PLEASE reconsider the ViP lock on Cormyr server

[Lagin3]

@DDO Gaming no one ever mentioned it will be wiped. You're just rying to start trouble. Stop with the assault on me.

I'm just trying to draw a response (a warranted response) from SSG. They KNOW they have an issue with the current set-up/ lockout. So why are you attacking the messenger?

 

[Lagin3]

So there's only a problem if ...

People came to Cormyr for 2 reasons. #1 to take part in the event, #2 to play on virtually lag-free server & see how much better 64bt tech is.
When several guilds got established there wasn't ANY hint or word of being opened to F2P. We wanted a lag-free environment. We all knew a % were there for the event only. The problem is lack of foresight by SSG to have this dilema addressed before THIS happened. I'm being vocal about it. Why shouldn't I?

 

[Sol]

ngl I'm fairly confident that the server will die once VIP is the only way to access it because fresh blood won't come there. If you start DDO you'll play on a non-VIP server and have no reason to move there afterwards. Once 64-bit servers are added and people transfer, there will be even less incentive, especially with how much you can get playing for free now.

I know people who come back to DDO because they can just play without VIP on certain characters. If all my characters were locked behind a VIP server when the rest is F2P, then I'd just make a character elsewhere or transfer off if I can.

For better or worse it can stay a VIP perk, but it's not a very good perk relative to everything else VIP offers.

 

[Phoenicis]

There is no dilemma.

SSG has often and repeatedly stated Cormyr was VIP only. The 'open to non-VIP' period was stated and given clear start and stop dates.

Non-VIP have a choice at that point, Go VIP, hope SSG enables moves off Cormyr (something that has been mentioned on occasion), or abandon those characters in place.

For my wife and myself, we have made a number of new friends on Cormyr and have virtually abandoned our main server of Khyber. It remains to be seen if when the other 64 bit server(s?) come up will we move our mains and a number of other characters to the new servers to consolidate our most active characters onto the same server as some of our new friends. After all a lvl 187 guild is a hard thing to just give up on.

 

[DDO Gaming]

@DDO Gaming no one ever mentioned it will be wiped. You're just rying to start trouble. Stop with the assault on me.

I'm just trying to draw a response (a warranted response) from SSG. They KNOW they have an issue with the current set-up/ lockout. So why are you attacking the messenger?

lagin I appreciate this is a senstive topic for you and I humbly apologize if you feel I was assaulting you. However I only stated facts and you should focus on debating your position without being emotionally overwhelmed

 

[DDO Gaming]

There is no dilemma.

SSG has often and repeatedly stated Cormyr was VIP only. The 'open to non-VIP' period was stated and given clear start and stop dates.

Non-VIP have a choice at that point, Go VIP, hope SSG enables moves off Cormyr (something that has been mentioned on occasion), or abandon those characters in place.

For my wife and myself, we have made a number of new friends on Cormyr and have virtually abandoned our main server of Khyber. It remains to be seen if when the other 64 bit server(s?) come up will we move our mains and a number of other characters to the new servers to consolidate our most active characters onto the same server as some of our new friends. After all a lvl 187 guild is a hard thing to just give up on.

the difference in performance between 32bit and 64bit is a bit nuts and I would encourage SSG to make the investment. however its their $$$ and their decision how to best apply it

 

[Lagin3]

lagin I appreciate this is a senstive topic for you and I humbly apologize if you feel I was assaulting you. However I only stated facts and you should focus on debating your position without being emotionally overwhelmed

THANK YOU... YES I am overboard emotional about this. I have real life medical reasons for that.

 

[Positive thinking]

People came to Cormyr for 2 reasons. #1 to take part in the event, #2 to play on virtually lag-free server & see how much better 64bt tech is.
When several guilds got established there wasn't ANY hint or word of being opened to F2P. We wanted a lag-free environment. We all knew a % were there for the event only. The problem is lack of foresight by SSG to have this dilema addressed before THIS happened. I'm being vocal about it. Why shouldn't I?

That doesnt cover it all, some people like myself and my boyfriends came to collect all the first time ddo points for favor whilst slamming out all ten lanterns. Of course when we were done we coordinated with all our friends to make sure they were present in a suitable guild, of course some guilds lost more than a dozen players to players like us when they were finished favor and lantern farming. This would have made guild less active and when players see guilds as less active they either change guilds or dont bother to log into cormyr anymore.

