Hi all, A little bit early to start talking about next TLP when they typically launch in May but that is one thing I'd like to see changed. 1) Start with Kunark A TLP starting with Kunark open with an extended time. So many of us rush level classic the same path for the last 10+ years on TLP. We have never had a TLP start in Kunark. Start on Kunark and combine the time for classic and Kunark. Give us plenty of time to level up, level alts, do the raids, get raid gear. No rush, we have the two best expansions. -- Same old level path for PUGrouping. CB>UR>LGUK>HOLE or Oasis>UGUK>LGUK>HOLE. I Looooove me some lguk. My fav zone and I know every...single... spawn point in there. I've even come to love CB and UR (I never leveled much there in 1999/2000) but even with that much love after 10 years of this primary level path... its time for a change. The only way for that change is to not start at classic. -- No Iksar Not having Iksar available changes the flow of balance. Changes what players are willing to start as. Many players start their alt classes in Classic with plans to roll and Iksar "class when Kunark comes out. Some decide to just pay the money and do a race change when Kunark comes out. I believe the later is dwindling. Yes yes, you will lose cash spend on the race changes for Iksar but check your books. Is it really THAT much? I feel most people for the last few TLP's just don't roll their monk necro shaman, etc. They are tired of paying for it so they roll alts like a druid that can help them PL the Iksar. Or just an alt they will not really use once they start their Iksar main. Either way it diminishes something when you are not invest in what you are doing. Not having iksar and with people knowing it will be in soon skews the class selection heavy. Always short monks, necro, and shaman until Kunark then you are overwhelm with them. This is not beneficial to the health and longevity of the server. Its just not as fun as it can be. Start in Kunark and have an extended stay in Classic / Kunark will give the TLP's such a new feel. People will want to travel and level in Kunark starting zones. More adventure to be hand. Better class selection. Its a huge win for all with only a minor loss of cash for race change. This in itself could be the primary gimmick of the server. I think its enough on its own but it could be combine with something else. I don't think anything else is needed but players always ask for crazy stuff. 2) Start in Jan, not May I know, launching on the anniversary is nice but its not the best release date. Sitting inside during the long cold winter months. Holiday craziness is over. People setting in to their routines. Work, school, until Spring summer. Its always a time were new games are lacking and the time when we are not going out as much and doing stuff. The perfect time for a launch. A few thing that is bad for the late May lunches is its spring, its nice out, people go out and do things after work and on the weekends. Summers are busy and traveled. Literally the worst time to try and sink hours of game play into an MMO and a large reason why the population fades so fast imo. Bonus exp weekends. While we are all like YAY! faster leveling... the end result is we are finish the level process within a week or two. We push ourselves to take advantage of the bonus and knock out our mains and even an alt or two. Then what? We are burnt out and 80% of the content is over. We turn to raiding a few times a week and slowly fading away. Starting earlier would negate the exp bonus rush right as the new TLP's start. It would also help later comers later to catch up. win win. 3) As always, I've been suggesting for half a decade is, I'd love to see implemented is a yearly (seasonal, could even do ladders) POP locked servers that get dumped into standard poplocked server. This would give a new server/season to play on and also keep fresh players on the base pop lock server. Think D2, D3, PoE, season/ladders but with Pop Lock classic. This would only take up two servers (one already exists) and would on need cross server name reservation to prevent horrible renaming during the yearly dump. Again, P1999 figure out how to do that. Talk to them, it wasn't hard. Anyway, there we go. Pretty much same suggestions I make every year. Hope you enjoyed the read and it comes off understandable. I blatted this out in-between work emails and calls so sorry for any typos, double works, weirdly structured sentences.
I rather they add cool stuff than take away cool stuff. I wish they would revisit racial bonuses and give every class a new small shiny bonus similar to iksar AC or ogre stun immunity.
