Everquest TLP - Aradune and Rizlona Servers (Now with real customer service)

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DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
13,404
15,564
Can confirm. The SG botters are banned, per DPG inside sources. They rarely give confirmation about who gets banned due to privacy policy, but those botters are banned... though their identities are unknown.



They weren't selling dz loot. They were forcefully spawning a pick with the volume of accounts they had, checking the spawns, and letting it close.



Yeah but hear me out: what if you keep the level 1 there so he has no way of avoiding detection. Just toss it on some cloud-hosted VPS running 24/7. Boom, no more botters in SG.

I was responding to yerm's post where he specifically mentioned selling DZ loot being harmful.

I know all about SG
 

Metalhead

Blackwing Lair Raider
963
2,560
545le3.jpg
 
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Los_Necros

Trakanon Raider
337
150
It could be deeper than that. Botters keep the krono exchange going and raise the plat value of krono. An argument can be made that they are good, economically, for the people on the server giving daybreak the most money, and bad for the people spending little and returning on each tlp whatever else they say. The idea that you can spend a krono or two and gear out a character is appealing to a lot of folks.

Banning bots that hog unique camps or grief or even sell dz loot can be harmful. Bots in sg or seb, arguably, can be good for a server's revenue and new player attraction. Just can't let the PR get out of hand.
The factor you're missing is that if krono are 15k and items are 3k versus krono 10k and items 5k. The people buying krono from the company require less krono. Why buy 10 krono from them when you can buy all the gear you want for 5 krono.
 

yerm

Golden Baronet of the Realm
6,491
16,607
The factor you're missing is that if krono are 15k and items are 3k versus krono 10k and items 5k. The people buying krono from the company require less krono. Why buy 10 krono from them when you can buy all the gear you want for 5 krono.

I dont know that most people make a shopping list and then buy krono to fill it. I strongly suspect people buy x krono and then go shopping. They may splurge on more for a chase item or two, sure, but for the most part they buy whatever their budget allowed. So more plat in the system and "bazaar loot" available per krono (or tradeskill capacity per krono) is good for the krono buyer's gaming experience.


The reason dz loot is bad is it hastens the gearing process that at 3 months is usually already too long (until like SoD or some such) so it can cause players to lose interest if they soak up their loot too quickly and stop logging in. From a game admin standpoint, entry level content you want super accessible while the BiS you want to have as a carrot as long as possible.
 

Los_Necros

Trakanon Raider
337
150
I agree that people buying 2 krono might not reduce that to 1 krono. I'm talking the bigger players. The ones that will buy 20 krono from the website to buy 1 item. The people with more spending money aren't the ones that will just buy 50 krono for no reason. They buy krono because they know they need them. Big buyers might buy 40 krono once. Sure yes. But with the cheaper economy that 40 krono will last them infinitely. Whereas in the more expensive economy, that 40 krono will buy them less items and they will buy another 20 or 30 or 40 krono.

So yeah you might be right about the small fish. They might not change either way. Someone who is broke is going to probably buy 2 krono either way. But someone with money will keep buying more krono if they run out. That's the key. Them reupping on krono.

Your scenario the whales don't have to rebuy as often or for as much.
 

Los_Necros

Trakanon Raider
337
150
I feel like people don't realize that there are a decent amount of people on these servers that spend $4000+ on their characters PER expansion. Between buying gear and powerlevels on all their toons... it always amazes me how much money people spend on these servers.
 

yerm

Golden Baronet of the Realm
6,491
16,607
Who is chain buying 40 krono? Jesus, aradune must be a shithole if that's normal?

The whales I'm expecting are the guys who buy a dozen krono and gear out their characters. Then they might buy some krono for a chase item, maybe. Then they roll an alt and buy some krono for the alt. They do this a handful of times. When I see these dudes they usually buy a couple krono at a time, and do with it what they can. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think they're buying say 3 krono for an alt because 3 is what they need to gear it - they're buying 3, and gearing whatever that buy them.

The people dropping a dozen+ krono on an item like a bloodfrenzy from a dz do not strike me as the repeat buyer types. Or very common. Again, maybe aradune has tons of these degenerates to make it a real market impact?
 

Los_Necros

Trakanon Raider
337
150
I think maybe take the word from someone who has personal experience with whales and TLPs :)

The guy who spends 50kr on bloodfrenzy also overpays for everything else. These people love eq more than they love money.
 

Xevy

Log Wizard
8,886
4,105
We had a GM, who was in charge of banning botters/cheaters, who QUIT, tell us 2 days after they quit that they were told by higher ups not to ban these botters. That was literally why they quit. They were doing their job and weren't incompetent, but DBG said "no, not these guys".

So yes, to some extent they're in on it.
 

Los_Necros

Trakanon Raider
337
150
Now that I definitely believe. Someone above definitely is training the GMs or telling people to train the GMs in such a way that these people can get around them still.

Like, how is it that Rizlona people are crying about oh how difficult it is for their 6box team to notice a GM responds to them. Meanwhile 100 toons being botted on Aradune with no GM action because... they respond to an AFK check and that is how they were told to police.

Really what busted them this server is how open they were about it on a 2box server. If they didn't leave 100 toons in sirens grotto for 14 days straight... they would probably have gotten away with it even longer.

They're going to have a hard time on Aradune now. The community has smelled blood from the GMs actually doing their jobs. Now there is an expectation. If the bots return, in force, they will get dealt with, again. They might not suspend the MQ2 groups lvling up to replace the bigger ones, but they will 100% ban them again if they start botting in mass in picks.

They need to actually hide now. And, something tells me, they're too stupid and too used to not hiding... they won't last. They're so greedy and desperate. That's why the guy was caught doing open world King Tormax on Christmas morning.

