If a solo player gets any type of a break, be it a lower death penalty or a mini-map or an exclamation point or fast travel or whatever, pitchforks and torches we're dumbing down the game and making it easy.
But when it comes to raiding, we want boss mobs that roll down a conveyor belt?
Why wouldn't the hard-mode philosophy go all the way to the end game?
Because people will fight and complain? Solo players complained constantly about ksers in EQ1, and that was never fixed. But then EQ2 fixed it and was mocked for the effort. So people complaining isn't the issue, surely?
And how many times have we said that the game doesn't need a coding solution, because the player community will prevail and miscreants will be ostracized?
Someone might argue it is a double standard.
Well, some servers solved the issue by implementing a schedule system that was completely created and controlled by the players. It had lots of problems though.
The Legends server (ie the GM controlled schedules) seemed to work the best as they had zero tolerance banning for any guild who took down a mob off their schedule. It was broke a couple of times, but when those entire guilds were banned from the server, it stopped really quick.
I don't mind them putting in a means to stop abuse both in group and raid, but like your point, I find it a bit of double standard when people claim it is fine for group content, but not raid content.
One solution I was thinking of is to have a special server that is scheduled raids. Then, if an abuse happens, they ban the offenders to another server where the content is all completely contested like they did with the Legends server.
Introducing of raid instances for high-end raids, of which I'm a big supporter.
(mind you, I don't think every raid mob needs to be instanced, lower tier raid mobs with lower tier gear on faster spawn timers, don't seem to cause problems in MMO)
Instead of 1 contested open world raid for 4 guilds, you have 4 raid instances for 4 guilds.
Outside of instances, I haven't seen any solution that would work.
Introducing of raid instances, of which I'm a big supporter.
Instead of 1 contested raid for 4 guilds, you have 4 raids for 4 guilds.
Outside of instances, I haven't seen any solution that would work.
EQ early on had a server called the Legends Server (Stormhammer). It was a special high sub fee server (40 bucks). One of the features it provided was a schedule rotation for raid mobs.
Basically, when your guild was ready to start raiding, you would contact a GM and schedule a raid test with them for a certain day (providing you met certain requirements). Then, you would go to the Arena and that GM would spawn the top boss from that tier.
If your guild could beat the boss, you were ranked for that tier and put into the rotation with the rest of the servers guilds. Once you qualified you were able to pick which tiers you wanted and could even pass on some bosses. It was all handled by a schedule online with a guild list of who was doing what that week.
If a guild took down a mob that was not on their list, they were banned from the server forever. It was ridiculously easy to report it, you just did a log of them while they were doing it and sent it to the GM. The GM would ban everyone in the raid. This killed the drama very quickly. After a couple quick bans, nobody violated the rule and the system was pretty easy to upkeep (just a standard rotation automated on the site and a GM occasionally for the initial ranking test).
The nice thing about this is that the amount of loot brought into the world stayed the same.
With the instances you mention, the amount of loot is based on the number of guilds doing instances. As I mentioned to you, it increases the raid loot significantly and destroys that unique element of rarity that EQ had for its loot. Having instances makes the game like WoW where gear is extremely common and a given look or achievement in a drop is meaningless.
If a solo player gets any type of a break, be it a lower death penalty or a mini-map or an exclamation point or fast travel or whatever, pitchforks and torches we're dumbing down the game and making it easy.
But when it comes to raiding, we want boss mobs that roll down a conveyor belt?
Why wouldn't the hard-mode philosophy go all the way to the end game?
Because people will fight and complain? Solo players complained constantly about ksers in EQ1, and that was never fixed. But then EQ2 fixed it and was mocked for the effort. So people complaining isn't the issue, surely?
And how many times have we said that the game doesn't need a coding solution, because the player community will prevail and miscreants will be ostracized?
Someone might argue it is a double standard.
I don't think this is a direct comparison to the idea of instanced raid content with timers. What you seem to be referring to is making content easier or faster, which I am also against, but neither is created strictly because of instancing. Instancing only directly effects relative availability between players/guilds. As long as the lockouts are at the right time, it will keep the vertical progression from going too high. The difficulty and required players could remain unchanged unless those instances also have player caps. This above assumes that VR does not want one guild or entity to be able to be more powerful than others. They may want this as a form of competition and in that case, have them contested.
This does not exclude the idea of world bosses however. There should be at least a handful of those that take many guilds to take down, and varying smaller bosses aside just to make the world more exciting.
One thing to note about having players themselves govern the system is that VR will still have to moderate. I'm sure they plan to have GMs and event planners within and around the game monitoring things but what functionalities would it take away to monitor and enforce raid schedules?
Well, I never played on that server, and GM coordinating the server probably costs a lot of money judging by the extra fee.
If the world is huge and guilds are removed far from each other, there can be drama free raiding in open world.
But that costs massive amounts of development.
Another problem is, that you tend to want to run scripts during raids. That is much easier to do in an instance than in an open world.
One of the benefits of instances in Everquest, or rather a welcome side effect, was that the raids became much more challenging, developers could run zone-wide scripts without affecting the rest of the world.
If a solo player gets any type of a break, be it a lower death penalty or a mini-map or an exclamation point or fast travel or whatever, pitchforks and torches we're dumbing down the game and making it easy.
But when it comes to raiding, we want boss mobs that roll down a conveyor belt?
Why wouldn't the hard-mode philosophy go all the way to the end game?
Because people will fight and complain? Solo players complained constantly about ksers in EQ1, and that was never fixed. But then EQ2 fixed it and was mocked for the effort. So people complaining isn't the issue, surely?
And how many times have we said that the game doesn't need a coding solution, because the player community will prevail and miscreants will be ostracized?
Someone might argue it is a double standard.
I don't think this is a direct comparison to the idea of instanced raid content with timers. What you seem to be referring to is making content easier or faster, which I am also against, but neither is created strictly because of instancing. Instancing only directly effects relative availability between players/guilds. As long as the lockouts are at the right time, it will keep the vertical progression from going too high. The difficulty and required players could remain unchanged unless those instances also have player caps. This above assumes that VR does not want one guild or entity to be able to be more powerful than others. They may want this as a form of competition and in that case, have them contested.
This does not exclude the idea of world bosses however. There should be at least a handful of those that take many guilds to take down, and varying smaller bosses aside just to make the world more exciting.
One thing to note about having players themselves govern the system is that VR will still have to moderate. I'm sure they plan to have GMs and event planners within and around the game monitoring things but what functionalities would it take away to monitor and enforce raid schedules?
Instanced content increases the amount of loot into the system dramatically allowing guilds to gear up much faster than contested content making the rarity in loot meaningless. That is, it becomes like WoW where nothing is unique anymore because every guild can raid and obtain the same loot at the same time as opposed to only a single guild who took down that mob getting the loot for that given time and everyone else having to wait for the mob to spawn again in order to get a drop.
