Are TLP Servers Killing Everquest?

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Silver-Crow, Oct 7, 2019.

  1. Silver-Crow Augur

    Looking at https://eqresource.com/serverstatus.php we have 8 TLP servers now. In every case except for Mangler they're at a low population all of the time. Selos does have a blip to medium at peak times, but the rest of the time it too is falling to a low population.

    On live other than FV, Bristlebane, Cazic and Erollsi, they follow the same pattern as selos... a small blip to medium at peak times, and the rest of the time they're flagged as low.

    So what's causing this.
    I suspect much of this is really down to too many TLP's.
    In days of yore, people would start EQ, play on a server, join a guild, make friends and your reputation mattered, as there was an in-game community and if you got a bad rep, you got ostracised.

    With TLP's it's a different story. With every new TLP it gets ever more toxic with every server release, especially now that it's been monetised. Who cares about reputation when I can just make my own raids, and chase krono/pp which I can then sell for real $$. The servers themselves will last a maximum of 12 months, before a new server is released and everyone up-sticks and moves.

    It gets to the point people playing TLP's get fed up of the 'fresh start' every 12 months and playing the same old content, so move onto other games, or get tired of the toxic environment and rage quit. Additionally 12 months really isn't long enough to build a community on the servers, so there's no feeling of attachment.

    Live is slightly better, in that you have the chance to play in an established community, but again that grind from 1st level is a lonely experience.

    So what to do.
    1. Increase the time between new TLP's to 24 or even 36 months, so servers have a chance to become established.
    2. Create a new 'live' server with the Phinny ruleset (Truebox, AOC's etc) - this has the benefit of increasing expansion sales too.
    3. Allow transfers from any TLP or normal live server to the new server, so there's no more abandoning of characters you've worked hard on.
    4. Enable heroic characters on the new server.
    5. Sunset any TLP that reaches the stage of the Fippy server..
    6. Police the new server to crack down on BOT armies and unattended play to keep the server civil.

    I very much suspect that if we don't do something soon, then things will dwindle till EQ is no longer viable product. Already the forums are quieter, and I can see already long established guild members on Phinny drifting away.
  2. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    7. Disable levitation in Plane of Fire.
  3. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    God, keep that truebox garbage away from the live servers forever. Keep the TLP mindset away from live forever.
    FubarEQ, Conq, Goburs and 7 others like this.
  4. Javaliscious New Member

    What makes EQ fun? Ask yourself that. There are maybe a couple dozen answers. 1 I heard this weekend. People were talking about the bugs. A simple thing that you knew that maybe not everyone else did that allowed you to complete a task or kill a mob without needing a special class or an army of people to complete. I would bet half or more of the veterans here can think of one in the last 20 years that they remember fondly. Having them systematically yanked from the game makes it less fun. Argue that all you want but it is a fact.

    Now. Taking away veteran rewards, DPS, Charm, Mass port mid raid, How we pull, How encounters were learned over years of trial and error to kill them with 18 instead of 54, True box, the list goes on and on. If you ask me these changes to EQ are what is killing it. They are changing the game we love into something it isn't. Sure there were some good changes. Agents of Change was brilliant. QoL changes too. But if they keep taking away the stuff that makes it fun... well your going to have another dead game in the list of DBG killed games.
    Polekn, Aneuren and Icaen like this.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Going from what Holly Longdale said in the interview with Fading (The EverQuest Show teaser for episode 7), the populations of Live servers & TLP Servers are almost the same.

    Pretty confident to say that TLP are helping keep the game alive rather than killing it off & I certainly wouldn't be here playing without them as the TLP was what brought me back & I suspect many others too.
    Xanathol likes this.
  6. Xanathol Augur

    Maybe the game is just old. Maybe the live game vs the early TLP game are vastly different and maybe a lage portion of people prefer the old game and not the new. Maybe your conclusion is the opposite of truth - maybe TLPs are the only thing keeping the lights on.
    Skuz likes this.
  7. Krezzy Augur

    TLPs, through subscriptions, Krono sales, and bag sales are keeping the lights on at DBG. The bulk of the population on these servers quit EQ years ago, and came back for the nostalgia offered by these servers.
    Skuz and Meridian like this.
  8. Lumiens Augur

    It would be more profitable for them to stop all development on live and just focus on the TLPs. People continue to pay a monthly sub and make store purchases for recycled content.
  9. Krezzy Augur

    This is short-sighted. If no new content comes out, the game will stagnate far more than it already has. The live game is the end of the road for every TLP. New expansions only help us in the end.
    Skuz and code-zero like this.
  10. Machen New Member


    I very much doubt this is true. EQ is overall a pretty small portion of what DBG does. If EQ TLP's were what kept DBG in business, EQ wouldn't be buried 5 games down on their website.
    Bullsnooze likes this.
  11. Boze TLP complaint factory

    This is the ForumQuest version of "Are Millenials killing ________?"
  12. AcemoneyFV Augur

    Or maybe the fact that the fan base has been the same for 20 years. There's no new people playing this game. I'm betting the average age of EQ players is around 35 or so.

    Time is the only thing killing EQ. With no new players, you can't replace the ones who go. Every new player I've spoken to over the years is usually gone within that same month. Everyone I run into has played for years or is returning, to just disappear again. I can't lie, I do the same, come and go.
    Xanathol and Skuz like this.
  13. Silver-Crow Augur

    I'm not saying ditch TLP's, I know they make money, which is what keeps the lights on.

