metagame

I'm not making any assumptions, the way it is worded in OP's post is extremely confusing and leaves out major details. How much did it cost before and how much of an increase will this upgrade cost per month? Is this metric for one server or for all of them? We really need some more information here to understand exactly how much more contribution from the community is needed. For example if I was donating $10 a month before and the server cost has doubled now I need to donate $20 to maintain the same contribution level. This is really the most important part and it's not clear at all.

This is very unclear to me. Does this mean $350 per month plus a single $300 fee? Or does it mean $650 per month? Are you talking about an additional cost per month on top of the other costs of running the server, or is this figure a total cost for running the server? Please clarify what these numbers mean. This post is very unclear.

Excellent work dev team, keep it up, these updates are appreciated both from a transparency and a game improvement standpoint.

This is true, but a big part of 2FA is the part where if your computer is compromised, the hacker would also need access to a 2nd device to authenticate to your account. Anyway, I disagree with the notion of requiring 2FA for all accounts.

Illegal according to which country's laws? I think Elysium and Nostalrius differ in their opinion of this situation. Personally, I don't think Blizzard Vanilla would be nearly as good as an open source fan project (which is what Elysium is).

Yes, I was very active on the Feenix forum and I have followed your posts and threads (among thousands of others) throughout the last few years.

You said it yourself Theloras: your arguments are generally factually spot-on. If that's the case then why are you receiving so many downvotes? You and Duki receive downvotes because you overlook or don't care about the way your posts are worded. They are usually in a condescending or disagreeable manner, or completely off-topic and clearly directed in your own self-interest. Perhaps you should take some time to reconsider your unique voice with which you write your posts and make it less discordant with the literary environment this forum exists in.

I think a better solution is to add a feature to the mail system where you are required to send a few silver as a deposit to the recipient who can send it back upon getting the mail. For friends mailing each other, the silver will most likely be returned, and for sending mail to your own alts you can always send the deposit back to your main. You can get complex with this solution to improve it; disable the deposit requirement for friends who have each other on their Friends List because no gold spammer would be on a real player's Friends List. You can also increase the deposit requirement for low level players, and the deposit requirement could ease as you level up. Characters lower than level 20 are not going to be sending much mail to random people anyway (bank alts can have your main char on its friends list, and thus not be required to make a deposit). Level 40+ characters could be exempt completely from the deposit requirement. This would make mailbox spamming more costly for gold spammers, and also work against their objective because if they chose to eat the cost they would be simultaneously chewing away at their own bottom line.

All servers have lost avg playercount because the hype of a new server launch is wearing off. It's true that ZK is hurt the most by the population decline but I don't think the majority of people want the servers to merge. I'm sure when the dev team feels it is appropriate they will advertise the server through the proper channels and raise up the population again.

Between 700 and 2000 players is "Blizzlike" Medium to High population, and to some who take Blizzard's original decision as God's original holy word and intention, this is a good place to point them to when they say 9k players on Elysium is "too crowded" and "not Blizzlike".

@kingtut The code for the server is open-source. You can make your own 12x server or whatever and see if anyone plays on it. I think you might be surprised to see just how few people agree with you. Plenty of successful people with lives play WoW at 1x, just because you can't imagine being able to do it doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Damn, what server do you play on? This is exactly why I hate low population. Kang isn't so bad but Ice Barbed would be way better. Also respec for parry 5 if you don't have it already, heroic strike talent is worthless for leveling now that you have Mortal Strike / WW. You're not already eating after fighting two mobs? I feel like using Sweeping Strikes on two mobs -2 levels is way better than fighting them solo, especially because demo shout is more efficient.

Okay, might as well get this started off on the right foot I'm offering a 0.1 BTC bounty for a pull request that is well-tested, accepted by the Elysium staff, and is merged into core that fixes this problem: https://elysium-project.org/bugtracker/issue/2162

Do not use dynamite, use Crystal Charge + Crystal Spire + Crystal Restore. (You can replace Crystal Restore with a healthstone if you have a warlock that doesn't mind making you a new one every pull...) Dynamite: Resets your swing timer. Has a long cooldown. Is on the global cooldown. Does very little damage. Has a cast time. Only stacks up to 10. Crystal Charge does not have any of these problems. The only time using engineering for AoE pulls is better is when you are in a short fight (less than 2 minutes) with no other fight for 3 minutes, which is the only situation where Goblin Sapper Charge will be better than Crystal Charge. Then again Goblin Sapper Charge is pretty expensive, but in terms of raw burst AoE threat it does the most (it does more damage AND damages you, so doubles up on the threat)... but it has a pretty long cooldown. Crystal Charge is instant cast, is not on the GCD, is a 1 min cooldown, does a lot of damage (it can crit too), and stacks up to 20. It's also inexpensive and does not require engineering to use or create. Also use Bloodrage AFTER you pull, as taking damage in combat will give you threat with all mobs you are in combat with.

