Now that we're a couple of weeks in it's impossible to call Teek anything but a success. The prior year Oakwynd launched with a medicore ruleset to then fall victim to a currency/item dupe from the introduction of the tradeskill depot. Even before that the economy was heavily inflated from the PL crews and the constant demand for more max level characters from the playerbase. When Luclin launched and it was time to cash in on a massive bonus to AA exp gain it just...didn't work? Cheating was rampant. Botting was rampant. I was of the opinion that the 25th anniversary server would get everyone to show up but once they saw the terrible state of the game that would be it. Next year the new TLP would fail and the whole thing would be kind of over. Daybreak had held off on a Mischief clone longer than anyone thought they would and it was a proven crowd pleaser but what about everything else?
The launch went fine. For the number of people trying to play it's hard to complain. There was a lengthy queue for the first two days but it got tackled. Everyone went to implement all the strategies refined on Oakwynd regarding boxing and dubious software got a suspension.
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Some other anti-cheat went in to action. The more flagrant shit people paid to use got riskier and harder to come by. The surviving box crews out in the wild look like they used to look back in the day. They look like they're being operated by human beings and are far less odious. The PL crews were slower to get going and while inflation is always going to be a thing it's going to take more time to have a character leveled (and thus be more expensive) with no incentive for people to have several max level characters they never play.
Cheating reigned in a little, boxing reigned in a little, the servers work, the queue was short-lived, people showed up to play in huge numbers and I ever had Daybreak make me whole when I had five krono poof from my inventory. I don't know what the fuck is going on and I don't know if it is going to last but it honestly feels like a different company is running the show. They even quickly addressed the amount of platinum the tower key quests were generating. On Oakwynd handing out millions of platinum to strangers wasn't enough to convince them there was a dupe. Their official position was they looked in to it and didn't see an issue. It took so long to get legacy experience to apply to AAs that a bunch of people just went and gave Season of Discovery a try instead. They could have immediately issued bonus global exp and just...didn't? For anyone that skipped Oakwynd it's hard to convey just how fucking awful everything Daybreak did was.
Daybreak deciding it actually gave a shit wasn't what I was expecting but I never in a million years thought we'd see this many players also really give a shit. After Sleeper, Combine, Fippy, Vulak, Discord, Agnarr, Coirnav, Selo, Miragul, Mangler, Aradune, Rizlona, Mischief, Thornblade, Vaniki, Yelinak and the donkey punch that was Oakwynd there still exist hundreds of people willing to poop sock against each other and do it for Kunark loot no less all the while this motherfucker
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is floating off in the distance.
It's
inconceivable.
And they're not just poop socking. Reminiscent of World of Warcraft the two teams are going hard on consumables to push the envelop and secure wins. Planar wands, Kedge clicks, Lynuga earrings and others used en masse while lugging around a combination with a load of alchemical potions and powders that would earn you a respected nod from Hunter S Thompson. After spending 70 hours leveling one character people are leveling up boxes and personas of the premier dps classes to better use the 14 seconds they have before a raid target falls over. It's not for the loot either. With the Anniversary Tower everyone has more hit points, mana, mana regen, health regen, attack and resists now they would have been possible with this eras full best in slot. It's only going to get more ridiculous as time goes on. Check this out -
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Not only is there a new floor of the tower unlocked each month with presumably another piece of gear to wear but Teek gets the Planes of Power at the start of December. That's 12 slots every single person is going to be able to upgrade day one minute one with level 65 gear plus augments to then spend the next four months in PoP. Again. If rewards include non-lore rings, earrings or bracers it's 15 instead of 12. Meanwhile Gorenaire has never been more popular in a quarter century as 400 people try and zone out of Karnor's Castle to take her down all for bragging rights. For those of us doing the instanced guild thing soaking in loot the highlight reels look like the craziest fucking shit. The chillest dadmode ruleset server plus tower candyland and this game can still generate this much enthusiasm.
I wonder if recruitment has begun for the 26th.
