I don't know if I am a good indicator of the EMU playerbase.
But here's what I want.
I do not want to box. I do not want to use bots. But I still want to solo. With any class.
EQ was set up from the beginning to encourage grouping and social aspects. But there is no way you can make the original EQ setup work with the limited populations that all the EMU servers (save P1999 sorta) have.
(Although for a number of reasons, more game knowledge available, the fact it is implemented improperly, in a lot of ways P1999 is very different or at least plays differently from classic. Neckbeards... neckbeards gonna cockblock.)
There have been a number of approaches with enabling soloing on EMU servers. Buff bots, a vendor that hands out epics available at level one, etc.
My favorite approach so far has been the one taken on the Vengful Soloist and Envy of the Irish, namely stats (well some of them actually do something). I.E. strength enhances melee damage, wis/int spell dot damage, dex maybe ranged damage, you get the drift. And on those servers gear has a multiplier on it, so that an item with +5 str and +25 hp's, would actually yield +20 str and +100 hp's and so on.
This approach really works well for soloing, up until Velious where the boss mobs started with the inflated hp's. But you can have a fine time running around and getting your own gear and doing zones and Traks with stuff you solo yourself up until then.
And actually I don't mind boss mob types requiring "a group." I wouldn't mind it being more than one, but it can be hard to find more than 6 people who will do something like that on even "successful" servers from a population standpoint.
That said, you also have to include some way for melee to heal themselves. The ones I mentioned have rapid out of combat regen.
Anyway. Now I am going to put in some of my pet peeves.
1) Okay that classic server you worked so hard to code? The one you want to provide the classic EQ experience?
The one you adjusted so trade skills... are like classic? You know, no recipes, no autocombines.
Why in the name of god did you do that? Just why? It wasn't hard enough to farm pelts and component for some of these trade skills as it was?
You really felt the need to have someone go look up old recipes from EQ traders (if you can even find them at this point, and you haven't helpfully included them on your website)?
And above all you felt that the "classic" experience requires people to .... have even more carpal tunnel than the autocombine system that comes out of the box?
Dude it's not coming back. The trade skill system was always stupid. From the beginning. There was no need for it to be implemented the way it was. Doing it that way doesn't enhance the magic one iota.
Obviously you don't HAVE to do trade skills. But a lot of quests require trade skill items, and I have yet to see a non P1999 server with an actual economy.
Now here's my other peeve. I want you dev. Yes you. I want you to play on your own server. I want you to play a warrior who worships.... Mithaniel Marr (so you are human I guess).
Now the boats? Not being able to port? Have to run everywhere? Have to do corpse recoveries?
I want you to fully relive the classic experience. You know the one where a level 50 warrior without his gear has to run for his life. The one where you probably had to bind in Freeport to xp in lower guk.
The one where you are on a server with maybe 15 or 20 other people tops.
I know coding and bug fixing needs to be done. But I think it would be useful for you to actually experience what some things are like in classic for some classes, if you think the PoK books ruined the game.
Just saying no matter what you do, it isn't going to be like a live server of the era with at least 1500 people running around original/kunark/velious.
And yet you insist on implementing a forced things that were designed to force grouping on servers where groups are awful hard to come by.
This is a catch 22. I do not want to bust the chops of someone who works hard to provide a fun experience for people. But I also don't think some of you have really thought through what you are asking people to actually do.
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