I'm still stuck in the stone age. I can't get anything better than Frontier Wireless DSL where I am. Takes me an hour to download 1 gigabyte.
I have write down my in-game commands on a piece of paper, and mail them to the mechanical turk in Australia who then moves my character (@Barnd0g) tradeskills take a while
I still have AOL 3.0 on my old two PC's that I used for DOOM. Does that count? (and I mean old, my PC's used a DX2-66, the other had an SX-25 that was overclocked)
I've still got old 386 and 486 gathering dust somewhere. Started EQ on a Pentium, which made it until Luclin
I said it at the time on the post when that change came in and I couldn’t agree more.. this may have seemed like a dumb soapbox to stand on at the time but I think this is a direct cause of the server population decline. The dedicated players that have the time to play will always be here.. the people who were on the way out anyway are gone regardless of this change. What this change did was mess with the people that were in the middle where they don’t have a ton of time and need to maximize every bit of it. They are going to find something better to do with their time and they did.. myself included. I don’t know who championed it but it didn’t need to be changed…
initially I was like meh whatever but I am reversing my stance and think removal of /who zone is bad for the server it would be nice if devs please considered re-adding this relatively innocuous command that is an important eqemu QoL feature in this day and age
I think you guys are just burned out and finding some random thing to blame for it. You're just at the end of your journey and it's probably time for it to end. Remember that you were attracted to this version of the game on AK and now TAKP because of the hard/classic things in it, before all the modern changes. Things like riding the boat, walking everywhere, having to get flags/keys, basically doing it the hard/old way. People made track bots to check zones, or they played some class that can travel quickly and just ran around checking out what's going on where. When you just see everything as an obstacle/chore and it's not fun anymore, maybe you just need a break from it. I think the easier and more modern TLP servers might be a natural next step for people who want to continue beyond PoP, but the scope of this project was to build it like AK, and TAKP was kind of the beta server for it. AK was cool because it stayed the same for so many years - I don't know why you guys think it would be good to change TAKP into something else. There are still going to be people who are just beginning their journey and they haven't seen all this stuff, so they're not tired of it like you all are. You're asking for stuff to change but you all liked AK because it didn't change and everyone had the same chance to experience it, all while regular live EQ was moving forward and 10 expansions ahead. TAKP tries to be that same thing. Hopefully in 3 years or whatever it's still running and you guys can come back and see it fresh again.
New players on TAKP bring a fresh bout of excitement for everyone, be it exping, flagging, and raiding all the content. However, a lot are being turned away due to seemingly arbitrary balance / QoL changes. Us hopeless EQMac old timer addicts will play here no matter what. Not an issue of burnout per se. Not asking for these changes for myself... New players starting here, being excited to try the authentic PoP content, are sometimes turned away by very minor cosmetic QoL issues which do not really affect the server AKuracy and/or content balance or mechanics at all. These issues are very easily fixable, and have been fixed on the "other" server. Example: the /who all zone command was pretty much immediately re-added on PQ. And the mouse scrollwheel zoom thing is kind of a joke here now really. That's really the crux of the issue imo. There are plenty of non-EQMac changes and fixes here, and it just seems very arbitrary and soul crushing at times. Appreciate all the work the devs do to recreate the in-era accurate mechanics and feel. Attention to detail is umatched here.
While I do agree with your sentiment, solar, I don't think that's a fair argument when there are two distinct AKs that existed and TAKP is still different from both in many ways. Hobart went out of his way to make AK unlike the AK people had played for years (pre-hobart AK existed for longer than post-hobart did!), in good ways and in bad ways. The same can be said for the TAKP dev team, who has done significantly more work over a longer period of time than Hobart, with some changes occurring as a part of the progressive plan of the server and forgotten as the next parts of the project became a priority.
I think you're just missing the point of, I would prefer to play here or i’ll go do something else not eq. I would play here more if I had /who all zone back and I don’t. Thats all.. i just don't think im alone in that sentiment. Has nothing to do with burnout or raiding. A lot of the eq people here that are still itching to play eq are going elsewhere. They’re doing lazarus pq or even back to p99 for casual play, not TAKP, so i mean it is what it is. You guys will keep it however you want but I do think it’ll just be a login to raid and log out completely soon, if it isn’t already.
I never played old EQ, yet, when I tried live I couldn't stomach it. Modern version does suck and it basically ruin the game for me. Yep, still doing this, not burned out, on Quarm I have lvl 34 character and I have never asked to be ported yet for example. This is the charm of this game, being hard, brutal... This is why I like old EQ play style and it is the only game I play. It is fun. But, I don't want to waste my time running somewhere, just to see I have run all the way there for nothing. This is not fun, at least for me. And I also don't have so much of my free time to waste. I understand you are trying to emulate how it used to be on this exact same server. I never played it, I have no sentiment attachment and need for something to be as AKkurate as possible. All I'm looking for, is having fun playing old (and brutal) game. I tried Quarm out of curiosity, just to see how it is, when server starts fresh, when you start at bottom and there are no hand outs. The hard way. But few QoL things there, have huge impact on me. /w all zone - I have hard time playing without it. And there are few other minor improvements that I really like, and it is making playing this old and brutal game more fun. Agree That being said, I think, when legacy items stops dropping there, some players will come back here or at least start playing here more, than they do now. TAKP and three boxing has it charm, it is a wonderful server with superb community. (off topic: ...but now comparing TAKP's 3 boxing and Quarm single box, I agree with all those developers and players who at that time voted for two box, I now see, that duo box would probably be the best combination. Duo box, TAKP like server, with few minor QoL changes, would be my only server to play on it for ever) ...any beyond
You can play TAKP on the newest intel macs before the M1 chip. You just have to create a partition and install 10.14 on it.
