Hi, it's been a while since I done one of these.... Why so long? Well I stopped caring and gave up. But Classic has been open for almost 5 years now so maybe it's time for a little chat about the problems with it.
I made a topic with all the effect I felt I could expend toward classic (it ended up as about 10 words) pointing out the small issues that make the server seem like a forgotten wasteland. Little things like not updating the automatic announcements for almost a year, not announcing maint (tho they claimed this was an error), forgetting to open the patch server.... That's all still valid and relevant.
Do you know green ales still work? That's another "little thing" that they haven't checked.
Anyway, back on topic, so PVM is a wasteland. The cache system isn't going to fix the problems with PVM, what would fix it is changing up the current TIs (really we've had titans for years now), making them more friendly toward level 70+ players who are stuck after janeway. I mean Titans are pretty noob friendly, but rely on some key classes that aren't always available, mainly pullers. It'd be nice to see the return of magma/nogg road dungeon or something similar.
Part of PVM is MVPing. MVP loots sell slowly due to small population and already geared players. Now I know this problem was addressed on renewal with the introduction of "eat gear". MVPing could easily be revitalized with the DIRECT addition of stuff like slotted mids.
We have the challenge dungeon that still feels half finished. You know after spending some time on renewal in old glast heim it's disappointing to see it in the state it's in now. So much could have been done with that dungeon, including a quest line/kill count. It's just sad in it's current state. Maybe we need a new one.
We have people bugging entire maps full of monsters on to a single tile so they can farm freely whilst ruining the map for those others who may wish to use it.... That's not PVM. That's just abusing AI.
The current "event!" we have going on with the rockridge monsters... it feels half baked. I'm not trying to poopoo the staff's efforts (or am I?) but giving us some mobs to kill and saying hang on to the drops for mysterious reasons is really unmotivating. Give us real events! Talk to us! Classic is stuck in this state of "Seeing what we can do next..." it's been like that all year!
Look, I like Classic. It isn't perfect. It's far from it. We have bugged reflect in WoE that bypasses woe reductions (I wonder if that is to do with how reflect is applied, is it a special or is it in the db?), we have infinite range bowling bash and a problem where certain skills that are disabled in WoE or on WoE realms can be used via scrolls etc. It can't be that hard to disable assumptio scrolls outside of castles, or AR scrolls, or even consider disabling skills like battle chant that allow extremely powerful buffs to be gotten and carried over with no danger of dying.
Also there is abuse that can happen due to save points on the realms. I don't want to get into it too much, but the savepoints exist because of load issues from recall back in the day on old chaos/Ymir. Classic has none of that but all of the abuse that can come from saving on the realm. I'm not just talking about TKMs.
And yet the thing GMs police most is emblems because of renewal's slow load times. It's silly. Very silly.
As far as WoE goes, we have too many castles and too few guilds. I econned the whole Valfreyja realm for 3 weeks, and 3 of those castles for a month. I didn't even go there except to summon guardians. In this time we've gained 500+ OCAs. Which is going to produce a nice number of MP/DR/GR. Not to mention all the free ygg items. It really needs to be looked at. It's not right.
The smaller Classic gets the more vitriol and spite the community push on each other since they literally have nothing else to do. These people who have been playing vs each other for 5+ years (10 years in some cases) get quite vicious sometimes and those precious new players we do get (and it's quite a few tbh) see all of this and either jump into the toxicity themselves or just leave. In fact as I'm typing this an older player who returned somewhat recently is complaining about aforementioned toxicity.
However, it's time to stop blaming the players for that and start looking at what the toxic behaviour is symptomatic of - the server having nothing to do.
The cache system may be a start, but it's not going to occupy players for long. Killing plant property monsters is one of the most boring aspects of the game I can think of. We need TIs that provide GSBs and bring the community together. Give all those older players a reason to interact with new ones.
We need interesting and fun challenge dungeons. Old Glast Heim is a fun instance the first few times - but to port it over to classic it doesn't have to be instanced! It could function similar to the kiel hyre quest. It would just be something to do.
Okay I've ranted and I know there is so much more to be said, but that's up to other people too. It's not just me that feels like Classic is on it's last legs.
