Limit on Boxes

I would vote for a single set limit, if you allow ways to get more chars like that it will be monopolized swiftly and get out of control. Even the donation thing that was mentioned.

 

One other factor - everquest on 1-2 toons is boring outside of a raid environment. I've played a solo rogue and its pretty much a damn snoozefest - there isn't a whole lot to hitting assist/ 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 everytime the backstab/evade macro comes up in a group.


Secondly, box limits won't force anyone to play nice. I voted for a full group because like I'm sure everyone else did, I voted for how I like to play. The difference I can see between a box limit of 6 and 2 is that with 6 you can still play your duo all you like, my choice won't infringe on anyone elses good time. And like strikur pointed out earlier, if the account limit was 1-2-3-4-5-6 it wouldn't matter - I am a solo person by nature and outside or raiding that's what I would be doing. Whether I was a necro/druid/bard solo or a sk/sham or chanter/druid duo or a war/wiz/cler trio (you get it?) i would be solo. A box limit won't change how I want to play, just how I play. And honestly, if the account limit concurrently is 2 - I probably wouldn't bother to play until at least luclin anyway. And you might say good riddance - but I'm guessing much like Al'Kabor - this servers primarily flaw will end up being lack of population. I hope that isn't the case, but it is my fear.

 

I voted for 6.

Manual 6 CH chain never gets old.

 

Like most others, I voted for a limit that fits my play style, 3. However, I do have one concern with a box limit of 3, the amount of mules I will eventually need. As many of you know, I like to tradeskill. At first (probably for at least a year), a three account limit will provide enough mules. However, once PoP opens for play and I have time to GM tradeskills I see having only 3 accounts for mules as a problem. When AK shut down, I had 4 accounts. My 6 characters were on 2 accounts (I started before free to play) and I had 2 accounts with only mules. Also, once we hit PoP are our characters from AK we paid to save going to be allowed onto the server? If they are this could create issues with the account limit. I paid to save 5 of my 6 characters.

 

What is this 'paid to save'?

 

Well I like to box too, and produced videos of doing it, but I voted for a 2 box limit because I think that is the best number for the server.

And I disagree with the claim that it will not force people to 'play nice'. If you have to form relationships to accomplish anything in the game, then you'll socialize more and be less likely to act like an ass because the community gains the power to deny you the ability to progress.

I categorically disagree with this.

EQ is a competitive game-- the resource that is competed for is NPCs. Boxing is an enormous advantage in this competition. Someone once said that boxing is an arms race and I feel that is an apt description. If one person can log in 6 boxes at the same time and kill that BoT mini, then single boxers have no chance unless they were already in a group camping exp. One person rotating all six clerics on a raid is another gigantic advantage. Guilds who do this will outcompete those who don't.

If you want to do nothing but solo, then why not make a private server and play on that yourself?

'A lack of population' is an argument with no merit when p99 has such a high population that the server is outright overcrowded. When servers like PEQ list hundreds of concurrent users, that number is hugely misleading because the accounts per user is so very high there. If anything, that is evidence that the box limit would increase population because p99 is much more popular. (there are other reasons of course)

AK had fewer people because A) nobody knew about it B) the hoops required to join were many, also requiring a 'shady' hack (or buy a mac) C) it was very, very old and people prefer fresh communities for many reasons D) almost zero GMing to speak of E) bugs-- both client and server, plus the old client is obnoxious (we are moving to evolution I believe) F) no guarantees that your level 65 with 300 AAs gets flushed down the toilet when SOE shuts it down. (which happened) F alone delayed my decision to sign in for months.

 

I have an idea for a new poll: should we perma-ban from this forum and the server those directly responsible for getting AK shut down by using warp hacks to grief players? yes/no

 

Torven you are making the assumption that A) you can't do with 6 what you can do with 2 (and in the case of bot minis I should hope you know that isn't true) and you quoted me as saying I am a solo person, and I am. Outside of raids. Like many others, they enjoy the companys of others, even while doing things alone. And playing 6 doesn't mean I am a superior competitor for the semilimited (in that mobs will always spawn but some rely on time) resources - but a box limit of 2 does force me to play like you do.

And the population (truly the point if you take any away from this, please take this one) needs to be able to support a forced account limit in order to complete raid goals. 53 people voted. 53, That isn't 1 full raid. If they all box one account, then sure, you can have 1 guild make 1.5 full raids. A dubious at best, proposition.