If it lets you get a 5-second rule mana regen tick it might be slightly better than using your most efficient healing touch rank.

Ragnarok online was the fucking best. Actually, the community of vanilla WoW pservers reminds me a lot of the Ragnarok community. I still think WoW has the best engine of any classic MMO though, compared to Ragnarok and EQ (which are clunky) playing your character in WoW just feels good.

http://vanillaradar.com/elysium-stats/anathema/

I have to say this is pretty bizarre. Win trading has a very specific meaning. It has to do with abusing the queue system to farm marks of honor. Not attacking someone in world pvp is not the same as win trading. I could maybe see the argument for helping someone else by sheeping them to heal them considered griefing, but it doesn't seem to be comparable to other griefing offenses. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure what Elysium considers griefing at all.

Okay, let's try taking a different approach to this issue. If it is not your opinion or interpretation of the rules that is causing this disagreement, what is it then? Why are we talking about this? Is everyone who disagrees with you just wrong, and you're right? How would you describe my position?

I've never heard of win-trading used to describe anything other than arena or battlegrounds. It is within the rules because there is no rule against it. I feel like people have two default modes of thinking: either they think everything is against the rules unless specifically allowed by an authority, or they feel like everything is within the rules unless specifically prohibited by an authority. I'm definitely in the latter category. Pottu actually had two other good points in response to this in the last thread:

@Hurricane2 I feel like we've reached an impasse. Your interpretation of the way the game is made is different than mine. I don't know how to respond to this, is it possible you can explain what you mean? Are you saying "the game is made this way therefore it should be allowed"? I would disagree with that, as the game's rules are a combination of game mechanics and written guidelines.

Win trading was bannable in retail (in arena at least) as people's arena ratings were reset to 1500 and gear was taken away, etc. There is years of evidence to support this precedent.

I brought the chest example up because it's an exact analogy. In fact, your own evaluation of the hypothetical treasurechest proves why you are wrong about this topic. It doesn't matter what you think the rules are, the only thing that matters is what the actual server rules are and the way the game mechanics are programmed. In the case of a stolen treasure chest, there is no rule against this, and this is the way the game is made. Similarly, if some group of horde players are forming a group and helping opposite faction members by sheeping them to heal them, that's not the way it should work, but it's the way the game works. There isn't a rule against it. Whether or not Blizzard had a rule against cross-faction communication is hard to determine considering there were many examples of this, yet look, no one was banned. Like you said, it could have been an unenforced rule, but until you provide evidence of this "rule" it's unsubstantiated based on your opinion or memory. Finally, even if you could prove that Blizzard had a rule against out-of-game cross-faction communication, the fact remains that Elysium can make whatever rules it wants. Personally I agree with their decision.

It's not a monopoly, by definition, if you can easily compete on level playing ground with zero cost to entry.

I thought my chest example was clear, but I'll explain in further detail: the chest is an example of how game mechanics work regardless of how it would be if everybody were following "the obvious rules". The obvious rule is that someone who finds a chest first gets it, but the actual way the game works is someone who finds it first pulls the mobs and enters combat, and the second person to finds the chest gets the loot. It's not a fact that cross-faction communication is against the rules, because it happened in game and no one was ever banned for it, to my knowledge. There were tons of guilds who allied cross-faction to farm in Silithus, and killed other players from other guilds on sight, to maintain the "top guild" position on each of their factions. This wasn't against the rules then, and it isn't now. People openly discussed collaborating with the opposite faction for the gurubashi arena chest, too, I would know considering I had 8 level 19 twinks with 2x AGM trinket on retail (not in Vanilla, but still). This took months to complete and was achieved with collaboration between myself and others on the same and opposite faction. No one was ever concerned with getting banned... because it was not a bannable offense.