Hot Take: TLPs

The OP is arguing for at least one full time developer. That's the premise of the thread.

1 person trying to make sure launch servers are stable, fixing flagging issues that come up often, squashing bugs, and trying to improve balance in the first 20 expansion would be busy. Then they could address issues that were initially solved in the laziest possible way like removal of xp from repeatable quests and rooting some mobs. There is also likely a long list of QoL issues to improve the experience, like lockouts resetting on a fixed day of the week to give guilds more flexibility.

No thanks, this would give guilds less flexibility, not more.

Not all lockouts are 6.5 days.

A full time developer could work to recreate zones, events and scripts that are no longer here.

For example, they could recreate the Vulak Ring event to be made available in Velious. This way Vulak would actually be a challenging event. In Luclin they could recreate the original Acrylia Caverns including the Ring of Fire. In PoP they could copy/paste Plane of War and then nerf down all of the NPCs to be a T3 PoP zone status rather than a CoTF status. The Raid could even be included and the loot could be pulled from a handful of PoP items that were removed for one reason or another, or pulled from some LDoN raids.

In PoP they could disable 85/15 to encourage full backflagging cycles as you did back in the day. In GoD they could work to reimplement classic flagging where you must complete all 4 Sewer trials, Vxed and Tipt to access Kod'Taz. In OoW they could fix some broken events like OMM where you can just dispell his power up. In GoD - TBS ish they could add another tier of Mighty Buff to counteract the huge DPS creep of players on TLP servers.

They could also work on fixing balance among the classes in the earlier eras. Currently the state of classes is in no way reflective of "back in the day" due to the level 1-50 spell revamp, DoT revamp and melee innate AA. Monks for example stay way too strong for a long time, Rogues are way too weak early on, etc. etc. This one developer could work to balance out these differences a bit better. There is no "well this is how it was back then" argument so a balancing of classes would be good.

Now if you want to get really crazy, you could create a new TLP flag for 'new 1-115 content'. Enable it on a special type of TLP and then enhance the Mighty Buff power on typical raid mobs and throw a Meh Buff on trash as a lighter version of Mighty Buff to counteract any power creep.

You don't necessarily need new zones, but you could be backfilling many of the class abilities through expansions. For example, free target spells were introduced in Underfoot, Defensive proc Buffs in DoDH, , they could backfill a few versions of these spells for various classes available through quests. For example there is a great set of classic Hybrid level 49 spell quests. Do something similar to this and then give Paladins a very weak splash at level 49 or 59. Give Druids a remote nuke at level 50. Give Enchanters a Mana Reiterate Aura at level 50. Give shamans a Counterbias at level 50. Give Clerics a Shining at level 50. Etc.

The obvious response to this is to say just keep playing through later expansions and you get these abilities. Which is an understandable response. But I think the nostalgia that many people play for are the zones, mobs, items and encounters that they are familiar with from the early eras for many people. I don't think it is necessarily is the spells or AAs they use in these eras. Adding these backfilled spells to the earlier levels would make the early game more dynamic.

However that crazy idea would probably be similar to the Strommhammer server which didn't work out so I doubt this would work out. They do have a history of including new quests that weren't existing back in the day, specifically the set of Kunark diety based clicky items.

Some solid ideas there.

And I agree that there is a LOT of things a full time TLP dev could do, does depend on what the overall vision (oh no not that "vision") is for the work they do, whether they want to have the early expansions more consistent with their original incarnations, minus the bugs, or whether they want to fully flesh out the earlier game to be more like modern EQ, in terms of a more robust & diverse spell/ability set while still undoing the "power creep" to keep the game challenge at the right level.

One of several suggestions to fix how low powered Rogues are vs everyone else was to give them some extra combat abilities to bridge the power gap between them & other DPS, thing with class-balance is every expansion will need work to make that happen, I mean Monks are clearly OP in almost every expansion until very late in the game as they benefitted the most by far from the innate melee damage AA, while conversely Rogues got the least benefit from it. Addressing Warrior aggro issues would help a ton too. Thing is its going to be just about impossible to recreate how those past expansions were when they were current, making it too much like the original would actually be a bad idea, indeed the original class balance in many of them was actually pretty terrible at times when they were current and the best we can expect is they are made so that the class balance is more where it needs to be & more consistent, that said, there is still a strong argument that some "flux" between classes across expansions should exist so every class gets to have a day in the sunshine.

But, splashing more MoTM around is a bad idea which I would absolutely hate & so would many others I think the spells abilities & AA need to be much better tuned for the early expansions - fact is MOTM is an ugly band-aid fix to the problem and it's removal should be worked towards rather than us seeing even more of it, that's only going to happen by reworking a lot of stuff & every expansion would need to see some changes to make it work.

Honestly I think that a TLP only dev would have a very full itinerary and would be busy for many years with all the potential things to look at.

They think a full time developer resource should be available to build out every crazy idea that pops into their heads for a new TLP

While a lot of these are reasonable ideas, I tend to think that most of them would be a risk and that players would not tend to like the changes and/or newish content. I do not in general think that making early TLP everquest more like late expansion everquest would be a success.

Obviously some things like restoring ring of fire would be well received by almost everyone. If content is just broken, by all means fix it. Personally I'd be dead set against them adding further motm, I'd rather see balance fixed in other ways. Likewise the Vulak ring--leave Vulak as is, or revert it to the original vulak. The ring was the worst of the various vulak iterations and took forever.

Backfilling abilities that classes get later would be opposed by most who play the classic-pop treadmill over and over. Which is most TLPers. In general, giving players more abilities just continues the power creep and makes balancing even more difficult.

No thanks to all 3 of these timesinks.

They could spend time realigning the era of some revamps, add-in zones, and quests to better match their reward with an era where they are actually useful.

this is such an easy win. Costs them essentially $0 to adjust when revamp content is unlocked and the result is more interesting content for players in different eras. Make Veksar and Chardok B Luclin locked for example. And move Cazic Thule revampe back to Luclin too while you're at it. Totally unnecessary change to move that revamp to PoP. I don't care about rigorous 'classicness' at the cost of relevant content.

I find it amazing how much TLP servers want the original everquest. But do not want the original everquest.

Essentially asking for a whole new game with the bits of EQ you liked, while removing the bits you disliked.

Interestingly, the devs try their best to do that every year.
See ya in Claws of Veeshan.

I would prefer to have "revamps" where the old version of the zone is an extra zone we can go into, much like how Feerott/Feerott the Dream work where you can choose from the stone in PoK which you enter, say create an object near entrance to do this from.
By all means have the new ones only appear at the points in which they showed up on live but I reckon keeping the old ones accessible from an object would be cool too.

I disagree with your "asking for a whole new game" hyperbole, but see no problem with the second part of your statement.

nobody knows what they really want, this week it will be this flavor of ice cream and next week it will be another flavor of ice cream

P99 is that way folks. You can make weird scold posts about things not being classic enough over there and be celebrated members of the community.

This is a scorching hot take. I hope a fire extinguisher is handy.

It's doubtful that anything like this will ever happen. It's already been stated that the new ownership is going to be dumping what revenue is generated into DCUO and LOTROL. I wouldn't say that EQ is going into maintenance mode, but don't look for any infusion of resources into the EQ franchise sadly.

I missed that one, got a link handy?

https://www.enadglobal7.com/wp-cont...entation-Dec-2020-Acquires-Daybreak-Games.pdf

Specifically page 19 on the pdf.

They are hiring for several positions in EQ so I wouldn't say they aren't investing back into EQ.

https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers

Thanks!