The Serpents Spine start server.

I think it's going to depend, person-to-person, based on their experience and preference. Too often on this board people over-generalized based on biased opinions, so I'll try not to do that here. To me, TSS is like the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. It's got some age on it now, and is by no means the 'modern' version of the IP, but if you're a die-hard Original Trilogy fan it also isn't the content you want more of, because it's still the lesser version of something you considered great. So in the same way that I'm not nostalgic for the prequels , I'm equally not nostalgic for much beyond PoP. Someone else who maybe started closer to TSS, or just really liked that era is likely to feel different.

My question would be, outside of nostalgia, what does the game lose over time as it goes into more and more expansions?

it looses mindless one-button gameplay and the ability to PL to 50 or 60 and catch up in like 3 days.

But it gains much better raid content, more interesting abilities which make the classes far more balanced, and also plenty of things to do outside of raiding rather than camp an epic bottleneck piece to sell for krono. You have rare clickies like instant DA, instant levi, as well as augs and AA to farm, so there is content for all levels of engagement. It's not just a constant raid grind to chew through the 8 billion HP pool of a MoTM avatar of war and hope your clerics don't fall asleep.

I would say the trilogy is more like Brosnan's Bond or Keaton's Batman. Sure, I grew up with these and they have a place in my heart, but I will fully admit that Craig's Bond movies and Bale's Dark Knight trilogy are far superior cinematic experiences on just about every criteria.

Terrible class design, horrifying class imbalance, bland generic raids with overall simplistic mechanics (basically every raid encounter is the same with a different skin/npc model), laughably bad itemization, I'm sure I can probably go on if I really spent more than 30 seconds thinking about it.

Quick example: It's pretty embarassing that Lord Nagafen and Talendor - two dragons from literally two different eras share essentially the same loot table. How bad/lazy design is that? You also don't have to go further than this abomination and wonder what in the fudge they were thinking when they developed this item? Thing is useless since day one.

I liked the trilogy in era. I have fond memories of it, but after playing the game over the years you realize it's just objectively under developed in many core aspects of what the game is. It absolutely nailed concepts like zone design and lore, but fell flat on its face with class development and overall gameplay.

I see Level-Locking as one answer to the points raised above, Defiant gear can simply be tied to a level unlock with a TSS start TLP, as in you will see no defiant gear drop until the level 75 unlock takes place. Versions of zones could be tied to level unlocks, so too can other things such as Autogrant AAXP, instead of 4 expansions behind have them 2 level unlocks behind.

You could even tie Experience rates to the level unlock system if you wanted, so you could have Classic XP up to level 50, progression xp from 51-64, GoD XP from 65 to 70.
That said TSS was designed for a 1-75 play through with the Live XP rate, I would see no problem with a TSS-start TLP beginning with live xp.

Hypothetically-speaking with Level-Locked progression you could start a server with every expansion open, and you would tie Mercenaries to level 80 unlock.

Level-locking a server which starts in TSS and provides content 1-75, makes no sense. It is just time-gating players for no good reason. People who would be interested in a TSS start aren't there to dungeon crawl LGuk and raid Naggy for weeks on end. They want to experience in-era content that is almost always barren of players.

It is ok to try something new without clinging to the "Trilogy" rules and mindset.

Makes sense if you want to time gate things which would be unbalancing or trivialise content.

While I wouldn't play on a TSS start, I agree that LLP is a poor alternative and if the goal was to get people starting at later content, they should just release it fully. I'd rather be stuck at 50 for two months in Classic than stuck at level 10 for a week. Let people play at their speed.

Let's not forget that Aradune/Rizlona unlock TSS in mid-July, and players on those servers aren't likely to jump ship to a new TLP launching in TSS when they already have done a lot of work to get to where they are on the existing servers. Those who are interested in starting clean at level 1 in TSS can do so in just a few months time, no matter what the next TLP ruleset(s) turn out to be.

nah two diff things, a fresh tss server is all about the rush from naked lvl 1 to clearing tss and the path taken etc. even tho its not "new" its a different experience and thats what i want in a tlp

The autogrant issue is solved by starting in GoD