Doubt it. This server has a remarkable resistance to an increasing CCU no matter how much I try to raise it
CCU is concurrent users, so basically how many different people are online at one time? I don't know that acronym. It would be a nice if there were a few more, and I do expect Luclin to be busier. It is hard to convince people that spending the time on server accuracy is more important than releasing content as soon as possible. I am here and will always be here because of the dev teams commitment to accuracy, their ability to recreate complex encounters, and sticking to their guns on us using this old client. Old client feels better, and with less quality of life improvements, makes the game play experience much more Akkurate.
Two boxes was my vote as well. If the population swells during Luclin, I hope the devs will consider a 2-boxing limit in PoP zones, or at least the EPs and Time. Heck, maybe even if it doesn't. I love PoP's raid content, but too much of it is too easy to overpower with ranged DPS. True enough, but for the first seven of AK's ten years, accounts were billed monthly and the only client available was death on mega-boxing. Even when that changed, Temerity, Destiny, and Dark Conquest weren't boxing at anything close to TAKP levels. Some of the younger guilds may have been; I don't know.
Lucky for most of you, we care more about being AKurate. And less about everything else. Can you imagine what it would be like if number of users was more important, and we continually made changes that everyone says causes more users to be here? Bottom line. We are trying to be more like AK. It will never be exact. But we do have a purpose, a direction, and end goal. If you want to join us for the ride? Thats great. If you want to constantly bitch and complain? Door is over there =>
I'm not sure what you mean by this. My comment about trying to raise the CCU was just referring to the detail I put into the mechanics and content along with things like making the front page video and writing the wiki. I don't see a lot of people in here asking for Titanium or non-AK features really. If anything a 1 or 2 box limit was more AK like as Ravenwing said. Although I really don't want hotzones either, and that keeps being mentioned. CCU is important in a social game. People log in and see nobody and they leave. I'd like the server to have people running around like P99 instead of a few guilds that log in for raids and that's it.
Our server is over populated. Make AK great again and keep our population low. Build the wall and keep the trash out.
His comment was more about what our server would be like if you catered to the whims of the playerbase instead of sticking to your mission of accuracy.
Is it really fair for to the people who have invested in 3 chars? Considering this was something decided on very early in the servers history. People built and developed their chars based on this 3box limit. I can understand why people are interested in 2boxing, and hey, no one is forcing you to 3box. But to change this limit so far into the history of the server seems a little knee-jerk and pulls the rug out from those who decided to make 3 chars to work together. I also don't think it will change a lot of the server dynamics and turn TAKP into some wondrous life changing experience.
I personally hate boxing but IMO its the least of two evils when comparing servers. Reason I don't like it is for a number of reasons none of which are red lines for me unlike many things on other servers.
Would LOVE to see a 2 box limit. Holding out hope that someday our great community grows with more actual humans, and the 2 box limit is implemented. The MMO experience would be a far greater one. Dependency on others, interaction, and community involvement are relative and scale upward together. While the accuracy is a nice plus, the community is what makes TAKP a special place. Take away the accuracy, and TAKP is still awesome and extremely fun. Take away the community, and TAKP is just an empty museum. I don't think the latter would be fun or inspiring for even the devs, let alone other players. Other than Haynar, I guess, who has said before that he prefers to play by himself. Nothing wrong with that, for the record, but it doesn't reflect the view of the majority of players.
I like to 3 box. Thats how I play. I tried two boxing on dalaya. Did not like it so much. No one forces people to 3 box.