What kind of idiot takes a chance to warp and use MQ2 on KT on a 2box server while velious is in era still.

They might have high IQs and be good at coding, but wow the decisions they make are idiotic sometimes.

That single Tormax video has followed him for months and is the best evidence against him and helped the GMs track all of his toons.

Just a stupid stupid decision and all for a chance at a ONE TIME $ 200.
 

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
13,404
15,564
I dont know that most people make a shopping list and then buy krono to fill it. I strongly suspect people buy x krono and then go shopping. They may splurge on more for a chase item or two, sure, but for the most part they buy whatever their budget allowed. So more plat in the system and "bazaar loot" available per krono (or tradeskill capacity per krono) is good for the krono buyer's gaming experience.


The reason dz loot is bad is it hastens the gearing process that at 3 months is usually already too long (until like SoD or some such) so it can cause players to lose interest if they soak up their loot too quickly and stop logging in. From a game admin standpoint, entry level content you want super accessible while the BiS you want to have as a carrot as long as possible.
Except no one who is raiding is buying loot for their main because they're on lockout from their guild raid. If they're not raiding or an alt, it's not like they were going to get it anyway.
 

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
13,404
15,564
Now that I definitely believe. Someone above definitely is training the GMs or telling people to train the GMs in such a way that these people can get around them still.

Like, how is it that Rizlona people are crying about oh how difficult it is for their 6box team to notice a GM responds to them. Meanwhile 100 toons being botted on Aradune with no GM action because... they respond to an AFK check and that is how they were told to police.

Really what busted them this server is how open they were about it on a 2box server. If they didn't leave 100 toons in sirens grotto for 14 days straight... they would probably have gotten away with it even longer.

They're going to have a hard time on Aradune now. The community has smelled blood from the GMs actually doing their jobs. Now there is an expectation. If the bots return, in force, they will get dealt with, again. They might not suspend the MQ2 groups lvling up to replace the bigger ones, but they will 100% ban them again if they start botting in mass in picks.

They need to actually hide now. And, something tells me, they're too stupid and too used to not hiding... they won't last. They're so greedy and desperate. That's why the guy was caught doing open world King Tormax on Christmas morning.

What kind of idiot takes a chance to warp and use MQ2 on KT on a 2box server while velious is in era still.

They might have high IQs and be good at coding, but wow the decisions they make are idiotic sometimes.

That single Tormax video has followed him for months and is the best evidence against him and helped the GMs track all of his toons.

Just a stupid stupid decision and all for a chance at a ONE TIME $ 200.
They're not dumb. They did all this shit on mangler and got away with it, so they figured nothing would happen. They got brazen.

That said, once they go DZ only, they won't be getting banned since no one will be able to get video proof of anything.
 

Mrniceguy

Trakanon Raider
738
413
I agree that people buying 2 krono might not reduce that to 1 krono. I'm talking the bigger players. The ones that will buy 20 krono from the website to buy 1 item. The people with more spending money aren't the ones that will just buy 50 krono for no reason. They buy krono because they know they need them. Big buyers might buy 40 krono once. Sure yes. But with the cheaper economy that 40 krono will last them infinitely. Whereas in the more expensive economy, that 40 krono will buy them less items and they will buy another 20 or 30 or 40 krono.

So yeah you might be right about the small fish. They might not change either way. Someone who is broke is going to probably buy 2 krono either way. But someone with money will keep buying more krono if they run out. That's the key. Them reupping on krono.

Your scenario the whales don't have to rebuy as often or for as much.

You can't actually chain buy 50 krono from DPG. Their fraud prevention system wont allow you to do it, most you can get currently is 25 and it used to be 10. Most of the people buying items for 10 KR plus are guild banks or people who have earned Krono through gameplay.

If you wanna know which items people are buying KR for you can just watch the market and see which items are tied to Krono rather then plat. Generally speaking it's key twink items like fungi, Clickies like CoS and Spells. Random junkie stat items like Iksar Hide Cap from the frequently botted Kennels are typically tied to plat.

I don't think botting has a positive or negative effect on who is buying KR from DPG. Botting definitely drives sub numbers down overall though.
 

DickTrickle

Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
13,404
15,564
Botting definitely drives sub numbers down overall though.

Mangler was their most successful TLP. Aradune is hugely successful. The botting has only been getting worse as more Phinigel clones come out. So, I'm not really buying that's true. EQ players are gluttons for punishment.
 

Rajaah

Honorable Member
<Gold Donor>
12,516
16,540
EQ remastered would be interesting

better class balance. Better UI. A character model and lighting/shadow engine revamp could make the game look way better.

to really hype marketing and draw new people I think they would need to do more than that though.

I'd like to see the original models make a comeback in an up-res'd version of EQ. So character models that look fairly modern graphically, yet are unmistakably the early models from EQ. Continue on the track Velious started with armor designs. The Tizmak/Ry'gorr/etc armor appearances in Velious are still my favorite ever in EQ, and we stopped getting updates to those.

Could see a Classic EQ Remastered (or maybe including Kunark and Velious) happening someday under a perfect storm of circumstances, but I don't see it continuing past the first couple of expansions. In this age of Elder Scrolls etc, a Classic/Kunark/Velious EQ Remastered that allows for more soloability while also being in a world with other players would probably be popular on consoles. EQ's previous forays into consoles did okay and that was back when games of this nature weren't that big on consoles.
 
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Mrniceguy

Trakanon Raider
738
413
Mangler was their most successful TLP. Aradune is hugely successful. The botting has only been getting worse as more Phinigel clones come out. So, I'm not really buying that's true. EQ players are gluttons for punishment.
Mangler wasn't the most successful TLP.
Aradune has less botting then Rizlona.
There is tons of people that don't care either way, but it's only a few people running all the bots and less then 100 accounts. Botting definitely drives away more people then that.