Agnarr and our future after PoP

I'm not sure why anybody is concerned about the future of Agnarr after Planes of Power. It will either continue on or not. If it continues on, great. If it doesn't continue on, life will go on.

I am sure many will quit altogether, but we are a group of addicts that keeps coming back to this game, if we weren't it wouldn't still be kicking after 19 years. How many times have we all "quit" EQ in the past?

The reason they would choose Coirnav over waiting for the next TLP is the very same reason you say they won't roll on Coirnav. The next TLP will most likely start in classic. So, in order to get the to content they actually want to see they would have to do the long grind through Classic/kunark/velious/luclin/PoP/LDoN again before they get to see GoD and beyond. On Coirnav they would have far less time in the "old boring stuff" before they got to see the new exciting stuff. If it takes the average Agnarr play 6-9 months to get bored, give em another 1-2 month break from the game altogether and Coirnav is looking good to get a toon up to level and prepped for the new stuff.

Additionally, half my guild is made up of former Agnarr players who didn't want to be locked in PoP, those players still have social ties to people on Agnarr. I know I am still on my old Agnarr guild's discord and I still pop over there to chat with them and see what they are up to. Social ties are a large part of why we play the game. Those social ties are also a reason why people might choose to roll on Coirnav over waiting for the next server. Another 25% or so of my guild is old Phinny players, again, they still have ties to their friends on Phinny.

Coirnav isn't going to die anytime before GoD. It's really not. The massive population decay that people keep claiming just isn't happening. We lost a chunk of folks, every new server loses a chunk of folks in the first month. My guild raids at an odd, off hours, time and we are still managing to field a full raid. We are gaining new people every week. The attrition rate has been pretty standard for these servers. No it's not as big as Phinny, but it doesn't need to be to be able to provide a worthwhile gaming experience for the individuals who play on it.

Not true at all. Phinny and Agnarr both didn't lose this many people this early. As 'high' population as Coirnav is during peak hours, it's not coming near Phinny or Agnarr in the same era and it dropped off from 24/7 'high' pop much earlier in the lifecycle compared to Phinny and Agnarr.

The attrition rate hasn't been standard at all and the population has already decayed pretty far. I'm not sure how you think any of it has been 'standard'? It's not.

The rest of your point seems to be assuming the leftover people on Phinny/Agnarr have a desire to actually redo velious onwards, which I think you'll find an ugly surprise when this doesn't happen. A large majority of the players on phinny/agnarr have zero desire to ever re-do all of that and the ones who do have that desire have already re-rolled or made Coirnav alts.

I dunno, it seems like I just say the main point then you ignore all of that and paint your own fairytale story where it ignores all the current evidence and trends and somehow makes phinny/agnarr players want to re-roll. You've already received the majority of TLP people who want to re-roll. You're not going to see some big influx again as the ones remaining have no desire to re-do any of that content.

I believe you under estimate the fun players get from just grouping and developing characters. I will use P99 as an example, it spent 3 years in kunark and still maintained a healthy population. This was without a majority of players getting the chance to raid. There is so much content and things to achieve on Agnarr, and the ability to raid any mob every 7 days. Don't under estimate the non hardcore players who don't level to 65 in 2 days and Max their gear out with tons of guild raids. In a year Agnarr will still be rolling healthy.

Your seeing things from your perspective just as much as I am seeing them from mine. You have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to join Coirnav, so you assume no one will. I have a hard time understanding why people wouldn’t want to play here so I assume there will be an influx. Neither of us really knows until it plays out.

Coirnav started out with a smaller population than Agnarr and Phinny, the attrition rate in game has been about the same. Smaller pop to start with and regular attrition rates means it drops out of “max” during non-prime times. From the sounds of it you are basing your opinion on just what has been said on these boards and the homepage? You haven’t actually played on Coirnav and seen the community, so you aren’t getting the full picture. As someone who has played from the start and has watched the population changes both in my guild and in /log, the tunnel, general chat, I am telling you that the doomsayers on the forum are blowing things out of proportion.

