Gormal wrote:Gear was never the reason that the evil population went down the toilet. It was because after the core few players that were good took off, evils became a collection of underskilled people struggling to do the things that goodies could do easily. In addition, as much as evilrace players touted their helpfulness, it just never compared to what most people found on the other side.
Now its become a problem of "why go evil and do next to nothing when I can go goodie and have an easy time getting loot and running zones?"
and that flies in the face of the entire point of evil races.
what was the point of evil races? more hardships?
but in a GAME, the hardships should be balanced with greater power at the end game
greater power that just is not there
zones that are a challenge for goodies should be easier for evils - becaue they have to deal with retarded game mechanics that have no real function other than to punish the player - more cast-offs from the mystra regime. dayblind? means if yo uare doing any zone that isnt indoors or in the UD you had better have a psi as fogging every room is not practical. mobs that breathe or cast fire? well, no trolls for you unless they have insane spell saves
most of the original evils from outcast toril 1-soj2 that rolled evil again during sojourn 3 left the game outright not long after hittign 50 and doing a few zones. the first orc shaman (cant remember name) the first snake enchanter (ossis), etc. all straight left the game - many for WoW or just for real life. nothing can be done about that really
but others left and rolled goodie at the same time. evils, never really having a pbase big enough to ever field more than one zone group, couldnt afford to lose any bodies really. i too was one of those lured away by WoW raiding and other mmorpg's.
as of today, the disadvantages evil races ahve far outweigh the one or two second mem times, the 30 or 40 more hp at 50, or the innates that dont actually give an advantage in any zone. give them real, tangible power and perhaps people will play them again
give them the kind of power that makes magma a cake-walk for experienced players if they are evil race.