When the free to play pass is done on cormyr many mid to small guilds that arent exclusive to a group of friends that connect with each other and/or enjoy playing with each other will fizzle and die off as they probably should.

With its no transfer policy cormyr will be a ghost town similar to wayfinder and anyone that invested time in building a guild will come to the inevitable conclusion that their time was spent and waisted. Just a prediction, but hey we can patiently wait until that time, so i can say “I told you so” or “I was right”.

Damn i might even log into cormyr after the event is done and buy a “Button of winning” from the DDO store to slam it hard, because my boyfriend and I definitely won especially on the first time ddo points fron favor!

 

[Knowbody important]

People came to Cormyr for 2 reasons. #1 to take part in the event, #2 to play on virtually lag-free server & see how much better 64bt tech is.
When several guilds got established there wasn't ANY hint or word of being opened to F2P. We wanted a lag-free environment. We all knew a % were there for the event only. The problem is lack of foresight by SSG to have this dilema addressed before THIS happened. I'm being vocal about it. Why shouldn't I?

What you seem to fail to realize is this was not an issue caused by F2P players. This entire situation was already considered and understood before Cormyr opened day one. Everyone who failed to realize that the server was mostly going to die when the event ended lacked serious foresight. What has happened though is we have pulled in players with years of experience on their home servers and have chosen to remain. Going forward, there might be way more people then you realize that either choose to remain full time, or make Cormyr a 2nd server. You also seem to fail to realize that for every 1 person in the lfg's theres 10 playing solo or in static groups. There is Way, Way more people on the server than you realize and there are Way, Way more guilds on the server than you realize. Most of them are out leveling you solely because of your size. You say there were a few guilds at launch, I would say there was likely 40 or 50 guilds and now theres likely over 100. They just chose to stay small for one reason or another. There are even guilds currently raiding on the server. Some entirely in house...and they arent massive guilds.

 

[Urklore]

You can see the results, now that everyone has their cosmetics you see at most 3-4 LFMs, and these are all for levels 1-7.

Even on the weekends, you see at most 5 or so LFMs.

 

[Positive thinking]

What you seem to fail to realize is this was not an issue caused by F2P players. This entire situation was already considered and understood before Cormyr opened day one. Everyone who failed to realize that the server was mostly going to die when the event ended lacked serious foresight. What has happened though is we have pulled in players with years of experience on their home servers and have chosen to remain. Going forward, there might be way more people then you realize that either choose to remain full time, or make Cormyr a 2nd server. You also seem to fail to realize that for every 1 person in the lfg's theres 10 playing solo or in static groups. There is Way, Way more people on the server than you realize and there are Way, Way more guilds on the server than you realize. Most of them are out leveling you solely because of your size. You say there were a few guilds at launch, I would say there was likely 40 or 50 guilds and now theres likely over 100. They just chose to stay small for one reason or another. There are even guilds currently raiding on the server. Some entirely in house...and they arent massive guilds.

Exactly what i was getting at, there are lots of guilds on cormyr that are comprised of a close group of friends playing with each other, these guilds will survive because the foundation of the guild is strong and the players have the utmost loyalty to each other. They will survive, guilds with willy nilly guild guidelines and random invites of random players soloing within the guild just for ship buffs and lacking the integrity of true guild loyalty, whether it be from the members, the officers or the guild leader are destined to fade away into dust.

Good strong surviving guilds will have a string tribal bond, other guilds will fail.

To this poster, your suggestion that certain guilds are running raids in house is smart and correct and strong guilds are the ones doing this, weak guilds need other guilds to raid with and then are easily controlled and influenced by these guilds, weakness will always just be weakness, but this whole argument isnt really relevant to the thread either way.

 

[Knowbody important]

Exactly what i was getting at, there are lots of guilds on cormyr that are comprised of a close group of friends playing with each other, these guilds will survive because the foundation of the guild is strong and the players have the utmost loyalty to each other. They will survive, guilds with willy nilly guild guidelines and random invites of random players soloing within the guild just for ship buffs and lacking the integrity of true guild loyalty, whether it be from the members, the officers or the guild leader are destined to fade away into dust.

Good strong surviving guilds will have a string tribal bond, other guilds will fail.

To this poster, your suggestion that certain guilds are running raids in house is smart and correct and strong guilds are the ones doing this, weak guilds need other guilds to raid with and then are easily controlled and influenced by these guilds, weakness will always just be weakness, but this whole argument isnt really relevant to the thread either way.

