Honestly, Selos was kinda perfect aside from zooming through the "golden" age

I've played a lot of TLP over the years. By far my favorite server was Selos. The increased XP/Drops/faster spawn times and lockouts made some of the more tedious parts of EQ much more fun. I had loads of alts, did lots of hardcore raiding, and finished most of the weird "per expansion" quests during the Luclin-> OOW period. Stuff I never ever would have bothered with had it not had higher rare spawn chance (BiC, shawl, etc). Completing your VT key shard farm in 4 hours was a joy.

Of course, once it got a bit further it started moving into "new" EQ, where most quit. That wind-down after PoP where GoD takes a chunk, then DoN/omens go for the jugular. There is a reason why no one really sticks around past PoP. GoD actually kept a pretty reasonable population on Selos, but past that It's just not the same game anymore. That "golden age" of Velious->PoP, and in selos case even GoD now that story quests were possible without nightmare mode grinds has always been one of the best parts of this game.

I'm guessing we will see a new progression server announcement soon once Mangler is done with PoP. Hopefully they take some of what everyone I played with on selos enjoyed and forward it to the new one, while giving a bit longer time in that Velious->PoP best era. I think selos could have started on velious, given each major expansion (Pop/Luclin) an extra month, and still been as poppin as it was. It was the first server I've actually enjoyed leveling alts on, and doing those weird expansion-wide quests that require 30 pieces and are usually completely ignored due to bad drop rates elsewhere. It's weird to have nostalgia for something that literally happened only months ago, but I guess that's the nature of selos. That was a blast last summer.

Agreed, the unlock times were far too fast, and I actually wish the exp and loot bonuses were higher. I still dropped something like $500 on exp potions etc just to make it go faster, and i'd do the same again if the exp rates were even higher.

I have alt-aholicism and my burnout was lower on alts because of the loot and exp rates.

Now if only the unlock times were 4 months, and FV item rules.

I'm older now with responsibilities, I can't deal with hardcore old EQ loot rates and exp rates. I get burned out more and more each TLP server, but Selos literally had such a low burnout rate for me it was ALMOST perfect.

4 months, faster exp, more loot, remove "most" no-drop tags from items. BOOM

4 months unlocks wouldn't be Selo. 6 week unlocks would better for selo 2.0; individual month to month unlocks are barely affected but overall the server would remain in certain regional eras longer. Definitely needs double loots and perhaps higher exp bonus or move the autogrant to be sooner by a couple of expansions. Edit, and definitely all tradeable loot.

Like Selo and Mangler, openning 2 TLPs at the same time would be great. one for hardcores and the other for casuals. FV rule set, PVP, short unlocks, no-true box for the hardcore server.
For casual server, 4 or even longer unlocks per expansion with increased loot/exp rates.

There aren't many hardcore eq players left that actually want anything of a true grind. If they exist, they're already on p99 slaving away camping mana stones in classic.

Embrace the live quality of life changes... more loot, more exp, more zones, these are things people on tlp want.

By the way, the only person I talked to in discord that ever said levitating in plane of fire over geometry made sense was a communist.

The comical part is the "casual" server, which I assume is considered Mangler, is where the "hardcore" people are lol. Quotations are purely for the fact that I think people have different opinions of those words.

Selo is the casual server.

The general belief, at least from the majority of forum posters, was that Selo was "hardcore" and "racing" because those people incorrectly believed that was what a hardcore player would want.

The uproar caused the original Mangler ruleset to be changed for a legitimate hardcore ruleset to the sort of thing it now has which of course attracted the massed teams and Krono speculators.

Sorry but, if you don't have 'Sleepless' or 'Timebreaker' as a title then don't tell people what it means to be hardcore, thanks. =)

I've always found on TLPs no matter the rule set the 4 "70" expansions OOW, DoN, DoDH and PoR are the most tedious and where you see a lot of people slip away...

Having been through it it's incredibly apparent that that 70 era was when EQ tried some new things and the overall effect was just poor.

Different, but not what made eq great. That era will probably kill every tlp unless they tweak it. The bundled loy with pop, so it's not off the table that they're willing to address some serious weak content.