What instances do is greatly increase the amount of items into the system (causing fast gear inflation) and allowing players to more quickly consume the content putting pressure on the developers. This is why modern games have a problem with players sitting around complaining about not enough content. The time it takes to gear up a guild for continued progression in a contested content game is an enormous amount of time compared to games today, keeping them busy chasing progression rather than sitting around board comparing how they all have the same gear.
I hate games that are completely instanced and things like server channels. It's immersive breaking. I don't think all raids should be instanced either. But EQ was never like that.
EQ had certain great expansions that simply lend themselves to instances, and high end raids were instanced after a while.
Let's say you have a party in the open world, and you discover a dungeon, and you can only enter at around lvl 70. And the zone inside will have a dragon with a massive zone-wide AE.
Why should it not be an instance? It makes sense that it is an instance. the zonewide AE needs will be limited to the instance, the raiders won't bother anyone outside, and there will be no drama. How does it affect a player outside of the instance?
The open world outside, which is still 90% of the content, is still beautiful and challenging, but some dungeons inhabited by massive monsters, take place in an enclosed location, an instance.
And if someone else wants to experience this fight, they can too, they don't need to wait until everyone else left the dungeon, another instance is simply spawned.
Well, I never played on that server, and GM coordinating the server probably costs a lot of money judging by the extra fee.
If the world is huge and guilds are removed far from each other, there can be drama free raiding in open world.
But that costs massive amounts of development.
Another problem is, that you tend to want to run scripts during raids. That is much easier to do in an instance than in an open world.
One of the benefits of instances in Everquest, or rather a welcome side effect, was that the raids became much more challenging, developers could run zone-wide scripts without affecting the rest of the world.
That is hard to do in open world.
Everything that a GM did on Legends server as it concerns testing and putting guilds into a rotation can be automated and would not be that difficult to design and implement.
Raids in EQ not being challenging is kind of a gossip thing. They were actually very difficult, but their difficulty was not always in complexity of event, though later there was some zone wide events (POE for example), but the difficulty in coordinating healing, tanking, and other roles for long periods of time with a very low error threshold.
Regardless, whatever you do in an instance, can be done in open world with technology today. Also, having it affect the rest of the world is kind of the point and why so many loved the Ring War in Velious and other major zone events that were caused by raids. Instancing is counter to the social game and puts us back on the track of WoW and games today.
Yeah, 40 bucks just to get content cleared in a timely matter... No Ty. Sounds pay to win to me.
You didn't get it cleared in a timely manner. The only thing the server gave you was immediate GM support when requested (ie I could call a GM and have one answer in less than a minute). More personal investigation into that support (no "scripted blah blah" responses). Also, the GMs tended be similar to admins on the Test server (ie more power and knowledge of the game systems over a standard production server GM).
Outside of that and just guild rotation schedules, that is what it got you.
You still had to beat the mobs on your own, you still had to earn everything in the game, no handouts, no bonuses, no special treatment in game. It was honestly no different than some of the servers whose guilds formed a similar alliance to do content in a rotation.
Not sure how that is pay to win. Pay to get away from the ass hats? Sure... but win? Nope... if you were a terrible player and your guild sucked, you didn't down bosses no matter how much the server cost or how nice the GMs were. /shrug
Vanguard had these deep open world dungeons that were massive, I didn't play the game very long (it got shut down duh)...but I did love those massive dungeons.
What was the cave close by Vexhal Exhange with the spiders? That was great.
I like both open world and instances. Like 90% of the world open world, and certain raids and some expansions like LDON with instances is perfect for me.
the zonewide AE needs will be limited to the instance, the raiders won't bother anyone outside, and there will be no drama. How does it affect a player outside of the instance?
The open world outside, which is still 90% of the content, is still beautiful and challenging, but some dungeons inhabited by massive monsters, take place in an enclosed location, an instance.
And if someone else wants to experience this fight, they can too,
For a lot of players, seeing a dragon being fought in the open world is as close as they are ever going to come to an encounter such as that. Not everyone, and arguably most people, will ever be in a high end raid guild. Taking the "drama" out of the world and tucking it away into instances leaves the game world less interesting, less dangerous, and less compelling. Imo anyway.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Yeah, 40 bucks just to get content cleared in a timely matter... No Ty. Sounds pay to win to me.
You didn't get it cleared in a timely manner. The only thing the server gave you was immediate GM support when requested (ie I could call a GM and have one answer in less than a minute). More personal investigation into that support (no "scripted blah blah" responses). Also, the GMs tended be similar to admins on the Test server (ie more power and knowledge of the game systems over a standard production server GM).
Outside of that and just guild rotation schedules, that is what it got you.
You still had to beat the mobs on your own, you still had to earn everything in the game, no handouts, no bonuses, no special treatment in game. It was honestly no different than some of the servers whose guilds formed a similar alliance to do content in a rotation.
Not sure how that is pay to win. Pay to get away from the ass hats? Sure... but win? Nope... if you were a terrible player and your guild sucked, you didn't down bosses no matter how much the server cost or how nice the GMs were. /shrug
Ok, pay to have better access is still p2w if you ask me. You couldn't compete on the normal servers so pay more money so you can.
So are game expansions Pay to Win? As you are "paying to have better access"?
Vanguard had these deep open world dungeons that were massive, I didn't play the game very long (it got shut down duh)...but I did love those massive dungeons.
What was the cave close by Vexhal Exhange with the spiders? That was great.
I like both open world and instances. Like 90% of the world open world, and certain raids and some expansions like LDON with instances is perfect for me.
I didn't play much of Vanguard, but I am aware it had massive land mass areas and dungeons.
I liked the private feeling of instances at times, but they do far more damage to the game than they help when used in a traditional sense. They alienate the player base, kill social responsibility, increase loot into the game, etc...
I loved WoW when it came out, but I came to find that a lot of that love was just the newness of features that "appeared" to solve the discomforts I had with EQ. Over time, I realized that WoW took away a heck of a lot more than it provided in solutions and this is why none of the games today have any real meaning. They are all essentially just WoW clones, carrying on that design direction to which I found I mostly dislike.
I remember LDON when it came out. I really disliked it and maybe that was a warning as to the disruption that instancing would provide as it kind of stood out in EQ like a sort thumb.
Yeah, 40 bucks just to get content cleared in a timely matter... No Ty. Sounds pay to win to me.
You didn't get it cleared in a timely manner. The only thing the server gave you was immediate GM support when requested (ie I could call a GM and have one answer in less than a minute). More personal investigation into that support (no "scripted blah blah" responses). Also, the GMs tended be similar to admins on the Test server (ie more power and knowledge of the game systems over a standard production server GM).
Outside of that and just guild rotation schedules, that is what it got you.
You still had to beat the mobs on your own, you still had to earn everything in the game, no handouts, no bonuses, no special treatment in game. It was honestly no different than some of the servers whose guilds formed a similar alliance to do content in a rotation.