I’d prefer they skip a new TLP this year. But, when they do; I’d want relaxed boxing, double loot and FV rules. After running ISB for years to manage my box group; I’d like to be able to run at least 2 or 3 accounts from my single PC so I can accomplish things on my own timeline or when my group is missing “class X” to continue, we cannot find a rep and have to disband because of it (or never get started up).
"we have the best expansions" - Lost all credibility there already, but fine, some people have awful taste, so thats fine, I guess. "Start in January and not in may" - no big deal, I'd prefer starting in May since you can then relax through summer, and start playing more when the good expansions come, instead of wasting time in classic + kunark, since thats obsolete soon anyway. Ladder/seasonal: Could work, but I dunno if its worth the hassle of setting it up. The pop locked server would wither away to sub Agnarr levels quick anyway, and the TLP recylers can just do their thing as it is already? They can even cash out their stuff mid POP for kronos, since normal players will keep playing on the server for a year or two more - on a "dump to pop lock" server, most stuff will be useless anyway since most will quit? As for ladders, what would you want to compete for? Fastest to 50/60? Clearing content? All that is done within a couple days of server/expansion release anyway for the simple difficulty content you face in the first months.
All classes/races from start. Mischief loot rules. More/larger bags on the Market Place OR a TSS start but limited to lvl 50 for first 3 months and gradually add lvls as appropriate; yep - fast travel and centralized TS Merchants FTW!
The only thing I agree with with the OP is Classic+Kunark but doing double time (24 weeks) is a huge bad idea. You can do the double launch but it should be no longer than 16 Weeks till Velious. I also agree they should skip a year. With Mischief still being insanely popular and Yelinak doing alright and Vaniki offering something different I dont see a huge need for a TLP this Spring. But if they want to release one here is my ideas from a long time Guild leader/Raid leader on pretty much every TLP server they have launched (though I'm still on Mischief this time! No one wants that crap loot system on Yelinak lol) Here is my server: 1) Mischief loot rules - Lets be honest Mischief loot is the second best thing they have done on TLP servers after instancing content. It is universally loved and Mischief literally being the most populated TLP even as the "bad" expansions are going on just shows how popular this loot method is. I know a few "I like to walk uphill in the snow both ways to school" people don't like it, but that is such a small part of this community that it isn't hardly worth mentioning (and frankly they have had their server in Coirnav (the harder slower server) and while it did ok, it never reached the levels of the more popular TLPs. 2) Faster EXP (starts with DoDH levels (66%) and then goes to Live levels at GoD) - If there is 1 thing I hear EVERY SINGLE TLP, is that people want faster EXP. People flock to the servers during EXP weekends. The one thing I heard the most that people liked about Selos was the EXP rate, cause you could make a bunch of alts and have a good time. Again, there are those who don't like faster EXP, but that's fine, give them a slow EXP server and let's take some bets on which server (slower or faster) has a better population...Ill give you a hint...its not the slow one. 3) All Races/Class combos at start that can be opened - You couldn't have Vah shir or Drakkin cause their cities are in later expansions, but you could open all other race class combos from the start and let people make Zerkers/BLs from the start as well. There are vendors for all these classes in their race home cities so it would work fine. No one cares they wouldn't have their epics, literally no one. Just let people play them. 4) Unlock Schedule - Open with Classic/Kunark at 16 Weeks then do this: Velious: 8 Weeks Luclin: 8 weeks PoP/LoY/LDON: PoP launches with LOY then LDON 4 weeks later: 12 weeks total GoD: 8 Weeks OOW/DON: OOW for 4 Weeks then DoN for 8 weeks: 12 weeks total DoDH/PoR: DoDH for 6 Weeks then PoR for 4 Weeks: 10 Weeks total I don't know expansions past PoR lol. 5) Relaxed True-Box at GoD: Once you get to GoD+ the population starts to dwindle significantly, so relaxing True-box to let people to 2 or 3 box a single computer is definitely benificial. 6) Flagging Easier: VP Key should be made even faster and easier, or better yet, just removed entirely. It was a dumb quest when it first came out and makes even less sense on TLP servers that are timed. Get rid of the toxic quests or make them so negligible that it doesn't matter. VT wasn't too bad on Mischief with the changes made, keep those changes in. PoP flagging is part of the expansion and should stay as well as GoD and OOW (though keep mischief changes for Anguish keys). Vule should drop more eyes especially with the 10 Week timeline (Should drop a minimum of 4, no reason it shouldnt take 3-4 weeks to get your guild fully flagged for Demi or any expansion later that requires stupid flagging requirements.) Also change the stupid instances to all be 72 or 54 man. Why some raids are 54 and others 42 or 36 making guilds have to either split raid or just make people sit out is completely stupid. No one cares if it trivializes the content slightly, its already trivial in most cases. These arbitrary confines are dumb and should be removed. Anyway, I'm sure there are other things that I would want changed, but that's a start to what would be my perfect server.
