2 new TLPs announced for 20th Anniversary

It's not even just time, they use as many 3rd party tools to make everything easier....

Tools for raid encounters, tools to see the entire map, tools to automate
Hardcore players are some of the laziest players and dislike actual challenge.

I'll call it now the hardcore server will be far less populated than the ultra casual by a long shot.

Just depends on wha DBG defines as hardcore and casual. Unless the servers are drastically different, I expect the player base will settle mostly on one of the servers.

And since I expect the servers to simply be slightly modified phinigel clones, whatever server has the faster exp will be the heavily populated one

There is more of a market on casual servers for krono sellers, many of the "hardcores" will roll there just for that alone. It will be the superior server by a large margin.

We are in our 4th year on Phinny with a still pretty decent population. For players interested in seeing more than classic-->pop one more time, that kind of time frame is not out of the question.

I for one like the idea of a casual server. That said, if they were to disable krono on the "HardCore" server, and all those "hard core" guilds went to the casual server so they could farm thier krono, you'll find me on the hardcore server.

We consistently saw this on Phinny. 20 guilds beat Luclin in era, most of them casual guilds that raided 2-3 nights a week at most. 19 guilds beat Gates of Discord in era, most of them casual guilds. Currently, on Phinny, Entendre and Resolute are both fairly casual guilds and both have beaten SoD already. (Resolute advertises as having a "spouse-friendly raiding schedule" with just two official raids a week normally.) Glancing at their dkp, it looks like Entendre is rolling with 50+ people on raids; Resolute's dkp isn't visible but I suspect they are as well.

Raiding in EverQuest isn't hard, casual guilds can field raiders and function just fine, even with low attendance requirements.

The main difference between casual and hardcore is the time it takes to level mains and alts. The leveling process can be incredibly cumbersome for some people depending on how many hours they are able to play. I know I'm in that category these days, I can schedule hours to raid just fine, but when it comes to Coirnav XP levels.. forget it, I'm just not interested in long grinds anymore.

I play these new TLP's to meet new people, forge new relationships and enjoy the server in its infancy, when people are everywhere and the zones are lively. I saw more consistency from my guild on Agnarr logging in once reaching max level, because they could roll up alts or help power-level other guildies and make decent progress everyday. Coirnav XP levels felt awful after that; I saw so many people drop off the server in the first week alone, it was terrible to see such a quick decline.

Been said a lot, but if all they do to differentiate a hardcore is increase the time-aspect, it'll flop like Coirnav.

Grinding is neither hardcore nor hard! #MNGA

I see this this all the time and I realize that most TLP players really don't have a clue as to what's casual or what's hardcore or what server is a "flop". Go to Daybreak Status and Coirnav is always one of the high population servers along with FV and Bristle and still it's called a failure.

I concede! Coirnav was the most successful TLP of 2018 and it was, and still remains, undoubtedly the newest TLP of every single server in history.

There, I said it.

Mine.

LoTA on Phinny has cleared every xpack, everything since Kunark in Era. (we didn't start the guild until April 2016).

No required attendance.

25% RA to bid full DKP, below 25% RA you can still bid to a max cap. (25% is 2 weeks raids).

We raid Mondays and Tuesdays 7-11:30pm. Sat we do "fun raids" for no RA and almost always older content / lower tier (currently we are doing hard mode cause its fun and we dont have time for it Mon and Tues).

We field 50+ mains most raid days, we fielded 72 mains until the drop to 54.

We are likely the most casual guild on Phinny and are doing just fine. Yeah we dont clear content as fast as the others (check PhinnyProgress.com we are almost always last to clear the xpack) but we don't care, we push ourselves to beat content in era on our schedule. And we certainly aren't the only casual guild out there beatin stuff. And if you dont think what I said is as ultra casual as you can get I'd like to know what you consider a ultra casual raiding guild. 1 day a week raiding? 1 Day every other week?