Not sure how that is pay to win. Pay to get away from the ass hats? Sure... but win? Nope... if you were a terrible player and your guild sucked, you didn't down bosses no matter how much the server cost or how nice the GMs were. /shrug
Ok, pay to have better access is still p2w if you ask me. You couldn't compete on the normal servers so pay more money so you can.
So are game expansions Pay to Win? As you are "paying to have better access"?
According to your requirements it is. /shrug
Um, not the same thing when other people aren't paying that much and are just on a different server and you have already paid for the game or expansion. /shrugs
It meets your definition. You stated: " pay to have better access is still p2w if you ask me"
An expansion is paying to have better access. So therefore, you are paying to win?
Now you added another exception I see.
Ok.. well... is having your character transferred pay to win? How about renaming your character pay services or any of those types of services? Pay to win or do you have another exception here?
Do you have a list of exceptions that conflict with your definition or do you just make them up as you go along?
Yeah, 40 bucks just to get content cleared in a timely matter... No Ty. Sounds pay to win to me.
You didn't get it cleared in a timely manner. The only thing the server gave you was immediate GM support when requested (ie I could call a GM and have one answer in less than a minute). More personal investigation into that support (no "scripted blah blah" responses). Also, the GMs tended be similar to admins on the Test server (ie more power and knowledge of the game systems over a standard production server GM).
Outside of that and just guild rotation schedules, that is what it got you.
You still had to beat the mobs on your own, you still had to earn everything in the game, no handouts, no bonuses, no special treatment in game. It was honestly no different than some of the servers whose guilds formed a similar alliance to do content in a rotation.
Not sure how that is pay to win. Pay to get away from the ass hats? Sure... but win? Nope... if you were a terrible player and your guild sucked, you didn't down bosses no matter how much the server cost or how nice the GMs were. /shrug
Ok, pay to have better access is still p2w if you ask me. You couldn't compete on the normal servers so pay more money so you can.
So are game expansions Pay to Win? As you are "paying to have better access"?
According to your requirements it is. /shrug
Um, not the same thing when other people aren't paying that much and are just on a different server and you have already paid for the game or expansion. /shrugs
It meets your definition. You stated: " pay to have better access is still p2w if you ask me"
An expansion is paying to have better access. So therefore, you are paying to win?
Now you added another exception I see.
Ok.. well... is having your character transferred pay to win? How about renaming your character pay services or any of those types of services? Pay to win or do you have another exception here?
Do you have a list of exceptions that conflict with your definition or do you just make them up as you go along?
Wow, ok agree to disagree then. >.>
This isn't an issue of disagreement. There is you using a definition properly, and then you not.
I can't say something invalid and then claim to "agree to disagree", that is only relevant on subjective issues. (you like cake, I like pie, which is the best?).
You stated something to be pay to win, then you defined its requirements. When I showed an error in your requirements, you provided an "exception"...
What if the game has a PvP server and requires extra subscriptions in order to pay for the additional rule set management they offer? Is that "Pay to win" also?
See, I think you are misusing "pay to win" which is why your definition keeps running into problems.
No if everyone paid for the game and its x-pacs but you can pay more money to get better access to it then the ones on the regular paid servers I call that p2w. You can disagree all you want but that's it.
You aren't getting better access. You are getting better customer service, but the server rotation is just a rule set, no different than any other rule set server, be it PvP, Role playing, etc... this one just had scheduled raids rather than competitive ones. The extra money was for the added staff, not the rule set.
For the rotation servers to be Pay to Win, such would have to be cheating. Is players rotating raid content cheating?
The problem is that you are misusing pay to win. Paying to win means you pay money to bypass content, to gain rewards that you did not earn, to circumvent game play. A server that has rotations isn't cheating, isn't circumventing game play, or gaining rewards unearned. They are just taking turns on the content. That is not cheating, that is not Paying to Win.
Sounds like you are just hung up on the 40 bucks a month thing and don't understand that having a GM staff that will respond to you at a moments notice is expensive. In fact, there were massive problems in EQ back then with the GMs and customer service. The entire reason for this server was that they said they could not afford to give the service people were demanding due to the costs and this server solved that.
So how is having a GM instantly attend to a bug, a crash, an issue, etc... Pay to win?
No if everyone paid for the game and its x-pacs but you can pay more money to get better access to it then the ones on the regular paid servers I call that p2w. You can disagree all you want but that's it.
You aren't getting better access. You are getting better customer service, but the server rotation is just a rule set, no different than any other rule set server, be it PvP, Role playing, etc... this one just had scheduled raids rather than competitive ones. The extra money was for the added staff, not the rule set.
For the rotation servers to be Pay to Win, such would have to be cheating. Is players rotating raid content cheating?
The problem is that you are misusing pay to win. Paying to win means you pay money to bypass content, to gain rewards that you did not earn, to circumvent game play. A server that has rotations isn't cheating, isn't circumventing game play, or gaining rewards unearned. They are just taking turns on the content. That is not cheating, that is not Paying to Win.
Sounds like you are just hung up on the 40 bucks a month thing and don't understand that having a GM staff that will respond to you at a moments notice is expensive. In fact, there were massive problems in EQ back then with the GMs and customer service. The entire reason for this server was that they said they could not afford to give the service people were demanding due to the costs and this server solved that.
So how is having a GM instantly attend to a bug, a crash, an issue, etc... Pay to win?
If they just made a server with that rule set that didn't cost more than than the others then it would be fine.
Some servers had them, rather they were ran by player alliances though.
Like I said, the extra money was due to the costs of the GMs (thought I was a little off on the GM support, it went beyond just bugs and the like, they ran quests, I never really got involved with those events much, so I forgot about them). They were there for any problem instantly and that was not cheap, especially with the special tailored quest content. Though... I can't remember, but the server may have had some extra content as well, I think... Wait... here is an advertisement on the features:
What Everquest Legends will offer you: Character Pages Part of the Legends web site, each player character will have a personal homepage featuring all the character's statistics and items, and will be updated daily.
Dynamic Server (Exclusive) Our dedicated team of Customer Service & Development staff will not only be providing in-game support to our Legends players, but also running new quests and adventures for players of all levels to participate in.
Legendary Items Some of these Legendary items will even be named after the first player who discovers them.
Calendar of Events This web-based calendar will be kept up to date by the Legends Team, and will let you know who, when, where, and what is going on server-wide.
Interactive Maps Quickly find which zone your character is bound in, and which zones you have or haven't visited.
Tales of Adventure The Tales of Adventure will feature the best stories submitted by Legends players, prominently displayed for the whole world to marvel in your glorious deeds!
Guild Halls This new service includes a guild calendar, message board, member roster, and pages to post guild news, the guild history, and more! (Including logo) This sounds like a really great idea, I can't wait to see it live. However, there are only 8000 spots available, but if you do get in, you can move 8 of your current characters on a single account with items. The monthly cost is $39.95 and will include your current subscription. Sign up is February 4, 2002. Remember ONLY 8000 lucky people will get this chance.
