What are you looking for in a server?

[Darkscis]

Originally Posted by DanCanDo

Exactly Chaos, couldn't agree with you more. I find that feasible for the player
base that's "starting" to become a little more popular, (the solo player) but at
the same time, I believe if any player wants to get to that "end game" boss,
then they have to sacrifice their solo desires and find people to help them go
after the raid mobs, etc.
Features like mercs and bots cater to that solo player. Nobody is forced in to
using them, but those who look for servers with them, probably don't have any
desires to group with other players.

The reason I feel the solo player is starting to become more popular is purely down to the age of Everquest. A lot of us here on EQEMU are here for the nostalgia... it's the game we played as we were growing up/studying. Naturally, with that being 15+ years ago now, we are all starting to reach the low to mid 30's. That means the bulk of us have jobs, houses, families etc that eat into your time. I can almost guarantee that new, young, EQ players will be few and far between - trying to get someone interested in the antique graphics in this day and age would be near impossible.

When you do finally make some time to game, you need to get on and start doing something immediately. You don't have the luxury of sitting around for an hour lfg before putting in a 12 hour stint because you finally got into a good lguk camp. Naturally, that means the requirements we have as players evolve a little more away from what original Everquest was. Those that ARE willing to chance their free time on finding a group need to play on p99 because that's where the rest of the like minded population are. The other servers need to have solo/small group content or people will eventually leave for p99 or other games when they realise they just don't have the time to achieve anything meaningful.

How can you reasonably expect a brand new server to have 30+ player content when you don't have the population that something like p99 has. Even if your player base was an average of 100 people - a full third of those would need to be the correct level, correctly geared, willing to group up and available for X hours. That means you need to start with small group content, something like 4-10 people, but then you get into the realm of what people expect. When your population grows and you try to release large scale raid content, everyone who flocked to your server because "solo/small group" gets annoyed and leaves and your population takes a dive again.

That leaves new servers with the option of either going solo/small group, or allowing boxing - both of which have their flaws and both of which attract vastly different players.

[NostalgiaEQ]

Originally Posted by Darkscis

Those that ARE willing to chance their free time on finding a group need to play on p99 because that's where the rest of the like minded population are.

Need is a strong word. Thats like saying if you want a desktop computer you NEED to get a windows based PC. Monopolies are never good anyway, people need options.

The key here that everyone except p99 is missing is ADVERTISING. Everyone here are technical people so we tend not to want to think about that but that is the only reason why P99 is beating everyone else combined. They found a marketing hook and push it in 100 ways to a million+ person audience.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by NostalgiaEQ

Need is a strong word. Thats like saying if you want a desktop computer you NEED to get a windows based PC. Monopolies are never good anyway, people need options.

The key here that everyone except p99 is missing is ADVERTISING. Everyone here are technical people so we tend not to want to think about that but that is the only reason why P99 is beating everyone else combined. They found a marketing hook and push it in 100 ways to a million+ person audience.

There are few things that set P99 apart from the rest of EMU:

- people there want that EXACT classic content, without any fancy shmancy "bad" things added post Velios era (ok some extend that to pre-GoD, because thats when EQ1 Golden Age effectively has ended, with massive population loss in 2004, due to EQ2 and WoW). A lot of them take any custom content as an offense.

-P99 is run by very capable and highly dedicated team. I seen a lot of good custom servers rise and die due to: loss of interest, lack of time, or simply mood swings of their admins. It takes someone with strong DETERMINATION to keep doing it.

-and finally, yes advertisement is good. If no one knows what you are - no one will come

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by Darkscis

How can you reasonably expect a brand new server to have 30+ player content when you don't have the population that something like p99 has. Even if your player base was an average of 100 people - a full third of those would need to be the correct level, correctly geared, willing to group up and available for X hours. That means you need to start with small group content, something like 4-10 people, but then you get into the realm of what people expect. When your population grows and you try to release large scale raid content, everyone who flocked to your server because "solo/small group" gets annoyed and leaves and your population takes a dive again.

I agree. Most of content should be solo, with 1 group encounters littered around corners of the zones (similar to WoW dungeons perhaps?), and raids being 2 groups - IMHO that should be good enough setting.