2 new TLPs announced for 20th Anniversary

There have been major boosts to player mitigation that will make Underfoot much easier in this regard, this time around. Including most recently a new mitigation boost (from a patch within this last year iirc?) that just takes effect at level 85+, due to DBG changing how warrior stances work. (Which we don't even get til later, but we still get the boost in SOD.)

Even five years ago, on Fippy, Underfoot tanking wasn't nearly as hard as when Underfoot was released on live. I played a main warrior in one of the guilds that made it into tier 3 before fading, and tanked stuff successfully in Tier 2 and 3 wearing a mixture of SOF and SoD gear with only a few pieces of underfoot gear. Lack of tank gear wasn't what ultimately did in the struggling guilds on Fippy.

If its been nerfed, fair enough.

How many Casual guilds have folded in to Entendre and the last few "casual" guilds on Phinny over the last expansions for them to field these numbers? What happens when there aren't any more guilds to fold in to them, will they fold as well?

Early TLP's have allot of players to pick and chose from in US times zones, no one is denying that. If they want to reach out to a bigger market and make the server viable over time for Ultra Casuals, they need to make raid targets accessible for lower number raids then what current TLP's do. For every 54 person "casual" raiding guild, there are 50, 12 to 24 person simultaneous fielding casual guilds out there that consist of a few hundred players.

Adding merc's to raid zones from day 1 would fix this. They won't need much updating from the way they are now until PoP, and then they would only need to be aware of the total potential dps of the present merc's and split that evenly between the people who are set to main assists. That said, I wouldn't mind helping DGB with some machine learning code to "train" their merc's for later expansions, even though I don't think that would be necessary if the merc's are beefy enough compared to current raid content.

Of course, quite a few, as has always happened on the TLP's.

But, we are three and a half years in on Phinny, and there are still casual guilds.

Don't know what point you are trying to make, but there is plenty of opportunity for casual players even this late into at leat this TLP.

make pvp , last thing we need is another blue tlp server + GMs HATE dealing with blue server drama

i like it

You going ultra casual next server?
If it's fv loot rules I'm going to love it....

I can only imagine Bazaar + fv loot would be an automatic gold mine.

Get ready for disappointment. If they didn't have the rulesets down by the announcement of these new servers, that means they only have a little over a month to make changes to the ruleset and implement changes, and test it. I doubt we'll see much difference from what we have currently.

Shouldn't come as a surprise or disappointment to anyone to be honest.

As the honeymoon phase runs its final course, I am transitioning into disappointment and regret for such high hopes.

Hardcore:

Slow XP

Truebox

No AoC

Motm

Corpse Runs

No Pickzones

Neither one of my guilds was in prime US time. One was a late night PST guild and the other an Oceanic guild. Still no problem killing stuff or fielding members.

And no, there aren't 50, 12-24 person casual guilds out there. I doubt there are 50 guilds total on any server. There are the guilds that raid and there are the guilds that don't raid because the players either don't want to or can't dedicate the time to raid even casually, and they aren't going to be able to raid even if you gave them mercs. The casual folks that want to raid join the casual raid guilds. Seriously, there are guilds out there that are happy for you to raid one day every other week and will still let you bid on loot. It doesn't get a whole lot more casual than that.

Mercs would destroy the game in the early eras on a TLP. A tank merc can solo Lguk at level 30, and never drop below 95% health. And they can't adjust them, because on live servers that merc NEEDS to be able to kill like that, in order to allow people to catch up. Since groups are non-existent. It would also take far more than the 6 weeks we have until this server goes live to fix mercs to work in raids. You do realize that, currently, the way mercs work, only the mercs in the group of the person who actually has aggro will attack the mob. They would have to heavily rewrite the merc AI, and that would impact live servers.

Not gonna happen, and not needed anyway.

The people that are the surest in their opinions are usually the ones that know the least....

So you are saying you know how everyone plays and you know every facet of EQ code and the current code capabilities of DBG? I noticed you put the guilds you were referring to in past tense, shouldn't that tell even you something?

You're going to up your krono count to the billions on that server

Are you sure?

Ding! You are one of the people in the world that has 130 IQ or more, use it for good ;p

Which is why you couple FV loot with Daily Raid Instances and no MOTM. At that point you have a lead mine.

If you know anything at all about FV loot, 10 people selling the same item makes for a very cheap item.

I think I should be able to solo all raids in Era, with my 3 box trio. That's a real casual server!

No true box with AoC. Either server and I am there . Let us box and give our small guild the opportunity to raid each week! If that is hard core ok! If that is casual..ok! I can deal with FV rules or no. I can endure the MoTM. I can roll with some slower exp but lets not make it a job. We are adults and have lives too. PVP would be a mistake unless you make it in certain zones I guess. You haven't done No true box with AoCs yet. Seems like a winner!

Can't imagine doing Guk again. Ugh. 51/50 or bust.

As for the casual/hardcore debate, I've always thought of it in terms of how they defined having fun. Casual players are happy to hang out with friends, old or new, kill some stuff, maybe get a little exp or loot. Hardcore players are more likely to get a buzz from the competitive aspects of the game. Yes, hardcore types usually play more, but not always. Some casuals also put in a lot of hours, but maybe they spend them tradeskilling, doing quests other than those required for BiS items, and fighting in camps that give less than the maximum possible return on investment.