    What I'm getting at is lets space them out a bit so they're meaningful and can develop a decent community before the heart gets ripped out of them, by the next TLP Server to come along. Some of them may survive that way.

    Additionally if you have somewhere to move your character to, when your server becomes abandoned, it will go a long way to actually retaining people. The new Heroic server is a decent idea for something different, but it would actually be more beneficial if they started the server at Live and allowed anyone stuck on a dead end TLP to migrate to it.
  14. Chuuk Augur

    TLPs die off because there's no new influx of players and there's a deep distrust in DBG actually enforcing the rules against botters.
    • The hardcores typically stay the longest, but they start leaving because there's only so much you can do when you play 6-8 hours a day and unlocks are 3-months.
    • Casuals typically quit because they get left behind / locked out of a ton of content by the hardcores.
    • Both groups quit because of botters - hardcores tend to get banned trying to be vigilantes and the casuals hate the fact that they can't camp a useful mob within 2 expansions without fear of getting mollywhopped by a bot group.

    Truebox worked for Phinny because it was new - but on Mangler, you wouldn't even know it is there. Everyone knows you can just search Google for how to host a dozen VMs on your PC and get around the Truebox.

    Even if they are actually spending valuable time and resources cracking down on botters, their public relations team isn't doing them any favors. No one actually believes they are doing anything other than nabbing poor casuals for running AHK scripts overnight to forage stuff or keep their character online to skill up bard instruments.
  15. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Played on Agnarr from classic to the end of Velious, had a great time. Never again though. There's a sizable group of people who do hop from tlp to tlp because they like the progression experience. It has an appeal.

    But it's 2019, and WoW classic is a thing. I have not played it personally, but every person I know from Agnarr that I've talked to can't stop talking about how awesome wow classic is.
  16. Midnitewolf Augur


    Actually he has a point. There are a ton of people, myself included that are playing on TLPs, which most people seem to think is the only thing really keeping EQ afloat right now, because we want to play a game that is challenging and requires a group of coordinated individuals to play through effectively. Pantheon is rapidly (well kind of slowly actually) positioning themselves to capture this segment of people and I fully expect 90% of the TLP population to abandon the TLPs and head over to Pantheon the second it offers an open beta with saved progression. So if the TLPs are what is keeping EQ afloat, DBG would be better off updating the TLPs or even creating a spin off game using say, PoP as a kick off point. I mean I think even base EQ would gain a huge amount of people if it was just updated to modern graphics.
  17. Xanathol Augur

    Pantheon is never releasing but even if it does, right now, it has so many design flaws that it shows that Brad has learned nothing over time, as he repeats the same issues again and again. Sure, if Pantheon ever did release, people would leave to try it out - and then come right back.
    MasterMagnus likes this.
  18. Midnitewolf Augur


    I think those design flaws are a matter of opinion. For example, there are a lot of people who think a game designed to require you to group with other players to be able to defeat content is a design flaw and that everyone should just be able to solo. However, we have that in 100 different MMOs or I can play single player RPGs for that experience so going back to group-centric content is exactly what I have been looking for, for years now to be honest. As far a not learning anything, remember he is trying to recreate the old school feel of EQ so repeating much of what made EQ originally a success seems like a valid strategy.

    Personally I think old school EQ with all its flaws is still a better game by far than most modern MMOs including WoW. Aside from a few things like gear being left on the body when you die, lack of a way for non-caster classes to escape a dungeon after cleric LDs or whatever and a few other QoL features, they could recreate EQ from scratch and I would still pick it over anything else that has been developed before or after EQ. It isn't a game for everyone, that is for sure but it doesn't have to be. If only like 1% of WoW peak subscribers actively play Pantheon, it will be a successful and fun MMO.
    Skuz likes this.
  19. Machen New Member


    I've made this case before, but it is unlikely the current Dev team is capable of this. This would be a completely different direction from what they've done over the past 15 years, and would in some cases repudiate most of their professional careers' work. If players don't like post-pop content and would like to see more content similar to the pre-pop stuff, well, you would probably need an entirely different dev staff to create it. (Probably one more like the guys working on Pantheon now.) The current dev team is so philosophically distant from what you want that it would not work.
  20. Sethisto Elder

    TLP are the only reason I've come back to EQ. They really should fix a lot of what you have in that list though. Even with truebox, there are people on Selos that run entire groups everywhere. Personally I've always felt like boxing entire groups is what kills this game in the end. Community has always been what keeps people playing Everquest. Boxing is pretty much the dungeon finder of this game. It promotes anti-social play. Why play a massive, online game with other people and just solo it all?

    Hell even I'm guilty of this. Depths of Darkhollow released on Selos recently and 2 of my friends I played with in the previous few expansions are MIA for RL issues. Instead of grabbing other guildies and making groups, I just boxed my druid and did most of the progression quest solo. Because that was the easy, WoW style low-effort way to do it. It's human nature to go with the comfortable option, even if in this case it doesn't help at all in fostering what makes these games great - the community.

    There are too many TLP servers for sure, or at least way too many with similar rule-sets. The minor differences between the older ones makes me wonder why some of them even exist. Selos is an example of TLP done right. It's completely different, and some of the most fun I've had on these. Is there really a reason to have corniav/phinny/etc all separate? There are just too many going on at one time.