Yo, I wanted to share my thoughts about this server, maybe its not too late to fix it, in case other servers where ppl went/are going will be fail and ppl will search server to play in future.
This post is subjective opinion, its not to brag or to flame. Some ppl might find it interesting, some ppl will discover unknown facts, other ppl (new) will know how is the situation.
Lets starts with introduction of myself.
Who doesnt care about private story can skip this
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I played around 7 years on classic clubs 1st server - talking island. The server had good and bad moments. It was a bit seasonal, in winter more ppl played, and in summer ppl were making break. In general the server was succesful, one of not many servers that survived so many years alive in l2 history (it did even better than officials). It had its failures and things ppl disliked : auction house which in the end killed server because of star wars (every1 with +18 weapons and +8-10 armors) - remember this point it will be important later, 2nd problem was very slow updates but as there wasnt classic server competition, people could accept it and wait. Because of auction house, people invested real money and felt binded to the server and didnt want to leave it. Shady part of this was the source from where items appeared on this AH - Old players will know, for new players i guess you can realise by urself. Dont get me wrong it also had possitive effect - cps that wanted to start on server could just "cash in" and in 2-3 months they were on equal lvl as other players, just missing epics. Continuing the introduction topic, for the big part of talking island server i was pleased/had honor to/had passion to test new server updates, advice rebalance/new things/new ways of server development - ofcourse i didnt get anything for it, not col nor real money. I was doing if from passion and i have no problem with that, but i know on other servers even randoms who bring 1 cp to play get paid. In most of cases server had its own ideas how to develop - mostly folowing official updates line, just taking into consideration what features were bad on official. Later on there was not much to follow from official updates so club decided to make its own orginal update (lilith vs anakim). In general i feel it was succesful, it was the most pvp/oly balanced chronicle in my opinion plus it revamped some locations to let mages get good exp, not only leech in gc - overall i rate this update very high, except few bugs that were fast fixed after it went live except sos skill(sk buff) that totally destroyed rb farm mechanics.
There was a moment in TI history where ppl accused me of abusing bug i find because i have upper hand having access to test server etc blabla. Since then admins cut of from me (most likely decission to keep good PR - their choice, i dont blame them) - it was around 1 year before every1 left TI server. Since then i didnt have any influence on server development -already on anakim/lilith update i had no influence). Im passionate for classic chronicle, im old dated player who likes to grind his way up, slowly progress, have stable situation, know the efford i put into farm will not be wiped in 3 months etc. The project fited my needs so i played here.
After TI "died" bad things started to happen (from my perspective). Server started to be on down ramp to failure. Let me explain why
The community, me and my friends started to beg admins to open new server. We - community- were not interested in playing seasonal 3 months interlude servers where after 1 month you reach endgame and have nothing to do and search for another project. Also not interested in Essence servers with legit bot installed into game. We were ignored for many months. When everyone already lost his hope, me and my friends came up with smart idea. What idea you may ask. We created fake news in community that the project start new server soon. It brought a lot of interested ppl into server discord. The discord had like 100x more activity than for past 6 months. We created free promotion for server, everyone believed its true but then admins made an official answer that its fake news and ignored all efford, hype and community wishes.
At this point almost everyone gave up. For sure me and my friends gave up. We had no more ideas, our last chance idea failed. We moved on. Then one of friends came up with idea, he found ppl who want to launch new server - classic. He found sponsor but there was enough money just to launch project. There wasnt money for advertisement, no money to pay devs, no money to pay clan leaders to come play and stream the server. Yes its 2023 - the lack of money backfired, and the server didnt gain big interest of community. The whole server team worked for free as charity just to make our dreams come true and bring back our lovely classic server to live. We even found a dev that worked for free and like it or not, he was 10x more efficient than classic club with adapting server to community needs. Sadly the server received huge strike form classic club admins. They realised the danger in new project and regardless all of begging in past about opening new server, suddenly they found motivation. The motivation that comes from anger, jealously and in general bad feelings. They announced new club server. they didnt even have files/update ready. They didnt know how to setup server to make community interested. They copied most of orginal features of competition server to attact attention and started to discuss on discord what else to put to make server succesfull and community interest. At that time i was more interested in new project, didnt even try to advice anything to club and tbh i hoped the server fail, after all the pain i received here. Sadly ( for me) the new server died because majorty of community believed club admins. Most of ppl who were about to start there, didnt even play just waited for club project, the rest who played noticed low online and stopped. As you can see now, karma is a bitch. Project built on hate is not doing well.
