How to get TLPs to survive past PoP with a solid population

Yeah you'll find some that love OoW or DoDH, but it's rare to find a DoN or PoR fan.

Yeah that's prob the biggest part of the bad reputation it has, but just the crazy names and the bard speed un-CCable mobs get annoying too. Underfoot has the same problem... people remember it as being really hard, but it is perfect difficulty for today's EQ. Contrasted with how easymode House of Thule is, it makes HoT downright boring.

They need to start banning the automated AE cheaters in The Deep and other similar zones. Also start watching the people who run 30-40+ characters and sell Loot Rights for $ all day long in global chat.

Let's all step back and be real a minute. Why would they want or care if a population lived past PoP? What they want is almost everyone to move servers to the next TLP so it is vibrant for the next few nostalgia seekers.

There is nothing DBG can do to get TLPs to "survive" past POP. The reasons people quit have very little to do with expansions being to long ect. Post PoP EQ really starts to change from a Sandbox do as you please MMO into a Themepark MMO when you do as devs want you to and log on almost solely too raid.

People always talk about the GoD expansion now like its great. The common phrase is that its tuned now as opposed to launch and is "challenging"

If its challenging for people who have been raiding PoTime for 6 months, what do you think it is for the casual players all quitting during PoP as they cant get keyed or get groups in higher zones?

I dont really have a solution for this. I just dont think speeding through PoP will help people play through GoD because its going to be too hard for standard pick up groups to do much still.

Ain't that the truth. I skipped both DoN and PoR on Phinny.

I think a major change to PoP flagging would help. While it's true that any solo/group player who wants access to the elemental planes can easily join pickup raids and get it, many just plain don't do it. If there were alternate, group/solo task methods of getting flagged up to EPs I think a lot more casual people would get there and have better gear by GoD.

Make the game not suck past PoP? It's not quite as simple as that, but mostly. Look at the world building of the game past PoP, it looks like someone spent 10 minutes in a world editor, it's just horrible. The same texture plastered onto a boring landscape for square miles at a time, mobs strewn about with little to no logic or progression. EQ expansions, especially the first three, had real style to them, and really specific feelings to each one. Once you pass PoP, the game turns in the most generic and boring looking thing possible.

The other major contributing factor, is people's inability to easily catch up to where the player base is. You are always going to have people dropping off as a server ages, the real problem is that there are huge barriers for new people to join an existing server. If you don't catch that first wave of leveling, when it's easy to find groups, you're pretty much screwed. The game is on it's death spiral from that point on.

The only thing they could really do to help alleviate this somewhat, is make mercs avail after PoP. At least people would stand a reasonable chance to catch up...but still...what's the incentive? Why level alone, in what will be a horrible grind, when you can start fresh on a new server, and be surrounded by other players?

There is just way too much time you need to spend by yourself, either boxing or with mercs, to catch up to an established server, and at that point, why not just play on live? This is a problem that will never be fixed. They are smart enough to know that, and just keep opening up new TLPs.

You do realize every one of those server merges means all the servers are down for nearly a day. Then you get the problem of merges where your name gets changed because someone else on the other server has same name.

The best way to have servers serve after PoP is to shorten the time in the previous expacs or start at Luclin.

DoN was fun, PoR so so. At least both were only 2 months long. The issue with those is that they released 3 expacs with no level increase.

Well, these absurdly long downtimes and rollbacks aren't helping player retention at all. They've been daring people to find something else to do for like 3 straight days, and while that might be solid personal advice for some of these people it's not good for DBG.

on mangler, we have a pickup raid channel for non raiding guilds/players and raids are organized all the time up to Sol Ro. which gets you into the elemental planes. There was 2 weekends in a row where people scheduled to go through all the raids over the 2 days. And with LDON, BoT and HoH opens up to level 63+.

Make a new game / expansion that starts after pop and dont start a new server every year.

And what does that do? nothing.

I think that it is always going to be a difficult proposition to seriously take measures to extend the viability of any server.

Ultimately it's up to the players who go there whether that server has a population which declines quickly or slowly. In my experience the rate of server decline is identifiable fairly early on.

I don't think there is much DPG can do to prevent TLP server decline, it is all but inevitable.

What I think DPG can do is make it easier to return to a TLP server after a break, the biggest barrier to returning is usually the "gap" that forms between a player who leaves & the rest of the server as it progresses through the expansions & levels.
EverQuest is very aware of this gap & has over the years already made strides to put in place various measures to enable players to catch-up, Autogrant, XP rate increases, low AA boosted AAXP gain, XP potions, and the ease with which they can obtain gear through things like group missions & Heroic Adventures.

What I propose they could do next is to re-tool & expand the Heroic Upgrade system to make bridging the gap even easier by making multiple tiers of Heroic upgrades available on live & TLP servers at set points with a future roadmap for upgrades of the Heroic Upgrade feature also planned in.

So on live servers Heroic Upgrades always put you within XP range of max level characters (max 30 level spread), and on TLP the Heroic Upgrades are at worst within 20 levels of the max level due to the faster unlock schedules.

Here's how that looks:

On TLP:

Heroic 55 available once PoP unlocks (slightly modified version of the 51/50 template)
Heroic 70 available once SoF unlocks (Defiant Geared, AA up to but not including TSS)
Heroic 85 available once VoA unlocks
Heroic 100 available once RoS unlocks
..........................................................
Heroic 115 available once Level 125 expansion unlocks
Heroic 130 available once Level 140 expansion unlocks
.................
On Live:

Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 120 then a new Heroic 100 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a price reduction on all servers.

Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 135 then a new Heroic 115 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a price reduction on all servers.

Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 150 then a new Heroic 130 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a reduction on all servers.

I agree with many here. I dont see the problem being the expansions, though there may be some merit there. The real issue is the catch up. If you dont play continously forever or miss a month or so - good luck trying to catch up. Now this doesnt mean there arent any groups. I'm still finding groups at mid level on Mangler but it is a totally different experience from say the first few months of launch to now. I cant get my friends to join because they have no one to level with.

The game would open up more if they figured out a way to deal with this. Not sure if they can do it, which is why I completely understand the yearly TLP launches. Nothing is better in EQ than the first few months of launch when you are able to play with everybody. Once that dies down, so does most people's interest given the effort required to continue.

You should because it's not true.

Yeah I'm not sure if something in my post wasn't clear, but I mentioned how easy it is to join pickup raids and get those flags. I can't explain why so many casual players choose not to join those pickup raids, but it seems to be a problem.

Even this isn't true. There are periods where it can be difficult to catch up, but most of the time you can catch up and be raid ready within an expansion. I started a fresh set of character on Phinigel when it hit TSS, and was raiding within weeks. I recently made a new heroic character on Phinny (during TBM expansion) and had him raid ready in 3 weeks. It's a lot easier than you assume, the game has a lot of catchup mechanics. Plus the smaller the population on the server, the more likely that a guild will be delighted to help you catch up.