the actual content. Stuff like that should be doable and seems fun/different.
I know I already mentioned it but you keep describing Shards of Dalaya! It was an interesting server but sadly it is a shell of its former self at this point. Not sure if you ever played it but it had stuff like Kaladim being a mid level dungeon, Befallen I think was a high end dungeon at some point, Paludal and Shar Vahl were raid zones iirc
Shards of Dalya was really fun and awesome, I played it like what 15 years ago lol. Really good creative content.