I forgot about the legendary items. Basically, they were new items added to the drop tables of various mobs and the first player to loot them got to name them.
Some of the features I think they were testing out (interactive maps, etc....) and obviously the quests were additional features for the players.
Point is, this was like an "expansion" server. As you can see, not the same exact content on it. You were buying extra features of play with it (mostly the interactive aspects of web/guild systems and that of the GMs with quests and the like).
This was paying for special treatment, or rather a more personalized treatment due to people getting angry at the poor customer service of SoE at the time on the regular servers.
Basically, it was the Legends server was the full product, while the other servers became the OEM versions of the game, ie the product, but lacking in the support.
What Everquest Legends will offer you: Character Pages Part of the Legends web site, each player character will have a personal homepage featuring all the character's statistics and items, and will be updated daily.
Dynamic Server (Exclusive) Our dedicated team of Customer Service & Development staff will not only be providing in-game support to our Legends players, but also running new quests and adventures for players of all levels to participate in.
Legendary Items Some of these Legendary items will even be named after the first player who discovers them.
Calendar of Events This web-based calendar will be kept up to date by the Legends Team, and will let you know who, when, where, and what is going on server-wide.
Interactive Maps Quickly find which zone your character is bound in, and which zones you have or haven't visited.
Tales of Adventure The Tales of Adventure will feature the best stories submitted by Legends players, prominently displayed for the whole world to marvel in your glorious deeds!
Guild Halls This new service includes a guild calendar, message board, member roster, and pages to post guild news, the guild history, and more! (Including logo) This sounds like a really great idea, I can't wait to see it live. However, there are only 8000 spots available, but if you do get in, you can move 8 of your current characters on a single account with items. The monthly cost is $39.95 and will include your current subscription. Sign up is February 4, 2002. Remember ONLY 8000 lucky people will get this chance.
<snip>
That does change things quite a bit. I would like if pantheon had a server with just that rule set at the same price as the other servers. With out all the extras.
Well, as I mentioned in a previous comment, these days that "feature" could be pretty much entirely automated.
That is, you would go to a special instance for testing your qualified tier only. No loot would drop and it would be one of the top bosses of that tier. If you won, the game would flag you automatically and then put your guild into a database where it would display the rotation through an in-game or web page out of game of who is doing what tier mobs that week.
With a good report tool system, any abuses could easily be logged, captured with video/screens, and easily handled by a GM (ie someone takes a mob they aren't scheduled for, the GM reviews the logs/report and then bans them from the server to a non-scheduled raid server). I was thinking, you could even have a flagging automation system. Basically, when it is your turn, your raid leader (or guild leadership) is flagged and all who enter the raid with them are flagged for the mob as well. Anyone who is not flagged and attacks/kills, helps without being flagged by the rightful raiders would cause them to get a negative flag to which the GM could easily pull up all in the database and deal with as needed.
This way you retain the nature of EQ raiding as it concerns loot rarity (ie only loot from a single Boss per cycle) and you automate the system where no heavy GM interaction is required. Then, any server could have it as a normal rule set server.
Those who want competition servers, well... there will be those, those who want the ability to actually be able to hold a job and raid content without having to wait for years of content to be released, well this solves that.
My ideal server would be one with a massive harsh death penalty, ridiculously long leveling curve, corpse runs that require gear recovery, long fights even with trash mobs, etc... in that theme and then rotation schedules for raid mobs. They could even put in "contest" type raids where there are metrics to gauge the skill of the raid in handling various dynamic content in order to establish the pecking order for the rotation as well.
That would be a server where more focus would be put on the skill of the raiders over the ability to poopsock.
Ok I have to agree with Driven. If you have to pay extra for content in any form or way then that is pay to win. And makes it even worse if it already has a standard sub. Now the server type you are talking about can exist, I see no problem with that and it actually sounds like a decent solution, but not for extra money.
I basically break most free to play type games into 4 categories and sometimes a mix of either:
1. Buy to Play: Buy and get access to everything. This has some problems but at least its not pay to win.
2. Free to Play, but with cash shop for things not essential for game play like vanity items and Name changes, server changes, etc. Not my prefered thing but at least its not pay to win.
3. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for ease of access or faster access etc. this is definitely pay to win or what I call pay to win faster.
4. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for goods that are full on pay to win.
I would put the paid server you sugested in category 3: Pay to Win Faster. But thats only if I have to pay more for the access to existing content that my sub should already cover. If my sub covers it then its not and its fine.
Ill say this though. While I dont mind the idea in general. I cant help but almost think of this as wanting instanced content without it being technically an instance.
Also there are easier ways to do this. Instead of having everything be a camp. Why not have quest or item triggered Raids. You still have to farm the trigger item or complete a complex quest to pop the raid mob. And you still have to make your way to its spawn location (deep dark dungeon etc). And you still have raid level difficulty. And you can still have it be rare drop rates. Couple this with only being able to do it 2-3 times a week per Raid boss, and i see no problem
Ok I have to agree with Driven. If you have to pay extra for content in any form or way then that is pay to win. And makes it even worse if it already has a standard sub. Now the server type you are talking about can exist, I see no problem with that and it actually sounds like a decent solution, but not for extra money.
I basically break most free to play type games into 4 categories and sometimes a mix of either:
1. Buy to Play: Buy and get access to everything. This has some problems but at least its not pay to win.
2. Free to Play, but with cash shop for things not essential for game play like vanity items and Name changes, server changes, etc. Not my prefered thing but at least its not pay to win.
3. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for ease of access or faster access etc. this is definitely pay to win or what I call pay to win faster.
4. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for goods that are full on pay to win.
I would put the paid server you sugested in category 3: Pay to Win Faster. But thats only if I have to pay more for the access to existing content that my sub should already cover. If my sub covers it then its not and its fine.
Ill say this though. While I dont mind the idea in general. I cant help but almost think of this as wanting instanced content without it being technically an instance.
What are they winning? You aren't getting faster access. In fact, if you choose not to work and poopsock with your guild, you will get more raid targets than you would if you were on a rotation.
Fact is, it is "faster" for a good competitive guild who has the time than it is on a rotation server.
There is no "win faster" here.
Everyone on a rotation server agrees to "win slower".
As for the instanced comment. As I said, the problem with instances is that they produce loot proportional to the number of guilds doing them. The schedule rotation idea doesn't change the amount loot brought into the world.
At that point, an instance is really pointless as it was created to allow copies of the same content so everyone could do it without having to wait as it was in EQ.
As I said, this is a better solution for a rules server. Some people will want the full on competition servers, I never really cared for that level of raid competition, even when I started playing EQ. Fact is, only a very small percent of the player base is even going to have the thrill of this form of play as most targets will be killed within minutes of them spawning and likely by people who have been camping them.
My main concern though is about loot entering the world and instances will make loot all too common, which will invalidate the entire point of having that rare item.