The population is low because the subset of players who actually want to experience classic EverQuest is extremely small. It really is a different experience entirely using the client we use vs the Titanium client or the Live TLPs. Boxing is extremely convenient for players whose mean age is probably in the 30-40 range and may not have the time or flexibility for 6+ hour long grinds or to sit LFG for several hours at a time. People may only get an hour here and there when the baby is asleep or when the work finally ends. Boxing allows them to flexibility to play on their time. As others stated it's a decision left up to you on whether you box. You can get along fine without boxing as there are a few people who have leveled to 60 on solo Rogue and solo Tank classes on this server. Many more 2-box and plenty 3-box. You choose your own adventure. Not boxing undoubtably is the harder path but it is doable. 3-boxing allows me to challenge myself as much as I can. I've completed many Epics for my Alts with little or no outside help. It's difficult to motivate people to spend 4 hours wiping to Lord Rakashiir for your 47 shaman who sees playtime about twice a month for an hour total. But my 3-boxed crew had no problem dying over and over to feared pets and fleeing trash trains! These sorts of adventures are fun to me. Then when I do come up against a challenge I don't really think I can surmount with boxing like I happened to with the Rogue epic final fight, my mana didn't keep pace with General and I ended up wiping around 50%, a few guildmates came out and helped me finish it off. Again not something that would've been doable without boxing. Tough to motivate 6+ people to help a crappy 46 Rogue box that opens doors. Re-2 vs 3 boxing... I would live with 2 boxing but all that would do is just push people off of support type classes into more holy trinity classes most of the time. Not sure how much I would bother playing my main Druid if this was the case. Too much content is tuned around having a real tank or charmed pet and a cleric. The server population isn't sufficient enough for this to be a real option right now.
I vote for a limit of 6 if i could. 3 is a nice compromise spot though, I'd rather this issue get "tabled until PoP is finished". I ran 6 on AK and I would enjoy to do so again. I also invite people to my shenanigins regularly. Boxing isn't what makes people antisocial. Boxing is what helps people get things done. People choose to be antisocial - people choose to exclude others. Some boxers on AK were like that. Some weren't (Fang, myself, rwe, darco, sappy all come to mind).
I am not real social. I dont care to be social in game. Forcing people to be social is wrong on so many different levels. I will always be against changing boxing limits.
2 box limit would make me bail. I always seek grouping, but being left with no options when grouping doesnt happen is why i started boxing back in 2000. I gladly single box if the possibility is there, but sitting in pok doing nothing is not an option.
Ah, the perennial discussion! AKuracy, balance and boxing. As far as AKuracy, it's fuzzy. Raven makes an excellent point about the PowerPC client being godawful for boxing. After Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel Macs, AK had a hard ceiling on the fastest possible computer that could run EQ. It was the 2005 quad core G5 tower. It could only comfortably run 4ish clients with minimum settings. Moore's Law didn't apply to AK; the best boxing rig in 2005 was the best boxing rig until Hobart introduced the Intel client in 2012. Subscriptions also mattered. I'd guesstimate that the average number of boxes per person on AK before 2012 was somewhere between 1.5 and 2. I was one of the weirdos with a G5 quad who routinely 3-4 boxed in the PowerPC/subscription days. I bet I could count the others on the fingers of one hand. As for balance, I agree with Raven and Torven that the main concern is the raid scene. I love our raid scene now. We have enough guilds to provide a nice range of options to newcomers from different timezones and with different interests and play styles. We're fortunate that there's plenty of content to go around. Add in a few more guilds - which, realistically, could each just be 6-10 skilled boxers - and suddenly most guilds are starved for mobs most of the time. This is particularly true toward the end of expansions, when all guilds end up in the same progression state. Personally, I enjoy boxing a lot. Like Darch, I like pushing boundaries. On AK I'd sometimes load up 6-9 toons for stretch challenges. It was taxing and often infuriating, but for whatever reason I couldn't get enough of it. I'd be a bit sad to be restricted to two. I'd probably play enc/clr a lot, or maybe roll a shaman to pair with my SK. I bet we'd see a ton of such combos. In past conversations about these issues, Torven has speculated about separate limits for raid and non-raid content. I'm not sure how that would be implemented, but I think the idea has a lot of merit.
