How to Incentivize Grouping or Accelerate Solo Catch-ups?

Well there are 84 levels to get prior to having access to it for one thing.
It's best use is replacing XP lost on raids & boosting merc AA - even while merc are pretty bad in current content at least they are okay in one expansion or more ago stuff.

The problem with overseer as a catch-up mechanic (111-115) is due to just how passive a measure that is, logging in to do overseer & back out again is sadly more productive than any active measures you can actually do solo.
I'm not saying overseer is bad, but the active measures - when you cannot get a group are terribly limited and unrewarding, even if you say go to an older expansion well, there you are hit with XP nerfs it's like the devs are force feeding you the notion that the only way to play is grouped & only in current content & only while doing progression - there is no other good option besides the "log in overseer & log out again" since grinding mobs is largely an exercise in annoying yourself.

I too took the overseer route from 113 to 115 over the course of a couple weeks & while it served its purpose I would hardly call that playing EQ.

Oveerseer is a good option for supplementing your exp grind during the current expansion I think but other than that is a slow, non-involved process. I'd say a conservative, average estimate for exp gained is about 5% a day. If we're talking about someone who almost exclusively levels via Overseer (this might be the case for returning/soloing/Heroic characters) it'll be at least 20 days before you level once. At the earliest availability of Overseer (85) that means it'll take someone 600 days to reach the level cap (115). If we cut that number in half to allow for grouping at 100 that's still 300 days of Overseer to get someone to the point of being "useful". That's a very slow pace for a catch-up mechanic and won't be enough to hook people into playing past the first month of their subscription, if they do so.

Ladder servers are a terrible idea.
I have gone into depth on why in other posts.

It's 10%/day, easy. I just did it, and it was terrific. I don't ever fight in current zones, so with the XP penalty for old content, it would take years to level. This way, I made a level every 10 days, and did what I found to be fun, and could forget how much XP was generated.

is that 10% on a fresh L85 Heroic Upgrade character on a new account or on an account that has Overseer maxed out already?

There's a significant difference between the 2 scenarios.

Overseer only started a year ago (14 months, actually). I reached that 10%/day pace about 3-4 months in. It doesn't take long. Just as the game is full of top-heavy characters, the game is full of top-heavy Overseers

And it doesn't matter if it's that pace for an 85, leveling is much easier at that point. The hard part is once you get to 110, and anyone at that point can easily have Overseer maxed.

So, yes, they are 2 different scenarios, but the one scenario is very temporary, and the other is the permanent end state.

Firstly, thanks for making this thread, it's one I wanted to make myself. And after doing a bit of reading through various EQ medias, it's obvious we are not alone. There are a lot of other people who want to play EQ Live, but there is just too much of a gap between new/returning and veteran players. Most of us don't want to box, P2W/boost, or be PLed, we just want to play with other humans. Hopefully that's something that actually happens at max level, but we don't actually know.

I think there are many viable solutions, anything from simply reducing the amount of EXP needed to level, revamping Hero's Journey, or adding a level sync feature. Level sync was one of the best things ever added to Final Fantasy XI but it was added a bit too late in the game's life. EQ2 has a similar system called Mentoring, but level sync in FFXI actually puts you on par with the people that are lower level, where an EQ2 Mentor is still extremely powerful and you're just following them around while looting corpses, trying to keep up with them. Level sync/mentoring would require the most work. Hero's Journey mostly just needs some level/difficulty adjustments and probably increased EXP for objectives, while the former suggestion of reducing required EXP per level is the fastest and easiest solution that requires the least work (which makes it the most probable).

Other things like server merges are likely never to happen, even though they'd make the game feel so alive. Merge all the regular servers into one and only have Pickzones. But people would flip their over losing their name. There's also always a group of people who prefer to play on smaller servers. They could have a pickzone with a small player cap on each zone I guess.

I've also suggested lowering the level requirement on high level buffs on lower level players in some form. Even though it is essentially power leveling, at least we're still actually playing the game instead of AFKing while someone else kills stuff.

There is also the option of removing the merc upgrade quests or making them easier, maybe just make them auto-granted AA or something. Though truthfully I've never even used them so I can't say how much of an upgrade they are or how much of a difference they make.

