The sub level 50(lv 60?) levels are desolate

From what I have seen of most of those servers, many of them are far easier to become "relevant." That would be the biggest issue I see in recruiting people whom are used to "easy mode" EQ. Sadly, with the advanced stage of the player base, anyone that isn't at least on tomes will probably have issues landing a group going LFG in /ooc.
 
Vitali said:
I guess the view is someone will come to SoD unsure, after playing servers where they can box as many clients as they want (EZ server, Grand Creation, etc) or have no AA or alternative to exp (P1999), and immediately accept the mountain of exp and drama they will have to deal with to progress their character.

Someone coming from P1999 will see they need to exp to 65 basically solo. Then grind 500~ AA, and depending on class (basically anyone who isn't a healer) will have to either two box or pray for some high tier person to adopt them like a pet to gain exp. "There there little fella, all you need to do is loot corpses for me. Thanks champ". After all AA are complete you now have over 100 tomes to work on. Again if your class is like (heaven forbid) a tank , good luck. At this point you may have a guild, I know Prophecy is always recruting. So you might have some rot gear and a few friends from raiding. You can start to trudge through tomes but even then the time investment is huge.

Exp aside, let's not forget quests. Some quests are almost required for classes. Or a charm? Archaic? Ritual? Relics? Ancients? Runics? Gosh that seems like a lot of work, and even more time.

Also those little nuances that push your character over some thresholds. Dragons/ Giants ally aug. Gotta pick a faction and complete that to progress the main story and access Dreadlands (SC/BS/ third I can't remember). Don't forget to do MQ as well, that aug is nice and required. The Vah while not required is a seriously nice item. Even I don't have it, but I sure wish I did. ToT item?

By now my point is made. I stand by what I said. If something isn't changed about how these things and many others work themselves out, a typical EQEmu player will see all that and try. Try to do it, try to figure it out, and likely just say forget it. Then they'll leave.

With that, we come back to the initial purpose of this post: How do we make the leveling process not so desolate? What can we do to retain people and make them want to level/ make an alt, etc.
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Its sounds to me like you just don't like the game. Every thing you named sounds like fun to me and is the reason I even log on. If I dreaded those things, I would simply find something else to play.
 
Those are fun to you, and the other couple dozen of us who play SoD. We are the outliers here in the grand scheme of MMO playing.
 
fuwok said:
Unfortunately, that's where everybody else is right now.
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I have to chuckle and disagree as I look at P99 with upwards of 2k concurrent users despite a toxic community, ongoing staff corruption, absentee/empathetic devs, and (thus) stale content taking eons for expacs promised years ago.. Theres still tens if not hundreds of thousands of players who would love to play old games over the crap we've been dealt in the last decade of MMOs. Though P99 being the "classic" server will tend to bring in more people, the cons greatly outnumber the pros. There is something missing here, and I still contend that its largely due to a lack of promotion and the technical difficulties with the old client. SoD is superior in almost every way; from community to quests, to class balance and content scaling, even modern EQ pales in comparison (imo).
 
Zaos said:
I have to chuckle and disagree as I look at P99 with upwards of 2k concurrent users despite a toxic community, ongoing staff corruption, absentee/empathetic devs, and (thus) stale content taking eons for expacs promised years ago.. Theres still tens if not hundreds of thousands of players who would love to play old games over the crap we've been dealt in the last decade of MMOs. Though P99 being the "classic" server will tend to bring in more people, the cons greatly outnumber the pros. There is something missing here, and I still contend that its largely due to a lack of promotion and the technical difficulties with the old client. SoD is superior in almost every way; from community to quests, to class balance and content scaling, even modern EQ pales in comparison (imo).
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You can disagree all you want but that's your opinion. The simple FACT is that there is more then 10x the amount of people on p99 and even the shittiest wow private servers have more population then sod has. People don't want to invest there entire life to an mmo anymore and the people that do enjoy sod end up leaving the server due to the constant nerfs.

A few years ago this server was GREAT, Multiple guilds across all tiers, exp zones were packed then a few nerfs (people who have been around for awhile know which nerfs im talking about) happened that dropped the pop from 250-300 down to about 150 and the server has never really recovered since.