For what it is worth I don’t think there will be some massive wave of Agnarr folks in a few months, but if even 20% of Agnarr players who tire of PoP choose to try Coirnav it will be a nice influx of new blood. It’s not required for the server to “survive”. It would just be nice to play with some of my friends again. Many of them made their “for funsies” toons, as you call them, just incase they did want to play on the server later, so they had less catching up to do.

How do you know a large majority of players don't care about POP lock and didn't plan on staying long? I'm curious.

You have 170+ friends. Call it 180 to make it even.

How do you know 60 of them quit EQ altogether? All 60 really spent the time to reach out personally and let you know that? Lol ok.

I won't even bother with your statements about the other 120.

I completely understand why people would want to join Coirnav. That's what you're not getting - I'm not here to say Coirnav is totally pointless or that some people won't have fun on Coirnav. I'm just presenting a realistic view of what will happen. What you're assuming is how people on Phinny/Agnarr will behave when it seems you don't really understand how most of those players think and just hope to catch some of those bored players.

I'm actually an officer in one of the main phinny guilds and I handle some of the recruiting/member management, so I know who has left, why they've left and I've watched what affects app numbers and how app numbers have changed based on TLP launches/expansions. That's where I'm coming from - it's not just me saying "Oh I don't get why anyone would want to play on Coirnav, so it's totally going to die from what I read on some forums."

Some people will want to play on Coirnav. In fact we've had guildies who re-rolled mains there. From what I hear the ones who are playing there are happy. So I understand why they want to play there, heck I also made an alt to screw around with on Coirnav. Then I watched the fairly sizable population decline on Coirnav that didn't happen on Phinny or Agnarr in any where near those quantities. You may not notice it as much since it seems you didn't experience other TLPs in as much depth maybe, but frankly anyone who has been on other TLPs will tell you that it's a worrying sign for the longevity of the server as a high pop server.

If you want to know what the mindset of most phinny/agnarr players is at right now, it's more closer to "If I get bored I'm quitting. I never want to re-do all the content ever again even if Phinny/agnarr dies". The ones who don't have that mindset have already made Coirnav toons for the most part. You won't be getting anywhere near 20% of bored players. I'd wager maybe 1-5% tops. The rest will quit and wait for wow classic rather than re-roll.

I'm not saying Coirnav will be empty or that it will not last. Even if your pop drops I'm sure at least a couple guilds will stick around and tough it out into GoD and beyond as apps basically becoming nonexistent and attrition kills the guilds. However, surviving with a few active guilds in a low pop server is a big difference from this fantasy a lot of Coirnav players have in their minds where any real difference making amount of agnarr/phinny players will re-roll on Coirnav.

ps - if you're basing your view of Coirnav attrition rate on your guild list and chat channels, you won't notice the change for awhile, especially not this early on. Pay more attention to the number of picks in level ranges, how many apps the popular guilds are getting and how easily new raid level guilds form and you'll see the true effect.

A server can look healthy, but if the number of players/picks/groups for leveling up is dropping week to week it's a worrying sign even if the current numbers are still in a healthy range.

I played on Phinny from Classic to the end of LDoN. I was in EoE that entire time, I would say I had a pretty good experience of it. I played on Agnarr from Classic to mid Velious, Agnarr took a huge population hit in Kunark. Far, far larger than anything I have seen on Coirnav so far. We lost half our guild to the Kunark doldrums. Shockingly, a good portion of those folks came back for Luclin, something you rarely see on Progressions servers. I have plenty of experience on TLPs, and I’m not seeing on Coirnav what you are. I am actually playing on Coirnav too, in an established raiding guild, not just messing around on a alt.

I have stopped believing any doomsayers though, most of the time they are wrong. Phinny didn’t die after PoP, RF and LJ aren’t dead yet, people came back to the game on Agnarr after quitting, something that rarely happens. This TLP crowd is surprising in it’s behavior. I wouldn’t put it past people to do what they said they wouldn’t. If we weren’t all EQ addicts who had quit in the past and came back for more we wouldn’t be on these servers. Never believe a TLP player who says they are quitting.

You didn't experience the real decline then. Sure there was burnout but the real decline didn't start until GoD onwards where leveling groups and apps actually started disappearing in more noticable numbers.

The most obvious notice of this is in the guild clearing list. It was only after Ldon when we saw the first raid guild really bow out (MiM) in GoD. Then every expansion after that it was more mergers and more guilds struggling to fill holes as attrition finally started to outpace new applications.

