A new server with the same old class meta isn't good enough

It's plain as day that classic through PoR has dramatic and un-ignorable balance problems in raids.

Why are mages still a meme throughout this whole period? Why is mark of the old ways still a thing?
Why do casters largely suck for almost a year in the 70's?
Why are monks the top dpsers, for almost all eras, every server?

These are the biggest glaring issues, but there are others, like druids early on.

I know this is an old game, but the people playing it have changed. Stale metas year after year aren't healthy.

Yes yes, in before "But class x can do well in scenario y, so you have no argument". I know.

Because they cut staff too much and can't handle any extra projects.

People still hand them $$$, so why fix it?

I feel like the real answer here is stop rerolling on every TLP like a crack addict. All of your complains are completely solved by just playing the game past TSS.

Seems like an EZ fix to me

Ya, I could go to mangler who is in PoR right now.

Only i'd have to somehow catch up, and learn 4-5 expansions of content i've never been in that's still relevant in PoR, find a raid guild that wants my class, then hope said guild has the patience for me to learn all the raids from nothing.

Not exactly "EZ". And this is not even relevant to the balance problem discussion anyway, just a tangent on me personally.

Why people on gaming forums have to reply to very real concerns from someone with some snarky BS so often is pretty pathetic.

1. Devs are too thin right now and TLP class balancing is not a top priority when there are serious issues with live server performance.

2. Since you seem to be a veteran TLP rotator, your best option is sticking with the current, living through the deficiencies and getting to an era where your problems don't really exist.

3. Your most glaring issues probably aren't even the most glaring. They are very caster bias.

Counter: why do shams and necros get a spell in classic that remains the best dot in game through luclin? Why do they have the power to click this one spell and outdps pretty much anyone they want in group content between classic and kunark?

Counter counter: That poison dot will only tick 3 times at the most in strong groups, making it extremely mana inefficient.

And even in slower groups, you're not gonna be casting that dot every mob because of the massive mana cost.

As to your point about limited time, ya i'm not a game dev, but I really don't think the needed changes would be that hard to conceptualize and implement. They could also very easily be crowd sourced by some of the usual TLP bigshots. I bet they'd be more than happy to lend a little time to give input.

And as to your point of "just wait it out". I'm no longer a serial re-roller, I have zero interest in ever raiding classic through velious stuff ever again. It's so tedious and boring. Again, this is an irrelevant point about me personally and doesn't really have anything to do with the very real balance problems.

I feel like "somename-the-little-feline" has logged on a new account.....

Ya, same person. Not trying to hide it, these forums have some weird behavior when you're logging in and i'm too lazy to fix it every time I want to post.

Once upon a time there were no TLP, there were only live servers.

Class balance on live servers was dealt with in an incremental fashion, each new expansion the devs would gather around the camp fire with mugs of ale in hand and discuss how to make Shadowkinights slightly better than they already were without the players having an open revolt & after several hours of that spend a few minutes chatting about all of the other classes and which ones needed some extra help, after ignoring Wizards they would then set out plans for a few improvements to the other classes, sometimes focusing on one that needed extra help as it had noticeably fallen behind the others. These improvement would then be a part of the newest expansion.

So in this fashion, over time, through each new expansion created Shadowknights gradually attained supremacy, Wizards were put in a corner and everyone tried to pretend that they were never in the game to start with and the other classes steadily got nicer to play, though sometimes there would be a coin tossed & the game of Nerf Bat would commence whereupon a class may be hit with said nerf bat & taken down a peg or two because prior minor changes had ended up being far more amazing than they ever wanted them to be, generally the Shadowknights were excluded from most Nerf Bat games.

After many years of addressing class balance in this manner the dev team had the bright idea of creating TLP servers, class balancing was only being done on live servers in whatever the new expansion being worked on was but the TLP server players did wail & gnash their teeth at what they saw as balance issues that needed addressing & the devs were thus overwhelmed, they were now small in number, great swathes of devs had been culled in the intervening years & fresh members of the team were for many years only replacing a few of the dev team that had moved away from the campfire.
The devs only had a few hours and extremely limited amounts of ale available to discuss balance and the TLP servers were not their primary concern, but the noise they were creating was truly immense in scale & scope, battered and defeated the devs agreed that they would try and address some of the TLP players concerns, but they would have to allocate some time to that & it would have to be limited, they had a to do list that stretched years into the future and now they had to add more to it.
While they slotted in the occasional fix here & balance thing there the TLP grew in size, the dev team looked at this in awe & in trepidation, will all these extra players mean their numbers would grow & their immense workload be reduced - yes, but not right away, they would have to struggle for a few years and work a lot of overtime to do their best and redouble their efforts on making Shadowknights awesome & god-like stealthily while making even more effort to ignore Wizards and trying even harder to pretend they never existed - but at least this time they had an excuse!!!!

Stay tuned for the next thrilling chapter of "Why TLP are a pain in the backside to address balance issues on".

This is of course just meant as a silly story for fun, but TLP balance is hard, TLP as a concept ended up being a lot more work than the team likely imagined it would be.
When they made TLP they never considered that players expectations would have shifted as much as they had, the balance issues across levels of each class were sometimes well known but they had been largely resolved at some later point in time.