Just by making the world raid bosses roamers and spawn at random locations and random times will fix some of the drama. Same goes for all nameds and even dungeon nameds. That's the best way to prevent excessive camping. Ancient Cyclops in south Ro and South Karana nameds like Quillmane are good examples, popular mobs but you couldn't claim camp because of the spawn system. For raids some additional measures might be needed of course and it's good to hear that devs are thinking about it.
It doesn't really work when you have tracking classes. Most Pegasus cloak campers would park a ranger in South Karana, then log in on a regular basis, track and kill then Multi-Quest for money or for an alternate character. If you weren't a friend of the offending party, good luck getting the cloak without paying the bastages tons of platinum or bartering. People should be able to get items on their own without having to pay the Troll under the bridge his bribe money. I don't know about most gamers, but I know that I adventure for the content, experience and the loot. I don't care to be denied content due to some higher level camping douche looking for a payday or alt twinkage.
No if everyone paid for the game and its x-pacs but you can pay more money to get better access to it then the ones on the regular paid servers I call that p2w. You can disagree all you want but that's it.
You aren't getting better access. You are getting better customer service, but the server rotation is just a rule set, no different than any other rule set server, be it PvP, Role playing, etc... this one just had scheduled raids rather than competitive ones. The extra money was for the added staff, not the rule set.
For the rotation servers to be Pay to Win, such would have to be cheating. Is players rotating raid content cheating?
The problem is that you are misusing pay to win. Paying to win means you pay money to bypass content, to gain rewards that you did not earn, to circumvent game play. A server that has rotations isn't cheating, isn't circumventing game play, or gaining rewards unearned. They are just taking turns on the content. That is not cheating, that is not Paying to Win.
Sounds like you are just hung up on the 40 bucks a month thing and don't understand that having a GM staff that will respond to you at a moments notice is expensive. In fact, there were massive problems in EQ back then with the GMs and customer service. The entire reason for this server was that they said they could not afford to give the service people were demanding due to the costs and this server solved that.
So how is having a GM instantly attend to a bug, a crash, an issue, etc... Pay to win?
If they just made a server with that rule set that didn't cost more than than the others then it would be fine.
Some servers had them, rather they were ran by player alliances though.
Like I said, the extra money was due to the costs of the GMs. They were there for any problem instantly and that was not cheap, especially with the special tailored quest content. Though... I can't remember, but the server may have had some extra content as well, I think... Wait... here is an advertisement on the features:
What Everquest Legends will offer you: Character Pages Part of the Legends web site, each player character will have a personal homepage featuring all the character's statistics and items, and will be updated daily.
Dynamic Server (Exclusive) Our dedicated team of Customer Service & Development staff will not only be providing in-game support to our Legends players, but also running new quests and adventures for players of all levels to participate in.
Legendary Items Some of these Legendary items will even be named after the first player who discovers them.
Calendar of Events This web-based calendar will be kept up to date by the Legends Team, and will let you know who, when, where, and what is going on server-wide.
Interactive Maps Quickly find which zone your character is bound in, and which zones you have or haven't visited.
Tales of Adventure The Tales of Adventure will feature the best stories submitted by Legends players, prominently displayed for the whole world to marvel in your glorious deeds!
Guild Halls This new service includes a guild calendar, message board, member roster, and pages to post guild news, the guild history, and more! (Including logo) This sounds like a really great idea, I can't wait to see it live. However, there are only 8000 spots available, but if you do get in, you can move 8 of your current characters on a single account with items. The monthly cost is $39.95 and will include your current subscription. Sign up is February 4, 2002. Remember ONLY 8000 lucky people will get this chance.
I forgot about the legendary items. Basically, they were new items added to the drop tables of various mobs and the first player to loot them got to name them.
Some of the features I think they were testing out (interactive maps, etc....) and obviously the quests were additional features for the players.
Point is, this was like an "expansion" server. As you can see, not the same exact content on it. You were buying extra features of play with it (mostly the interactive aspects of web/guild systems and that of the GMs with quests and the like).
That does change things quite a bit. I would like if pantheon had a server with just that rule set at the same price as the other servers. With out all the extras.
I think something like that would do much better now than it did back then. This was before the whales hit the scene. I don't think many of the rich gamers today would even blink at a 50 buck per month server with tailored service and dynamic content.
No if everyone paid for the game and its x-pacs but you can pay more money to get better access to it then the ones on the regular paid servers I call that p2w. You can disagree all you want but that's it.
You aren't getting better access. You are getting better customer service, but the server rotation is just a rule set, no different than any other rule set server, be it PvP, Role playing, etc... this one just had scheduled raids rather than competitive ones. The extra money was for the added staff, not the rule set.
For the rotation servers to be Pay to Win, such would have to be cheating. Is players rotating raid content cheating?
The problem is that you are misusing pay to win. Paying to win means you pay money to bypass content, to gain rewards that you did not earn, to circumvent game play. A server that has rotations isn't cheating, isn't circumventing game play, or gaining rewards unearned. They are just taking turns on the content. That is not cheating, that is not Paying to Win.
Sounds like you are just hung up on the 40 bucks a month thing and don't understand that having a GM staff that will respond to you at a moments notice is expensive. In fact, there were massive problems in EQ back then with the GMs and customer service. The entire reason for this server was that they said they could not afford to give the service people were demanding due to the costs and this server solved that.
So how is having a GM instantly attend to a bug, a crash, an issue, etc... Pay to win?
If they just made a server with that rule set that didn't cost more than than the others then it would be fine.
Some servers had them, rather they were ran by player alliances though.
Like I said, the extra money was due to the costs of the GMs. They were there for any problem instantly and that was not cheap, especially with the special tailored quest content. Though... I can't remember, but the server may have had some extra content as well, I think... Wait... here is an advertisement on the features:
What Everquest Legends will offer you: Character Pages Part of the Legends web site, each player character will have a personal homepage featuring all the character's statistics and items, and will be updated daily.
Dynamic Server (Exclusive) Our dedicated team of Customer Service & Development staff will not only be providing in-game support to our Legends players, but also running new quests and adventures for players of all levels to participate in.
Legendary Items Some of these Legendary items will even be named after the first player who discovers them.
Calendar of Events This web-based calendar will be kept up to date by the Legends Team, and will let you know who, when, where, and what is going on server-wide.
Interactive Maps Quickly find which zone your character is bound in, and which zones you have or haven't visited.
Tales of Adventure The Tales of Adventure will feature the best stories submitted by Legends players, prominently displayed for the whole world to marvel in your glorious deeds!
Guild Halls This new service includes a guild calendar, message board, member roster, and pages to post guild news, the guild history, and more! (Including logo) This sounds like a really great idea, I can't wait to see it live. However, there are only 8000 spots available, but if you do get in, you can move 8 of your current characters on a single account with items. The monthly cost is $39.95 and will include your current subscription. Sign up is February 4, 2002. Remember ONLY 8000 lucky people will get this chance.