Selos 2.0:

Starts in velious.
Double the chests(loot) from raids in OoW+ And yes, I actually did just say double the loot. Even with these fast lockout timers.
Double or even triple the flags given from raids. I never raided anything past DoN until this server and I've been enjoying EQ more now than ever before. I actually love this server, I just wish they would have cleared up some of the seriously ridiculous bottle necks. MMM is one of the worst raid zones I've ever encountered in my life and it's an enormous bottle neck for the SoF expansion.12 flags for such a pita raid zone is unacceptable.
I'd push the unlocks to 6 or even 8 weeks for level increase expansions... Especially if double loot and massive increase in flags won't happen.
Unlock LDoN with PoP. Unlock GoD/OoW the same day. Unlock DoN/DoDH the same day. Unlock PoR/TSS the same day.

I don't even consider LoY/LDoN/DoDH/PoR real expansions. They're easily the worst content this game ever saw. DoN group content was kinda lame, but the raids were fun.

What about 40 days? Every 40 days a new expac unlocks? That's just under 6 weeks.

Not sure what else to add at this moment. Just some quick notes off the top of my head.

Selo had the right idea with faster XP and more loot drops but lost me at the 30 day unlocks. Way to fast to enjoy the content.

I'd love a selo like server with slower unlocks (like normal 3 months) and FV loot. If anything it would be a fun experience.

But outside that, I'll prolly return to Selo when it hits TSS and start from level 1 that way with mercs.

My goal has always been to get to max level to see current content. But the way the game is structured now it takes too long to do that through existing means. You either grind it out (mostly alone), box, of boost and play an unknown character with 50 hundred skills.

I wouldn't really agree. That era was mostly good back when it was released. Don especially. The real problem is those expansions did not age well and are terrible in the tlp concept. Gameplay and players have changed so much and the speed at which we do this content is what makes it seem like such nad expansions.

I agree though that the issue needs to be fixed for tlp as the state of the game is where it's at and theres no doubt there is a lull during these expansions. But it's not because the content was bad from the begining the game has just changed and these xpacs didnt change with it.

Theres an interesting idea of creating a level locked tlp which would release all the lvl 70 xpacs together that I think would be very refreshing.

Oh I bet in the day casuals loved it as they could take advantage of all the group instance stuff. Not being blocked out would have been enormous. But on tlp most people are raiders (I believe) so the perspective I used is from a modern tlp raider, casual or hardcore.

Bundling level 70 wouldn't be terrible, or just auto releasing it on prior expo completion.

That is...not true.

Selos was by far my fave TLP experience, but one change could have made it so much better- expansion unlock timers that are determined based on the amount of content in the expansion. I love EQ raiding, but spending even one month in certain content-light expansions is painful, as is only having a single month to enjoy others with more for players to do.

Expansions with more content (especially raid content that requires many pre-requisites) should allow players more time to fully experience them before rushing into the next expansion. This could be biased by personal opinions, but I think a consensus could be reached that would please the vast majority of players.

Eg: PoP, with its many planes to unlock before reaching PoTime, could benefit from a longer period. Six weeks instead of four, perhaps. Other expansions have so little content that they need to be bundled with prior/succeeding expansions (LoY, LDoN, DoN would all qualify for me, there's not nearly enough content to keep a guild happy for four weeks in any of those.)

If Darkpaw really wanted to go the extra mile, they could tune the amount of drops to be more in line with other TLPs. On selo's, the reduced lockouts meant that we were raiding twice as much as other TLPs, so roughly twice as many drops... but we were only in each expansion for 1 month, compared to the three months of other TLPs. This meant that a guild raiding as much as the lockouts would allow would enter the next expansion with only 2/3 as much loot as a comparable guild on a tlp with a three month unlock schedule. After several expansions, that effect can be significant.

Only complaint I have for Selo is there isn't enough key drops. Having multiple tiers of raids where each tier needs to be killed 4 times before you can move on doesn't work with 1 month unlocks.

6 week lockouts and x2 currency/keys/flags and Selo is fixed for version 2.0

EDIT: BUT ... dont release a 2nd Selo until the current Selo is finished or its kinda pointless. This would essentially make a 2 year event server which would be cool

unlock speed is most decisive factor to determine if it's for hardcores or casuals.

this game is all about raids. TLP is quite anti-casual because unlock speed is too fast.

12 weeks unlock means less than 12 chances to do a AoC raid each target.