Sod has a great endgame it really does but in its current state its very "clique" heavy, i would even say its impossible for new players to get anywhere. Want to start playing sod? Want to play a Tank? To BAD! We use ringers here, everyone does and if u say you dont you're a damn lier.

TLDR: Change needs to be made to sod, getting on the eqemu login may give the server a boost but it wont last long. The gap between new players and veterans is to big of an issue considering how much time it takes to do something in sod and if your one of those people who thinks that the server is fine with its current pop i would just like to say "enjoy your single player game".
 
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Expletus said:
You can disagree all you want but that's your opinion. The simple FACT is that there is more then 10x the amount of people on p99 and even the shittiest wow private servers have more population then sod has. People don't want to invest there entire life to an mmo anymore and the people that do enjoy sod end up leaving the server due to the constant nerfs.
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Dont want to invest their life into an MMO? try joining P99 fresh start. have fun taking 5 hours to get to level 2.



Expletus said:
Sod has a great endgame it really does but in its current state its very "clique" heavy, i would even say its impossible for new players to get anywhere. Want to start playing sod? Want to play a Tank? To BAD! We use ringers here, everyone does and if u say you dont you're a damn lier.
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< Goon Squad > & < Dragonkin >



Expletus said:
TLDR: Change needs to be made to sod, getting on the eqemu login may give the server a boost but it wont last long. The gap between new players and veterans is to big of an issue considering how much time it takes to do something in sod and if your one of those people who thinks that the server is fine with its current pop i would just like to say "enjoy your single player game".
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Gap for what? the end game? of course thats the same in any game. I bet there is a huge gap between my characters on p99 than the person starting off fresh. (PS im almost BIS everything on my enchanter sans a stupid BCG. I even have VS gloves on an enchanter...

I think people juts assume they need to be end game to have fun. Join < Goon Squad> if you arent a shit bag and enjoy the game without ringer tanks.
 
Well I can say off the bat that when someone who IS new to the server gives you a general break down of the things that have bothered/do bother them about starting on this server their "opinion" is going to be one of the more valid regardless of your opinion on the matter as he is THE ACTUAL FUCKING TARGET AUDIENCE.

"Its not this, its this!" Mother fuckers, open your god damn brains... you guys probably vote on party lines too. It's not fucking mutually exclusive, it can be two things or a few things or everything.

I never had problems with getting this game installed and running flawlessly on any of the pieces of shit or high quality rigs or OS from XP to 7 that I have played on, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I have a friend whose computer is almost the same, I think we differed in amount and type of RAM and hard drives but he still had problems. His problems were almost entirely EQW and as a general piece of advice I advise everyone who I suggest plays this game to NEVER use EQW. But Zaos is correct, some of the ways this game can act up is a huge turn off to someone who wants to play this game, let alone people just starting.

Is there a massive gap between the high end and the fresh starters? Yes, absolutely. People play MMOs for the mass multiplayer part of these games, or at least for the MM part some of the time. Will adding new content to 11-64 change that? Probably not. People play their mains and high geared alts constantly for a very good reason: There is a fucking shit ton of crap to get done after 55 and with no job, no life, the best ringers and a good group 95% of the time you are still going to take a year or two to get good. In P99 the struggle is getting to 65 and then getting in a raid with the few targets they have. The struggle on this server is called Shards of Dalaya, the whole thing is uphill.

Pretty much the impression I get is that in no way will 2.5 allow us to get on EQEmu. 3.0 MIGHT allow us to get on the EQEmu server but there is also possibly a political problem to getting us up on EQEmu. Either way, 3.0 is gonna be awhile so we need to figure something else out.

I hear good news about 2.5 fixing a number of technical problems so thats a good notch on the belt and also one of the few things the Admin can actually do to help the server retain people. However, the biggest thing we can do to make retention a real thing is to have people in the 10-45 range to group with these people and Admin can't do anything about that. This is on our shoulders and is something we have to try to do as a community.
 
What would prevent 2.5 or any other version of SoD from being compatible with eqemu login? Most of the servers on the list take separate installs as they use various eqemu patches or have custom content.