Anything that increases the speed of leveling during natural gameplay is a welcome change. Or anything that somehow makes it more social like it used to be.

How is a new/returning player supposed to even know what Overseer is much less how to go about utilizing it in the first place though?

Back when there was no cap on overseer quests/day, you could complete the whole quest-selection, with the "finish now" button. That was around 35% of level 114 in 10 mins of overseer iirc. Blatant pay to win though...

I played from classic through OoW, and love the old content. I missed everything else until I came back this last fall. I got to sample a few good zones in some expansions like HoT, VoA etc. I think there is a definite market for allowing people to get experience in some of these older zones just for sake of seeing the content. You get bored endlessly grinding in GD FM or EW.

Realistically, people are going to want to level in current content because that's where the best gear drops. If people can get equivalent/better xp in old zones then I don't think that would do anything negative to the game and would reduce some of the lag in current zones.

New players/returning players would have more people to group with. Gear for those players would become more plentiful in the bazaar, and at the very least vast expanses of the game wouldn't be so empty.

If it was possible from a coding standpoint I think it would be a very valuable feature. Nothing will replace the nostalgia trips that TLPs give, but it would make live servers far more approachable for people to start playing on. A lot of people quit because it feels lonely long before they get to current content.

Plus the free to play model requires you play on live. If you want to make money off of these players returning you need to make the game enjoyable for them so they pay for a sub. If they log in for 3 weeks, get a character to 60, get tired of moloing and leave you haven't received a good return on investment from their free account.

A dungeon-like system similar to how World of Warcraft does Mythic Plus. Start at level 1 dungeon, basically just a T1 zone, kill a certain number of mobs + namers in zone to progress, you only have an hour to complete it if you want to get to dungeon level 2. Mobs can actually be CC'd so the game isn't just a DPS race. Once you get to a certain dungeon level it drops the equivalent of T1 raid gear (maybe slightly below) and the gear doesn't progress further, however, you can complete higher dungeon levels for fun/challenge. Put a leaderboard in game so that you can compete with other players.
This system would solve a lot of problems that modern EQ has.
1. The group game is boring. Let's face it, after you completed all the missions for the 1,000,000th time and complete your type 5s, you have 0 reason to go back except for tribute gear. Getting to the Xth dungeon level for raid gear is a good way to gear up alts and your friends who don't raid.
2. Encourages good gameplay. In the group game I start taking off my gear to give myself a challenge, or pulling massive trains on myself to see if I can keep up. These are examples of bad gameplay just to give myself some enjoyment out of the group game. Also, it will give an introduction to raiding. The biggest difference between groupers & raiders is how they handle mechanics and coordinate with others. In the current group game there's almost no reason to hold your burns because nothing is scary enough to warrant needing burns. 3/4 group missions are theoretically soloable by SK/PAL. Having content that required coordination would be significantly more fun.
3. Get casuals geared up. Some people don't have time / want to raid, which locks them out of a lot of content & power of their class (mages without arms/pet ear can't even compare to mages that do, tanks without raid range/neck focus don't even compare to tanks with those focus effects, etc)
4. Actually be fun. Let's face it, the most fun content in an expansion is the missions, even after grinding them a million times. Beats grinding any day of the week. Unfortunately grinding missions for AAs is not time efficient at all. You get roughly 120 AAs from doing the COV missions and it takes 30m-1.5hr to complete them, depending on group. With any group of 6, in 30 minutes I can get at least 400 AAs with lesson burning.
5. Add competition to the group game. Most raiders raid because they want to be #1. In the group game, the only competition is the parse, but when mobs die in <10 seconds, does the parse really matter?

This kind of content probably isn't for everyone, but it would definitely get me to log in more during the week and increase my enjoyment significantly. I want to play more, but I am out of things to do that don't feel like chores and I'm sure many others feel the same way.

Tl;Dr: infinitely scaling content

I admit I have skipped a lot of "mid-level" expansions, like PoR and DoDH, but they looked cool while i ran through them. Im not an ALToholic, so I would probably only play them properly if they introduced a good shrouding mechanism for my main(mass slaughtering grey-cons is not playing properly btw).

