I would love to have a TLP with classic xp, true box all that stuff that makes it as close to classic eq as they can still do, and have the expansions unlock at a year or like 6 months at least each. Perhaps some of the silly small ones can be accelerated ( i dont know what they are but I think they exist) but all the main ones give me a while to do quests, and enjoy the reward! I love the TLP servers, thats my only issue with them is I play casually, meaning I binge for a month quit for a month stuff like that. So I sink all this time into a quest, then a few weeks later my epic is worthless because the next expansion dropped, or whatever you get the idea.] thats my dream TLP, feel free to post what yours might be.
Just to point out, you can make an Agnarr character and level up at your leisure. Your gear won’t lose relative value. You won’t suddenly be under leveled. Just a thought. I’m pretty casual too, so I feel ya.
These servers tend to be ghost towns 2 months into an expansion. Six month unlocks might sound good, but it's not, unless you're cool with just playing with the 3 other people that actually want this.
I think the problem is the combination of short expac unlocks, slow experience rates and ridiculous bottlenecks to completing quests (eg, VP/VT keys, certain epics, angry goblin etc) that people complain about on every TLP. Back in the day you had up to a year in an expac, and a smaller percentage of the population were raiders or the kind of people that aim to have all the BiS gear in every expac. 3 month unlocks + bottlenecks = Toxicity (but apparently $$ for DBG)
I'd give agnarr or project 1999 a try if you feel like you wanna come back to where you left off but not feel behind. Those are both perfect for what you want to do.
The real problem is that for every 2 expansions you get daybreak is going to dump another server on you.
Agree. 6 months is brutal. Try suffering through DoN, DoDH and PoR in 18 months. As bad ideas go, this one is way up there.
Slow XP does not help casual play. Casual play is enough of a progress limit in itself. The OP's server idea with lava-fast XP, if launched when no other progression server is in pre-PoP... and given a couple of years with no newer-launch progression server stealing population could probably work. However, more Phinny servers every 2 years probably makes more money. Then there is the "each expac is not really an expac unto itself" issue. The mission based or mostly-mission expacs do not stand up well in hindsight.They need to be combined with their level-cap-matching "real" expacs. LoY and LDoN could be launched BEFORE PoP and might actually get deeply used... they certainly should never be separate from PoP ever again. Other posters recommending Agnarr or P99 are on the money... no other servers have population and are static. Static is the only way taking long breaks doesn't put you behind (unless you want to open the free trade loot progression debate/appeal).
Games just too old for anything special. You can change up anything you want, adjust this and that, but it still is the same old game. Time for a new one soon for sure.
I really cant see how xp effects casual play, unless of course you expect to always be at the max level in witch case that's not really casual. I can see things like mercs and auto grant AA will help casual play because it removes the reliance on grouping. slow xp rates have nothing to do with casual play in my opinion.
Taking from OP, I'd put the slant on this of repeating the TLP model every 5 years. On Ragefire, we're starting to get into the expansions where the content and gear was repetitive. After we get thru DoDh, PoR and into TSS we get into the cycle of add 5 levels, T1 and T2 gear, with some progression model. If there was a TLP server that "reset" every 5 years, had 6 months per expansion, that would roughly be Classic to DoDh. I'd continue to re-roll and go thru that content myself. I true box 4 computers and have still never played a handful of classes. I'd gladly re-roll and pick a new set of 4 classes to experience TLP with.
This would be popular for some players I'm sure. As for me, if the servers all stopped at DoDH, I'd never play on a TLP again.
I think diff times per expansion would be good. 3 months for classic and kunark are fine. I'd do longer in Velious and Luclin and have LoY, LDoN and PoP 6 months at the same time.
If you really want a server to be casual and keep 'hardcore' players off it, probably the best way to accomplish this would just be remove all the raid targets from the game. Once you do that it's kinda pointless to race to the top cause there's not much at the top at that point.
Or just add them in when MotM would be stripped...like 3-4 expansions later (whatever the current setting is). Casuals still like to kill raid targets...plus, epics and all.
