I would quite enjoy a Kunark start, FV loot server next year

Leveling post 46 in Classic EQ is painful. Kunark gives so many more options and it spreads out the player base. I checked 8 different rare spawns that are not camps and they were all taken last night. Feeding 3000 people through two or three decent XP spots is painful.

It was strange how many people back in the "day" never got to max level. They'd get high enough to do planes and such and then coast. Even after Kunark, I remember people hanging out around 53 or 54 and not getting 60.

I guess they could follow Jagex's example & release a EverQuest Classic for Smartphones.

Worked for them pretty dang well.

Well.. people really sucked back then.

As long as you're adding on and expanding on what makes Classic EQ+ "great", I think you'll have a solid market for this. I've been thinking about your post a lot over the last few days and the best example of how to do properly do this would be to study why mods like Brutal Doom are so popular. I specifically state "why" and not "what" here, for obvious reasons.

So let's imagine something like this. Hear me out here:

Engine Changes

1. Rework the UI, which is already being done. The #1 issue with the EQ UI is that the game is essentially a 3D MUD. This significantly limits group/raid complexity because humans are visual creatures, and reading a text line is far, far less efficient than a visual notification (especially when you have 7 text windows with information flooding past you). Raids mechanics like Hatchet the Torturer in Demi-Plane of Blood are simple and fun in a UI/Interface like WoW, but are annoying with a UI/Interface like EQ's.
2. Rework the models and animations, but allow for players to keep the originals. Forgive my ignorance - I had this idea where the animations were tied to the skeletons of the models and not the models themselves. Players could then choose their animations, which gives characters more personality.

Classic Updates

1. Expand on the raid content. The loyal giants of Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox suddenly suddenly have larger and more elaborate castles, with more characters and interesting itemization! Same with Master Yael. Raid mobs have been reworked to incorporate more fun and engaging mechanics. Eliminate death touch mechanics. Plane of Hate would be reworked to be the "end zone" of classic with Innorruk being the primary behind-the-scenes-bad-guy.
2. Update some of the nonsense itemization so that all players, including non-raiders, have something to work for.
3. Update Odus zones to be a little more relevant.
4. Do the work necessary to allow berserkers to start with Classic.
5. Let Kerrans and Vah Shir to be the same race so weebs can get their cat fix with Classic (kek!)
6. Rework the class balance a tad so it's not MeleeQuest.
7. Stick to the Holy Trinity of interesting EverQuest baddies: Dragons, Giants, and gods.
8. Incorporate updated textures like P99 does.

Potentially Game-Breaking Ideas to Avoid:

1. Reworking the stat system. EQ's primary stats are worthless, which begs to question why they are even there. The stats that really matter are secondary (+HP, +Mana, +ATK, etc) and tertiary (+Heroic stats, Cleave, Ferocity, etc), so why not incorporate that into the primary stats? I don't see this as an economically viable issue to tackle, and solving this trends towards overly simplified solutions. Players also don't like over-simplification.
2. Adding leveling quests. This isn't World of Everquest. The quests that EQ players really like are quests like the epics, Spirit Wracked Cord, Loyalist Shield of Honor, Sigil Earring of Veracity, Ring of Dain Frostreaver IV, etc. These are big, long, and highly rewarding quests. You could definitely change some of the bottlenecks (for instance, make the Praesertums for the Sigil Earring of Veracity questline be instanced group dungeons), but avoid leveling quests.
3. Merging class abilities. EQ is a 6-way mechanics game of DPS, Tanking, Healing, Pulling, Utility, and Control. WoW and Final Fantasy combine the latter 3 with the holy trinity, but separation of these is what makes EQ so much fun and unique.
4. Avoid copy/paste dungeon design. The most popular EQ dungeons and zones are all hand-crafted. This is what makes them memorable and unique.

Okay those are my nonsense ideas that no one likes.

I'm surprised that they haven't tried that cash grab already, to be honest.

Risiko,
In lieu of them having to design an all-new expansion, which would be pretty cool if it had the same feel as Velious, I would like them to take any expansion from the last 2-5 years (not current) and scale the encounters and loot down to the level you have in mind. That would be like a new expansion without having to develop from scratch although I would like that too if they want to spend the resources on it.