I forgot about the legendary items. Basically, they were new items added to the drop tables of various mobs and the first player to loot them got to name them.
Some of the features I think they were testing out (interactive maps, etc....) and obviously the quests were additional features for the players.
Point is, this was like an "expansion" server. As you can see, not the same exact content on it. You were buying extra features of play with it (mostly the interactive aspects of web/guild systems and that of the GMs with quests and the like).
That does change things quite a bit. I would like if pantheon had a server with just that rule set at the same price as the other servers. With out all the extras.
I think something like that would do much better now than it did back then. This was before the whales hit the scene. I don't think many of the rich gamers today would even blink at a 50 buck per month server with tailored service and dynamic content.
I don't think those "whale" type players would even want to play such. Reason I say is that server had no freebies. There was no cheating (ie buying exp potions, gear, etc...), there was no paid advancement, etc... You were really just paying to have a very attentive and interactive GM base for quests, events, etc... as well as a lot of frills with all the web based tools, forums, character view, etc.. that already exists by default in most games today.
Without the Pay to Win (ie buying progression, circumventing content, etc...) a "whale" would likely find little interest.
Though people like me did enjoy it because we were professionals who could afford the monthly fee and wanted a more tailored experience. They also limited the number of people who could be on the server specifically to attend to a more "community" like atmosphere over the massive crowding of the main production servers.
"back then", the overwhelming majority of raid guild supported instancing raids
in FACT, it was implemented ON REQUEST of raiders
Ok, time for a little debunking session.
First, I played EQ hardcore for the first 3 years, and never once heard anyone suggest instances in game, guild chat, forums, irc or the EQ chat rooms. The competitive nature of EQ was just accepted. The drama was part of the game.
Every MMO nowadays has hacks that just keep an eye out for spawns. In EQ it was called macroquest.
No one actually went to look if a mob had spawned, you just zoned in, pulled up your macroquest utility and the map showed if there was a mob and where. You could set the hack to warn you if a mob had spawned, you didn't even needed to be at your PC.
That's not a solution.
It also really doesn't fix any issues at all, it actually makes the issues worse.
So because there are hacks in a 16 year old game that is poorly managed, Visionary Realms should just design their game around everyone knowing everything. Don't think so.
The entire point of instancing is to allow multiple guilds to go after the same target without having to compete.
Not really, the point was to stop the drama, to stop the GM having to intervene every 2 minutes and to cut the amount of development cost needed to make a massive world.
Loot isn't less rare just because you use instances, it's actually a kind of an odd argument that I haven't seen anyone else claim before.
If loot is rare or not can be easily changed in instanced raids, you can change the lockout time, you can make the drop more rare, you can make the instance more difficult, etc.
The idea behind instancing has always been to allow more people to kill the mob. You say you've never heard that argument, but it is the argument against instancing. It removes much of the exclusivity that made EQ the game that it was. Besides immersion, there is literally no other major arguments against instancing.
I can log into Phinny and see multiple guilds killing the same raid mobs.
Phinny is a classic server, it has nothing to do with EQ of today. And all classic servers are infested with drama.
27 pages of whining about the raids and drama on the phinny server:
Citing a progression server that brings back an extremely high concentration of the hardcore player scene to only 1 or 2 servers is a poor example. Its like citing P99.
Originally in EQ, a tiny subset of the players engaged in raiding. 27 pages of drama on a forum is nothing. I don't even have to read the thread to know its 2 or 3 guilds, with 5 or so champions from each guild spamming the forum over and over again with their disdain for having to compete. Chances are its mostly the 2nd and 3rd ranking guilds, because the guild that is winning all the mobs probably doesn't care that much. Point is, its not representative of a majority.
In the end, the game is either one of competition or its not. Its either providing everyone with their own loot pinata or its not. That is not what classic Everquest was about, and it was much more popular before instanced raids became the norm than it was when everyone got their free chance at items. The more realistic and contested nature of EQ was its defining feature that made it stand out from the crowd. When they went the way of WoW, SOE hamstringed themselves trying to compete directly with a new, higher quality game.
Its marketing 101. Product differentiation is key to surviving as a brand. When you stop doing you, its considered a huge risk and means you must offer a better version of what your competitors are offering. That simply was not possible.
Likewise, it will be a huge risk for Pantheon to fall in line with the mainstream on matters like these. Pantheon has a chance to shine as a game where your accomplishments mean something again; where nothing is given to you for free. That is why they have already announced that instancing will not be used in Pantheon except in isolated instances for the purpose of story-telling.
Aradune keeps labeling this game as a cooperative MMORPG. I'm not sure why you guys think it should revolve around social and political PvP and contested content. In my mind, it should be a very minor part of the game if not at all. Like raiding, only a small subset of gamers are into the contested content thing. If you think otherwise, I challenge you to look at how MMORPG's have changed to be more inclusive and accessible to all play styles and less about exclusivity and player self-policing. That change didn't happen in a vacuum, it happened due to player demand, including many of the so called hardcore gamers who were directly responsible for the changes that came with games like WoW and EQ2 and the greater accessibility paradigm that continues today.
As far as I can tell, Aradune is more interested in creating a game with more challenge and player interdependency and less about the more controversial and divisive mechanics that were more detrimental to EQ in the long run.
Comments
The Legends server (ie the GM controlled schedules) seemed to work the best as they had zero tolerance banning for any guild who took down a mob off their schedule. It was broke a couple of times, but when those entire guilds were banned from the server, it stopped really quick.
I don't mind them putting in a means to stop abuse both in group and raid, but like your point, I find it a bit of double standard when people claim it is fine for group content, but not raid content.
One solution I was thinking of is to have a special server that is scheduled raids. Then, if an abuse happens, they ban the offenders to another server where the content is all completely contested like they did with the Legends server.
Introducing of raid instances for high-end raids, of which I'm a big supporter.
(mind you, I don't think every raid mob needs to be instanced, lower tier raid mobs with lower tier gear on faster spawn timers, don't seem to cause problems in MMO)
Instead of 1 contested open world raid for 4 guilds, you have 4 raid instances for 4 guilds.
Outside of instances, I haven't seen any solution that would work.
EQ early on had a server called the Legends Server (Stormhammer). It was a special high sub fee server (40 bucks). One of the features it provided was a schedule rotation for raid mobs.
Basically, when your guild was ready to start raiding, you would contact a GM and schedule a raid test with them for a certain day (providing you met certain requirements). Then, you would go to the Arena and that GM would spawn the top boss from that tier.
If your guild could beat the boss, you were ranked for that tier and put into the rotation with the rest of the servers guilds. Once you qualified you were able to pick which tiers you wanted and could even pass on some bosses. It was all handled by a schedule online with a guild list of who was doing what that week.
If a guild took down a mob that was not on their list, they were banned from the server forever. It was ridiculously easy to report it, you just did a log of them while they were doing it and sent it to the GM. The GM would ban everyone in the raid. This killed the drama very quickly. After a couple quick bans, nobody violated the rule and the system was pretty easy to upkeep (just a standard rotation automated on the site and a GM occasionally for the initial ranking test).
