EQ TLP - Oakwynd (Evolving Ruleset Progression Server)

Arbitrary said:

I bitched about it before but everything being heirloom encourages everyone to be greedy as possible and scoop up everything they can "just in case." It's annoying as fuck. Free trade is just better. Everything has a price, gear can freely change hands, turn what you don't need in to things you do, etc. With Oakwynd's system everyone is incentivized to be a hoarder and whatever they add to their pile is stuck with them forever. There's just a huge difference psychologically in seeing something that *might* rot in the loot window (and is thus free) and everything having intrinsic value through tradability. If it's free why not you? If you don't even use it so what. It was free. It's completely different than wanting to gear out a character and investing the resources necessary to do so.

The whole thing feels like a server that came before Mischief instead of after.

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Since Mischief is still going strong they're probably hesitant to release a server that will cannibalize it. They want to find lightning in a bottle again but have no clue where to even start

Ambiturner said:

Since Mischief is still going strong they're probably hesitant to release a server that will cannibalize it. They want to find lightning in a bottle again but have no clue where to even start

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I would think the idea with Oakwynd was to have some small perks early and then ramp them up to encourage retention but there have been enough TLPs now that you really need a twist at the start.

Pharone said:

I wasn't going to mention it, but I had noticed the other day that the Oakwynd server thread on these forums was already starting to fall off the list of threads with new replies and it hasn't even opened Kunark yet. Not a good sign honestly.

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Do you think hundreds of people read these forums?

Korzax Stonehammer said:

Do you think hundreds of people read these forums?

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No, but I do believe that these forums are a good sample size of people that like playing EverQuest. If we aren't that in to a server, it says a lot.

Ambiturner said:

Since Mischief is still going strong they're probably hesitant to release a server that will cannibalize it. They want to find lightning in a bottle again but have no clue where to even start

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That can be said about them for the last 24 years.

YttriumF said:

Qwalla's interview gave me the impression that maintaining a Mischief style ruleset was very labor intensive for the team.

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Didn't listen to it, but it's probably a lot of things where once they do it for Mischief they can just copy it to the new server

They could decide to just cut off support for these servers when they reach a specific expansion that critical mass falls off on.
But I feel like the current team is too proud of the expansion work they've done over the last 10 years, and is refusing to let that go at the detriment of the team's ability to commit to quality releases.

YttriumF said:

Qwalla's interview gave me the impression that maintaining a Mischief style ruleset was very labor intensive for the team.

Every industry struggles to discover "lightning in a bottle" and spends too much damn money on business analytics and consultants. DPG has the team, technology, and enough of the old guard to pull it off. I have no strong feelings about the newest Freeport zone ... but ... another variation for the 25th TLP?

Old Freeport lies buried as a collapsed and crushed ruin under new Freeport?

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There shouldn't be anything terribly labor intensive on the second run of a mischief server. All the tiers have already been made and most of the exploits fixed.

Secrets said:

They could decide to just cut off support for these servers when they reach a specific expansion that critical mass falls off on.
But I feel like the current team is too proud of the expansion work they've done over the last 10 years, and is refusing to let that go at the detriment of the team's ability to commit to quality releases.

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Agnarr was PoP-locked. People seemed to think that was a great idea, and maybe it was, maybe not. I think they have a reasonable amount of people still playing since it hit its cap 5(?) years ago. Not like, thousands, but like a few hundred people at peak times and there's multiple guilds that still raid and shit.

I think there's a lot of cool stuff in the later expacs most EQ players never played, but there's also a bunch of garbage and the flavor of the game definitely changes. I think EQ TLP's know their $$$$ is nostalgia related though so really they can unofficially kill off any server after OoW with very little blowblack.

I almost think they don't want to do another Mischief yet because it's a guinea pig. They want to get the item drops/tier lists correct for stuff deeeeep in the game and Mischief has to run through it first and they'll tune it up. Once they feel comfortable with a good amount of balanced drops/bosses/tiers for as long as they THINK people will play it (House of Thule? Secrets of Faydwer?) they can launch another one using what they learned to make it smoother.

People expecting something amazing for the 25th anniversary haven't been paying attention for the last 24 years

Ambiturner said:

People expecting something amazing for the 25th anniversary haven't been paying attention for the last 24 years

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They've made advancements in the past. Sleeper/Combine were neat, Phinny was the first introduction of raid instancing, people like Mischief, Vaniki was interesting, etc. Oakwynd is underwhelming now but it might come in to its own once a few expansions are unlocked. Probably not but maybe!

