will getting lower level groups be hard on phinny in the near future?

i started EQ up again a few months ago and picked RF as the TLP server. i grouped a new character a bit with alts of endgame established players but found that i had to 2 box often to level.

fast forward to phinny. i have leveled a cleric with great groups over the double xp frenzy weekends. lots of fun and levels. i only made it to 30 and leveled a mag to 18. based on the xp gained the first few weeks i feel i made some progress. while many people made it to 45 over those few weeks, i had to sleep i guess more than others. i plan to level as i can but i don't have the option to true multibox, so groups are the key with my cleric as was in the beginning.

i am still at level 30 and have some luck getting groups, but i feel a lot of pressure to keep up with the flow of players due to the fact that groups will not happen at low levels in just a few weeks. without the ability to multibox or use mercs i have the bad feeling that this server will be top heavy soon and never recover. making it a core to hardcore sever also.

People roll alts all the time. I wouldn't worry too much.

Not immediately, but long term absolutely. See: RF and LJ now.

Not to say groups don't exist, they're just a lot harder to come by and places like unrest have 1 instance going instead of 5

Assuming no new TLP servers open............

Ok now that's out of the way-

I think it'll be fine. We are almost a month into launch and there are still 30+ people in my starting city. My city has 3 zones and just one of them has 30 people. It reminds me very much of how it was in classic.

People are rerolling alts. Most people are not going 1-50 then raiding, the majority are playing multiple characters and leveling them all. The LFG tool is always insanely packed. Eventually it will die down, just like classic did, but for right now and through Kunark I expect groups-a-plenty.

I just bought 3 more computers and will be leveling those guys in the coming months, for example.

Same here. There is not much to do in between raid targets at level 50 aside from rolling an alt or two. I'm pretty sure most raiders will be playing alts long after Kunark hits.

Plus you will get the new character influx of Iksars in Kunark and Cats/Beastlords in Luclin!

As a cleric, you will be fine as long as you can get 50 a month into kunark. I just started a baby necro, and at level 10 I saw 3 full groups on the smaller pick in Sro. If you are 43 going into PoP, you will probably need to find an alt happy guild. The way progressions work, you will pretty much need to join a guild at some point, and in the end, pretty much everyone joins the same guild. If you do join a guild, no matter your level, you will be able to find groups through PoP, as boredom sets in with certain classes and guild needs change. With the no/limited box thing, this may last into even later xpansions.

Harder? Relatively, yes. Hard? No. Some of us are altaholics. I just got my second char to 50 and am itching to start my 3rd. It will probably also be easier if you do make new chars whenever a new race and/or class becomes available.

Assuming no other TLPs and hopefully DBG ain't that stupid... I'm hoping they'll be plenty of alts although this ain't the EQ of the past where people made alts to past the time between days or week long raid respawn timers... And that Phinny xp rate might turn people off.. RF/LJ people can roll alts sure cause the xp rate doesn't seem like so much of a grind..

I myself is a altoholic and have been in every game I played but even I'm given some pause with that XP rate

considering the slow experience ,it will be interesting to see how many actually roll alts.
tbh even on RF i had little desire to roll an alt and thats with ok experience.
main reason been it was just redoing the whole thing over and over again.
weirdly the best game i felt happy rolling alts was SWTOR because of the class story made each experience different .

Signs point to yes

With the experience rate I just don't see too many new players joining down the road. Alts are a bit different because if you twink and get power leveled the time required might not be too great. I do agree there may be a decent amount of new characters come Kunark, because of Iksar.

It also depends on whether DBG decides to adjust the base experience rate up to normal RF/LJ levels or not.

Yes it will become more difficult as the server becomes top heavy. Sure their will be alts/twinks leveling up but new players? Probably not many.

Sadly, sort of. My friend had not played in 10 years but signed up after I kept telling him about the server. He rolled an SK and even though tanks are typically in demand it takes him a while to find groups.

Now that he's in low 20s it's getting easier but it's almost a miracle he made it there.

A 30 cleric will get groups in guk all day long till 40 easily. A 40 cleric will get groups in the hole or OOT goblins or Sol B no problem. You're fine.

Lguk is only one option. I have a main cleric on luclin and know the drill.

My main point is without multi-box or Mercs or some way to solo when the server is at endgame, new toons will be hard to level
on phinny. I feel that I need to keep up with the main wave to proceed to the next expansion.

And when Kunark comes out, there will be a ton of new toons, the same when Luclin comes out.

It already is more difficult to get groups at lower levels, even on a cleric. I've been leveling my alt and if I didn't have a druid to PL her with she'd not be getting any exp. I've tried making my own groups, I've just had really bad luck with flakey people. I'm not getting picked up by many groups at all. I never had this issue when I worked on getting my main to 50, but the servers had just opened and there were so many people around. The population on the server while not dead is definitely dwindling, and we haven't even been live on this server for a full month (2 more days).

I worry about population issues more on this server than any other. I'm seeing and hearing a lot of people not wanting to roll alts because of the exp penalty (~60% from LJ). This isn't even a plea to increase the exp rate, it's just me being a concerned player. I fear in a couple months there won't be many people to group with at all.

Yep, we are 2 days out from the last 2x xp weekend and numbers are already lowering. Zones that had multiple picks now only have one. People who joined during the 2x xp, feel like they've hit a brick wall now that it's gone.

I don't know what else to say. Some people will stick it out and grind through no matter what but many will quit over the frustration of watching their xp bar move one yellow in an entire leveling session. That will surely lead to a lack of players and it will become even harder for anyone to join and level up.

Genuinely curious about the player that experiences this. Even outside of double xp days a 2 hour stint with a group that was pretty horrid yielded 3/4 of an entire level in the mid-30s. On good days (again, no double xp), a 4 hour stint yielded about 2 full levels. What sort of leveling session durations are we talking about and at what level range?