The nice thing about this is that the amount of loot brought into the world stayed the same.
With the instances you mention, the amount of loot is based on the number of guilds doing instances. As I mentioned to you, it increases the raid loot significantly and destroys that unique element of rarity that EQ had for its loot. Having instances makes the game like WoW where gear is extremely common and a given look or achievement in a drop is meaningless.
I don't think this is a direct comparison to the idea of instanced raid content with timers. What you seem to be referring to is making content easier or faster, which I am also against, but neither is created strictly because of instancing. Instancing only directly effects relative availability between players/guilds. As long as the lockouts are at the right time, it will keep the vertical progression from going too high. The difficulty and required players could remain unchanged unless those instances also have player caps. This above assumes that VR does not want one guild or entity to be able to be more powerful than others. They may want this as a form of competition and in that case, have them contested.
This does not exclude the idea of world bosses however. There should be at least a handful of those that take many guilds to take down, and varying smaller bosses aside just to make the world more exciting.
One thing to note about having players themselves govern the system is that VR will still have to moderate. I'm sure they plan to have GMs and event planners within and around the game monitoring things but what functionalities would it take away to monitor and enforce raid schedules?
If the world is huge and guilds are removed far from each other, there can be drama free raiding in open world.
But that costs massive amounts of development.
Another problem is, that you tend to want to run scripts during raids. That is much easier to do in an instance than in an open world.
One of the benefits of instances in Everquest, or rather a welcome side effect, was that the raids became much more challenging, developers could run zone-wide scripts without affecting the rest of the world.
That is hard to do in open world.
What instances do is greatly increase the amount of items into the system (causing fast gear inflation) and allowing players to more quickly consume the content putting pressure on the developers. This is why modern games have a problem with players sitting around complaining about not enough content. The time it takes to gear up a guild for continued progression in a contested content game is an enormous amount of time compared to games today, keeping them busy chasing progression rather than sitting around board comparing how they all have the same gear.
I hate games that are completely instanced and things like server channels. It's immersive breaking. I don't think all raids should be instanced either. But EQ was never like that.
EQ had certain great expansions that simply lend themselves to instances, and high end raids were instanced after a while.
Let's say you have a party in the open world, and you discover a dungeon, and you can only enter at around lvl 70. And the zone inside will have a dragon with a massive zone-wide AE.
Why should it not be an instance? It makes sense that it is an instance. the zonewide AE needs will be limited to the instance, the raiders won't bother anyone outside, and there will be no drama. How does it affect a player outside of the instance?
The open world outside, which is still 90% of the content, is still beautiful and challenging, but some dungeons inhabited by massive monsters, take place in an enclosed location, an instance.
And if someone else wants to experience this fight, they can too, they don't need to wait until everyone else left the dungeon, another instance is simply spawned.
Raids in EQ not being challenging is kind of a gossip thing. They were actually very difficult, but their difficulty was not always in complexity of event, though later there was some zone wide events (POE for example), but the difficulty in coordinating healing, tanking, and other roles for long periods of time with a very low error threshold.
Regardless, whatever you do in an instance, can be done in open world with technology today. Also, having it affect the rest of the world is kind of the point and why so many loved the Ring War in Velious and other major zone events that were caused by raids. Instancing is counter to the social game and puts us back on the track of WoW and games today.
Outside of that and just guild rotation schedules, that is what it got you.
You still had to beat the mobs on your own, you still had to earn everything in the game, no handouts, no bonuses, no special treatment in game. It was honestly no different than some of the servers whose guilds formed a similar alliance to do content in a rotation.
Not sure how that is pay to win. Pay to get away from the ass hats? Sure... but win? Nope... if you were a terrible player and your guild sucked, you didn't down bosses no matter how much the server cost or how nice the GMs were. /shrug
What was the cave close by Vexhal Exhange with the spiders? That was great.
I like both open world and instances. Like 90% of the world open world, and certain raids and some expansions like LDON with instances is perfect for me.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
According to your requirements it is. /shrug
I didn't play much of Vanguard, but I am aware it had massive land mass areas and dungeons.
I liked the private feeling of instances at times, but they do far more damage to the game than they help when used in a traditional sense. They alienate the player base, kill social responsibility, increase loot into the game, etc...
I loved WoW when it came out, but I came to find that a lot of that love was just the newness of features that "appeared" to solve the discomforts I had with EQ. Over time, I realized that WoW took away a heck of a lot more than it provided in solutions and this is why none of the games today have any real meaning. They are all essentially just WoW clones, carrying on that design direction to which I found I mostly dislike.
I remember LDON when it came out. I really disliked it and maybe that was a warning as to the disruption that instancing would provide as it kind of stood out in EQ like a sort thumb.
An expansion is paying to have better access. So therefore, you are paying to win?
Now you added another exception I see.
Ok.. well... is having your character transferred pay to win? How about renaming your character pay services or any of those types of services? Pay to win or do you have another exception here?
Do you have a list of exceptions that conflict with your definition or do you just make them up as you go along?
I can't say something invalid and then claim to "agree to disagree", that is only relevant on subjective issues. (you like cake, I like pie, which is the best?).
You stated something to be pay to win, then you defined its requirements. When I showed an error in your requirements, you provided an "exception"...
What if the game has a PvP server and requires extra subscriptions in order to pay for the additional rule set management they offer? Is that "Pay to win" also?
See, I think you are misusing "pay to win" which is why your definition keeps running into problems.
For the rotation servers to be Pay to Win, such would have to be cheating. Is players rotating raid content cheating?
The problem is that you are misusing pay to win. Paying to win means you pay money to bypass content, to gain rewards that you did not earn, to circumvent game play. A server that has rotations isn't cheating, isn't circumventing game play, or gaining rewards unearned. They are just taking turns on the content. That is not cheating, that is not Paying to Win.
Sounds like you are just hung up on the 40 bucks a month thing and don't understand that having a GM staff that will respond to you at a moments notice is expensive. In fact, there were massive problems in EQ back then with the GMs and customer service. The entire reason for this server was that they said they could not afford to give the service people were demanding due to the costs and this server solved that.
So how is having a GM instantly attend to a bug, a crash, an issue, etc... Pay to win?
Like I said, the extra money was due to the costs of the GMs (thought I was a little off on the GM support, it went beyond just bugs and the like, they ran quests, I never really got involved with those events much, so I forgot about them). They were there for any problem instantly and that was not cheap, especially with the special tailored quest content. Though... I can't remember, but the server may have had some extra content as well, I think... Wait... here is an advertisement on the features:
I forgot about the legendary items. Basically, they were new items added to the drop tables of various mobs and the first player to loot them got to name them.Some of the features I think they were testing out (interactive maps, etc....) and obviously the quests were additional features for the players.
