Varlyndria: Ascension - Coming Summer 2013

[Drakiyth]

@Ak48: Thank you very much, will do! I can't wait to launch this for everybody.


One thing I have been doing lately is going over player's comments of how they feel things should be or what would make the 2nd installment of Varlyndria better than ever. I figure since bots had to be deleted anyway or the server would be broken right now from the bugs they were causing, this would be the best time to implement some new rules. Let's first go over what makes a mmorpg successful.

• SOLO FRIENDLY IN MOST ZONES
• GROUPING/RAIDS/TEAM WORK FOR BEST GEAR
• PLAYER VS PLAYER
• STRONG PLAYER ECONOMY

With that said, Varlyndria Ascension will have the following changes made to it:

• IP will be limited to 1 but players who donate Tier 4+ can have 2. (I want to rid completely of having your own personal army and encourage teaming between players. This seems extremely restrictive and I admit it is for the better good of the server and to support individuality instead of one guy controlling everything. Wouldn't it be nice to know that 200+ players is actually 175 or more real people to interact with?

• Bots will be limited to 1 out at one time. The original model of Varlyndria was to make a server where you could have your own personal party but let's face it, this destroys interaction between players, makes players leave for a more group-oriented server (which most people want in an mmorpg) or just makes the experience far too easy with no challenge.


These changes might be a shock to some players but I hope you can understand that my goal here is to go GOLD, and GOLD servers require a large player base full of people who interact with one another and not a box fest or bot fest. To see players calling out for certain paths will be amazing! Just think about that and think of the combinations you and your guild can put together for raids and pvp alike.

[RStefan01]

Originally Posted by Drakiyth

GOLD servers require a large player base full of people who interact with one another and not a box fest or bot fest

I think Project 1999 is the only gold server that your description actually fits =p

[Mariomario]

Originally Posted by Drakiyth

• IP will be limited to 1 but players who donate Tier 4+ can have 2. (I want to rid completely of having your own personal army and encourage teaming between players.

If you want to limit it I would really, really recommend pushing the limit to 2 and Tier 4+ to 3. Limiting the IP to only 1 connection severely hinders your households with multiple people and forcing them to donate just so they can play together means most will simply say forget this server and move along. Most households have at least 2 that play together, whether its roommates, wife/husband, siblings, or even just friends that come over and play together.

I understand the idea of not wanting to be a box/bot fest, but I would get rid of bots altogether and limit your IP to 2/3 with donations. The removal of bots also means not having to deal with their bugs/glitches or factoring their calculations into scaling content bosses. With the mechanics of your server and 64 classes bots would honestly be almost worthless anyways.

[Drakiyth]

Originally Posted by RStefan01

I think Project 1999 is the only gold server that your description actually fits =p

Aye, perhaps that's why so many people enjoy it aside from the nostalgia factor of old EQ and it having a solid staff. I want to move things in the right direction with such a large scale project that I am serious as a heart attack about.

EDIT: A poll has been put up. Please vote on what you feel would be the best action to take for making Varlyndria a stronger mmorpg that has solid player interaction and team work.

GO HERE: WWW.VARLYNDRIA.COM

[Drakiyth]

"You dare to attack me here? You will suffer! You will all suffer!" - Jon Irenicus

[Burningsoul]

I'll cast my vote here - do away with boxing, period. People will pay to box, people won't pay to solo. That's where the divide starts. It's a slippery slope until you end up like EZ Server where unless you 6 box, good luck. You CAN solo, but what is the point when random_box_army steamrolls you.

[NatedogEZ]

Originally Posted by Burningsoul

I'll cast my vote here - do away with boxing, period. People will pay to box, people won't pay to solo. That's where the divide starts. It's a slippery slope until you end up like EZ Server where unless you 6 box, good luck. You CAN solo, but what is the point when random_box_army steamrolls you.

Afraid of players running by you and taking bosses from you? Haven't really ever seen that happen to me while playing on EZ /shrug

[boweq]

no , what a think what he means natedog,

it gets to a point, where people box and never talks or groups,

and then its get to the point, where you cant 8+box , you cant really progress,

EZ + THF are both the same,

[NatedogEZ]

Well he mentioned getting steamrolled .. by multi-boxers (is why I asked that)

I didn't mention anything about the social aspect of the game.. heh

But yes I do agree that multi-boxing can greatly decrease the "MMO" feel..

