New EQ Progression Server (Phinigel) Coming December 9th

Phinigel Server

Daybreak is launching a NEW EverQuest Progression Server. That’s right, the rumors are true! And it’s better than I expected. Phinigel will be a “True Box” Progression Server. This means you only get ONE EverQuest account per computer, and if you want to multibox you’ll have to do it like we did back in 1999: Multiple computers.

There’s more! Large raid targets from each expansion will be INSTANCED in addition to their open-world versions with a 6.5 day lockout. Interesting. This actually seems… fair?

Content will unlock every 90 days. This means Classic – > 90 Days -> Kunark -> 90 Days -> Velious -> Luclin -> Etc. No vote drama on the player or developer side. This I can support.

I think I’ll play here. I hate that I already dumped so much time and money into Ragefire, but it’s EverQuest and I like starting over. It’s what I’ve been asking for, so I’ll try once again to see if this time we can have an actual server community that doesn’t hate each other for stealing mobs or not voting to unlock an expansion or not. A server without so many multiboxers means that content and groups will be much closer to the original experience. It really was a situation on Ragefire where a few ‘bad apples’ spoiled the bunch.

For now, this seems like a win for me. I appreciate their effort to appeal to someone like me. I’ll let you know if I uncover any nefarious details that change my mind.

  • Most people don’t care if people box from different computers. The problem is when you see 6 mages all casting at same time. That won’t be happening because that stuff daybreak can see and then ban.

  • @Rawblin: I think keeping people from multi-boxing on one PC is policeable, but less-so on multiple computers which is allowed anyway. We’ll see!

    @Streaks: Let’s hope they police it hard themselves. And yeah, it’s when you have 6 mages all casting their spells in unison and being all on auto-follow. It’s when these characters aren’t PLAYED but practically botted that it matters most to me.

  • Yeah I’m with Rawblin. I’m sure throwing up an ip or mac proxy will be a quick “fix” to the multi-boxing restrictions. And for those not techie enough, wait about 1 day and I’m sure there will be a how-to video on Youtube. Unless there is going to be strict GM policing, which I would highly doubt, good luck stopping the boxers. Boxers typically give two shits about other gamers.

    Hey, hopefully I’m dead wrong and Daybreak will prove amazing.

    Keen, what you need is for P99 to launch their new progression server, which they have discussed at some point. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen any time soon with P99 recently entering Velious.

  • @JJ Robinson: I hope that with enough reporting and petitioning that GMs and volunteer guides will be able to monitor the situation. The population isn’t huge enough that it’s impractical. It won’t be perfect.

    Yeah, a P99 progression server would be really fun. I’d be lying though if I didn’t openly admit to liking some of the QOL improvements though in the live servers.

  • @JJ Robinson, from the description Keen gave it sounds more like it will be a restriction on game.exe opened on a single computer. But even if that is the case, DAoC had that (capped you out at 2 instances of DAoC opened at a time, couldn’t get a third) and it was cracked quickly enough for people that wanted it. (Lottacam among others)

    In this day and age, it really isn’t even feasible to technologically try to outwit the masses when it comes to gaming. Keen is right that there will have to be a quite vigorous in-game human-operated policing of such activity.

    I just personally feel that Daybreak won’t be willing to man the GM slots with enough people because that costs money.

  • @Rawblin: They’ve brought in volunteer “Guides” to be their in-game force. I hope they use those guides to be the spotters who then signal someone with authority to act. They’ll likely use some sort of mac address filtering, etc., to try and detect multiple accounts on one PC. Easily cracked by someone who knows what they are doing, but that rules out half the people or more. Simply making it against the rules may be enough to scare some people off.

  • As a note above, Multiboxing from multiple PCs certainly does not mean that people won’t have all accounts casting at the same time. They can even use just a single Mouse and Keyboard and have that broadcast to all the PCs. There are 2 ways: multiplexing hardware, to send 1 keyboards output to multiple PCs. This is not really a thing anymore because it’s expensive and the mouse becomes easily desync’d.
    The other option is a piece of software called Octopus, which uses LAN sockets to send keystrokes and mouse positions to other machines.
    There is also Virtual Machines. Not sure how they are going to prevent that without using a Rootkit to prevent the software from launching in a VM.
    The saving grace is that (aside from VMs) most people can’t afford multiple PCs to box on, so there will be fewer.

  • @Lokked: Yeah there are ways to go all-out and make it effective. My hope is that we’ll go from 1000 people being able to do it with ease down to make 25% or less getting it all figured out.