Where are people going on takp where it takes longer than 5 minutes to get there and where you're likely to find someone already set up?
It's not so much a particular zone, but if you're looking to exp you may need to run to fire, bot, pov, etc, checking multiple zones for camps, which can take some time and become dispiriting. Not wading in, but the change definitely affects and elongated the process of setting up camp.
/who all zone was a great QOL upgrade from AK. AK was a pain to setup XP camps for all of the reasons listed. We got used to it, but never liked it. On TAKP however, we got used to having /who all zone working and loved it. Removing player access to the command was a grave error IMHO. Please bring the functionality back!
I was not going to write any more on this topic, one my post is enough, but since you directly asked me, beside what Tuluvien already replied, of top of my head, Sebilis, KC... (and I don't know how much time it takes to get there, I just don't find it particularly fun, running to some location for nothing). I would never go to Hill Giants, if I saw any player in that zone. Only when there is no one in there. For other zones, I would check, who is in the zone and then send a tell asking, what are they camping, to see if it is worth running there. This taken away just makes me see (and experience) game in a different light. No matter how silly this may sound. Yes I can spam in alliance. We all can start constantly spamming questions in alliance. But I don't want that. First i don't want to advertise to whole server what are my intentions and second I feel it is such step back from what we already had, that I just can't do it. Beside many ignore alliance anyway. So, what I was doing for a while is, I ran to some place. If it was camped already, often this was enough for me, to just log out. Then Quarm came and they put "/w all zone" back into game...
Alright I guess. I just use "/ all 20-30" if I want to see if there's another trio exping somewhere. Or "/ all 2 64" works too outside of primetime. Yes, it's a little QOL issue. But it's really, really little.
It's definitely a function I got used to over the years, especially as I was PL'ing alts. The /who all range stuff is fine, but not nearly as useful as looking for a specific zone. Now I run out to a place because I get a bug up my butt that I want to go do XYZ in whatever zone, find out there's folks there, and either try to join them or just log and try again later. Yes, it seems silly. I don't think I'm the only one who does it, though. At this point in the game I'm manufacturing excuses for playing, and impediments just make me go do other things. And that's fine, but I'd be remiss not to state it after playing here ~8 years.
Just curious but how long has Quarm been live thus far? Is it already at PoP era or is that still a ways off?
They are online for about couple of months or so... So until Jan 1ts legacy items (manastone etc...) will still be dropping. The cycle is 9 months, so it will take few years before they get to PoP. Seems like server is steering toward 'custom'. There are rumors that certain things will change. Like magician epic will not be as hard as it was originally for example. I've heard several other planning changes, but didn't understand them, since I have never played original EQ. And, they are just a rumors anyway, so who knows... Also, I have heard from several sides, that main person has a history to burn out on a personal projects, so this one may not live that long to see the PoP. Again, who knows... TAKP does offer stability and reliability.
That's why I'm hesitant to even consider playing there. Come time to release Kunark that guy could be burned out and abandon the project altogether. He is passionate for Everquest from what I've heard, but there's still his past history to consider. As far as TAKP is concerned, the removal of /who all zone is lowkey annoying, but if it's era accurate then I don't mind it too much as I am closer to a purist.
PEQ and other servers had /ooc serverwide as well as /auction serverwide. so that was the EQEmu thing. the /who all zone is the EQEmu thing as well. I know it such a convenience to have after we came this far. But our goal to the server is to emulate AK as it is with bug and exploits fixes.
It's also annoying to do /who all <level range> or /who all <class> and head over to see if they have room only to find out woops that person turned out to be with a full group and doesn't have any room anyway. I know you could just send a tell but in my experience random people are more likely to let you join them if you show up unannounced (maybe its a psychological thing) and ask "in person" With other "QOL" issues like mouse-wheel, or changes like Monk AC or Ranger Archery I can see how that actually changes the game balance (mouse-wheel allows better field of view for example) but with /who all zone I don't really see how it changes any sort of balance of power or anything other than it makes the entire game more convenient to play. I'm not saying I'd quit over it or anything but as a casual noob I used to frequently do /who all poj, pon, poinnovation (before the other planes opened up by level) to see what's up and I sure as heck don't plan to run check all those zones manually instead.
I'll be honest, having only played iterations of EQ without /who all zone.... Most of the positives seem to be that you'd have to communicate with people, and the negatives being that people don't want to talk in Alliance or send tells. And... that seems at odds with what (in my very humble opinion) made EQ great: actually talking to people and building community.
/who all zone makes it easier to talk to people that don't join alliance. I would send tells all the time using it. Ask them what they are camping, if they need another, etc. It simply saves you the run, which sometimes can be far depending on your level. Its nothing more than convenience. A convenience that is offered on nearly every other server. We aren't all 14 year olds (although sometimes we act like it). Our time is precious and limited at this point.