Also, I agree there could be multiple reasons why people aren't playing, but I don't see the point in people complaining about the core gameplay when changing it is obviously not an option. EQ (and SoD) is all about the journey from 1-65 and 65-max AA, experiencing the content in between. The exp rate on SoD is already much faster than that of P99, and even faster than the ez-mode Red99. 99% of the people playing on an exclusive PvE server like SoD are trying it to experience the content, not for a few days of instant gratification where they instantly hit max level and complete all the content in a matter of weeks. Not only is that the same reason new MMOs can't keep a stable population, but its literally the antithesis of the EQ experience.

Also Ezie when you say you got your client running perfectly, does that mean things like your cursor speed don't vary from your normal windows cursor speed? You can look up/down in third person at the same rate you look up/down in first person? It literally plays just like p99 or eq live? Cuz I've yet to see one of my friends install SoD and get it working like our p99 clients.
 
Zaos said:
Also Ezie when you say you got your client running perfectly, does that mean things like your cursor speed don't vary from your normal windows cursor speed? You can look up/down in third person at the same rate you look up/down in first person? It literally plays just like p99 or eq live? Cuz I've yet to see one of my friends install SoD and get it working like our p99 clients.
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It won't work like those because this client is old, shitty, and bug ridden. There is literally nothing to be done about this until 2.5 releases. Even 2.5 can't and won't fix all install issues, but it will fix many of the client related game play and interface issues.

I've had some kind of issue with every single emu I've installed, be it eq or wow. This includes p99. Over the years, I have even had many issues getting and keeping live working correctly. This is due to the wide range of hardware, networking, anti-virus, and OS configurations out there. Not to mention the differing human abilities to read, comprehend, and follow directions. This is precisely why there is a help section on the forums. I would argue that the help section should be at the top of the forums, with other new guy stuff, so it is easier to find and ask for help. Maybe the help section should also be linked to in a better way from the install directions.

In terms of your specific issues, and every single one of your friends with the same exact problem, post your problem in the help section and people will help you troubleshoot. Just like everywhere else in life, if you don't ask for help you wont get it. It is as simple as that. The SoD install is just as easy (and easier) to use than any other emu, and many many people have it working flawlessly (outside of known client related issues which effect everyone.)
 
Daffie said:
...The SoD install is just as easy (and easier) to use than any other emu, and many many people have it working flawlessly (outside of known client related issues which effect everyone.)
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Its really not (though I realize this varies for people). Other than adding the vsync=true to the ini to sync x/y mouse movement (which does nothing here), the other major EMUs require no tweaks. No core priority/affinity, no eqpn, no eq windows or other software, nothing. They just work.
 
Zaos said:
Its really not (though I realize this varies for people). Other than adding the vsync=true to the ini to sync x/y mouse movement (which does nothing here), the other major EMUs require no tweaks. No core priority/affinity, no eqpn, no eq windows or other software, nothing. They just work.
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This is literally the steps to play SoD:
1. Download EQ (you can even DL it legally from Sony. All EMUs require you to get your own copy of EQ, but some can't use installs that have been patched from live.)
2. Sign up for an SoD account
3. DL Patcher and delete the EQ live shortcut.
*Updating - the patcher handles any updates pushed out by the devs.
**EQ windows is a checkbox option that comes with SoD, but isn't required. Bind affinity is a checkbox in the patcher if you want to use it, but isn't required. SoD offers links to EQPN but isn't required and most people don't us it.

p99 install steps
1. Download EQ - Titanium only (don't patch to live or you have to start over.)
2. Download files and manually replace them in your titanium install
3. Delete files manually in your install directory
4. Sign up for 2 accounts (Forums/login)
5. make a shortcut for the launcher and delete the shortcut for that launches live.
*Updating - you have to manually download and install updates or you can't play after the devs release and update.

I honestly don't think it could get much easier to install an EMU than it is with SoD. It is seriously no brain easy, and it is much easier than installing the most popular EQ EMU. Most people install the thing and it just works no matter what windows OS they use or what graphics processors they have. (I believe you can even play SoD on Apple and Linux.)

In terms of game play: As said before, the current SoD client is old as shit and was put in production way before p99, which is why it has more bugs. The Devs are working to upgrade the client to a much more modern version than even P99 has. This will fix the most glaring client issues: Raid bug, keyboard bug, target ring bug (AMD), clipping plane bug (Intel), some custom UI stuff that you don't notice unless you are a power user, and hopefully the LD while zoning bug.