Phinny actually did die after pop in a sense that recruiting stopped being about new players vs. cannibalizing from other failing guilds. Not that phinny on a whole will die anytime soon thanks to it's healthy number of guilds still around, but there was a noticable switch in recruiting and app numbers from after PoP onwards.

Guilds started surviving by cannibalizing from failing guilds from the GoD era onwards. In fact, CoC, which is one of the healthiest phinny guilds in raid numbers right now is mostly so because it's been the recipient of multiple guild mergers/roster movements from failing guilds.

The worrying thing for Coirnav players is this whole cycle seems to be happening much earlier on Coirnav and it has far less established guilds to cannibalize and consolidate.

Guilds aren’t canibalizing each other just yet. People are still figuring out what kind of guild they want to be in, and guilds are still figuring out what kind of guild they want to be. Moves at this stage aren’t canibalization, they are just folks getting settled.

Though I’m not sure why we are arguing about it, from the sounds of things there is a chance that none of the servers will be around much longer. Scandals and layoffs and what not.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. Time will tell, and in the end we will all eventually move on to something more entertaining. It just get a little tiresome to hear all the Coirnav hate, when if you actually get in game and play the experience is just fine, and the people playing are happy. The population has settled, we really aren’t still seeing a noticeable decline. It’s not a dead server and it is still a fine place to play. It’s future is no more doomed than the future of any EQ sever.

On Agnarr? I would have to disagree with you there. I've had two characters of mine, both guilded, approached to leave and join one of the others, not FE but one of the ones who thinks they are contenders for all the server first crap. The guy was pretty arrogant and wasn't too pleased to be told "no" and "I'm happy where I am"

One person trying to recruit you is hardly the "entire guilds collapsing and being absorbed by other guilds" cannibalizing senario snomie was referring to. Individual people leaving one guild for another, especially this early in the server life, isn't cannibalizing, it's someone choosing to move on to somewhere that fits their playstyle better. 10-20 people moving from one guild to another because their guild can no longer handle the content is cannibalizing that is indicative of a shrinking server population.

Not to mention we were talking about Coirnav, but the thread is supposed to be about Agnarr so yeah, go with it.

Its anecdotal, but put me down as someone who will consider joining Coirnav after Velious hits. I don't want to do classic or kunark, I hate that content. I would rather wait for luclin for aas, but I want to be 60 and raid geared by that point.

Hopefully the server doesn't fall apart before Underfoot. After Underfoot, any further expansions are gravy. As long as 1 guild makes it that far the server will be success by my regard.

They aren't gonna screw around with pvp. They will go and play on another server, or another game.

There isn't going to be any significant amount of red flagged characters actively playing on Agnarr in 3-6 months.

Giant thread not about PvP - check.

Couple of comments about PvP - check.

Machentoo locating these comments like a heatseeking missile to complain about them - check.

Just another day on ForumQuest.

But in all seriousness, it just depends on guildleaders. There are a handful of active PvP players who are either good guildleaders, or total no-lifers who have enough time to lead a guild despite not being any good at it. If some of these people set up shop flagged red on Agnarr, you'd see some others follow.

But the circumstances really aren't good enough to attract them. The fundamental truth is still that PvP flagging is irreversible, and blue-red cross-teaming is hard-coded out of the game. People who want to go red on a blue server are better-served on P99, where PvP flagging is reversible.

They won't, and even if they did, no one will follow them.

Feel free to come back in six months and prove me wrong.

While I have no doubt that you're actually cranky enough to do this if the shoe were on the other foot, I don't think I'll be adjusting my plans for the next six months to win a forum argument with you.

That said, if you happen to be bizarrely independently wealthy (are you Martin Shkreli, for instance?) I would entertain the possibility if you were willing to pay me a good salary to do it.

So, even you admit no one would bother to do it unless someone paid them a good salary to treat it as a job.

Got it.

I mean I wouldn't really do anything you asked me to (eat 100 cookies in a day, vote Libertarian, etc.) unless you paid me. Unless for some odd reason you asked me to do something I already planned to do.

agnarr future is a mass exodus to the next TLP