This is pretty hilarious given that until the innerflame AA changes Classic was 99% CasterQuest and the only argument that this era is now "MeleeQuest" is a single OP Class, namely Monk.

FD / pet killing with 2 daggers here I come.
In order to make it fun the player power would have to be re-aligned.

Take away the solo exp cap limit as well.

My TLP experience was playing on Phinny during 2015/2016 and I remember pretty much all melees consistently wholloping in the damage parses compared to casters. Monks were top, for sure. When I inquired about it 'cause it didn't match my 2003-2006 experience, they stated that melees were rebalanced in a later expansion (not sure which), but that those changes carried over to the TLP servers. I played a necro during that era and re-rolled a berserker the moment I could, and never looked back.

So my experience was 2015/2016 and it's now 2022. Not sure if they rebalanced anything, but my experience was that all the parses were considerably weighted towards melees.

The problem with this si the "new" experience servers are almost never as popular as the more traditional one if released at the same time. The majority of the TLP population, which is mostly recycled, don't want these crazy rule servers like Selo's or Vaniki because ...well they just dont, and have spoken pretty loudly based on servers pops.

The only real success "new" experience server was Mischief with the random loot (Which seemed to be universally loved as well as the higher drop rates and free trade). Otherwise they have all been kinda a bust compared to their more traditional contemporary servers.

Ive said it from the start:

Classic TLP (maybe Kunark start)
Truebox (with Light box in OOW and full box later)
Normal unlocks (3 and 2 months)
Faster EXP (Should start at like the DoDH rate and go to Live at GoD and then Selo's at TSS)
Mischief Loot
Zerker and Beastlords at start
All race class combos at start that are on Live

Id put Krono it would be the most profitable server they have ever had.

lol havent played this in years and popped back onto the forums to see if there was anything worth getting excited over... crazy to see the exact same arguments etc being made over and over, to keep restarting the treadmill for krono farmers


absolutely amazing

It's as if the people in these forums are suffering from a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior.

I wonder if that's a definition for something?

It is perspective mainly. Anything past a certain point in Sky even the casters are meleeing. Bane strike ftw.

Why not enjoy Kunark in four weeks , you may be dead next year? The problem with people like you is that you’re not looking forward to Kunark or any content else you would be happy for 7/20, you just want the free trade so you can pay your $150 one bedroom rent by selling Kronos ; have a nice daaaay

I want free trade because melee classes are decent that way and you can get raid gear by farming instead of raiding.

Where are you living that you can get a 1BR for $150???

https://loft.com.br/imovel/venda-vila-olimpia-sao-paulo-2-quartos-87m2/1q4chrl

About $200 US, sometimes you have to imagine there are other countries in the world.

This is nothing different than Mischief/Thornblade. They were in Classic for a month, then Kunark opened.

That is pretty much a brand new game. If they are going to do that, they should just actually make a new game.

Remember a TLP is pretty much just tweaking a few rules and turning on the game for them and that is it. That is very cheap to do. Designing new content for both Live and a TLP, is not cheap. They would have to double their staff and if they were going to do that, why not take the framework of EQ, i.e. classes, spells, equipment stats, etc and design an alternate world EQ in Unreal Engine 3?

One reason might be that we're already up to Unreal Engine 5.

I never really understood all the complaints about class balance. To me one of the most amazing things about EQ is that originally they really didn't even attempt to balance the classes. It honestly seemed more like they were designing classes based on what they thought would be fun to play or match the type of game play various different types of people would want to play. Examples:

Necro - Self-sufficient soloer, that didn't like to group.
Druid - Jack-of-all Trades utility class
Cleric - Max social player
etc., etc.

Really if you think about it all the original classes seem targeted at a different player type rather than classes that were designed to be balanced against each other. Also, the beauty of a PvE game is that you don't have to balance classes against each other, rather you just have to make it so at least one class is fun for all given player types. To me that is the type of balance we should always want to see in any PvE centric MMO we play. To me every instance of trying balancing all classes against each other has made all the classes play just like one another with the only differences being what outfit your wear, what weapon you wield and what the skills/spells are called.

Yeah nice correction. Not sure where the 3 came from on that one. It is as you say, Unreal "5".

But just to be that guy, EQ would still look much better re-mastered/re-made in Unreal Engine 3.