Hello! I'm prefacing this by saying I don't want to cause any problems or forum drama and that I am honestly just asking questions I do not know the answer to. I am definitely not talking down anyones preferred playstyle or opinions or anything of that nature. Just simple honest curiosity. 1. What is the long term goal for this server aside from completing development on all the content? 1a. Will it go up to the desired level and stay there, or will it reset and start over to begin the journey again? 2. Why is boxing permitted? 2a. Will boxing ever be not permitted? 2b. Has there ever been any research into whether boxing being allowed here has turned players away? 3. The word on the street is that the server population is quite small compared to the EQ TLP servers and P99. Is this true? 3a. Do you (the reader) have any thought on the population and what you'd like to see regarding it? 3b. Are you (the reader) happy with the population? I'm being sneaky and writing this at the office (currently Monday morning where I am) so more questions might come to me during the day. I'll probably post them too. Thanks for reading! Looking forward to seeing what the skinny is.
I can't answer a lot of the other questions but I think the population is just right. As someone that played a long time on the namesake Al'Kabor this feels like a faithful recreation and the population levels reflect the population levels we had then. On boxing, if anything the boxing restrictions in place make it feel a tad less like old Al'Kabor as many of us would frequently run 4+ toons at a time.
1) PoP 1a) Nobody starting over except bum 2) because we love it 2a) No. Kindly read the wiki 2b) Who gives a flying fuck we like to box 3) Always growing and TLP's constantly shrink past GoD so /shrug - we're at a good place 3a) 2 more raiding guilds one euro one oceanic 3b) Fuck yea I started in alpha with tollen and speedz and rob - nerds with a dream Enjoy your stay. Read the wiki.
Our population is too big. It needs to be 25% of the current pop. Zones are too crowded unlike AK where you could go to any zone at any time and every camp was open. Those were the days.
No I have not. I looked through (albeit a little quickly) through some of the stickied threads in a couple sections but did not think to consult the Wiki. I'll do so, thanks. Thanks for the other replies. Insightful.
If you try to ever bring up the idea of limiting boxing, on a server that had had it as a backbone since the beginning... You're gonna have a bad time. If you want to why it's here, read the many topics on it since 2015. Been playing EQ since August 2000. Have always been more than happy with the population here and will never play elsewhere because of it. Because of the overall happiness with the population we generally don't care why people choose not to play here. We are more concerned with why they stay, and it's been working out. I should add that I hated boxing before starting here. I am now quite capable, though I still prefer not to. It has done nothing but empower me and I'm now happy to have the option.
Boxing is permitted because it existed on the original AK server which this server aims to emulate. You also weren't limited on how many characters you could box either, but a choice was made here to limit it to three for a number of reasons.
All of your questions touch right on what is this server's identity. Our core. PoP timelocked forever. Boxing permitted and empowered. Population low enough to allow people to enjoy Norrath. Those are things that help make AK the best. Questions 1 and 2 are answered by the wiki and the most basic of rundowns regarding AK. 2b is presumptuous at best, I think. The majority of the population seems to be happy with the population, those that aren't leave, making the rest of us happier still. This is just one big hermitage .
The server has a good core. If you want bigger, no boxing, only option is p99. You don't have to box. Discussing pros/cons of boxing here will get plenty of hostility. Thats just a warning. Plenty of anti-boxing attitude people have tried to stir up the masses. About how much better it is to forbid boxing, blah, blah, blah. Its a boxing server. Its limited to 3. That was voted on years ago. We are not going to revote either and change it.
Since Luclin has released, I'd say the population has just about hit the sweet spot. I'd like to see 300+ on during peak hours, personally.
Boxing and anti-boxing rhetoric are inventions of P99 and that community. I've said it before, P99 is far removed from what Everquest in 1999-2001 was actually like. And not even close to how AK was. Virtually everyone boxed on AK years before it went F2P and had a working PC client.
I was in a very pro-boxing guild on eqlive. GL and many of officers liked to box. But the majority of the guild didn't box. We were always getting new members who would try this anti-boxing campaign. And complain about boxers. And all this anti-boxing rhetoric. It almost seems like every one of those assholes ended up on p99.
The only thing this server lacks are eurotrash... But i assume apple products are more common in the states
Kinda seems like you're asking questions about our experience indirectly. So I'll try to answer specifically and theoretically. Boxing is here and will always be here. There is a majority who loves our three box rule, and minorities who would like to box more, fewer (me), or not at all. The awesome thing about this server, is that it is populated enough to choose your play style and the experience rules benefit you no matter what you choose. How so? Three boxing limit means those who box three alone get the worst possible per kill experience. If they add a single boxer to their group, their experience increases 9%? or so. Exp at 4 and 5 in a group is better than 3, regardless of kill speed increasing. Adding a 6th to the group lowers exp per kill marginally. See all of that here: http://wiki.takp.info/index.php?title=Experience_Points#Group_Size_Modifiers I generally three box when I play. I have a Necro I either two box or play solo. My RL friend plays and she single boxes 90% of the time and might drag a cleric or wizard the other 10%. She single boxed a monk to the 40s, a rogue to the 30s and various others into the 20s casually playing and joining groups when available. She has zero problems leveling up beyond her own play time limits. Get into the 50s and there are plenty more groups to join, and 3 boxes looking for a 4th to pull, improve efficiency, or just sit there and do nothing but increase overall exp. On more populated servers, there are lists or randoms to get things like Stormfeather or Scout in WW or the angry goblin. Here it is much more natural, and a short bit of camping can get you most of what you need. I'm happy with the population, and I think when POP hits we could easily add an additional 100-200% and be comfortable with plenty of zones and camps to choose from. Our raid rotations lead to very little drama at higher levels and do not require you to live on this game to achieve the smallest of equipment upgrades. Give it a shot if boxing doesn't completely offend you. You'll find the community inviting, the population welcoming and the code to be on point. If boxing offends you, or the idea of not using a mouse scroll view limits your creativity, then Agnarr might be your best bet for a POP-Locked server.
