Song/Dance- all last 1 hour. Almost completely eliminates the people that would main sws/bd as most will box and buffbot it from town. Also greatly reduces the people that will actively play Nuker/Archer as they can be fully resist stacked and have lower chance of success. Possible solution? 5-10 Min song/dance for resists, 5-10 Min song/dance for SD/SM. People can still buffbot it but they will need to drag them behind. This is a possible fix to greatly increase the poulation for 2 active support classes, 4 nuker classes, 3 archer classes that are RARELY seen here. You could make the same argument for ANY support class really but the most imbalancing is the bd/sws. Lets say we only get 2-3 more ACTIVE players per class, this at those numbers creates another 20 ACTIVE players. People will main them, I did Sws main retail. BD was one of the most popular classes in retail as well, due to the fact you could get good groups.
How often do I see OL/WC active playing? My answer 1! Pantofla. Only guy I've seen personally playing one of these classes other than the buffbots in town. Amazing support classes that are invaluable at mass pvp. Eliminated because we can just lvl one up and box it. Prophets, counter critical. Why bring along a prophet when you can just counter crit buff 1 hour.
This change would not affect the people that already have their buffers lvl'd up, it would only require them to drag it with them and rebuff every 5-10 min for certain ones. The npc buffer could remain the same, this mainly applies to 3rd class change skills. It makes your buff choice more important, do I buff for potential pvp or do I go full on pve buffs.
I see threads on server wipe. This would not be needed with more active players. How many players that still love the game and have possibly checked this server out and have been turned off by their favorite class being useless and nobody wants to group them due to buffbots sitting in town.
This also could potentially increase the number of people playing active healer/recharger classes as well. I can't say I think it would GREATLY increase the poulation of these classes but it would be a good first step to that endeavor.
Soloing raid bosses would be at least slowed due to not being able to apply these buffs for that long, or at the very least make them drag their buff bots along to make it a pain in the ass. This encourages grouping which is what this content was designed for.
The issue with the server is if you like playing a tank/melee classes you got a great home here. Which is why you see nothing but melee classes other than the rare exception. This turns off a lot of people that are looking for the "retail" feel which is advertised here as being close to retail. It's close but these features make it a hard stretch.
Lets face it, most people playing private servers leave if they can't get it easy mode. I've noticed this with the new people that have joined here since I started. I recruited ONE person that made it to 78 without crying for powerlvl because it was too hard. This is easy to lvl. Even after lvl 80. These really arent the type of players you want anyways, let them join and take their donations and they can leave because they probably wont stick around anyways. We want active players that enjoy the game and the MMO aspect of it. As of now it's a solo antisocial server for the most part.
Otherwise just add ALL buffs to the darn npc buffer so we can eliminate the need to box all these buffers. It's stupid really.
