What are you looking for in a server?

[NostalgiaEQ]

I've been working on a server lately, I'm not very far along but I wanted to hear your thoughts on what a server should be. Why are you here? (may be a bit personal but I think it is important). I'm here because I guess I have been haunted by (good) memories of everquest and could never really find another game that could fully satisfy the MMO need that EQ created in me. Are you here because you couldn't/didn't want to keep up with the pace of live? Do you not like how live is pay to win? Did you not agree with how live was run? Do you want a return to old school EQ before the new textures and hub zones and models? Do you think they watered down the difficulty of live too much? Do you want to 'cheat' (not a bad thing) and pick your own difficulty and program bots? Do you love or hate mudflation/twinking? Do you love/hate boxing? What are your thoughts on custom content?

Why are you here and what are you looking for in a server? If a new server came out today what would you go in and look for to decide if you wanted to play there? What would your perfect server be?

These are just questions to get you thinking; feel free to talk about whatever you want.

[Keyn1]

Old school EQ was amazing. It took me a month to get to lvl 12 because no one had any idea what was going on. The first time I was blinded, I thought the cat had stepped on the vga cable of my CRT and unplugged it. The WHOLE screen was literally black. Back then, the code shutoff/blocked the video signal to the monitor.

The online community was amazing. No information was handed to players by the devs. The only way any of us got ahead was by the ones that managed to figure things out. The game just relied on its players. Now there're windows for everything, everything gets handed to you. Now it's 'just a game.' In the 90's, it felt like more than just a game.

Maybe we're all trying to recapture the old feeling. Some say you can never go back, and maybe that's true. By now, MMORPGs are no big deal. But I'm damned well going to try to find that "thing" that made EQ great.

[gravystain]

I think a lot of us are looking for that feel we got with Everquest in the classic-velious\luclin expansions. Project1999 did an amazing job at giving us that feeling again but unfortunately what now needs fixed is what to do when a server is made with the intention on never progressing past a specific point. EQ never had to go through these same issues because new patches and content were releasing making older content less camped, people didnt MQ everything single item. By the time people started figuring a lot of the content out there was already a new expansion or patch that gave them more to do. For me, i'm looking for someone to make a classic server experience and then tries to address some of the issues that come with making a hard stop server.

[tdanger84]

Let people play through with a few bots. Most of us have some kind of life where we need to be able to casually play while being able to watch our kids or do other things. That is why so many of us push for a solo experience. That is why so many people box or go for bots/mercs. Grouping was fun back in the day but you also had to do it that way because there was such a huge population. None of these emu servers will ever see a population of that magnitude. Bots are better than boxing because boxing is tedious and a great deal of us(myself included) don't have the patience or the will to learn and use it. Anyone with half a brain can manage a few semi-autonomous bots. I also prefer having a few bots over just having everthing tuned for solo and giving everyone a ton of clickies. Let my cleric bot cure me, let my druid bot sow me, its cool as long as there is a decent ooc regen.

[kokey98]

I like servers that minimize the time sinks but not effort.

e.g. i don't want to kill "a blazing elemental" for 13 hours waiting for 1 of many item drops for a mage's epic quest. .: the difficulty should be killing the npc, not trying to stay awake.

e.g. i don't want to spend 15-30mins "running" somewhere when i have an hour or two to play. hitting autorun is not playing a video game, imo. if someone wants to take the long way, they can choose to do that if they enjoy it.

don't focus on "group think" b.s.

e.g. just because there's a consensus on these boards about any facet of the game, that is not a logical argument that it is right.

if people really preferred "classic" then you wouldn't see so many playing the live servers still.... and p99 has that market locked up. 1000+ people consistently. that contradicts what i said above slightly, but i don't believe it applies, because those that play p99 aren't looking for new servers to join, they are looking for a temporary break or window-shopping for the heck of it.

which is nothing negative about anyone or anything thing. However, if your making a server i don't think they are your target market nor a good focus group, for lack of a better way to explain.

I'm trying casual dreams. no custom spells and such. although the way that particular server is set up, it's almost a waste of time to play certain classes that i like... if you can get around that type of stuff, a solo-experience liek the previous post is similar to what i am looking for, too.

The biggest problem i see with the lower pop / short-run servers is a lack of consistency. they waffle or are unaware that their new idea or fix completely contradicts what they said they intended for the server - more power to them, but it's like taking the rug out from under someone from the user's standpoint. sure they can do whatever they want, and the user can go somewhere else when it happens - easy enough, but i don't think either party is gettign what they wanted so it can't be a good thing for either.

once you pick a path that makes sense well thought out, ignore the players, lol... generally speaking, i think that's the problem, btw, not the sysop acting on a whim -- suggestions from multiple and varied sources will create chaos compared to a well thought out plan/goal. Find a few "smarter" players/staff/whatever you can bounce ideas off or that you'll listen to about suggestions, but never take them from the peanut gallery, lol.

i tried to not say anything too specific for that reason about what kind of server you should make. hammer out some preferred concepts, map it out, then implement it after you've thought it through. maybe you want people to run 20minutes before they see an npc that's worthwhile to kill and its item only drops 1/100000 deaths :P

[ChaosSlayerZ]

This question came up before just back in January:

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40320


Anyway. I have BIG feeling of nostalgia for my newbie days of unknown and exploration, going places for the first time, discovering things for the first time, stumbling upon quest npcs in the middle of nowhere, doing Stein of Moggok for the first time, grouping, raiding etc.