Xevy said:

Agnarr was PoP-locked. People seemed to think that was a great idea, and maybe it was, maybe not. I think they have a reasonable amount of people still playing since it hit its cap 5(?) years ago. Not like, thousands, but like a few hundred people at peak times and there's multiple guilds that still raid and shit.

I think there's a lot of cool stuff in the later expacs most EQ players never played, but there's also a bunch of garbage and the flavor of the game definitely changes. I think EQ TLP's know their $$$$ is nostalgia related though so really they can unofficially kill off any server after OoW with very little blowblack.

I almost think they don't want to do another Mischief yet because it's a guinea pig. They want to get the item drops/tier lists correct for stuff deeeeep in the game and Mischief has to run through it first and they'll tune it up. Once they feel comfortable with a good amount of balanced drops/bosses/tiers for as long as they THINK people will play it (House of Thule? Secrets of Faydwer?) they can launch another one using what they learned to make it smoother.

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The issue with a locked server that never ends is that you can't make money off of it each year. It's a one and done idea, and at a specific point it becomes too top heavy.
It works on emulator because there's no profit incentive or requirement to pay people, and on a commercial game, there's no consistent revenue from doing so compared to re-iterating the same game with slightly different rules.

I used to believe that SOE / Daybreak could make a ton of money off of the $15 a month that people would pay to play a PoP-locked server, but reality didn't consider the financial cost of staffing a project like that as I lacked the experience to know how much personnel costed and the numbers behind servers.

I also, for the longest time until entering industry, mistakenly assumed that subscription costs would be enough to sustain their current profits and that very few spent much in the cash shops back then (This was about 2013, 2014?), but failed to realize they need to constantly improve and adapt to market trends so that they don't fall out of favor with investors who want a rather large return on their investment.

So the model works for them because they profit greatly from the repeated server launches.

I still agree now with the assessment that launching these and nixing support at a specific expansion is a reasonable ask if it means that other types of servers see more attention and quality increases, as that won't really affect production costs - and merging those characters into a live server afterwards means you can reprovision the server's hardware following its stagnation sooner.

YttriumF said:

If you hired me to go make a "John Wick" movie, only make it exactly like the first John Wick movie, then I am going to tell you to go watch the original and stop wasting my time. Absor's Objection applies here just as well as it does when it comes to pvp. If you like EQ1 pvp, then go play on Zek. If you like the Mischief rules, then go play on Mischief.

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Everything about this is retarded

YttriumF said:

If you hired me to go make a "John Wick" movie, only make it exactly like the first John Wick movie, then I am going to tell you to go watch the original and stop wasting my time. Absor's Objection applies here just as well as it does when it comes to pvp. If you like EQ1 pvp, then go play on Zek. If you like the Mischief rules, then go play on Mischief.

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Mischief has great retention and activity compared to other servers, so, uh...

YttriumF said:

If you hired me to go make a "John Wick" movie, only make it exactly like the first John Wick movie, then I am going to tell you to go watch the original and stop wasting my time. Absor's Objection applies here just as well as it does when it comes to pvp. If you like EQ1 pvp, then go play on Zek. If you like the Mischief rules, then go play on Mischief.

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Did you even try to think?

How do I play a Mischief server in eras before the one it's in now, with everyone else at that same point? What if I only like certain eras or high population levels?

It's like you don't realize that every TLP is a reset for the people who want the same shit over again. That's why it exists.

Mischief was a huge success. It's been years and years since PvP was. The emulated servers also serve as evidence of a lessened interest in PvP. They are not the same thing at all.

DickTrickle said:

Did you even try to think?

How do I play a Mischief server in eras before the one it's in now, with everyone else at that same point? What if I only like certain eras or high population levels?

It's like you don't realize that every TLP is a reset for the people who want the same shit over again. That's why it exists.

Mischief was a huge success. It's been years and years since PvP was. The emulated servers also serve as evidence of a lessened interest in PvP. They are not the same thing at all.

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Not only that but this argument was flat since the early "progression" attempts pre-tlp frequently did so on either fv or test. So tlp oriented customers DID choose a loot-accessible ruleset to try out shit.

Show me where anything resembling what guys like zaide or tuco did with progression based play on live era eq servers happened, but with pvp. The only serious attempt I know of was red guides on selo. Cool dudes, small showing. Show me where people tried to combine fv and progression? Almost all of them, I think one was on vox or trak and another on a rando server, the rest fv or test.

Then you have zaide showing that mischief is still kicking. The server is in sof. I assume elderan could show the same - more popular than anything since it.