New Progression Server confirmed

I don't think raiding had anything to do with most of the attrition you saw. Like every server it opens, it's new popular and shiny and people become bored of it after a week or two. Either the leveling is too slow, or the game isn't quite so fun when it's auto attack and kick or Vox is boring after your 70th kill. In fact I'd bet the initial over population and queue times alone accounted for more attrition that the raiding has at this point.

Also, you've got no idea what raiding and racing was like on LJ, the entire extent of your raid experience on the server was a few rotation targets and what you read on the forums.

If this new instanced server has 3-6 month time locks it will be an almost immediate failure. When you're not competing with other guilds there is literally no reason to want to kill Lady Vox 75, becuase it is both boring and does nothing to benefit you. Mark my words that the new server will have the most marked attrition of any EQ Progression server to date unless the time locks are notably shorter than what we've seen in the past.

I mean you're here talking about attrition on servers where you havn't played in months. In Sebilis we have over 120 people at any given time, sometimes much more than that. That's more than we almost ever saw on Vulak period. And Chardok and Karnors similarly have nearly 100-200 in them simultaneously. The idea that there is a population issue is laughable and could only come from someone who actually doesn't play here.

I'd prefer raid mobs spawned every three days instead of every 24 hours, it would greatly reduce raider attrition and would give rise to much smaller guilds which would mean many more guilds. The biggest factor in raid game attrition right now is that there is so much content you can burn yourself out if you try to lock it all down 24/7 as was typical of past "top guilds".

Zaide_sl said:

I don't think raiding had anything to do with most of the attrition you saw. Like every server it opens, it's new popular and shiny and people become bored of it after a week or two. Either the leveling is too slow, or the game isn't quite so fun when it's auto attack and kick or Vox is boring after your 70th kill. In fact I'd bet the initial over population and queue times alone accounted for more attrition that the raiding has at this point.

Also, you've got no idea what raiding and racing was like on LJ, the entire extent of your raid experience on the server was a few rotation targets and what you read on the forums.

If this new instanced server has 3-6 month time locks it will be an almost immediate failure. When you're not competing with other guilds there is literally no reason to want to kill Lady Vox 75, becuase it is both boring and does nothing to benefit you. Mark my words that the new server will have the most marked attrition of any EQ Progression server to date unless the time locks are notably shorter than what we've seen in the past.

I mean you're here talking about attrition on servers where you havn't played in months. In Sebilis we have over 120 people at any given time, sometimes much more than that. That's more than we almost ever saw on Vulak period. And Chardok and Karnors similarly have nearly 100-200 in them simultaneously. The idea that there is a population issue is laughable and could only come from someone who actually doesn't play here.

I'd prefer raid mobs spawned every three days instead of every 24 hours, it would greatly reduce raider attrition and would give rise to much smaller guilds which would mean many more guilds. The biggest factor in raid game attrition right now is that there is so much content you can burn yourself out if you try to lock it all down 24/7 as was typical of past "top guilds".

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Racing on LJ even now is mostly civil, FI has clear top status, MM has taken a few hits but I think in a couple of weeks will be the clear 2 again, and for the most part people race but there isn't much training or douchebaggery, FI doesn't seem interested in total lockdown so there are a fair share of mobs for other guilds to go for and the MotM buff keeps the box crews that really plagued that mid teir raiding on fippy from causing much trouble.

I think way way more attrition was caused by 6 box douchebags than the raiding environment. Alot more guys quit in LGUK after getting KSed by a 6 box crew, or who got tired of not being able to get an efreeti camp cause they were monopolized or any of those things. Also I think the realities of EQ hit people hard, people don't remember the bad times of sitting for a night LFG and all that BS you gotta deal with.

If it were 3 day spawns and one guild got them all, the server would die off big time. EQ was never a "small guild," game. Every guild I have ever been in that started having less than 20 people active during prime time died out fast. As it stands there is just enough to stay busy for the rest of us.

Zaide_sl said:

Also, you've got no idea what raiding and racing was like on LJ, the entire extent of your raid experience on the server was a few rotation targets and what you read on the forums.

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I'm still in touch with people a few times weekly (PS - Corvid, it's been a bit since we've talked/talked indirectly through Laura) - but yes, that was my DIRECT experience, sure. And it has been BETTER recently, it's starting to get close to something resembling a real server. (In part due to tiering, like the person before Zaide mentioned)

A large part of it is simply symptomatic of how many guilds are interested in content in a "tier" these days - most servers had 2-3 raiding guilds in Classic. And often with completely different timezones and "dead times" that they ended up not covering - versus 8-12 guilds being interested now in Classic content many with 24/7 coverage vs. the old days of "EST beats PST" "PST beats EU" "EU beats EST" rock paper scissors that often occurred with the 2-3 guilds during this time.

And I'm not claiming there's a population issue - but attrition is regularly occurring, population is consistently shrinking - that's a fact that is not only professed to me by people currently playing that I talk to, but is also plastered all over the forums. Heck, has there been a week recently without a "X guild fell apart because of too much attrition" post over there? Seems between both servers there's a guild dying every week or two - and history shows that when a guild croaks, around half the people in the guild quit the game and the other half stick around (either in a new/existing guild or unguilded)... or worse... very rarely does a guild croak and a majority of the old guild continue.

