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The Lineage 2 Classic Debacle (their first emergency patch)
pkpkpk
Member UncommonPosts: 265
For those expecting good things from commercial classic servers, this is a bad omen. It seems that the rule here is that old gameplay is championed by the company only as long as the majority of players want it. They may only use it in advertising. When they find themselves with over 10,000 players on their classic servers, and the majority of those players filling their forums with complaints about the difficulty, things change fast... very fast. Only a little over a week after the server launched they are rushing out an emergency patch during prime time to appease what seems to be an unreasonable and hysterical mob. Here are the three changes to the game in the patch:
XP Loss Upon Death decreased to 4% from 10%.
Gold and Item Drops permanently increased on all monsters.
Fixed an issue where monsters gave significantly lower XP in the following zones: [etc, etc. etc.]
After testing in game, I am getting about two to six times as much gold as I was before the patch. As some players have paid benefits that give them more gold, this is increasing exponentially for them, giving them up to 9x as much gold as they were getting before.
How much gold were they getting before the patch? After only a week, players were offering to buy weapons worth more than 200,000 gold. Items were being sold worth more than 340,000 gold. Though according to one player on the message boards who supported increasing the gold, no one could buy this 340,000 gold item after only a week, cause they didn't have the money yet, cause the drops were so low. Some of these players, by the way, were level 40. There were murmurs on the message boards that the experience was too high, that instant travel was bad, that supernatural newbie starting gear was wrong, that they should reinstate item drop on death, that the game was too easy. Still... the emergency? Make the game easier! Emergency patch! It is probably the most pitiful spectacle I have ever seen in an online game.
A commercial classic server is an impossibility. The people on those message boards are drones. They log in at five o'clock, log off at twelve. They are punching a clock. They can't spell, capitalize, or use proper grammar. They have no coherent chain of reason. And they all say the same thing.
This is the mob that rules the game. The company didn't even answer for their actions. They just changed it. Why in the world would someone play this? As I predicted before it launched, it will become exactly like every other MMORPG. It is a progression server, literally, progressing towards crap. The people there... they are there to play with lots of players. Classic, schmlassic. This is commiting the exact same errors as every other MMORPG. It is nothing but a marketing ruse. They made a tremendous amount of money launching this opposed to, say, what they would have made from another live server. And within a week they're already drawing in the bait. Disgraceful.
A lesson to be learned here: a commercial "classic" server is an appeal to the feelings of the players. I had never considered this before, but now that I think of it, "classic" means to most players "the fun I had when I was younger". It is a "sales point". That is why these players are here...I already could have told you with 20,000 players something was amiss. Project 1999 has about a 1000 at a time, Uthgard DAoC somewhere near that. NCSoft's only chance to make this game good was blown. They gave in, and didn't even explain themselves. They get their 20,000 players, but not me. Hahaha.
Also quick note of bad things in this game:
1) Instant travel (not classic)
2) Supercharged starting gear (not classic)
3) Party based combat. Many players are using to level very quickly. From what I have seen it is tedious and skilless. Mobs drop like flies, and regeneration is off the charts.. It is like TERA or what I imagine Guild Wars 2 is. I had thought Lineage 2 was mostly solo, but not at all. Soloers are disadvantaged, but the parties stink, and anyway why would I play Lineage 2 over EQ?
4) 1 in 10 players (no joke) are multi-boxing. This is the tackiest and most tasteless thing I have ever seen in an MMORPG. One of ten players is going around with at least a healer that he controls following him around. Very, very strange and, well, degenerate.
5) Death penalties have been removed almost. First they took away the chance to drop an item on death, now they have reduced the experience penalty by 60%.
EDIT: This server is a train wreck now after the latest patch. It takes two hours to log into it. Players are remaining AFK 24/7, a good deal of the queue is multi-boxers and foreigners. It may seem I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. I would have to be one desperate addict to remain in the Lineage II queue for 2 hours, so I'm done with this game it seems. I revoke what I said on the news thread. This game is "pay to win"--unless you have a VIP account, it takes two hours to log in (yes, TWO hours, think about that). Sometimes after I log in I'll only play for 30 minutes or an hour. This server is probably the biggest joke I've ever seen. It was marketed as classic, somehow attracted 20,000 or more players, and has gone off into insanity, a flurry of challenge reductions, cheating, absurd spending, logged in 24/7 players powerleveling. This has... nothing to do with classic. Somehow it became a sight seeing tour for tens of thousands of idle people. I've never experienced anything like this in an online game, and I have been playing them since the mid 90s. I don't really know how to analyze it. I don't think it will become clear till the dust settles, and we see why so many players are so anxious to reach high levels on a Lineage II Classic server. Will the activities at the end be much different from the normal servers? I thought the item shop would be a novelty, as any other free to play game I've played. A certain kind of player would use it, but this company is in this big time, and they're making tremendous, almost unseemly amounts of money. Very strange... the number of players on these servers is perverse and entirely out of proportion with other classic MMORPGs. Uthgard DAoC has _300 players_ on right now. DAoC Classic 300 vs. Lineage II Classic 20,000. Is there any more unnatural contrast than that in the world? How can we see anything but complete illogic in Lineage II Classic? And so it is, just a teeming mass of players screaming for the game to be easier, and the company acquiescing without even explanation, as the server spirals downwards among corruption, greed, pride, cheating, unreason, and immorality. Yuck...this is very opposite of the experience someone looking for a classic MMORPG wants.