 

Faults concerns over box limits in relation to raiding forces is valid. If a large enough community doesn't develop for whatever reason, raiders, and the server as a whole is screwed. I think for now we should stick to 2-3 boxes, my preference being 3 to allow a bit more variability in group composition, and for the ability for a single player to do more content. I think there is a good chance that with a 2-3 box max, Classic-PoP, and a well run, maintained server, there may be significant interest in the everquest community. A lot of people felt that PoP was their last favorite expansion. Combine that with a solid legit experinece, minimal boxing (NoMQ, GM monitored and enforced). I think there is an excellent chance that as the server nears some form of completion in the next 5 years, population growth will too. It shall be interesting to see. And as Faults says, we should be ready to change box limits if we are seeing serious raid failure.

 

People keep bring up p99 as something to compare too. That is like comparing to a WoW emu server. p99 is a whole different game, they have a slow development process, and extremely large following, TAK is no where near that size. Thats like saying I am going to open up a Burger Queen next to Burger King and expect to compete with them.

I also want to make the argument that people are going to play a certain way, no matter how many boxes there are. It is ridiculous to think you are going to make people play nice if you limit their boxing. P99 is a great example that place is a shit storm of server, some of the rudest people I know and have been guilded with in the past played on there. That server forces you to play with other people.

 

lol Furst, I have never played there but boy have I heard the stories. Maybe it is best to let people box how and when they want, there will always be competition. I think it is fair to draw some comparisons between the other EMU servers though.

P99 - up to Velious only, no legit boxing, heavily GMed, shit show = high population. I find P99 very interesting.** For all the shit that has happened there, they seem quite functional on the surface. RMT was huge but they seem to have wiped a lot of that out now. They have some really dedicated staff.

PEQ:TGC - server in development, currently in end of GoD, full on boxing, legit MQ2 for botting - very friendly server for the most part. I wouldn't say their pop is that high though. Seeing the box armies in action is pretty entertaining actually.

TAK - I imagine as somewhat in between the two servers, you can box 2-3chars (evaluated depending on server population). I honestly believe there is a group of players out there that want to play on a well run PoP server, with some boxing allowed. I am not against 6 boxes of whatever. My interest is playing on an older client, and with PoP locked. I really like these aspects.

**Edit - I would hate to only have 1 box to play with sooo boring. I voted for 3. I am cool up to 6 though.

 

Why is this on page 20? What is the main goal of this project?

 

I voted for 2 and yes, like most of you I have plenty of biases why. I prefer only to ever play 1 toon. Any second toon I played was to say run someone else's cleric out they lent me for a rez, to pass/store items among toons, port groups and that kind of thing. I could box as well as most, having had both ghetto and two comp. options. Sometimes, running a second toon worked well when one of those toons just really was not going to be doing much due to the nature of whatever event it happened to be. Playing 1 toon properly was always preferable to 2+ actively at a time though.

So a second account is a decided convenience. But it is declining scale. Maybe half the value of the former. A third account, half that still and so on. Some people box out of necessity, but at the core the solution is not more boxes - it is finding ways to encourage more players on at your time, etc... Hand some loner 6 boxes, they wont have an incentive to play long term and encourage friends to come on. I cant tell you how many time someone would come on, see no play options and leave. Not really because they were the only one at a level range (though sometimes at lower levels when we were so top heavy), but because it was some boxer PLing their toons who didn't want to deal with true newbies (their choice) or a different boxer who had their 5 toons, some illegally parked to tweak xp, in places like POS eating all the frogs and knowing they let someone else in and their xp falls.

When people come on and see/know there are openings and/or wont otherwise get turned away, they play more and stay longer. That in turn leads to more groups and the whole server does well. Players gain a broader understanding of their classes. Less burnout too.

Pre-FTP, only a handful of players would shell out for more than 2-3 toons. Pre-Intel client, only a few players could tolerate the impact of too many accounts running. Guild rules in many places precluded boxes on raids, except where essential. There is always a reaction time impact, always! No matter how good or fast you are, you are less so when time is split. Errors are also more common. It's math plain and simple (time is a fixed quantity and more characters - more room for errors. That was AK for most of its life and a part of what made it distinct was the people it attracted in light of that: relatively more patient, collaborative, problem solvers who put challenge ahead of advancement.

Heavy boxers might argue what they do wont impact on what i do. I stayed on despite all that stuff. But it did impact the economy, culture, amount of time my friends stayed on, their stress levels and so on. The guilds learned long ago they needed to rotate to make things happen, FIF wasn't cutting it. It made for a far less contentious place. FIF made its de facto return with those last few years and then came all out grief. Lots of people were hurt by that.

We can always go larger later. But the debug is done best by a few people with more focus. It is a vastly more difficult situation to try and reduce the number of accounts later on. Heck, if I could get around with a nexus or pok already, I would have voted one account for now until the game was real and I needed those mules.

 

These accusations towards me never get old. Start a thread on RnF forums for personal attacks.

I will be on Tak project if you like it or not.