Point is, this was like an "expansion" server. As you can see, not the same exact content on it. You were buying extra features of play with it (mostly the interactive aspects of web/guild systems and that of the GMs with quests and the like).
This was paying for special treatment, or rather a more personalized treatment due to people getting angry at the poor customer service of SoE at the time on the regular servers.
Basically, it was the Legends server was the full product, while the other servers became the OEM versions of the game, ie the product, but lacking in the support.
That is, you would go to a special instance for testing your qualified tier only. No loot would drop and it would be one of the top bosses of that tier. If you won, the game would flag you automatically and then put your guild into a database where it would display the rotation through an in-game or web page out of game of who is doing what tier mobs that week.
With a good report tool system, any abuses could easily be logged, captured with video/screens, and easily handled by a GM (ie someone takes a mob they aren't scheduled for, the GM reviews the logs/report and then bans them from the server to a non-scheduled raid server). I was thinking, you could even have a flagging automation system. Basically, when it is your turn, your raid leader (or guild leadership) is flagged and all who enter the raid with them are flagged for the mob as well. Anyone who is not flagged and attacks/kills, helps without being flagged by the rightful raiders would cause them to get a negative flag to which the GM could easily pull up all in the database and deal with as needed.
This way you retain the nature of EQ raiding as it concerns loot rarity (ie only loot from a single Boss per cycle) and you automate the system where no heavy GM interaction is required. Then, any server could have it as a normal rule set server.
Those who want competition servers, well... there will be those, those who want the ability to actually be able to hold a job and raid content without having to wait for years of content to be released, well this solves that.
My ideal server would be one with a massive harsh death penalty, ridiculously long leveling curve, corpse runs that require gear recovery, long fights even with trash mobs, etc... in that theme and then rotation schedules for raid mobs. They could even put in "contest" type raids where there are metrics to gauge the skill of the raid in handling various dynamic content in order to establish the pecking order for the rotation as well.
That would be a server where more focus would be put on the skill of the raiders over the ability to poopsock.
I basically break most free to play type games into 4 categories and sometimes a mix of either:
1. Buy to Play: Buy and get access to everything. This has some problems but at least its not pay to win.
2. Free to Play, but with cash shop for things not essential for game play like vanity items and Name changes, server changes, etc. Not my prefered thing but at least its not pay to win.
3. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for ease of access or faster access etc. this is definitely pay to win or what I call pay to win faster.
4. Free to Play, but with cash shop that you pay real money for goods that are full on pay to win.
I would put the paid server you sugested in category 3: Pay to Win Faster. But thats only if I have to pay more for the access to existing content that my sub should already cover. If my sub covers it then its not and its fine.
Ill say this though. While I dont mind the idea in general. I cant help but almost think of this as wanting instanced content without it being technically an instance.
Also there are easier ways to do this. Instead of having everything be a camp. Why not have quest or item triggered Raids. You still have to farm the trigger item or complete a complex quest to pop the raid mob. And you still have to make your way to its spawn location (deep dark dungeon etc). And you still have raid level difficulty. And you can still have it be rare drop rates. Couple this with only being able to do it 2-3 times a week per Raid boss, and i see no problem
Fact is, it is "faster" for a good competitive guild who has the time than it is on a rotation server.
There is no "win faster" here.
Everyone on a rotation server agrees to "win slower".
As for the instanced comment. As I said, the problem with instances is that they produce loot proportional to the number of guilds doing them. The schedule rotation idea doesn't change the amount loot brought into the world.
At that point, an instance is really pointless as it was created to allow copies of the same content so everyone could do it without having to wait as it was in EQ.
As I said, this is a better solution for a rules server. Some people will want the full on competition servers, I never really cared for that level of raid competition, even when I started playing EQ. Fact is, only a very small percent of the player base is even going to have the thrill of this form of play as most targets will be killed within minutes of them spawning and likely by people who have been camping them.
My main concern though is about loot entering the world and instances will make loot all too common, which will invalidate the entire point of having that rare item.
It doesn't really work when you have tracking classes. Most Pegasus cloak campers would park a ranger in South Karana, then log in on a regular basis, track and kill then Multi-Quest for money or for an alternate character. If you weren't a friend of the offending party, good luck getting the cloak without paying the bastages tons of platinum or bartering. People should be able to get items on their own without having to pay the Troll under the bridge his bribe money. I don't know about most gamers, but I know that I adventure for the content, experience and the loot. I don't care to be denied content due to some higher level camping douche looking for a payday or alt twinkage.
I think something like that would do much better now than it did back then. This was before the whales hit the scene. I don't think many of the rich gamers today would even blink at a 50 buck per month server with tailored service and dynamic content.
Without the Pay to Win (ie buying progression, circumventing content, etc...) a "whale" would likely find little interest.
Though people like me did enjoy it because we were professionals who could afford the monthly fee and wanted a more tailored experience. They also limited the number of people who could be on the server specifically to attend to a more "community" like atmosphere over the massive crowding of the main production servers.
Originally in EQ, a tiny subset of the players engaged in raiding. 27 pages of drama on a forum is nothing. I don't even have to read the thread to know its 2 or 3 guilds, with 5 or so champions from each guild spamming the forum over and over again with their disdain for having to compete. Chances are its mostly the 2nd and 3rd ranking guilds, because the guild that is winning all the mobs probably doesn't care that much. Point is, its not representative of a majority.
In the end, the game is either one of competition or its not. Its either providing everyone with their own loot pinata or its not. That is not what classic Everquest was about, and it was much more popular before instanced raids became the norm than it was when everyone got their free chance at items. The more realistic and contested nature of EQ was its defining feature that made it stand out from the crowd. When they went the way of WoW, SOE hamstringed themselves trying to compete directly with a new, higher quality game.
Its marketing 101. Product differentiation is key to surviving as a brand. When you stop doing you, its considered a huge risk and means you must offer a better version of what your competitors are offering. That simply was not possible.
Likewise, it will be a huge risk for Pantheon to fall in line with the mainstream on matters like these. Pantheon has a chance to shine as a game where your accomplishments mean something again; where nothing is given to you for free. That is why they have already announced that instancing will not be used in Pantheon except in isolated instances for the purpose of story-telling.
Aradune keeps labeling this game as a cooperative MMORPG. I'm not sure why you guys think it should revolve around social and political PvP and contested content. In my mind, it should be a very minor part of the game if not at all. Like raiding, only a small subset of gamers are into the contested content thing. If you think otherwise, I challenge you to look at how MMORPG's have changed to be more inclusive and accessible to all play styles and less about exclusivity and player self-policing. That change didn't happen in a vacuum, it happened due to player demand, including many of the so called hardcore gamers who were directly responsible for the changes that came with games like WoW and EQ2 and the greater accessibility paradigm that continues today.
As far as I can tell, Aradune is more interested in creating a game with more challenge and player interdependency and less about the more controversial and divisive mechanics that were more detrimental to EQ in the long run.