Ideas for the next TLP server.

The last few TLPs I've tried out have had their moments of nostalgia, but have all been fairly grindy. I'd love to see a TLP that uses the Achievements system to bring the quests back into the play. As things currently go, a handful of quests are worth completing, but most of them just aren't rewarding enough for the effort involved.

What's more, XP awards for a lot of the original newbie quests has been diluted a lot.

To address this, I'd like to try the following:

• Reduced normal XP award - say 25% or so?
• Boosted quest XP by 2x or more. If a player does a level-appropriate quest, the XP should match what they'd get by grinding the same amount of time.
• Some Achievement quests will have additional bag, XP potion, or other rewards associated with them. Do not make the rewards visible! Let the players find out and share with each other when they earn them.

Another idea to try - a tradeskill server.

• Allow all players to buy Tradeskill AAxp, regardless of era.
• Sell for station cash or add quests for tradeskill-only bags.
• Start with Abyssal Sea enabled and a Magus present in Commonlands to portal to this zone, as well as allowing the Magus in this zone to portal to Commonlands. Enable only the tradeskill learning quests here.
• Enable tradeskill trophies from server launch. Add vendor or quest sources for materials required for the beginner trophies. Lock tradeskill advancement behind having an evolved trophy.
• Consider doing something to boost the usefulness of Research. Maybe allow it to create spells in-era using something dropped by raid mobs?

Server now DOA. Move along.

I've always thought it would be fun for a no-key/no-mighty/no-lockout raid server with a raid point system of some kind that incrementally makes content more difficult.

Kill a raid target and you get a token on your character for that target, all characters engaged on a target while its engaged get their tokens added up and applied to a special boss buff that scales its difficulty. Kill the boss and your guild gets put on a leaderboard (kind of like ldon leader board) based on the token/player ratio.

Loot awarded is based on the token/player ratio, either quantity or some kind of scaled defiant-esque type gear sets.

Level locked like vaniki so you can do whatever content you want for a given level bracket, but you might have to do higher token bottom tier raid targets to gear enough to work up the leaderboard on top tier raid targets.

would be nice for guilds with significantly lower numbers to be able to progress through raid content as well on easier lower token content.

True Boxing Server: minimum 2 characters per player have to be played to gain XP or be able to loot.

TSS start with a standard release cadence.
Characters start at level 1.

This give people a chance to experience a much better era of the game.

Perhaps, but there are effectively three EverQuest games (Live, TLP, and P99) that cater to three different audiences.

This is just my personal opinion, but I've LONG argued that there's a huge shift in raid/content design that occurs right at Demi-Plane of Blood that a lot of players just don't care for. Humans are visual creatures and EQ is a text-based MUD at its heart, so in order to "communicate" more complicated encounters, those messages have to go through a text based system, which is hard to digest. In World of Warcraft, these messages and warnings are communicated visually, and this allows for content to be much more unique, interesting, and more quickly/easily understood without wearing out the player. I'm not trying to make a pro-WoW argument here, just highlighting the engine difference.

I think this is one of the many reasons why you see a drop off in interest especially at DoDH with TLP servers.

The drop out is driven by burnout during the 70 era. The Era last too long, none of the 4 expansions offers enough worth while raid content. 2 of the expansion don't include new AA's. 2 of the expansions are largely devoid of group content worth doing, Omens doesn't have enough group content, DoDh is only one of the group that success in group content. PoR also offers some of the least fun raid content in the history of the game.

Vishimtar (DoN) is your first heavily mechanic driven encounter.

TSS is a long from being live in terms of game play. However the game is alot more flushed and balanced in design at this point. It also offers a lot more then just auto-attack AFK that early eras have.

TSS is a far cry from Live. It's basically Classic EQ remastered with more dynamic raids, better class balance/design, and more worthwhile content level 1 to max.

There aren't many emote/text driven events in TSS. Most of the raid mechanics offer "visual" communication to indicate what to do - NPCs turning different colors and/or changing size, rooms being quartered off by walls of ice to be broken, torches that go unlit, buffs placed on characters for bane procs, unattackable mobs with hints in the name of what they do, etc.

Basically every complaint that people try to use against live isn't found in TSS.

Stat bloat? Well, the stat bloat between Kunark - Velious, or Velious - Luclin, or Luclin - POP are equal or way worse.

Thematically different than Classic? Nope, TSS is actually a revival of the classic DND themes. Dragons, Dungeons, Giants, oh no!

"Simon Says" events? Read above.

"Only high end content"? Uhhhh TSS is the first expansion since Luclin to provide 1 to max content and the very last expansion of that nature.

This x10000000000

TSS is basically the culmination of what the last few expansions had been building up to imo.

That is giving each class its own identity.

Druids are no longer just a worse cleric/wizard combo
Paladins are no longer just worse warriors with heals.
Shadowknights are no longer........ Shadowknights are just busted

The list goes on and on.