----

Manual 6 boxing toons was really never a problem on EQMac. It was when automation came into play that ruined it. Automation allowed for monopolization. 6 boxing opened up the opportunity for people to work together to kill "raid" targets without relying on 20-30 real humans to show up for a raid. Like Faults and others have pointed out, the strongest flaw with this projection will be population.

Monopolizing a BoT mini isn't the end of the world. Heck they are on an 8 hour spawn. PoP gods aren't worth monopolizing unless the plan is to intentionally block access for another party.

You won't see someone solo boxing Vex Thal or EP minis, places that people actually care about.

 

And how large do you think their 'following' was before the server even opened? They grew large because of their attention to detail and policies-- and their most notable policy is the 1-box rule.

P99 has issues largely because the server is so crowded. Competition for limited resources is the main driver behind bad behavior. Ignoring the toxic raid scene, p99 is much better. AK started having issues after boxing became popular as well-- Destiny's raid leader couldn't tolerate the competition of one extra guild in the EPs and he resorted to warp hack training to keep Malignant out. Before that, a Temerity member trained TSO off the server, (and joined in on the Malignant training bandwagon as well, but that was mostly LOH) granted TSO was doing bad things. So lets not pretend AK was some kumbaya hippie love fest-- if it had more people you'd have seen a lot more bad behavior there too.

 

Hey I am just arguing that no matter what you limit boxes too there are still going to be things that piss people off. Honestly I do not care for a boxing limit if someone can play them legit good for them. It is always going to be easier for a raid force to walk into a boss and kill then 3 people running them individually.

People then argue that they will start scripting, I will argue we have a solid GM force that will immediately ban them. Why not empower the cops rather than limit the people? If i was to have 3 accounts playing and one in the bazaar why is that so bad?

 

Off topic, but come on guys. Do we really have to keep reliving the drama from a server that's a year gone now? We have a new server and an opportunity for a fresh start...

 

I should have stated I donated to save characters instead of saying I paid to save five characters. I apologize for using the wrong word. Also, whether or not these saved characters from AK are ever allowed here, I am looking forward to Beta and being able to play on a PoP server once again.

 

pop is a little ways off

 

Yah, I know.

 

p99 doesn't have a high population because of a box limit, as people just VPN to box anyways; the reason P99 boasts large numbers is because it's an extremely stable server, with active GM's, and is really the only choice for 'classic' everquest; it has no competition for classic gameplay so it can with some marketing rake in hundreds upon hundreds of players seeking nostalgia, it is less than an official live server but for what it offers and the stability it offers it's bar-none the only choice for legitimate gameplay that WAS everquest and isn't some custom/accelerated box.

 

A VPN alone isn't enough to defeat their box detection. P99 has spyware that will catch the lion's share of users attempting to break the rules.

If project 99's forum had a poll that asked if people there would want to get rid of the 1 box rule, what do you think the results would be?

 

60/40 get rid of it I bet

 

I can predict the outcome of 3 vs 6. Currently, 1 acct has 4 votes, 2 accts has 13 votes, 3 accts has 24 votes, 4 acct has 1 vote and 6 accts has 15 votes. In a 3 vs 6 run off 3 would get all those who voted for 1, 2 and 4; 3 would get 42 votes and 6 would still only get 15 votes. No need for a run off.

 

I believe a majority of their population is happy with 1 box, a few would like another 2 for ports/buffs/etc. I suspect there is also a portion of the population would like it totally uncapped altogether. They have done well for their server by enforcing 1 box. Whatever is decided on this server, enforcement would be needed. I could be wrong on this though.

 

AK was best when we had to pay for boxes. I had 1 account for a looong time and enjoyed AK. When Kazlan was AAed a bit I made a 2nd account and put a shaman on there to be able to exp a lil bit when no groups to be had. Im on EU time. AK went downhill for me after FTP made multi boxing much more common. Im sure most AK vets feel the same. Please lets have a 2 (or 3) box limit.

Btw. I made 4 more accounts when we went FTP and while I could add some COH on raids and an extra cleric it really was better with only 2. (imho)

Whatever we settle on lets play nice and enjoy.

 

Duke Nizzar used a VPN for the better part of two-years without being caught on Red99; he's only banned because he got caught red-handed selling things on redguides (kind of hard to hock off a VP geared wizard, when there is only three wizards with that gear and all from the same guild)

 

I mean i 6 boxed when I had to pay for it. I maintained 6 concurrent toons after I came to AK, in the last 6 months of AK i had access to 9 toons, mostly for utility purposes (rogue/monk to pull, boxing Krumples mage to CoH etc). I would've played 6 if i had to pay or not. I believe the push for a box limit is that people will play nice but I believe that can be better accomplished by a clear, concise, and well enforced PnP.