One thing that could be helpful to new guys is for YOU to work through your issues in tech help forums section. That way, new people who are unlucky enough to have your problem can seek help by searching and finding your post/solution. Also, if there is no configuration solution for your problem, the devs can look at it and maybe fix it.
 
Daffie said:
This is literally the steps to play SoD:
1. Download EQ (you can even DL it legally from Sony. All EMUs require you to get your own copy of EQ, but some can't use installs that have been patched from live.)
2. Sign up for an SoD account
3. DL Patcher and delete the EQ live shortcut.
*Updating - the patcher handles any updates pushed out by the devs.
**EQ windows is a checkbox option that comes with SoD, but isn't required. Bind affinity is a checkbox in the patcher if you want to use it, but isn't required. SoD offers links to EQPN but isn't required and most people don't us it.
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Now after you're done with that, log into the game, realize your mouse is totally worthless, you can't turn left or right in first person, you can't look up or down in third person. Now unplug your mouse from your computer, throw it on the floor, drive over it with an 18 wheeler. Post on the suggestions forum and let people tell you to run EQPN, or tell you that nobody else has this problem, watch your other friends have the exact same issue. I am an EQemu guru and have tried every possible method of fixing this and have come to terms with the fact that it can NOT be fixed. Not to mention the fact that you can't even have more than 1 hotbutton bar, which itself alone would drive every possible player to uninstall before they even start.

Now watch anyone who has come to play with you delete everything and go back to EQemu because THEIR client works out of the box.

The content, the leveling, almost every issue on this thread raised other than the client and the amount of people who actually know this server exists, are irrelevant. If the client was fixed the content leveling and the way this server is would be WHY people come to play here, not what drives them away.
 
That is just it, until you came here, none of us have ever heard of this mouse issue. Check the help forum, nobody has posted such a thing in the seven years I have been here. But, perhaps your mouse issue is a F12 thing? (It disables the mouselook.)
 
darksabbath said:
That is just it, until you came here, none of us have ever heard of this mouse issue. Check the help forum, nobody has posted such a thing in the seven years I have been here. But, perhaps your mouse issue is a F12 thing? (It disables the mouselook.)
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Rofl, I just found several dozen threads about it in 10 seconds, and I remember the issue from when I started here back in 2006 and had to same issue on every pc I've tried running it on since then.

https://shardsofdalaya.com/forum/search/53390/?q=vsync&o=date

https://shardsofdalaya.com/forum/search/53391/?q=mouse+axis&o=date

https://shardsofdalaya.com/forum/search/53397/?q=mouse+++problem&o=date
 
The only issues I have had while playing SoD was the LD bug before it was fixed and more recently I get the disconnect on zone for one of my characters but not the other even though they are on the same computer.

I have never had the mouse problem, the only time I have ever seen my mouse slow down or speed up is when I have 2 instances of SoD going, with netflix on a second monitor in an 18 man raid when I am also macroing on UO:Hybrid.

For the most part when I install I torrent EQ Titanium, install into my games folder under SoDEQ, toss the patcher in the folder and run as Admin. If I dont run as admin I have noticed on a fresh install that there is like a 50/50 chance it doesnt register mouse 5 when I try to use Vent or Mumble.

My buddies problem was the mouse getting stuck when he tabbed and his keyboard locking up, but that was all EQW.
 
darksabbath said:
That is just it, until you came here, none of us have ever heard of this mouse issue. Check the help forum, nobody has posted such a thing in the seven years I have been here. But, perhaps your mouse issue is a F12 thing? (It disables the mouselook.)
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I tried to get a friend of mine to play, but he had some mouse issue. It would move at lightspeed basically, impossible to really control. I think it was only vertically too. It was pretty weird, he tried a ton of shit to get it to work but nothing would work so he just gave up and quit.

Ezie3205 said:
The only issues I have had while playing SoD was the LD bug before it was fixed and more recently I get the disconnect on zone for one of my characters but not the other even though they are on the same computer.
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I still get zone crashes constantly, atleast the last time I was playing a few months ago. It's so goddamn annoying.
 
I fixed that zone crash thing by using a VPN. You might try it if you ever play again.
 
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