Gauging Interest

[Splose]

This is a thread I've wanted to make for awhile, but the recent "poll" threads really turned me off making it. Now that that has died down I feel more inclined to do it.

While some of you may know who I am and what projects I have been affiliated with in the past, I am sure most people hanging around these forums nowadays do not. I have been a member of the EQEmulator community for as long as I can remember, and as a result have created or had my hand in many successful projects - EQDestiny, Emarr, and EQTownship, EQGenesis being my most memorable and fulfilling. I have also worked on many more custom servers behind the scenes. I have a database at the moment that I have been playing with on and off for the past 4-5 years that I have shown to maybe 3 people max. It has a ton of content, but I have not released it for a variety of reasons.

I have recently been contacted on more than one occasion by some old time players of my many past projects here on EQEmu asking whether or not I will ever be making a server again. The answer to that at this point in time is maybe. With the recent happenings at Daybreak it gives us a stark reminder that the Live game, while I think it has many years left in it, will not be around forever. My intent is to release a server in the near future so that when they finally sunset the Live servers my server will have a reputation as a long-standing, stable server that will catch some of the influx of Live players completely new to EQEmu. The reason I have not released this server is because I tend to stress about a few things. So I'd like to get some opinions. First I'd like to provide a basis for the conversation. If you'd indulge me please copy and paste the questions I have at the bottom and answer as you see fit.

Content Releases, Content Difficulty & Box Limits

Firstly. Bots/Mercs will never be a thing.

Current plans are to release content in "expansions". With a breakdown of the following for each "expansion":

80% solo content
10% group content (tuned for 6 players)
10% raid content (tuned for 18 players)

I am a strong supporter of boxing, and I am against boxing restrictions of anything less than 6. However, from my recent playthrough of the latest WoW expansion I really learned the value of well-made solo content. I learned that the solo player who plays for 1 or 2 hours everyday is the person you need to make happy for a stable and successful server/game/whatever.

My dream is for people on any server I create is to group up to defeat content rather than having everyone box their own group. The addition of 18 man raid content is to ensure that nobody boxing can just completely beat the game solo.

Dungeon Crawl vs. Sandbox

As someone who has played pretty much every custom server. I can safely say that from a player perspective the most fun I've ever had has been on servers where progression is very linear and strays very far away from the original sandbox style of the game. Think EZServer, THF, etc. With that said, the most rewarding server that I have ever run was my only sandbox style server, EQTownship which is best compared to Shards of Dalaya. Fully custom. While I would love to make a server like that again, my strength as a content creator has always been through my class design and boss encounter design, not storytelling and lore.

Complete Class Overhaul and Removal

Over the past couple of months I've been in the process of completely overhauling classes. Deleting every spell that a class is able to use and completely redoing it from the ground up. This can either be a selling point of the server, or something that will scare long-time EQ players away from the start. I've noticed a glaring issue with my original intent on doing this as well. EverQuest has way too many damned classes.

For a complete class overhaul I keep thinking to myself that the best course of action to provide decent balance and to preserve my sanity is to just straight up disable a lot of the classes and start with a basic lineup (2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 melee dps, 2 ranged dps). Introducing new classes as needed. This would allow me to provide a tight balance. I feel this is the best course of action because it is way more sustainable over a long period of time than one person balancing 16 redundant classes against each other.

Donations

A very controversial topic. Running a server takes up an unhealthy amount of time and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want some compensation for my time after server hosting is taken care of. The problem is that pay-to-win servers are the worst. I will specifically name drop THF here since I played on that server before it turned fully P2W.

My group of friends and I all paid for donator weapons ($50 at the time). It was a great way to support the server. At the time it was the only gear available via donation. Over time you were able to donate for a fully geared character and that gear would be better than any gear obtainable by playing and drove us to quit. This is not what I'm talking about. However I thought the Donator weapons were a great addition to the game, and are a great way to use the epic 2.0 weapon models.

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So now that you guys have a bit of an understanding of where I'm at. Here's the questions I want answered as thoughtfully as possible. I think it is necessary to say that this thread does not mean I will be releasing anything, rather just probing for interest.

• What are your thoughts on a 6-box limit, when the most challenging and rewarding content will be tuned for 18 players?
• Which do you prefer, Dungeon Runner style, or Sandbox, and why?
• Do you prefer a hub zone with teleporters, or a custom zoneline travel-based world?
• How do you feel about limiting class choices?
• How do you feel about completely deleting class abilities and customizing from the ground up?
• How do you feel about introducing donator weapons as the only piece of gear obtainable via donations?
• What are some tasteful rewards for donations that I can implement that are NOT pay to win?