On TLP that solution doesn't work too well, players are encountering balance issues across the entire level range & they become far more relevant once again whereas they had faded into irrelevance on Live servers with how few were playing through those levels there long enough or in numbers enough for those things to be a problem anymore.

Balancing the game across 16 classes & 26 expansions is a gargantuan task, the devs have not simply thrown their hands in the air & admitted defeat though, they have tried to address the biggest issues that are causing the biggest problems, but that list of problems is vast, getting everything on it dealt with is unlikely to ever be completed. Over time the list of remaining outstanding problems should gradually reduce in severity and impact upon players but it's going to take a lot of time, think years, maybe even decades.

With the team expanding there may come with that an increased capacity to address balance concerns but don't expect any huge increases in the scale or number of issues that get looked into and addressed because the game is still rolling forwards and new content will be getting made all the time.

Sadly, you don't even need to cast it every mob to out dps the laughing stock warrior, rogue, and ranger classes in classic/kunark. Heck, you can probably use venom of the snake exclusively, send you pet in, and not break a sweat outdpsing those three. Plus the two classes with the best dot in game have the best mana regen (or are TLPs still calling it FT?) options available of any class. Go figure.

Why do you think you see mainly necros, shams, and mages camp all the highly contested farm places in early expansions? Because nobody can compete with the 1-button superstars.

Why are enchanter charm pets essentially the best dps option in any classic/kunark raid and still very viable in velious? They can twiddle their thumbs and just charm something every so often and outdps anyone in the raid. Same can be said in groups. Throw druids and necros in there in specific zones

Do you see melee AE groups in the deep? Didn't think so.

Do you see any melee efficiently soloing like a majority of the casters? Surprisingly, it's another no.

Bringing up raids without acknowledging the clear advantages that casters have in other aspects kind of tarnishes the argument.

Also, as Skuz highlights, class balance was something that was done over time. People who want it right now need to just suck it up and play past POR. It's a monumental task to re-balance classes without seriously altering "future" expansions or live. Boost older spells? They suddenly become more efficient and better than future spells. Re-do those? And the issue becomes cyclical all the way until live. Boost baseline passive crit rates of casters? That'll without a doubt change the atmosphere of live. Reduce resists of raid targets? Now you have to worry about casters potentially reigning supreme in both group and raid content.

Melee after kunark are better than casters in groups, outside of enchanters. Not sure why you think otherwise. I mean, I think I know why. You're trying your best to come up with an argument against what I said.

I don't know if you're one of the serial "well no you're wrong, heres why: (irrelevant or wrong information) like Skuz and Machen constantly do, who i've long since ignored.

And casters are for the most part far superior soloers than melee are in every expansion. Swings & roundabouts.

The point wasn't to move to a server that is past TSS but to not leave a server for the newest TLP when it is released. If you stay around and play those expansions as they are launched you won't have to worry about catching up and learning the new content.

On live servers people regularly make new characters and level them up all the way to 115. Just saying....

No new TLPs is the answer...

A better question would be, why is levitate still a thing in Plane of FIre?

Retune classic through TLP? Really?????? omg you are delusional!

It's really not that bad. My guild has recently had 2 returning players, one didn't have any experience with EQ past Velious and the other PoP. The current culture armor is better then EP armor and 85ing them into qvic for goat armor isn't that difficult (not hugely competitive either). The cursor loot from DoDh made getting a decent gear set on them easy. In both case they had their 2.0 within 2 weeks starting back up.

As for learning the class changes, Look at the scope of the different post PoP expansions:

The follow expansion have no AA's and only a handful of spells:
LDoN (nothing useful content wise)
DoN (Linear progression that pretty easy)
PoR (Current expansion guilds are actively playing the content)

Full Set of AA's and handful spells:
GoD (Mostly just twinking content at this point)
DoDh (4 easy missions to key for DSK, then you just need to be added to a raid and DZ to flag for the demiplane, a lot of useful mission to help gear up)

Full set of Spells and AA's:
OoW (6 MPG group trials for reisst cap increase increase, get you 7 signets for Anguish access so you can do your 1.5/2.0)

All the guilds on Mangler have felt some level attrition as the content have moved on, at this stage most can't afford old accept the ideal recruit. While the top tier of guilds probably won't have much patience for new player asking a lot of the questions, the mid tier is strong on the server with people that will help others. Find one that fits your playing time and is cool with helping someone learn the recent content.

The hardest part is leveling up, because the server lacks a low/mid level game. However the 7 weeks until TSS unlocks is a good amount time to catch up and learn the current content to be prepared for TSS.

I agree with OP, early xpac TLP class balance is broken with no fix in sight, so the only solution is to not release any more TLPs that don't have at least TSS unlocked from launch.

I was unfortunately logged out reading TLP forums, and sadly saw your post since obviously you're not on ignore while logged out.

You know damn effing well that this is a bad faith argument, and just further proof of why I block you, and Machen. Solo exp isn't relevant other than some low level twinking, and I know you know this.

You'll type anything to disagree with someone. Doesn't have to make any sense, you just love being a contrarian. If you're like this irl, it's probably why no one wants to be around you, just fyi.