At the same time, I am also instantly reminded of:
-hideous time sinks,
-insane recover times after combat (unless you are a necro)
-disbalanced classes (necro can solo to max level yellow cons, while half of other classes can't even solo blue cons),
-ultra reliance of holy trinity on raids (warrior tanks and cleric heals, these 2 other tanks and and 2 priests are for utility only),
-poorly itemized world (tons of good loot in Crushbone for teen levels, and item-baren BlackBurrow and Karana), poorly designed quest structure
-generally poor layout of newbie zone in relation to level progression areas (smooth level progression if you start on Faydwer vs going trough huge trouble past teen levels if you strt in Erudin/Qeynos)


So, in conclusion: I don't want actually original EQ, I don't want P99. I DO want feeling of unknown and excitement.

No, I actually don't want any of the modern easy mode things: I don't need instant travel, or instant recovery, but i do want reasonable recovery, better class balance, ability to solo well for ALL classes, with unique skills to contribute to a group/raid, without being "the only tank" or "just a buffer".

Take EQ world as a RESOURCE and turn it into something new.
New lore, new zone connection system, new class system. ETC.

I REALLY liked EQ2 when it came out, because it seemed to have solved most of EQ1 issues, without loosing EQ spirit (ok I didn't like piling up all players in only 2 cities, but national villages well done with a love in a heart). But EQ2 only lasted for about 2-3 years until they decided to go into NEW DIRECTION with Faydwer expansion which totally killed it for me (dumbing down crafting system which I freaken LOVED, was the final straw when I quit).


In short, I want:
- new world based of EQ spirit
- better class system (and I don't mean just lets add 2 new cool nukes to paladin and a cool demon pet to cleric)
- good balance between SOLO, GROUP and RAID, with all types of content available.
- ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKEN BOTS or BOXES!
- SOulbiners, but no lev 50 buffers for lev 1 players (thats just a cheap way to say here blast trough first 20 levels in 20 min)
- Paid Teleporters - the further you want to go, the more expensive it is.
- Cities and Factions - yes I know population is an issue, but please no more - we start everyone in a Nexus or any other single hub.


There are many more things I would like,so above is just a short list. I have some good ideas for a server done "my way", but I guess in next couple years I won't have a chance to start working on it.

[N0ctrnl]

This question came up before just back in January:

The same question pops up at regular intervals and gets about the same discussion. It's like deja vu every time

[sunbeam]

Yeah. But as nearly as I can tell the big thing is that no server will have the population necessary to have it just like the old days. (P1999 is what it is. Don't think a critical mass of people are left who are looking for that to have it work twice.)

So it is absolutely essential that whatever your angle on a server, you have to face the fact that people are pretty much going to have to play solo for most of their play experience.

You may think otherwise, but I take it for a fact of life. So the most important question is what is the individual server's approach to this? Boxing? Bots? Rule adjustments?

People will group up to raid (and raids have to somehow account for reduced population), or just to help someone out. But the way people's real lives are now, you aren't finding someone playing EMU 50 hours a week.

You are camping your own FBSS and whatnot. And that's just not possible for some of these classes when it is appropriate to want that piece of gear.

[NostalgiaEQ]

Thanks all and thanks for the link to past discussions on this topic. I am taking it all in, the more perspectives I can understand the better I can design this.

What do you all think about no corpse runs? I think out of everything this was the one thing that cut into RL the worst. Its like "crap I have to go to bed or whatever but I don't remember where my corpse is what if I never find it!" I think it added more stress than it was worth. With eqemu you can set it to keep your corpse but leave an empty corpse so you can res it for xp if you want. What do you guys think about doing it like that? What do the hardcore classic people think of that? Does anyone think that would break the immersion? I have been playing like that on my server for a while now and I feel much freer and much less likely to rage quit lol.

Also what about plat sinks? With the good items bieng no trade what do you think people would like to buy from a shop? Potions?

[Uleat]

EQEmu does have the option to not leave corpses or lose exp on death.

[gravystain]

Changing rates in EQ is such a fragile thing. I've played on servers with enhanced exp rates or no corpse/exp loss and found that people used it as a free gate spell to suicide around. I myself solo leveled a wizard very quickly just by binding in my leveling area and solo 2-3 mobs and suicide for a free full mana bar again and did that over and over. Even live progression servers had that problem with casters bind rushing raid targets casting pets over and over until they were out of mana and then dying to refill. I wanted to group on a wizard but the increased exp rate made everyone else want to solo for better exp and i couldnt keep up without finding a work around to the system. Even something as simple as increasing spawn time rates can cause solo classes and smaller groups that don't have the best group makeup unable to level in certain camps because they cant keep up with the spawn time. I think the only way to put custom features into a "classic like" server is to put them in 1 at a time and observe. Things dont snowball this way from the get go.

[sunbeam]

I'd like to add one more thing to this.

Trade skills were never really integrated with EQ like they have been in other games.

But think of the player base and what they have to go through. It's just about guaranteed that you won't have a large player base with a stocked bazaar let alone an EC tunnel.

So any tradeskills, and they are required for a number of quests, have to be done with people manually farming, and in many cases leveling other tradeskills up so they can support the actual one of interest.

Please don't go all classic and get rid of the recipe list that was integrated with the containers. Or god forbid mandate carpal tunnel for all the freaking combines you will have to do because you need to quest the Arx Key, or the Earring of the Solstice. Well the Arx key isn't too bad, but that earring thing requires high levels in a number of skills if you don't have other crafters. And the Coldain Prayer Shawl is pretty tough too.

[N0ctrnl]

I actually push out a UI file on my server that disables the experiment button (buggy anyway) and made all recipes searchable.

[gravystain]

I agree. Things like that aren't what makes the classic feel. Its not like people are figuring out what they need for materials on their own. They would have a 2nd monitor with the guide up on one screen anyways. Why make it more tedious than it needs to be.

[jabedoben]

I'd give my left testicle to have Last World back.