Anyone else wishing for something different?

I understand that the new ruleset on Viniki can appeal to some, but did they even read the forums or speak with actual players before making another "regular" ruleset tlp? They would get a much bigger playerbase just by adding free trade. This make's the casual players more comfortable, as it is easier to gear up. Has anyone ever even heard of a ruleset changing prior to the release? Just curious.

any server starting beyond classic/kunark/velious was always gonna be a 'no' from me

quickly it's going to be way too similar to live servers for my taste

Free trade was mostly a one off gimmick. I wouldn't expect it to happen again, especially not before the current TLP using that format is only one year old. They may revive it again next year, though I doubt it.

I was wishing for something different. I even started some toons on FV hoping the new TLP would roll into it. I did find that WoW Classic has a TLP which launched with QoL improvements, so might check that out.

I would say Random Loot was the gimmick. Free Trade is something that will eventually become commonplace on TLPs, it just makes the game that much more manageable for almost everyone.

Free trade was fun, when it was combined with Random Loot. It definitely needs tweaks and adjustments to be properly viable. At the very least, certain key items need to have trade removed or need to be made MUCH more common (looking at you, VP key pieces). Also, the tiers of Random loot need to be tighter for raid targets.

As far as Vaniki, I see what they are going for. They are trying to make a server that has all classes enabled at the start, all the improvements to the low level part of the game (the lowbie zones in Kunark and Luclin, lots of other QoL improvements), while not just opening at GoD. Personally I expect the first lockout level (lvl 40) to be a lot of fun for the first 4 weeks. The challenge of getting all classic raid targets down at lvl 40 will be interesting. When the lock moves to 50 is where things get rough. If you truly want to challenge yourself, you have basically 2 weeks to level 10 levels and try and kill as much Kunark, Velious, and Luclin as you can. Until I get a look at how underleveled raiding looks, I don't even know how feasible doing VP/ToV/Luclin will be at lvl 50. I'm sure some of the PoP zones will be raidable at low levels, just can't think of them right now.

Mischief/thornblade have two gimmicks. One is that randomness, the other is that most encounters drop 2-3 times the loot. Back on selo you could level up and max your AA yet remain behind and unable to reach parity with current content difficulty even with regular raiding. Multiple factor loot drops is a godsend.

The minority of players that came to the boards and wanted classic start got their way. If you complain here and cause enough of the long time posters to agree with you then you get your way. I guess you missed the memo, like 90% of the population.

Vaniki seems fun, but im not sure you have time for anything else. Fast moving, normal loot is gonna be a full time job to keep up i think.

I thought the VP key parts were WAY easier on Mischief in general. The devs made some loot drop adjustments on the fly, a few more wouldn't hurt. But, on the whole, Mischief is great!

Vaniki, as given, is something different and full of challenge, a fresh change. Yelinak is an accelerated classic server. They are each have parts that some on the forums have requested for a good while. I understand that no server parameters would please everyone, but I am surprised at the angst some are expressing. In the end, despite the loud complaints, I expect those players will play on one of the new servers. Some predicted Mischief would fail and look at the result.

The accelerated schedules of the new servers might mean that players fall off in a year for the next TLP but it should be a fun year.

No.

Leveling within the Vaniki time frame shouldn't be so bad. Loot and gear wise, find a guild that matches your play time and temperament.
If you want to "compete", try thinking about ways other than open would zergs or long LDoN grinds. There may be a variety of ways to advance.

No it won't.

Question 1: Yes, they did in fact look at the great ideas that were floated and then did the worst thing possible with those ideas. And thusly, Vaniki was spawned.

They took great ideas like berserker/beastlord at start, focus effects at start (it was never meant to be permanent, just a mangler thing), opening with trilogy or SoL, and making newer zones being available and viable in earlier eras (jaggedpine, revamped versions of zones, Veksar, Sol C, freeport sewers etc etc the list goes on) and found the worst/cheapest/easiest way possible to implement them and created a zerg try hard server. There are some casuals who think otherwise but it will 1000% be more try hard then selos. You will see.

Then they looked at what they can do to a regular TLP, and gave it faster unlocks to match Mischief (popular - actually a great thing to see - a underlying factor in the success of mischief) but they did it without accounting for the need to also couple it up with increased drop rates and better exp rates to match the faster unlocks. Thusly, they bred Mangler/Mischief for another inadequate spawning of something new.

A few tweaks to Yelinak based on the account of a faster schedule like increased drop rates (maybe something like just a chance to drop 2x loot for rare/raid targets) and increased exp and it has the makings of some potential fun.

Question 2: Yes, they made significant changes to Mangler prior to it's launch as it was DOA.

I highly doubt they would change anything on Vaniki, it isn't going to be super successful in any event - much like the Quarm event server.

They could make some changes to Yelinak and it would be appealing enough to at least get some subs back. (big lack of interest from at least 1k + players in top guilds discords and the official EQ discord)

I'll admit, these servers are some of the least appealing in quite some time.

I agree. I don't know why they didn't do the level locked server starting in Classic, that might have been somewhat interesting, but the way they have it set now and with all the autogranting of AA's there is going to be no real leveling game (also with the faster xp in GoD than classic).

I also think they need to move on to make free trade the default ruleset on TLPs.

I know youre new here, so ill keep it simple. Thats what people said about AoCs and MotM, and we will never see a server without those changes again.

For once I hope you are right.

A small group of players were on the boards early on asking for berserkers and beastlords. They came around to the easiest possible route(opening GoD right away).

Faster exp and auto grant will pretty much be required if we are to truly test the stage that has been set before us. There will be a ton of forwarding loot to officers/MT's to do harder content and I feel that mentality will never be quenched, as there will always be challenging higher content with this unlock speed. Free trade gave us that option to hand stuff down and would make this system work better imo.

There is an appeal to classic loot system too, earning the gear feels a bit more rewarding. I just dont think a fast event server is the place for it. We are not trying to get fully kited and invested in our gear. We just want it to come fast enough from normal raid schedules that we can complete content and attempt hard mode. Some form of faster loot feels right here, we face enough challenge with huge content dumps that are higher lvl. Only a select few guilds will have the time to invest what it will require to do anything worth while imo.

If you look back on progression charts for regular servers you see at least half the guilds taking more then a month to getting to end zone and quite a few taking two months.

Weren't both MOTM and AOCs on every server after the one they introduced it on? They have had plenty of time to play around with free trade. There is one live server with it. Expect free trade to be something they trot out every so many years when they need to spike the numbers. Having it on every server would actually reduce the usefulness of it as a gimmick.