I jut wish they would start a TLP with all races/classes accessible. Just have them share a home city with another race until the expansion they would normally be released is dropped. Doesn't matter if epic for Zerker and Bst were available until the expansion they were released, but would be nice if they added it when other epics were released,
Definitely need to make one sooner than later. Doing TLP's in May it feels like there are a lot of "bonus exp" weekends and "named spawn increases" that follow, and as much as I like both, that early on when there isn't as much to do but level they are wasted. They should time it so that Luclin lands just before we start seeing the bonus exp weekends every other weekend. That way we are seeing the introduction of AA's and then with PoP more AA and a level increase to co-inside with them. So, it should be release around Feb. I am good with the idea of starting out with Kunark. Definitely cannot lock Iksar, 1) That's what I would make 2) how can you have the race locked in the expansion that came out in. Thats like saying no Vah Shir during Luclin. Classic/Kun - 8 weeks Velious - 4 weeks Luclin - 4 weeks PoP - 8 weeks LoY/LDoN - 4 weeks GoD -8 weeks OoW/DoN - 8 weeks DoDh - 6 weeks @ 2 weeks short of a year, you would be stepping into PoR. Unlock Beastlords and Zerkers from the start (only the classes/races that are available for current expansion, and they don't get their 1.0 until the expansion it was released in.) Free Trade rules, with the exception of certian items (all Epic 2.0 drops for example.) Double loot, Random loot on raid targets. No MoTM, or significantly reduced. Keep AoC's and /pick. Allow only 3 boxes from 1 IP (can be on the same computer) then at GoD open it up. Ban people for breaking that rule (using VPN's.)
I think starting in Kunark is a grand idea. I also support all classes being available at launch, just for the races that are around. Epics can come with the later expansions for those classes, I don't think it would be a big deal to not be able to have the epic for a few months for those given classes.
I was deciding to come back after i retired 23 years playing i figured was enough. Naw, nothing good out there to play. I would be behind most guilds restarting on TLPs and way behind on Live. When do you guys figure a new TLP might start up?
I feel you here! I'm playing on FV until the next TLP, getting my feet wet. Normally they release around May, but it seems the community is asking for it to be earlier in Q1, so never know!
Well it is rough for players that want to catch up but not skip 99% of the content. It took me 30 days, constant power leveling, skipping 99% of the raid content to get 1 toon to 100 lvl and massive AA's with 12 accounts on live. I am not about to do that all over again. Yes back then it was easy 1000 or more to do. All expansions.
Typically, in May, but a general census is people want one sooner, probably because the last 2 they released aren't doing as well as the Mischief (the set released before the last set.) So, people are looking forward to the next one and hoping it is similar to Mischief. The people that don't want another one released anytime soon are people on Mischief that know, if a clone or something similar of that TLP was released they would see a decline in population on a server that is doing rather well.
Glad to see many agreeing with the Classic+Kunark start and some with the starting earlier than May due to summer and exp bonus issues.
