Obersvations by a ServerOp...
I decided to share some notes of various observations on the player accounts of the different people who have decided to utilize my server. Keep in mind that I advertise my server to be different than eqlive purists, and also advertise it to be bug ridden.
Of the 247 accounts that have registered on my server, only two player avatars appear to have actually tried to level. The spread tends to be 1, 60, 100 depending. Based on the communication that I've seen in-game and directed towards me, I would think that people are looking to get a quick hit of uberness, and not wanting to go through the leveling process.
1. Everyone wants to be a gm.
2. Once a person has attained GM status or found themselves to be high enough level, they next summon various high level elite gear and equip it.
3. Players have a tendency to fight one another rather than band.
However, point 3 highlights another tendency I've noted. When a player joins my server, they tend to be with another person. As one chap asked of me yesterday, "can you flag my account? my friend and I want to mess around".
I think that sums up the current player attitude for my server, and have to wonder if that same attitude doesn't wash over to the other servers. Should this attitude persist between servers, then there are several questions that might be asked.
1. What kind of playstyle are these people looking for? It seems that the majority are looking for a quick hit (give me ubergear, uberlevel, then kill some big mob) and then log out and come back every now and again to repeat the addictive hit. This is further supported by the many times repeated saying of "is this server levelme? can i level myself? what server is levelme?"
2. How can we more effectively build communities per server and for general support of the emu too? A quick look to the server's forum indicates that the community health per server is rather low. Based on what I see in the irc chat, I might argue that the only server seemingly in relatively good community health is eros. For it would be the only one mentioned that I've seen where the basics of a community are starting to emerge. I would say that community is more important than the quick hit players. I think many of us here would like to see players develop attachments and general feelings for their characters and the server they play on, even if it is negative. For getting that distinctive community oriented experience, that's largely and in part what EQ is about.
I've been evaluating Eros for my own server, and expect to be making some changes to work within the example that it has set. This will include destruction of the lab, but not of all the nonpure live stuff I've been working on.
Some bits to think about.
--MV
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