Congrats Coirnav clearing Underfoot

raid rog, grp shm. mercs are solid.

Either you scale the group progression to a raid geared player and its too hard for the group gear only people, or you scale it to the group players and its easy for Raid geared players. Not sure how to make it challenging and rewarding for both when the disparity between group gear and raid gear is huge in some expacs. I guess thats why they started making the group gear roughly the same as last expac's raid with weaker focuses later in the game.

The devs definitely tune group content for group-geared players, tuning it any other way would cut a lot of non-raiders out of the expansions & make them not worth them buying for a substantial live population who do not raid.

Some of the later expansions however virtually require you to be full end-tier group geared to beat the group missions. On TLP servers where you enter an expansion in well below full BiS the group missions can definitely be challenging for raid geared players however.
(RoS was probably even more challenging than TBL in that regard)

Nah later expacs you just need 1 expansion back top group gear on the tank, when ROS was live i knocked out End of Empires with a box team that wasn't even completely EOK t2 group (tank was tho) before I even hit 110.

On Miragul I've 3 boxed it with raid geared Paladin/partial raid geared Sham and Mage(still in Era there) to carry people through VP keys to maximize carry spots.

VP mission is a bit rougher but that was designed to be done with 2 groups, I haven't 3 boxed it successfully (and don't expect to since my class makeup is crippled by mob resistances) but I did box it once or twice on live.

The major problem that keeps most groups from doing those missions is they generally don't have a very well thought out group that maximizes synergy between the classes or they don't understand that overwhelming dps can mitigate alot or all of the difficulty.

House of thule and on is the golden era of eq. Folks who claim classic to pop are just regressive people and/or RMT'ers. The early tlps just exist to farm krono markets, anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves.

UF is a garbage expansion akin to gates of discord. It has no level increase and on a TLP this usually means less time to clear it and less loot grabbed from it before moving onto a more legit expansion. This also makes that shawl even less cool for even less amount of time. After UF you get 3 expansions with level increases in a row and they all are the best expansions this game ever had raid and groupwise.

UF is the best expac in EQ (LoY kinda debatable up there). UF is also a HUGE loot pinata. Our boxes were leaving UF with raid gear.

HoT is a fantastic group expac with absolutely terrible raids. VoA has fairly punishing group named and one of the worst partisan grinds in the game (Sepulcher) but overall some fantastic raids. RoF is pretty much a balance of both. I liked the group game and the raid game.

On a TLP, the most modern versions, you get shorter amount of time in UF due to no level increase. This means less time in Convo, as an example this guild on coirnav is getting at best 3 creation/sisters kills before they are in HoT and thats counting the first week of leveling in HoT. I feel even worse for the shawl folks who fell for the spectacle of them without realizing the nature of the tlp servers. Their shawl goes obsolete in days after getting creation drop. Then there is the drop out rate, they just did 3 months of seeds progression which was rough, and then 2 more months of a non level increase rough dps/tank check expansion. You lose population on these types of expansions. You will see a dip in cotf as well cause of this. People just have nothing to do once they have their aa's. Most mains had their aa's banked and cheevos banked when uf came out and then remaxed in a week and were idling waiting for raid nights.

Now take the next three expacs after UF. Each one has a level increase so thats 3 months each. I disagree with your opinions on these expansions and they will be in SS within 3 weeks for sure maybe 4. Then they will have 2 months of SS farming before VoA, in VoA theres another level increase so that means a week more of HoT raiding in VoA as everyone levels their characters and farms aa's. Rinse and repeat.

On TLP's especially the modern ones, HoT, VoA, and RoF is the best there is just cause of unlock schedule and amount of fun work everyone has to put in as theres 15 levels to gain and countless aa's. Not to mention the fact that all 3 have the best progression story and aside from a few outliers, amazing group content and raid content

It's really hard to say from that perspective. We got UF on 4/1/20, on 4/8/20 we did Conv for the first time. On 5/5/20 was our final Conv raid.

Getting into SS sooner just makes HoT more painful, its a really bad raid zone lol. Theres also a huge perspective difference here because 3 months in an expac is a LONG time.