Legacy of FrostStone - A Velious Server

That's too bad, really. Hopefully someone will come along and do a well done and as close to orginal as possible Velious, or even Luclin/PoP PC emulator server with boxing.

I'll continue to pray to every God I can think of.

It's a common sentiment from players who aren't hardcore or much good at the game but still think they should be at the top. They don't want to play on P99 because you'll never be anything there without being at least a little hardcore, and they don't have the nous to actually multibox properly so they declare it some kind of awful, server-ruining feature so that others can't use it to get an advantage over them. They're people who would rather have a meaningless server with <20 active players, where some random Timmy who took months to get his druid to level 53 can feel like he's one of the server's most accomplished players. They prefer a server with an absurdly low ceiling, but a ceiling that they can reach, over one where there'll be players far ahead of them, like P99 or any server that allows boxing.

Oftentimes they're older players who were already too far in life to be hardcore at EQ back in the day, unlike those of us who were teenagers at the time and could spend all our free time on it. Now they're looking to experience the game again, but their original experience was of being the casual never-amount-to-anything player who looked from the outside in as others accomplished things of note. In some more pathetic cases, you've got guys who now play with their healer wives on IP exemptions, duoing all day while vehemently opposing boxing so that they can be the big fish in a tiny pond. Then they'll have a high-level warrior or whatever since they're enjoying the exact same benefits you'd get from two-boxing, and use the fact that they have a high-level non-solo class to argue that boxing isn't necessary because look how I've managed without it.

Having fun on server so far. For all intents and purposes, it's a mostly deserted p99. Only 10ish people on at any given time. No boxers. Server admin has made it clear he is sticking to his guns about making it legit and never allowing boxing. His goal is to slowly build up like p99 was built. I was on p99 from day 1 and that server started very low pop. People gave Rog all kinds of shit and tried to convince him to allow boxing but he was pretty stubborn about ignoring people's requests to make the sever easier. Ironically his stubbornness is one of the reasons for the server's success. Not going to get into a philosophical diatribe, but stubbornly sticking to their own vision was one of the things that made VI successful. Infuriating to deal with, but successful.

Maybe this server won't ever garner a worthwhile population, but I don't think the admin is going to budge regardless.

P99 wasn't built up slowly. It had 100+ players from the start, and within two months it was in the several hundreds. This server started in June and only ever has a handful of players online. Like right now, during EU peak, it has three players and a GM on. I glance at their website with the online tally every now and then and I've never seen more than six actual players on. Why would anyone switch to a worse imitation of P99? It's nowhere near the quality, has literally no playerbase, and doesn't offer anything different.

If anything, running a server like that ensures that you just get shit players. The ones who can't play on P99 because they're pariahs of the community, incapable of tolerating the fact that some players are more accomplished than them, or just have an unhealthy opposition to anything popular. You'll get mentally challenged players like Kegz, or players who take some kind of misguided moral offense at things like hardcore play and boxing, because they can't do it themselves and can't cope with others having some advantage over them.

There is no redeeming element to what he's doing. He's just someone who thinks he can be succesful like P99 but doesn't have the resourcefulness to actually offer anything that anyone's interested in. He could if he offered a PC-client Velious server with boxing, but he's one of those aforementioned "uuh no, not boxing!" plebs. As such, his server was a failure before it even began, and all his work is completely wasted because nobody's going to play there. But I guess he stuck to his prinicples, isn't that ever so admirable.

axeman_sl said:

P99 wasn't built up slowly. It had 100+ players from the start, and within two months it was in the several hundreds. This server has been up since like June and only ever has a handful of players online. Like right now, during EU peak, it has three players and a GM on. I glance at their website with the online tally every now and then and I've never seen more than six actual players on. Why would anyone switch to a worse imitation of P99? It's nowhere near the quality, has literally no playerbase, and doesn't offer anything different.

If anything, running a server like that ensures that you just get shit players. The ones who can't play on P99 because they're pariahs of the community, incapable of tolerating the fact that some players are more accomplished than them, or just have an unhealthy opposition to anything popular. You'll get players like Kegz. You'll get players who take some kind of misguided moral offense at things like hardcore play and boxing, because they can't do it themselves and can't cope with others having some advantage over them.

There is no redeeming element to what he's doing. He's just someone who thinks he can be succesful like P99 but doesn't have the resourcefulness to actually offer anything that anyone's interested in. He could if he offered a PC-client Velious server with boxing, but he's one of those aforementioned "uuh no, not boxing!" plebs.

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You seem very angry at this poor dude. I'm no revolutionary, but shouldn't he generally be able to do what he wants. Being, you know, his own server and all?