Lets jump back into club topic. The server started, most of features were decided on discord by majory of ppl. Shortly before server started i shared my opinion about many features - mostly about "linemage" but admins had new ppl to listen to and didnt pay attention. They treated me as intruder from other server, or retard about whom community thinks is bug abuser. Me and my friend were ignored until today. Whatever we suggest in chat on website was just ignored. We were told it would be taken to consideration, but nothing was happening and time was passing. Guess what, all balance problems, broken exp locations, fkd up drop rate we reported in january/february. Look where we are now.
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Who doesnt care about private bulsh1t story can start reading here
tldr: class pvp balance, spots exp balance, drop rate fk up, shadow nerfs, homeopatic changes, no catch up/rerol mechanic, admins ignorance, community, entering 2nd time the same river, knowing every next change that is coming in future - killing motivation
Lets finally talk about lessons learnt, the most juicy part - aka what is fail on server:
- shadow changes. A lot of things (mostly drop rates) were chaning on start of server. Noone receive any info. Ppl discover by playing. How many times did you inform about changes? I think 90% changes are not anounced
- class imbalance - summoners op dmg and bugged debuf resist on summons, mages op, daggers unplayable. archers unplayable until 76, bugged dmg on necro/da pets. custom changes for p def boost. Nukes on summoners nuke dmg vs fighter dmg. Tyrants useless for anything. List can be long
- slow server adaptation to situation. Feels like admins either have no devs or money or dont care until server is very low populated. Updates come slow, fixes are ignored, problems arise and most of ppl quit before problems are addresses
- server having broken agro mechanics. Spots like DV not worth to farm because mobs dont have social agro - can keep agro only by mass agro. In other hand there are locations like abg where 25 lvl elven knight can succesfully make trains for 70 lvl parties and never lose agro, mobs dont cast stun to puller, only to robe classes(for unknown reason. In official it was different). Mobs are too slow in all locations Mages can farm in devotion set and never get hit, dont even need puller for mos tof locations, can solo pull mobs and aoe.
- Imbalanced exp areas. No need to explain much here. ABG tree spot 50 lvl party farm with 3 ppl active = 20kk/buff. Solo farm by archer = 5kk exp, solo farm cdl on exp boosted mobs w/o drop = 10kk exp. Full meele party farm in loa/toi 3-5kk exp. 7x more exp full pt with 3 active on abg than in any other spot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- imbalance of farm between mages and archers/meeles. This point connects a bit with above. You have party that is not efficient in aoe abg farm? go fk urself, get 3kk exp in loa or quit.
- imbalance between classes. Classes were poorly balanced even on orginal 1.5. Mages were op and fighters had no efficient farm and were weak on pvp. On dion admins went further. Boosted even more mages(more power), added even more power to summoner magic skills, and the most stupid thing - boosted p def on bards so fighter classes suck even more. AAaaaaaand there is 1 more bug reported like 5 years ago - bug where 2 piece main armor sets (doom heavy, avadon robe, bw light etc) gives extra p def - another "nerf for fighters" You dont believe? compare p def on your char with doom hvy set and bw hvy set. Should be the same tight? kekw. All of this had big impact on what party setup ppl played.