As for the incentive to play through with a shrouded main, they could reward me a reasonable xp reward while shrouded, or they could add progression-achievements that rewarded something nice(a useful clicky or a fancy ornament or something).

I want to group more with others, but I want to do it while making progress myself.

The evolving exp has been GREAT as a final small amount of character progression that I can work on in a group with others (helping them lvl, AA, progression, etc). More stuff like that please!

EQ needs this so much

the only thing I disagree with is the timer, the timer in mythic+ dungeons in WoW causes a ton of toxicity, instead just give people a leaderboard score based on their time but let slow groups plod through if they want to waste 5 hours on a dungeon imo

How are they supposed to know about EQ? huh? LOL

This situation is ideal for me when I'm leveling to the new cap, 110-115, but as someone who just starts out, this is not how it will work. With a recruitment mission every 12-24? hours, if you're lucky, you won't be pulling in those 10% numbers within the first month, probably more like you said, 3-4 months. That's if you're on it every day. This mechanic works for people who are current, and/or playing every day, have no other activities to do (casual players will not be on every day) but it's not something that will really engage players, I would imagine, and doesn't lend itself to the group game at all. It's a somewhat lazy design and it's sad that it's the best option for solo players (all players?) to gain experience.

Even at 10 days a level, that's still 150 days from 85 to 100. Should that be the standard experience of the game? To auto-pilot your exp while you scrounge for groups to play the way it was originally intended? Would any other game survive if the average time before you became any kind of useful to other groups was 6 months? Sure, Everquest is a little bit of a different game but in today's atmosphere I don't think it sounds very enticing, even to returning players.

I think one way to incentize grouping is to create an IP address flag that allows for special bonuses.

Example
Flag each account played on a different IP address so that when more than one is grouped together there is % chance of special chest or AA grant can occur. So this would provide a benefit for groups that are not made up on the same IP address (I.E. boxing). I am pro-boxing but if the benefit to group with someone else who provide a % chance for special items, experience or mobs that might push me to invite others again.

You could rotate the special bonus - maybe it is AA, maybe exp bump, maybe currency for gear, maybe unlock special bag, overseer stuff, colored sword etc. The idea is that people who choose to work with other characters get bonuses.

Another idea would be to create a faction system for other people, example if I play with charcater George (another player). The more we group together the better benefit we get example - +1 to accuracy for 6 hours grouped, +2 for 12 hours etc. This would create inentive to work with same other people hopefully creating more bonds and real life ties to keep people engaged.

What about a flag that new accounts with under 20 hours played get, that rewards older players who play with them. Example if I have account that is 10 years old, and I group with a account that has less than month old - The older account gains curracy towards some reward system.

All these would require some sort of FLAG tha could be set to allow the system to know who is seperate individual and who is older.

I've tried a few times to get into Everquest live. I always hit a roadblock in the 80s where my mercenary becomes weak, and it takes FOREVER to level up. rank 2 spells would help kill faster, but I cant solo nameds to get them, upgraded mercs might help but you cant do the quests without other people, etc. I'm sure if I stuck with it for a month or two I could slowly burn my daily xp bonus thing and grind it out, but honestly I get lonely and bored

I made it to max level in the House of Thule expansion, thanks to some special server back in the day where you started at level 50 or something, but even then it was still kinda lonely. The game is ancient so everyone has their guilds and cliques, I dont blame them at all, just always wished I could find an in somewhere and see everything Everquest has to offer.

I'm not begging to make the game easier or anything, just my 2 cents. It sort of feels like hey invest 2+ months into the game and MAYBE youll find some groups or some social interactions

The big issue with this one is there's even less incentive to play with George. Why drop a box or a clique group to include George, if it means you're going to lose your already earned bonus with other people.

Fellowships were supposed to help people along, but most people already have their fellowships setup for porting boxes around, and won't want to waste xp on someone that may or may not stick with a guild.

Yep the original plan was for the bst pet to tank, but i've always been playing catchup, and the pet just gets smoked if it draws aggro. Currently i'm still working on COTF stuff, so the 104 merc tank is doing ok with the 97 healer, but yeah, one dps, one heal was my end goal if i'm forced to box/molo.