I'm disappointed that people waste their time developing pointless garbage when they could be enriching the emulator community with useful, original material. I don't even know the guy's username, I don't give the remotest fuck about him on a personal level. However, his efforts are useless and shouldn't be praised. He's doing something completely unoriginal without any chance of success, all in the name of sticking to some nonsensical personal principle, when he could be providing something for which there's a significant demand. Something that's still 99% within what he already aims to provide, just with one single difference. He's an unoriginal copycat. That warrants criticism.

Anyone that has the ability to roll a server like this could give so much value to the open source EMU project that it's understandably frustrating that they throw away their time.

FrostStone will never go anywhere.

Unless I'm missing something, besides the population, how is this different then P99?

Lenas_sl said:

Anyone that has the ability to roll a server like this could give so much value to the open source EMU project that it's understandably frustrating that they throw away their time.

FrostStone will never go anywhere.

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I gotcha. Then again, a lot of people would argue playing archaic mmos in general is throwing away your time. If you think those people are wrong, it becomes hard to apply the same criticism to LoF.

Word_sl said:

Unless I'm missing something, besides the population, how is this different then P99?

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Totally different database and there are a significant number of relatively minor mechanical differences. Philosophically, the servers are identical and practically speaking they are pretty close (so far).

Word_sl said:

Unless I'm missing something, besides the population, how is this different then P99?

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Arden_sl said:

Totally different database and there are a significant number of relatively minor mechanical differences. Philosophically, the servers are identical and practically speaking they are pretty close (so far).

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So, basically a less refined and more bug ridden version of P99 with zero playerbase.

Jysin_sl said:

So, basically a less refined and more bug ridden version of P99 with zero playerbase.

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Basically, yes. But I'd call it less historically accurate and slightly buggier than P99 instead.

Bugs aren't really an issue though. I've only encountered one or two small bugs and the admin (can't ever remember his name) is very fast to fix them. The box's db and mechanics are very solid for the most part and, like I said, the admin is very dedicated/responsive.

The player base is certainly negligible. Most of the time I play it is between 7-11 people.

All this said, it serves my purposes. P99 is such an overcrowded clusterfuck, that I don't mind having a copycat server almost entirely to myself.

Arden_sl said:

Basically, yes. But I'd call it less historically accurate and slightly buggier than P99 instead.

Bugs aren't really an issue though. I've only encountered one or two small bugs and the admin (can't ever remember his name) is very fast to fix them. The box's db and mechanics are very solid for the most part and, like I said, the admin is very dedicated/responsive.

The player base is certainly negligible. Most of the time I play it is between 7-11 people.

All this said, it serves my purposes. P99 is such an overcrowded clusterfuck, that I don't mind having a copycat server almost entirely to myself.

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This pretty much sums up my experience of the server. If you want a low pop place to mess around and enough people that you don't feel completely alone thanks to global OOC, it works.

Obviously about 10 people want that.

Great success.

US peak hours.

Literally zero players online.

But at least nobody's boxing.

That would ruin the server.

axeman_sl said:

US peak hours.

Literally zero players online.

But at least nobody's boxing.

That would ruin the server.

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If you aren't interested in playing on this server, then stop wasting your time tracking the player population and choose a server that is to your liking. Why do you care?

Probably due to the fact the server COULD offer something people want, but instead tries to be a P99 clone and that lack of success is reflected by the current server pop.

I'd fire up a 3 box right this minute if the rules were changed.

Jysin_sl said:

Probably due to the fact the server COULD offer something people want, but instead tries to be a P99 clone and that lack of success is reflected by the current server pop.

I'd fire up a 3 box right this minute if the rules were changed.

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Who said it is trying to be a clone of p99? Who said it isn't a success?

He built a solid server with zero downtime and few bugs (which get fixed within a couple hours of being reported) for himself and his friends to enjoy. Many of those who roll toons here come from p99 and were tired of the raid bosses being locked down or every other significant spawn for that matter - not to mention some of the rude people on that server. This is a refreshing change where every camp is open and available, every raid boss is up, and everyone seems friendly and willing to help.

Starting out is hard, I won't disagree. Maybe that isn't what some of you are looking for, and that is just fine. There are many options out there for you. But please don't come on here and disparage someone who is simply willing to share his server to the public. He does a great job - maybe the best GM I have seen.

All the raid targets are up, sure, but none of the worthwhile ones will ever be down anyways on a sub-10 population server. How is that an "attraction" for the server? Why even bring it up?

Jysin_sl said:

Probably due to the fact the server COULD offer something people want, but instead tries to be a P99 clone and that lack of success is reflected by the current server pop.

I'd fire up a 3 box right this minute if the rules were changed.

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Any server on that server list COULD offer what you want. There are dozens and dozens of near empty servers on the server list.

You'd honestly have a better chance of lobbying one of those servers. This guy has made it clear in no uncertain terms he isn't allowing boxing. Start working on those guys.