Sad, lonely little community :(

[John Adams]

This just makes me sad.

swgemu.jpg

How is it possible that more people love SWG than EQ2? EQ2 is a far superior game! Not only do they have a huge, active community, they have 1400+ players online! Unless of course, that's just smoke & mirrors

I know why more people love WoW emulators... because Blizzard as like a billion subscribers.... but still... wow!

WoW Server Status Page

etc...

So, Community... what's the problem? What do we have to do to get you interested? Is it content? Server features? Do we need to pay you money? Just curious

[xinux]

The main reason SWG is so big is because there is no more retail servers.

[John Adams]

I think the same could be true about EnBEmu... though I haven't checked in with them for a year, not sure what's going on after the split.

[Kinshi]

As the admin of a SWGEmu community server I can tell you the fact there is no live, SOE version of SWG is the #1 factor. We don't have to compete with SOE for mindshare..also preCU SWG is soooo different from EQ 2 as to make comparisons invalid, there is so little crossover between like a game like SWG and a game like EQ2 as their fundamental designs and function are so different.

The fact there is a shiny, new free to play EQ II out there avail 24/7 with all content and features available does make a emu a hard sell. SOE itself is your #1 competitor for mindshare. Might help to focus on the areasa that would separate you from SOE

I think you should use the Shards of Dalya EQEmu server as an example. They took the content development tools and decided to heck with SOE copyrighted content and restrictions, and went and made their own.

As such, if you zero in on content dev tools, alongside game mechanics..instead of trying to be SOE(blizz)-like and get sucked into the never ending catchup that comes with replicating SOE content, you may find a lot more traction, plus in the end it gives anyone who uses EQ II Emu a LOT more choices.

Its the path I am taking with my SWGEmu server community swgcanon.com . We are moving away from SOE content, developing our own features, and writing our own content, and eventually will be a totally separate fork using our own assets.

anyway 2 cents... forget content for now...get the game mechanics & the content development tools done first...then the content dev will literally fly later on as that aspect will be far more accessible to non-programmers as a result. Only put more content in now as it applies to developing features and testing them.

[John Adams]

As such, if you zero in on content dev tools, alongside game mechanics..instead of trying to be SOE(blizz)-like and get sucked into the never ending catchup that comes with replicating SOE content, you may find a lot more traction, plus in the end it gives anyone who uses EQ II Emu a LOT more choices.

Thank you, this statement is brilliant advice. You are correct, we do need tools, which some of us are slowly developing behind the scenes. As for the EQ2Emulator "Project" as an entity, we do want a core server that is SOE-like, mostly because we can... but customization is definitely the key with emulators, and we've been developing our server engine with this in mind from the start.

Tools; it makes people happy.

[Starhowl]

Well, this is an ongoing effort, and improvements are coming every day; but despite that, it may be quite some time before we reach the level of stability that can hook a good number of players into staying for the long-run.

Also, I don't think it's any of our faults'; in my experience, EQ2 may be a more fun game, with a lot more content, but the people don't know about this project (it seemed my realm-mates on Lucan D'lere had never been anywhere on the internet). Exposure would certainly help with life on the forums and the game. I found this place by luck; I had done tinkering with WoW private servers, and after my EQ2 sub was up, I found my way here by fateful Google search. Not a quick find, either, I had to dig.

[Flunklesnarkin]

You guys are doing a good job with working on the mechanics and such, there just isn't enough content for a community of gamers to latch onto right now.

[John Adams]

I guess if people wondered if there was an EQ2 Emulator, typing that into Google should return something

But I agree. Lack of interest, lack of content, lack of community. MMOs are only fun with friends

[Flunklesnarkin]

Believe me, sometimes more players isn't the best outcome.

It's more about having the right players who just want to have fun and enjoy the game.


EQ2 is a large world and I would urge you to consider staggered content release when you do reach beta or live server.


Too much content too fast spreads the population out and makes a world feel barren. If you limit content at first (but not too limited) it forces player interaction between newer and older players. There definitely has to be enough stuff for players to remain interested while playing though.


Keep plodding along and you will get there eventually.. look at yeahlight with eqclassic (eq1) he's been at it nearly 7 years but he's about done with his masterpiece finally lol.

[JCL]

I love what you guys are doing here as live is just horrible. Cash shop + cutesy stuff they're adding like WoW just ruin it for me. What stops me from staying here and helping is the server is not advanced enough. And what I mean by that is combat is not fluid enough. If it was fluid I would be much more likely to stay interested. I know you guys are working hard and hope you keep up the good work for us who have the dream of playing the EQ2 we remember.

[John Adams]

And what I mean by that is combat is not fluid enough. If it was fluid I would be much more likely to stay interested.

Since combat and/or phat lewts are what interest most people, it would be helpful to get more detail about what is or is not working as expected. Jabantiz just re-wrote tons of combat stuff in the last 8 mos, and it is the best it has been since the beginning. If you are saying it's still not right, we'd like to know more.

Unless you're speaking of simple lag... then there's not much we can do there without attacking the network layer. That's a whole different nightmare.

[JCL]

I am unfortunately talking about the delay in combat. While this could be a network thing I have seen plenty of emulators run just fine with mid-range computers and not have lag. When I say delay you go to attack an enemy and a few seconds later you actually hit it or cast that spell while it hits you a couple times. Seems like a combat mechanic not network based. That's another thing; Enemies seemed to attack really quickly (which may just be a attack speed setting for them). I think he did fix the warping quite a bit though, but I'm going off of memory from playing months ago when you just started implementing changes.

[thefoof]

Just played a little bit of combat on my local server to see if I noticed any lag and combat seemed pretty smooth on my end, so likely the lag you were experiencing is either fixed now, or it's more to do with some other factor than the actual mechanics, possibly just normal lag, it's also possible the server was in debug mode or just a slower box.

I'll check out some on db project tomorrow while I'm writing some scripts to see, although we don't have any spells over there so I'll just be checking auto attack delays =p

Keep in mind what was revamped for the system was more the general combat mechanics, such as hits/misses general combat movement and mitigation. Damage while part of combat is it's own subsystem and incomplete as shown on the project manager.

[Flunklesnarkin]

Well I bought a new comp, a little later than I expected to but I've been working so much I haven't really had much time for games. Not that I really have a lot of time now but I don't see the point in letting all this money rot in a bank account. (yeah i know, i'm not the smartest money manager!)

I'll try to get this set up for next weekend and do a few hours of game testing each week after that. I travel a lot doing utility work but I really had to upgrade my comp... the final straw was when I put a blue ray in it and it overheated halfway through Les Miserables... I was like

[John Adams]

As Foof said, definitely give us accurate feedback on the current state of combat. Jabantiz will be interested in community opinion, I am sure... as long as you're nice about it Keep in mind when comparing EQ2Emu to "other emulators" that our code is our own, not a splinter of any one of 2 dozen WoW base projects and we've always run very lean (1 C++ dev usually, ever). Not making excuses, just saying that if anything is below expectation at this stage, this might deserve some consideration.