It would be interesting, but I'm not sure if it is mechanically doable. Maybe if you could limit IPs based on zone. IE only two boxes in Vex Thal and PoTime? That would work if it's mechanically possible. However you can't extend much beyond that without impacting grouping content. All PoP zones outside of like HoHB, PoNB and Time have some group and some raid content. Similarly all Luclin zones have some raid and some group outside of VT. PS-I bet the OP hasn't returned to the forums since making his post.
I don't see the PoP client as some sort of straightjacket that enforces classic EQ. Yeah, it's annoying to have 1 hotbar and hit F9 a bunch of times to change your viewpoint, but it isn't that bad. P99 has nerfed the Titanium client so hard by now that it's nearly as bad, and thousands of people play there. Now Live is on another level, of course. I too find the strategical and tactical aspects of boxing fun. But has it occurred to you that this is a chicken and egg problem? No one is particularly interested in helping you because they don't need help because they are 3-boxing everything by themselves. I mean, it's not like people never got epics for infrequently played alts on Project 1999. Basically the TAKP community only exists for raiding and in Alliance chat. This is why I disagree with Pithy: I don't think raiding is the only concern. EQ has a ton of fun group content that is all done solo here. The reason I prefer 2-boxing is that you can still get things done, but it's less easy to create a trio that just does it all and completely obviates the need for any sort of human interaction, i.e. completing 10 epics by yourself. Zyzzix I mostly see you soloing Chardok or Velketors or whatever. I'm not throwing stones, because there is just no reason to actively seek out any company for most camps and I do the same thing: I'm happy to work with others, but most of the time it's actively worse so my dopamine system kicks in . . . Anyway, I don't see it changing unless the opening of Luclin sends the population into the 500+ range. I'll be curious to see whether people come over or whether the client really is that big of a deal.
We have too many that exceed the 3+1 boxing limits now. We are working on detecting them better. Policing 2 boxing is way more work. And we are not remotely prepared for that. Policing single boxing? Insane.
The client really is a rough transition for most players. I know quite a few from P99 who rolled over here and quit after a level or two due to the client. Beyond the 1 hotbar and F9 cycling, there's no scroll wheel to 3rd person which is huge if you're used to playing with it, cycle target hotkey which made P99 Enchantering a joke, no mana value shown which some people take issue with. Among many other things where it just feels slower than Titanium or TLP. It will definitely keep away a lot of people. Dunno, I prefer not requiring help for the vast majority of group content. Even on P99, all group camps with a full 6-man group were trivial. Even Sirens Grotto and Dragon Necropolis. Lower man groups were difficult and fun, and doing raids like VS, Fay, Chardok royals with 6-man groups were fun. But these, to me, are just as fun, if not more fun with a 3-box or two 3-boxes as they were with 6 solo players IMO. Because you are doing more, responsible for more and can stretch yourself further. I got a crappy shaman alt epic on P99 and TAKP. While I raged off over a few mistakes that lead to time consuming wipes on TAKP, it undoubtably was more satisfying to complete it on TAKP than to just play a Druid or Cleric in a 4-5 man kill on P99. To each their own though. I've always despised the grouping aspect of the game. It was something I tolerated in order to raid.
All the boxing haters quit this server long ago, so the only people left are pro-boxers. Limit is very unlikely to change. What's sadly amusing to me is seeing how bad you're all at it. Every. single. time. I watch raids I see melee characters standing next to raid bosses not swinging. It's even in the front page video. That's one reason I didn't use much gameplay/combat footage. People who don't want to box, don't want to play around boxers. In an uninstanced game, resources must be shared, and boxing gives people a huge advantage over single boxers. This becomes more of a problem as the population rises. Just be glad that I decided to keep working on a server that I would never play because of the 3 box limit. It goes without saying that Haynar's contributions have been absolutely invaluable to this project, so if he came here because of the limit, then that provides me with some solace at least. Preserving the game is the most important task.