One other quick note on population. For the most part, from my anecdotal experience, our population is not affected or anyway hampered by new TLP servers and WOW expansions. If you play on Daybreak at all, new TLP servers typically drastically adjust population from those previous servers. I imagine the population on Agnarr has shifted quite a bit with expansions being released on Phinny and Corinav's release. I didn't notice a thing here, except an increase when we opened Luclin. Players here either dabble on live servers or do not play them. We have plenty of P99 vets here as well. It's a stable population that will only grow when POP is released.
I think the boxing and population stuff feels better on TAKP than any other EQ I've played. Because there is a boxing limit at 3, once you hit the limits of what you can do with 3, you either improve your skill or group up with other players to keep progressing. Since this is a voluntary effort by everyone in the community, we don't have much cheating and griefing either. It's a pretty friendly atmosphere to relive old EQ memories and make new ones. We try hard to fix code and content problems too, and not just the devs, but players all contribute their EQ knowledge to make it what it is. It's a lot more cooperative than any other EQ environment I know of.
Smaller populations like here are usually better imo because trolls/poopsockers/fatcats/forumwarriors require a larger audience to remain entertained. 3 boxing is insanely fun.
As a new player on this server who originally thought boxing would be a deal breaker, I'd like to share my 2cp. Before playing here, I played for 3 years or so on p99 and had a lot of fun- my original EQ experiences were mainly doing aimless (albeit exciting) things on Live around 2001-2005. I rolled many, many characters and explored a lot of "off the beaten path" zones. As a dumb adolescent, I didn't really understand the mechanics behind the game and my highest character was 47. Once I discovered p99, it was like an I.V. of straight nostalgia and I had an amazing time leveling up, and also getting to experience the end game I never had never been high enough level to access when I played on live. Hitting 60 and saving up the 100k for torpor on my first toon felt like a huge accomplishment, and there was this constant feeling of "better get to where I'm going and not die lest someone else take it" that was both thrilling and caustic. I don't think I realized at the time how over populated p99 is, and figured it was normal to see every camp in Sebilis taken and a handful of LFG characters at the ent. I leveled 2 toons to 60 and a naggy/vox rogue to 52, amassed a lot of gear, but ultimately raiding just bummed me out. For years, 2 guilds have contested all the top-end raid content while others fight over what's left. Not knowing any other raid scene, I assumed it was the way of the world. It's really defeating when all of your raids (except for stuff like HoT, Sky, etc.) are bat-phoned, only to rush online and lose out to one of 3+ guilds chomping at the bit for the same target. Ultimately, I felt I ran out of things to do after I had gotten all the items I could buy and wasn't prepared to switch guilds to a more "round the clock" raid scene because my life wouldn't permit that anyway. This was a little disappointing as when I found p99 I thought I would never play on another server. Since I played during Luclin and PoP, I was interested in making my next home a server that had that content, but I didn't want anything to do with live (mercs, instances, etc.) or go past PoP. When I found this server, it was exactly what I was looking for except for it had a low population and allowed boxing (which almost made it tough for me to commit). I can't believe how wrong I was. On the boxing front, I was met with "you don't have to box" when myself or others voiced that concern. I originally shrugged this off because I viewed boxing as an advantage, and so if one wanted to compete it was necessary to box. I figured if you're holding down king in seb with your trio, why would you stop playing one of your chars to have someone else join you and lose out on loot? This was a school of thought that had been ingrained as normal from playing p99 for a few years. TAKP is nothing like that attitude whatsoever, I can't stress how much a relief it is. If you don't want to box, you don't have to. You won't be looked down upon for only bringing one character to the table. And in my experience people generally welcome the company of another player over xp/loot for their own toons. Not having boxing restrictions is also great for buffing your toons, item transfers, etc. On p99 while playing with my at-the-time room mate, if we wanted to buff our alts with my main, my buddy would have to log on my main, buff my alt, then I would log and switch to my main and buff his alt- quite a chore considering must buffs last ~20-30 mins. While I have yet to experience the raid scene firsthand on TAKP, it seems like targets stay up and are left on rotations. It's still mind-blowing to me that things like Tormax would be left up because "it's not our turn". Truly a better way of life. At the end of the day, it's just pixels anyway; experiences are what's valuable. I think this comes from having a group of people who are more invested in creating a community than personal gain, but I also think a lower population switches the conversation from "can we do this before someone else contests us?" to "Do we have enough to do this at all?". It's harder to hide a bad reputation on a smaller server. No opinion would complete without sharing the negatives too, so I will say my ascent to 40 was a little lonely but in line with what I expected from an older server. It felt to me as if many higher levels saw I was leveling up and switched to their alts to play with me or surprised me by popping in zone to buff or PL me, which was really, really special to me. Once I hit 40 and could group with 60's and still get XP, many groups would have me out even though I was 10 levels below what I should have been for the zone. Things like this make TAKP a genuinely special place. TL;DR: If you think boxing is bad, it's probably because you are used to playing on a server that fosters greed.
I would like to see the server grow to about 1k on at any given time. EQ is all about socializing with other people.
You are gonna socialize with 1000 people? EQ is about playing how you want to play. Not forcing others to play like you think they should.
@Speedz Please post the quote of @Rabitz on our front page and award him the title "the Recruiter" Excellent post. @souske gdiaf, 1k more would ruin the server... but I guess that's 1k more humans to buy my wares. But gdiaf anyways for not being stationed at Dyess