Anything can be successful with the right people running things and amazing players willing to work within the guilds system.

its ok to just call coirnav a success, i promise your head wont explode its been the highest populated TLP server since its launch, and the only current TLP that reaches high population at all on the front page. no, it didnt reach the heights of phinigel, but thats OK.

many people, myself included, started playing there fully expecting there to be a 20th anniversary TLP.

that said, coirnav was an obvious money grab, but hey, DBG is a business. i wont hold that against them. however, with these two new servers id say we've reached a saturation point where even people like myself who enjoy starting over in classic wont really be looking for a new server for a couple years at least.

Because people that aren't biased evaluate the server based on the precedent set by previous servers, rather then the very low bar of "is there 400 people on during prime time"

Loving the last few pages of this thread. Confirming what i said about all the wannabe "hardcore" kids

#Bringbackcorpseruns

When I first started back on Agnarr one of the major things I noticed was there is so little deterrent to dying. You used to get a feeling when death was coming. But on Agnarr? It was more of an inconvenience and so many (poorer) decisions were made in haste simply because you didn't care if you died.

I'm really interested to see what happens with Underfoot tbh given there is finally a spread of guilds that have SoD cleared in-era going into it. SoD is and was lollerwaffles levels of easy. Always has been and people *****-ed about it at the time. Underfoot, until you get Underfoot gear on the tanks, is not.

The top guilds can compensate with unholy DPS to get through it until they can get traction on gear, and then its not bad at all. The more casual guilds, not likely.

Coirnav is basically nothing but casual guilds, and they are managing it. Neither of the two guilds I have been in on Coirnav have had mandatory attendance requirements to bid on loot. One of them only instituted a level requirement for raids starting in Velious, and even that was flexible if we had room. Raid as much or as little as you want. Play as much or as little as you want. We still filled the raids and sometimes had a wait list, even after kicking out boxes. Everything died. Game's not hard and lots of casuals are doing just fine.

Coirnav hate has always been misplaced.

Not liking that they went with slower XP is reasonable viewpoint. I think that was a mistake too, I think it limited the audience. Doesn't mean Coirnav is a failure or not a good population, I just think that factor cost it some people.

Coirnav also lost appeal to some just being so close to other servers being in relatively early eras. Great for anyone that only loves the super early. Probably (again) lost a few that weren't looking for a new server until about now.

About now... we have two undetailed concepts that sound like niche-appeal servers. Not likely to hurt Coirnav or any other existing server badly. Most likely to be a place for not-currently-playing types and those seeking about a year's worth of gameplay and expecting the 2020 server to be a wide-appeal concept.*

I don't see any of this as a bad thing. It actually seems reasonably logical and longview thinking as far as keeping as many people paying to play in a given period. That should be their priority, even if it means server longevity varies.

*everything will well past Agnarr. Agnarr will be long into the lock so who knows how busy. Phinny will be really far into the modern era. --the appetite for some sort of Phinny again (maybe free trade, maybe trilogy start, hopefully higher XP), will be strong.

There are 2 things that I think really separate the “hardcore” from the “casual.” When I think about a “hardcore guild” I think about “bat phones” and contested open world kills. When I think of a “casual guild” I think of AOC raids and being an expansion behind on open world kills. So logically to me it would make sense to have the “hardcore server” have a faster spawn rate on open world kills than the “casual server.” More open world competition on raid mobs would appeal to the hardcore raider. Maybe double the spawn rate that is currently in place on TLPs. On the casual server if the spawn rate on open world raids was slower the hardcore people would stay away. If you could only kill open world Naggy once a week or even slower than that I would imagine that would appeal more to the casual crowd.

The other thing I have noticed is the speed of which each expansion opens tends to separate “hardcore” from “casual.” It would be really cool to see how each server would fair just based on that difference. If one server opened the next expansion much quicker than the other. I think exp rate is really irrelevant on the discussion between hardcore and casual.

I can see hardcore server having no aoc and fast repops... it defnitely would breed competition but i honestly do not believe EQ has enough population to sustain it. Not only do they not bring in new blood, but they continually siphon from old servers and divide the population.

If they did this, i might play but with the expectation that i would quit sooner than i prefer.