It is relevant. Guilds that play together stay together. People want a community. Some people join guilds just for the buffs to those people guild level is EVERYTHING. Other people join because they want people to play with, and still others because they want to experience parts of the game they would not see otherwise. Whether Free to Play, or Pay to play does not matter as much as cohesion. A guild that does activities together (raids being able to accommodate the most members) will have a direct impact. I say this mostly for Lagin's benefit. His real issue is that he mass invited folks, and those folks have informed him that they have no real loyalty to this server or to his guild. Any hiccup and they are gone. The hiccup in this case is that free to play players will have to go vip to remain. For the average guild this is not a concern as they will adapt. However, it appears that for Chainmail it's an existential crisis. I want to see him succeed, but adaptation to whatever is coming is the key....not complaining about realities that occured to a lot of folks last September/October.

The guilds that are working on a strong foundation, will retain folks and will see free to play players switch to VIP just to remain.

 

[DDO Gaming]

However, it appears that for Chainmail it's an existential crisis. I want to see him succeed, but adaptation to whatever is coming is the key....not complaining about realities that occured to a lot of folks last September/October.

I recall when I created my first character on cormyr my primary motivation was literally "let's see how this plays out". At the time Orien was occasionally so bad many days I just gaveup trying to logon. I would like to think my game time on Cormyr contributed to performance testing etc because [despite the ongoing complaints of fellow some gamers] I have seen a massive improvement on orien. Its possible orien will once again keel over and die after cormyr reverts to VIP but until then...

 

[Arch-Necromancer]

Why do VIPs want a VIP only server?

Maybe hearing their reasons and thoughs would help everyone understand the situation better...

So far I have just seen arguments about it being 64-bit and with less lag, but those will no longer be valid once other 64-bit servers are opened for F2P as well.

 

[Knowbody important]

Why do VIPs want a VIP only server?

Maybe hearing their reasons and thoughs would help everyone understand the situation better...

So far I have just seen arguments about it being 64-bit and with less lag, but those will no longer be valid once other 64-bit servers are opened for F2P as well.

So, there's a couple of reasons. As it stands VIP even with the rewards system offers very little benefit outside of the xp bonus which is about the only valid reason to go VIP. When they gave away all of the content with a free coupon, they greatly devalued VIP (I hope this never returns personally). So, offering a reduced lag server experience adds more value even if only temporarily.

In addition to that there are practical reasons. As someone who runs perpetual public groups, knowing that my party members at least have access to the VIP content, that I know I won't be planning to go do x...and half my party leaves because they don't own the content. I have also run into issues trying to form static groups with guildmates who were not VIP and oftentimes due to the VIP xp boost the VIPs would eventually outpace them. Then your options are to stop leveling while that person catches up. Or run content that you don't actually need to in order to catch them up. It ends up being a burden upon the VIP player, as the non-VIP player is holding everyone else back.

The last bit is the biggest part for me. The VIP experience boost does not seem huge, however over the course of 30 levels....it becomes hours of difference, more so if the VIP character is running an xp pot which is easy to do with earned ddo points + the 500 bonus monthly points.

 

[Sol]

So, there's a couple of reasons. As it stands VIP even with the rewards system offers very little benefit outside of the xp bonus which is about the only valid reason to go VIP. When they gave away all of the content with a free coupon, they greatly devalued VIP (I hope this never returns personally). So, offering a reduced lag server experience adds more value even if only temporarily.

In addition to that there are practical reasons. As someone who runs perpetual public groups, knowing that my party members at least have access to the VIP content, that I know I won't be planning to go do x...and half my party leaves because they don't own the content. I have also run into issues trying to form static groups with guildmates who were not VIP and oftentimes due to the VIP xp boost the VIPs would eventually outpace them. Then your options are to stop leveling while that person catches up. Or run content that you don't actually need to in order to catch them up. It ends up being a burden upon the VIP player, as the non-VIP player is holding everyone else back.

The last bit is the biggest part for me. The VIP experience boost does not seem huge, however over the course of 30 levels....it becomes hours of difference, more so if the VIP character is running an xp pot which is easy to do with earned ddo points + the 500 bonus monthly points.