[Jahar_LoA]

We are doing the same thing in DiabloQuest, we are eliminating boxing. However. I hadn't thought about multiple people playing from the same household. Going to make me think more into this, thanks.

[Kavanah]

Is it really that hard to just have that household submit a small form to have their limit set to 2? I think if players are watching for it, we could easily spot a 2-boxer over 2 people playing.

[wolfwalkereci]

So many aspects to take into consideration.
Here is an example using THF, when I wanted Zithuli rare it was "faster" for me to solo that encounter every day for something silly like 107 days to get it and *not* have to random or pay dkp against another.
People are greedy, most guild loot systems suck. The only truly fair loot system is DKP which no one seems to want to use.
So I always prefer to box and when possible find others that are like minded to guild with.
Nothing sucks more then dealing with a terrible loot policy and lets face it, eq is all about getting the gear.

[boweq]

Ayee,
But when you Look at all the top high players,

Every single 1 of them or the ones ive seen,

All box atleast 8/9toons,

ive seen people box 3 full groups, with EQBC there,

Then again a Enchanter can proberly solo the game if they donate,
Instnat T9/T10 level loot, usuable at level 1,
No warrior will ever be better tank than a SK with their Doner wep..
The latest items they put up for sale, Class Bps, = 195USD..
EZ = Box to win
THF= Box+Pay to win lol

[Kingly_Krab]

I don't believe bashing other servers in a topic that's advertising a server gives it good publicity, if you're going to bash servers, take it to PMs, please, just a friendly request and tip.

[Kayen]

Seems like you put a lot of effort into this sever so let me give you some hard learned advice from my experience struggling with this on Storm Haven for 5 years.

Boxing is a double edged sword in EMU.

At its core for Everquest boxing is essentially cheating the system. You have a game designed around having one character where your personal progression is based on improving that character to a maximum potential. Allowing the use of additional characters by an individual instantly create inequity in the game world in relation to other players.

This inequity is inherently a long term negative on a server by stratifying your players into 'classes' of those who don't box, those who do box and how many they box. Therefore, your definition of an individual player is no longer the same thing, thus as a developer will eventually need to tune and create content to meet the needs of each of class of individual player. In terms of game design this an extremely inefficient way to manage a game. The higher you set your IP limit the more disastrous this problem becomes.

In commercial games this is less of an impact because there is economic disincentive due to costs of additional accounts incurred on the player, if the player does box the negative to the game is off set by the income generated. In contrast to EMU which you can have unlimited accounts at no cost to the player (donation fee to box is not worth it from a developers stand point).

Ultimately what ends up happening on a server is in order to maintain any integrity/challenge you have to tune your content to whatever the upper limit of your boxing is else content will be trivialized. This of course disenfranchises all those who can not box and essentially pushes out all of those players severely weakening your community. The double edge sword part comes in because high box limits will artificially inflate your population and make your server look more alive then it actually is. Long term though you are better off having more individual players then just handful of boxers because your population and literally rise and fall by the actions of just a few people.

All that said.

Here is how you can avoid the pitfalls of boxing. Embrace it and tune for it intentionally.

Decide what you want to define solo,group and raid content in terms of actual individual players (not characters) and then tune your content to that factoring in boxing.

For example lets take a schema considering realistic population for EMU.

1 person for solo, 2 persons for group and 6 person raid.

Whatever your upper limit of boxing is present and multiply each by and then tune your content for that.

Ie 2 boxing. 2 chara = solo, 4 chara = group 12 chara = raid
Ie 3 boxing. 3 chara = solo, 6 chara = group, 18 chara = raid.

This will allow you to maintain balance in content. However, as mentioned earlier it will create inequity, which is only solved in this case by simply being honest with your population that boxing is a part of the server.

In conclusion.

My recommendation is if you can tune well enough and avoid boxing your server will be better positioned for long term meaningful growth by maintaining player equity, opposed to just boxer inflated population growth.

Kayen
GM Storm Haven