Aradune & Rizlona Launch Date! - May 27

Pop lock server.. no vet rewards ever, nothing worth buying with station cash.. why even make them progression? Just open them at pop.

This whole thing stinks.
Good time to try no man's land or something

Stick to the vision, Darkpaw!!

Yhea; I would really love to be playing from scratch atm. By May 27 I will prob be too busy to play at all because I will be making up required visits from March for my work, + the kids scouting programs will be up and running again and sports/etc. Will be busy as a Beaver. All this wasted play time right now...

I can see some thought went into this.

Strategically, Pop locked servers typically have a lifespan of 15 months.

classic 3 mths
kunark 3 mths
Velious 3 mths
Luclin 3 mnts
POP 3 mths
LDON

This usually coincided nicely with the next 'shiny TLP' which the krono kiddies will always jump to, which in turn maximises krono sales. 90% of the population will not play past this point anyway, so capping it at this point, just makes maintenance easy. Additionally locking at POP makes it easy just to kill off servers and merge them into agnarr which solves the problem of abandoned TLP servers hanging about ad nauseum.

I very much suspect this will be all TLP's from now on.

I've said it before, but it's a good time to get off the TLP 'reroll' ratwheel and stay on your current server, or even jump to the likes of Phinny, which now has heroic toons enabled.. a great place to use those free heroic characters everyone got if you want to see the later zones.

The key thing is, no-one is forcing anyone to start on these servers. There's lots of choice out there already for you to choose from if you really must have a fresh start.

I'm sure they'll be busy, agnarr certainly was, but they're not for me.

I think moving the 2 box strategy to 3 box will help with some of this blowback. Let 2 friends be able to fill a group and farm together. Not everyone will 3 box, but it will open up a lot of choices for a lot players.

Also, please consider making one of the servers not locked. I do like the idea of a yearly or league type server. But you would need some longterm plan where they all lead and give benefits to that extent. Like, you can choose to transfer to new server X in which begins at the next expansion after. This would keep a viable long term server while allowing free transfers from any league server whenever you want. A constant flow of players would give you another high pop server that will be fed by a new TLP every year or so.

Here to voice my displeasure. Don't want to see POP locked servers

May - Classic
Aug - Kunark
Nov - Velious
Feb - Luclin
May - Pop, forever

And they announce the next TLP, seems logical.

I remember paying extra, like $25USD/month to play on a special Stormhammer server which had dedicated GMs, lots of guides, lots of special events and even special quests and items and gear... would have been an awesome tribute to Brad McQuaid, not another Agnarr, lol.

I was so looking forward to starting new again and not having to play catch up... oh wait, I still have a max ranked toon dead on Agnarr, and one dead on Coinav. I'm for sure not doing that again as what I actually missed out on was Everquest AFTER LDON... so... guess I'm staying on Mangloid.

Pretty bad call on the pop lock with both servers imo. Making both of them pop locked is pretty confusing.

And here I was, hoping for a server that locked at Mines of Gloomingdeep...

Big question - what is the draw? What about these servers are suppose to entice people to play on them?

Beastlords and Beserkers are still locked by expansions.
Expansion unlocks were not delayed nor sped up.
The starting point is unchanged.

The only feature unique here is support, which every server should already have.

I’m sure the servers couldn’t handle it, but why not just make a server with...
AoC
Box as many as you want
Free trade
6 weeks per xpac? 12, who cares, just not locked
No gms at all, wouldn’t know what they are anymore anyhow

Seriously, whatever hype there was is gone now.

Are you guys kidding me about locking the servers at ldon? I've been playing this game since kunark, and love this game.

Why lock the server, it then dies, and I know all progression servers eventually die, but why not build them to last, How about you keep them progressing, and here is an idea, Launch pop and ldon at the same time, since ldon kills server pops!

Guild im in, their reaction to this accoucement was nothing but long sighs....................