- community - yes community isnt saint neither. Cant blame only admins. PPl get old and classic enthusiast community gets smaller every week. Another problem is people dont aim for pvp/fun but to farm/win/dominate server. Trying to make zerg ally and make enemy quit. Another problem is ppl are "tryhard" and try to play not what they enjoy, but what is OP ( see points above)
- zero boost for new commers. There is no catch up mechanic. Other servers offer stuff like 3x exp untill x lvl, runes, exp scrolls until x lvl etc. Here we get homeopatic joke features like 10% exp rune until 35 lvl. Are you making fun of us?! Its literally several months of everyday farm on current server state to catch up average server lvl
- homeopatic rewards - connected a bit to point above. FOR SOME REASON whatever new thing server offers, its taken very CAREFUL. Rewards from events are extremely low - that low, most of ppl dont even update client. Boost for newbies is so low noone want to start over, drop rates are so low ppl already lost motivation to farm. We get some promise and then when it comes live its not even worth efford for anyone to care about it. 0 game changing things- the last good one was on ti - anakim/lilith update
- no mechanic for new ppl to cash in/catchup - yes ah was bad and noone wants it now neiter. BUT admins took star wars problem so serious (i told you above remember the auction house problem for later convo), they hugely nerfed drop rates. Made server literally unplayable. I guess they wanted to make ppl "progress slowly"
- server drop rates - again homeopatic problem. I dont have xact data, i speak by subjective feeling. I farmed sv/abg/dv/loa on talking island and dion. I THINK DROP RATE IS NERFED 10x!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. No joke. Full drops and parts feel like dropping 10x less. Lets take abg for example.On tree spot On TI you get on average 0-3 drops per 3 trains (per 10 min). Many ppl can confirm that. What do you get on Dion? 0-3 drops per 3h. Another example SV. On TI you get 1-3 weapons full per week just by doing daily there. Meanwhile on Dion, i farmed there 2 months. i think i never received any weapon, got some helmets tho. About TOI, i think ppl are a bit unfair. It feels the same as it was on TI, its just ppl are more u sed to speed run the update than to farm 1 year to get 3 skils in cp. I think tablets drop rate works correct as it worked on TI but its not good for server like dion. Cmon ppl wont farm 2nd time for the skill like they did on TI. It should be considered and rates much higher from the start
- drop groups bug. In database items state as same chance but you get 1 kind of item 5x more than another. Dont believe me? How many zubei/avadon items you get on abg, and how many bw/doom? DB says the chance is the same
- no knowledge of chronicle by admins. On official Classic was made to farm items easily, and overenchant. Byuing enchants in luxury shop tryin +6-7-8 sets etc. Its destroyed here. No enchants in shops. Again homeopatic enchant drop rates in spots. Homeopatic parts/recipes/full item drop rate. Its ok to have low rates when auction house exist. When it doesnt, how ppl are supposed to get items?!
- Admins dont play the game. Have no clue what are current problems.
- fks up locations - again. Loa - like mentioned above, it has fkd up exp for meele. I farmed it as summoner pt making 5-7kk exp/buff. I know mages were able to do much more. On some point admins decided to "rework loa". In the end they added some strange mechanics benefiting aoe parties. For aoe parties not much changed. BUT for meele/archer/ summoner ( 1 target parties) it became totally useless. RIght after change we couldnt make special mobs spawn- the only reason to farm there because mobs had soes/bw helmet drops- It was much easier to spawn them as aoe pt. Moreover the exp also became very low (3kk. Drop from 5-7kk to 3kk) totally waste of time. Because of the 2 reaons - fkd up exp for meele and fkd up drop for meele (couldnt spawn special mobs) we stopped going there. It caused cascade problems for server. Enemy side which was mostly mages hapily farmed there, not suffering from changes and complaining that their enemies dont want to contest spots and pvp
- ignoring community voices. Me and my friends were fully ignored. Nothing was being done about problems we mentioned. Not only that, even if other ppl from community mentioned problems, they were geting answers like - "admins have different vision on this but it will be discussed". After that nothing happened
- broken exp. Locations on 50 lvl giving more exp than locations on 70 lvl. Locations for aoe givng muuuch more exp than locations for solo farm
- broken pvp balance. Meeles geting nerfed even tho they were weak on previous patch, mages stay boosted
- imposible to get cartain items - because of custom location changes/drop rate nerfs. There are many examples, i can share what i know. Ppl can post below what else is fkd up in their opinion
a) pob very hard to collect crazy amounts for clan upgrade
b) c grade armors - demon, fp, drake. I tried to farm drake boots. Spent 2h 30 min to drop 1 part. 1 PART!!! need 11 for craft. This items should be very easily accessible so ppl can burn them like matches and try to make +6. Prices on market speak for itself - higher than for b grade.
c) Soes full/recipe - fkd up because of server drop rate fkd up and because it drops only in loa - custom fkd up location and imposible to spawn bansees when killing mobs 1 by 1. Check soes rec price if you dont know what i mean
d) bw tunic rec - similar like above, just there is not big demand for it on server so it stays cheap
e) keys for top c weapons - now that we have b grades, c grades should be much easier farmable than b grade. wtf?
- zero contact with community. Planing to make varous changes, not leting community to share opinion
- super slow reaction for server/community needs
- waiting for every1 to quit before moving a finger
- listening to few ppl and doing what they ask for
- keeping updates that fkd up server instead of reverting them. Admins cant admit of making mistakes
- no info about plans
- lazy admins abandoning project for half year, waking up only when 90% of poipulation disappear, or when competition project starts.
- server need new path of updates, the new things, not the things every1 know from previous server - it kills all the hype, plus ppl dont farm stuff knowing its easier on next patch
Happy reading
Put your comments below, what do you think was fkd up on this server!