XP Loss Upon Death decreased to 4% from 10%.
Gold and Item Drops permanently increased on all monsters.
Fixed an issue where monsters gave significantly lower XP in the following zones: [etc, etc. etc.]
After testing in game, I am getting about two to six times as much gold as I was before the patch. As some players have paid benefits that give them more gold, this is increasing exponentially for them, giving them up to 9x as much gold as they were getting before.
How much gold were they getting before the patch? After only a week, players were offering to buy weapons worth more than 200,000 gold. Items were being sold worth more than 340,000 gold. Though according to one player on the message boards who supported increasing the gold, no one could buy this 340,000 gold item after only a week, cause they didn't have the money yet, cause the drops were so low. Some of these players, by the way, were level 40. There were murmurs on the message boards that the experience was too high, that instant travel was bad, that supernatural newbie starting gear was wrong, that they should reinstate item drop on death, that the game was too easy. Still... the emergency? Make the game easier! Emergency patch! It is probably the most pitiful spectacle I have ever seen in an online game.
A commercial classic server is an impossibility. The people on those message boards are drones. They log in at five o'clock, log off at twelve. They are punching a clock. They can't spell, capitalize, or use proper grammar. They have no coherent chain of reason. And they all say the same thing.
This is the mob that rules the game. The company didn't even answer for their actions. They just changed it. Why in the world would someone play this? As I predicted before it launched, it will become exactly like every other MMORPG. It is a progression server, literally, progressing towards crap. The people there... they are there to play with lots of players. Classic, schmlassic. This is commiting the exact same errors as every other MMORPG. It is nothing but a marketing ruse. They made a tremendous amount of money launching this opposed to, say, what they would have made from another live server. And within a week they're already drawing in the bait. Disgraceful.
A lesson to be learned here: a commercial "classic" server is an appeal to the feelings of the players. I had never considered this before, but now that I think of it, "classic" means to most players "the fun I had when I was younger". It is a "sales point". That is why these players are here...I already could have told you with 20,000 players something was amiss. Project 1999 has about a 1000 at a time, Uthgard DAoC somewhere near that. NCSoft's only chance to make this game good was blown. They gave in, and didn't even explain themselves. They get their 20,000 players, but not me. Hahaha.
Also quick note of bad things in this game:
1) Instant travel (not classic)
2) Supercharged starting gear (not classic)
3) Party based combat. Many players are using to level very quickly. From what I have seen it is tedious and skilless. Mobs drop like flies, and regeneration is off the charts.. It is like TERA or what I imagine Guild Wars 2 is. I had thought Lineage 2 was mostly solo, but not at all. Soloers are disadvantaged, but the parties stink, and anyway why would I play Lineage 2 over EQ?
4) 1 in 10 players (no joke) are multi-boxing. This is the tackiest and most tasteless thing I have ever seen in an MMORPG. One of ten players is going around with at least a healer that he controls following him around. Very, very strange and, well, degenerate.
5) Death penalties have been removed almost. First they took away the chance to drop an item on death, now they have reduced the experience penalty by 60%.
EDIT: This server is a train wreck now after the latest patch. It takes two hours to log into it. Players are remaining AFK 24/7, a good deal of the queue is multi-boxers and foreigners. It may seem I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. I would have to be one desperate addict to remain in the Lineage II queue for 2 hours, so I'm done with this game it seems. I revoke what I said on the news thread. This game is "pay to win"--unless you have a VIP account, it takes two hours to log in (yes, TWO hours, think about that). Sometimes after I log in I'll only play for 30 minutes or an hour. This server is probably the biggest joke I've ever seen. It was marketed as classic, somehow attracted 20,000 or more players, and has gone off into insanity, a flurry of challenge reductions, cheating, absurd spending, logged in 24/7 players powerleveling. This has... nothing to do with classic. Somehow it became a sight seeing tour for tens of thousands of idle people. I've never experienced anything like this in an online game, and I have been playing them since the mid 90s. I don't really know how to analyze it. I don't think it will become clear till the dust settles, and we see why so many players are so anxious to reach high levels on a Lineage II Classic server. Will the activities at the end be much different from the normal servers? I thought the item shop would be a novelty, as any other free to play game I've played. A certain kind of player would use it, but this company is in this big time, and they're making tremendous, almost unseemly amounts of money. Very strange... the number of players on these servers is perverse and entirely out of proportion with other classic MMORPGs. Uthgard DAoC has _300 players_ on right now. DAoC Classic 300 vs. Lineage II Classic 20,000. Is there any more unnatural contrast than that in the world? How can we see anything but complete illogic in Lineage II Classic? And so it is, just a teeming mass of players screaming for the game to be easier, and the company acquiescing without even explanation, as the server spirals downwards among corruption, greed, pride, cheating, unreason, and immorality. Yuck...this is very opposite of the experience someone looking for a classic MMORPG wants.
Post edited by pkpkpk on
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