This...You can't be a berserker on either server. I don't understand how you can have 26 expansions and basically tell the world you only think the first 5 1/2 are the only ones worth playing on BOTH servers.

Listen to your player base. Very few want the servers locked. Just unlock them or Lock them at OoW or something and call it a day. It doesn't cost you anything extra to unlock the servers.

I suspect it's more of a "we're short on money, can't afford to hire more devs, and we're maintaining 20 year old code" kind of company. At least now. When it was Daybreak then, yes you're right.

I have been eagerly waiting for a new tlp for months, but the PoP lock is an absolutely terrible idea. I played through the full life of Agnarr- it's not enough. It's a deal breaker.

I hope you can be persuaded to change this insane plan, and I know the only real concern is money- I've just cancelled my subscription.

So I've had a couple hours to reel about this, and now that that's over with I'd like to very sincerely, but very seriously ask, what is the best method to voice a request for a change to at least one of these servers?

I had just come back to EQ when Fippy was announced and I jumped right on that. I wasn't playing when Ragefire was announced, and I jumped right on that. Even though I was already playing when Phinny was announced, it was such an improvement over Ragefire that I jumped on that too. Every other TLP since Fippy I've only skipped because I was already playing on a different TLP.

I've been looking forward to the ruleset announcements since these servers were confirmed (even sat through the entire Discord AMA hoping for info), but today my interest dropped from 100% to 0% because these neither of these servers will progress past PoP. This is literally the first time in 10 years that a progression server has been announced but I have 0 interest in playing on it even though I'm not actively playing EQ.

Please, please let me know where the best place is to request one of these servers becomes a traditional TLP. I had hoped for something that would innovate beyond past offerings, but another Phinny clone would be acceptable after today's news.

If anyone from Daybreak sees this, thanks for reading.

I can only see this being thought of from one perspective.

These are a TRIAL RUN at GM supported servers to see how cost effective they are, they know the expected lifetime of a server that locks at LDoN and can price up what they expect that GM support to cost up to that point, this will be to test how effective it is at defeating the rampant botting that goes on.

These are supposed to be the new "model" used for future TLP so it makes sense that they keep things on a tight leash & locking at LDoN serves that purpose - they then can have a full review on what worked & what didn't on these two prior to rolling out the next batch of TLP that take the lessons learned on these two.

However I think this approach is not a good strategy & the "new features" basically amounting to a 2 account per player attempted boxing cap & GM Support are massively underwhelming.

Proof will be in the pudding, I don't as a rule wish ill on anything EQ related but in this case I will make an exception, I truly do hope that both of these servers are a worse failure than anything EQ has done before.

Maybe 1-2 asked for a LDoN locked, maybe 1-2 wanted locked at Velious, maybe 1-2 wanted locked at Luclin.
PvP TLP with AoC would have been better than this - at least some 10-20 people were asking for it
FV rules TLP with AoC would have been better than a PvP TLP with AoC a good few more were asking for that than the PvP TLP with AoC.

Maybe this is to try & grab some P99 players /shrug

DPG choosing to lock both of these TLP at LDoN I will have to give them some credit for actually managing to surprise me, I did not think the final rule sets would end up being this, because I genuinely thought the team was smarter than that.

I would have preferred Aradune to "recycle" between classic & LDoN - dropping the characters on Agnarr at the end of the "season" & restart over - maybe with some cool rewards for the players who play through the season that can be redeemed on other servers.

Then have Rizlona not be locked at LDoN & progress to live.

My parting thought on these two servers is DPG just did this:

Agreed! Someone there needs to review this and make some changes! I know your intention is to relaunch progression servers to get an influx of paying members, but look at all the dead servers! You will be just launching another server that will already be on it's last breath.

Adleast make Aradune server have some life! instead of launching a server that no one will remember, HONOR HIS MEMORY, naming a server that you are just copying and pasting, Is nothing but a disservice to all that he has gone for the genre!