Honestly, this. The only reason why VIP is worth it is because of the EXP boost and, frankly, the ability to open on Elite for alts. Multiple VIPs should give a small extra bonus (10% -> 13 -> 16 -> 20% or something that caps at 4) and that bonus should be shared with non-VIPs in the party (3 vips and one non-vip means the party gets 16% more experience, including the non-VIP).

However, I think that giving out all the quests in the form of a pass is something they should do more often. The paywall to play the game is vast, surely there are better ways to monetize when the content lock is such a bad look to any prospective player looking in at it for more than a few seconds (most people are savvy enough to check the store of a MMO they want to play first nowadays, and seeing 500+ USD of purchases of quest content is a bad first impression).

Like I said earlier, I think Cormyr is a bad VIP perk. It's not something I think people are going to buy VIP for explicitly unless they start putting exclusive content on it. If they want to make it worth it, they need to do something like Cormyr getting access to quests and stuff 1 month ahead of time or something. I don't like this idea, but it's something that I think they'd need to do if they wanted to make Cormyr a proper perk for VIPs.

Like, not to be harsh but the people arguing for Cormyr to remain VIP are the people who are invested in Cormyr to be successful. You bought into the VIP server and are now invested enough to spend money on it. I'm not unaccustomed to paying a subscription for MMO access, but this perk is competing against completely free servers.

I have no stake in the game, I don't play on Cormyr and I own almost every quest pack without VIP from years of playing. I get that money is needed to keep the game alive, I just think there has to be a better argument than this and better potential monetization options.

 

[Arch-Necromancer]

Fair enough, then the server should stay VIP, but there should be a way to transfer characters and guilds off the server when other 64 bit servers get opened.

 

[Mornyngstar]

Fair enough, then the server should stay VIP, but there should be a way to transfer characters and guilds off the server when other 64 bit servers get opened.

As stated on other threads, Severlin said ~"In the future we could revisit the issue of character transfers off Cormyr.
There was no mention of guilds moving but since they are putting in place guild transfers for the 32-bit to 64-bit migration, I would not be surprised that they add it for a price so guilds can hop servers.

 

[Ungermax]

I think SSG do not yet have a good grasp on what most players would need to justify a server being VIP only.

As it stands. We have Cormyrs main selling points being:

1) Prototype 64 bit
2) Unique cosmetics
3) Semi hardcore aspect in that you start with nothing (grey area due to unknown future SSG plans)

The main aspect of point 1 is that we get to see first hand what SSG can do with the upgrade, before they roll out whatever new server system comes next. It was rough at the start, but then lag pretty much disapeared with only a few outliers. The population was high for a time, the game felt ALIVE again, for a time. Being able to run lag free for a while restored some faith in the game for a lot of Vets I would say.

Point 2 is less of a factor because not everyone wants those cosmetics, and not everyone is VIP.

Semi hardcore aspect, starting with nothing, is kind of a nice break from things BUT. We dont know if SSG are going to have more events unique to Cormyr like this. If it replaces Hardcore in the long run (whether or not they will do another HC isnt the point) then the advantage would be, that with each event your character would be more powerful. So maybe later on when folk have the past lives and gear they want, more people might do the skull lanterns and what have you. But we just dont know if theyre going to do more events only on VIP locked Cormyr. If they were going to, then that might justify it a bit more in the long run. Who knows.

The problem with Cormyr remaining VIP locked, in my opinion, is that SSG have said there will be no transfers TO Cormyr. Now the biggest hurdle for most folk is that they have to "leave behind" their main server stuff, and this is literally why Cormyr as it stands, will not be a "main" server in the long run. If you cant transfer to it, then most will only play there if there is another unique event there.

So many points and so little concrete information from SSG. Cormyr was VIP locked until it wasnt but it will be again. They have the propensity to go back on what appear to be clear statements, and it is their right to do so, but. What they should do, is go back on their word once more and say, when the new 64 bitters come out, either a) Cormyr isnt VIP locked, and is just another 64 bitter, and kudos to those who already made a start there, OR b) it remains VIP locked but you can transfer to it.

What will be the point of staying on Cormyr when there are free 64 bitters that you can transfer to? The only real answer I can justify is, you have a static group or strong bond with the people/guild there that want to stay there. I think this is the ideal option for SSG, because they have won 100%. But I doubt it will sustain any numbers worth looking at unless they literally spam it with Cormyr only events.

 

[Lagin3]

@Ungermax well said