And comparing to Vulak - which was never lively in the first place even during the first week of it - isn't a great point of comparison. Besides, on Vulak you'd have never seen those numbers in those zones because of the zone balancing - I bet there isn't a regular 40+ XPing in Burning Woods this time like there was over there because there wasn't zone balancing. Just like Chardok was often a single group AEing or a handful of druids sniping named that made it worthless to go there. In fact, I bet if we had a full zone snapshot of Vulak back in the day to compare against here - although I've got not clue on full population numbers (which mind you would be inflated here to a degree thanks to kronos - more people running more boxes these days) - I'd almost guarantee there was more people XPing in Classic zones on Vulak during Kunark era than there is on LJ right now - because of the lack of instancing forcing people to spread out a ton more vs. the clumping zone balancing allows.

Additionally, it's not even the 3rd week of Kunark [easy for me to remember since Kunark opened on my BDay] - month 1 of an expansion is a terrible time to compare as well typically.

As for lockdowning - it kinda goes both ways - it burns out people doing it (as I can attest to first hand with Cypher - we did well at it, and it never burnt ME out - but it burnt out a ton of our people - that was with 5-7 days for most stuff back then too, since it was pre-"speed up") as well as those being blockaded. Faster or slower really doesn't matter just a matter of when the problem hits you, keeping Classic/Kunark on lockdown with 3 days is pretty easy (assuming you're not locking down epics as well - that can get cumbersome at that point) - but once you start dealing with Velious+ you've either got to let stuff slide or get really bogged down even with 3 days.

If this new instanced server has 3-6 month time locks it will be an almost immediate failure. When you're not competing with other guilds there is literally no reason to want to kill Lady Vox 75, becuase it is both boring and does nothing to benefit you. Mark my words that the new server will have the most marked attrition of any EQ Progression server to date unless the time locks are notably shorter than what we've seen in the past.

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With instancing the argument for long unlocks is basically nil - only thing that would really be needed to let people gate themselves to an earlier expansion if they so chose would be to allow AA to be turned on before Luclin at L50 [w/o any AA to buy or maybe the goofy "I've got too many AA" glyph] so people could "lock" their XP bar.

Creslin_sl said:

I think way way more attrition was caused by 6 box douchebags than the raiding environment. Alot more guys quit in LGUK after getting KSed by a 6 box crew, or who got tired of not being able to get an efreeti camp cause they were monopolized or any of those things. Also I think the realities of EQ hit people hard, people don't remember the bad times of sitting for a night LFG and all that BS you gotta deal with.

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I won't disagree that they might have been a strong part - personally, I managed to avoid them for the mostpart - and many of my friends I keep in touch with either dodge them or have a 4-6 man box crew of their own, so not something I have much confidence speaking of. For every friend of mine that quit, it was resoundingly the raiding environment - even my own (although indirectly - since it was political drama that was influenced by the enforced rotation BS).

Don't confuse my statements as it being the ONLY factor - it's the one I'm most familiar with (and have some passion regarding) - but I don't think I've said it was the exclusive one, if I did, I mispoke.

(Other factors I see [again, impact is debatable - for the quitters I speak to they were universally raiding complaints - but we do tend to attract people of like minds so it's not necessarily an indication that it's 100% or even near it necessarily] are: prequeue "can't play", long queues, hit by a big bug people that CS took forever to fix, friends bailed didn't want to play without them (for whatever reason the initial quitter used), EQ2 TLP switchers (don't think there was many of them, but I'm sure there's at least one or two), Live players that wasting time waiting for the Broken Mirror, people that quit because of the raiding ISSUES, people that quit because of the raiding FIXES, brokeass people that can't afford it and too lazy to farm krono, and I'm sure there's other categories I'm not musing in this quick stream of ideas...)

That sort of hyper competition is what sucks the fun out of the game. EQ in this era is a game where raiding is just a supplement to grouping and doing group camps. So when you field your own raid force you chew through the content in no time flat and get bored fast.

Thats why I hope they keep some slightly toned down version of MotM for the instanced raids, game will have lots of small healthy guilds progressing as their own pace rather than being forced into massive zergs.

Creslin_sl said:

That sort of hyper competition is what sucks the fun out of the game. EQ in this era is a game where raiding is just a supplement to grouping and doing group camps. So when you field your own raid force you chew through the content in no time flat and get bored fast.

Thats why I hope they keep some slightly toned down version of MotM for the instanced raids, game will have lots of small healthy guilds progressing as their own pace rather than being forced into massive zergs.

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I mean you can 6-8 mage almost any classic raid without that buff with the pet code staying in.

Krassus_sl said:

I mean you can 6-8 mage almost any classic raid without that buff with the pet code staying in.

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Only rumor so far was the removals of MotM - so other adjustments would likely still be there - assuming the rumor is true. (i.e. pet nerfs)

Watching MM jump Gore at 25% after another guild wiped to her and then still wipe at 11% was one of the funniest moments on Lockjaw so far.

link to the eq forum post of them blaming FI?

That's pretty sad when you can't kill a raid mob that was down to 25% before your raid force engaged.

Zaide_sl said:

MM QQ's on Forums

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Gorenaire was never conquered by Apok on RF, could MM be LJ's version of Apok????

Krassus_sl said:

Gorenaire was never conquered by Apok on RF, could MM be LJ's version of Apok????

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I thought that was already a given? Did Apok's leader RMT the guild's raid loot over giving it to members?

Phinigel server

90 day unlocks, no voting, no boxing, raid instancing - coming Dec 09