In my opinion the game gets WAY more interesting in that era of the game, unfortunantly, the server is usually hurting pretty bad at that point, and I think that is due to 4 expansions at level 70, two of them offering very little in terms of a reason to log in except for raids. You can finished 90% of the group/solo stuff in a week or so.

I'm of the opinion that there is a tremendous market for going back and fixing a lot of this earlier content and re-releasing it as a proper EverQuest TLP experience.

At some point, the market for simply re-releasing the same-ole TLP will dry up, so if Daybreak wants to continue that cash cow, they're going to have to do something.

Fair enough, but the bolded part is people's perception. I was a high end raider back in the early 2000's and Demi-Plane of Blood got weird and just straight up silly for most players. I played again on Phinigel in 2015ish. Wiping on a raid because a player missed a text message in one of their 8 chat windows where information is flying at you at a million miles per hour was just not fun.

I'm glad TSS is a revival of classic EQ themes. That's been one of my biggest criticisms of EQ for a long time. Now apply that to the original game and you'll tap into a large market.

Oh, and Kunark/Velious/Luclin/PoP are faaaaaar from perfect. There is enormous potential for fixing a lot of the issues in these expansions.

Demi-Plane is one of my all time favorite raid zones so I'm a bit bias, but TSS is nothing like DP. I created multiple triggers in Gina for almost every encounter in DP. I think I have about 4 total in all of TSS and haven't found a need for any more. People's perception is nothing more than assumptions and judgements on content they almost assuredly never participated in. TSS events have a much more "natural" feel to them.

Secondly, you're almost assuredly not getting a complete re-release of older era content. Devs just don't have time for that. Plus, you'll get an incredible amount of backlash from the community because they re-roll that content because it's 100% familiar and it's what they want. Any deviation from the norm is going to give the sheep a perception of it being "new" content and they don't want new content. They want regurgitated 20 year old content.

If you want anything close to a release of old EQ, TSS is the closest you'll ever find. Worthwhile dungeon crawls, loads of content, large zones, content for all levels, fun engaging raids, little to no increase in hotkeys/buttons, better class balance/design, and the list goes on and on.

I don't agree with that entirely.

First regarding those that don't like change, yes, you're always going to have those who reroll EQ because it's 100% familiar, but at some point the population that's interested in re-rolling the same thing over and over is going to decline to the point where it's no longer economically feasible. So Daybreak realistically has two options here, either a) Let it die and lose that cash cow, b) Think of something to continue the attention of the player base that's interested in the TLP experience. EverQuest TLP is effectively its own game at this point, so either evolve and take the opportunity, or die out.

Regarding Daybreak not having the time, I've listened to enough interviews with prior developers to learn that cash and resources were never EQ1's issue. It was, in fact, the revenue generated from EQ1 that was being used to fund other projects.

Regarding TSS+, I'll give that a shot the next time I play a TLP. Just can't this season

I appreciate the OP trying to post some ideas but I dont think they would be too popular unfortunately. I do wish they didn't nerf quest exp into nothingness. I mostly used some quests to help in the very early leavels and it was almost a ritual of sorts to, for example, spend a night in Blackburrow and then take all the fangs I got and get some nice bonus exp. I understand some people were collecting a warehouse of items to turn in for leveling but if they were going through all that trouble I was kinda ok with it. Even made a little starting plat on new characters by selling those items instead of using them for myself so I thought it was a nice option.

I just want a normal server with FV loot rules. No drop is just annoying and immersion breaking. Yesterday me and a guildy found ourselves camping the Spectral Guardian both for different reasons. We got talking and it turns out he had looted the student log I needed while I had looted the illegible scroll I needed. It is pretty damn immersion breaking that he can't just hand me the log and I can't hand him the scroll, that somehow we are compelled by I guess divine means of some type to never be able to trade some illegible piece of what is scrap paper to me but hey I can always destroy it muhhahahah. Dumb.

Him and I are both still camping our drops, both of us have managed to get the item each other needs when neither is around to go claim it. Stupid.

FV has FV loot rules

• FV Loot Rules
• Mischief Random Loot
• TSS Start
• Cap player level to current expansion -10. So TSS content is out, but player level cap is 65
• No Level req, no level rec gear
• One active character per IP address. Ban VPNs and connecting through a cellular network. Or something to limit it to one character per player

The level 70 stretch is what kills TLPs more than anything since they won't combine DoN with OoW and PoR with DoDh, but TSS is also where the game loses its soul, becoming a mindnumbing, handheld, boring grind. Class balance gets trashed a bit and some of those things don't get addressed until UF. The eyeroll inducing spell rank system is introduced. 'Quests' are on rails, made mundane, repetitive, and now required for 'progression'. Competing factions are no longer a thing. The list goes on. It is basically where EQ became less like EQ and more like WoW.

The limit per ip address isn't something that will ever work and preventing players who actively play on a cellular or other type of network like that is a bad idea.

So people traveling and leveraging their phone as a hotspot aren't allowed to play? What about people who live in areas with subpar ISPs who own a jetpack/mifi?

I guess it's a good thing I have two separate lines coming into/out of my house running my two LANs if I were to play under your ruleset.