Hey folks, havent played EQ in a decade but I've been really missing it. Too many crappy MMO's out there. Anyway, I just bought 5,000 DC and got a HC to use but not sure the best server to start. Is the PVP server really dead? Where is the biggest population? Any advice I can get would be most appreciated.
With a Heroic character you should be fine starting on any of the live servers, but I would recommend staying away from the zeks. Unfortunately even at 85 you will be struggling initially finding groups, so whatever server you are on I would highly recommend finding a strong guild as soon as possible. For the Rathe LPW (Looting Please Wait) is probably the largest "family" guild where they are focused on grouping. There are a number of other guilds that offer similar returning player family guild style, you might want to check out the guilds section on this forum to find the right one. Good luck and welcome back.
I'd suggest Firiona Vie as it typically has the largest population and the free trade ruleset. That means nothing is NO TRADE. Look for guilds like Knights of Infinity as they are a large guild with lots of people on at all hours providing help for newbies. My guild, Namakubi, will also help you as much as we can, but we are very small and don't cover all the hours of the day.
Don't play on FV. They'd charge you to breathe server air and enter zones, if they could. Come to Bristlebane. Everyone is on Bristlebane, come join the party.
Nah Phinigel has many times the population of any server in the history of everquest. Come play here unless you intend to play by yourself with an army of boxes.
You can't use a HC on Phinney. The level cap is still what, 65 or 70? *My emphasis* So what is the ACTIVE Daily population on Phinney? 1? MAX? In EQ's heyday, there was more than 400,000 ACTIVE subscribers, with populations on each server of over 2-3000 players on at any given hour. Now those were the days! Bump into people all over the place, getting groups on the ledge in the Overthere, Ports for Plat! Phinney is a ghost camp compared to old-school EQ.
Bristlebane's a fine server. Rathe is fine. I'm on Luclin now. Basically all of the "normal" servers are good to start on. Trakanon (low pop), Zek (PvP), Antonius Bayle (European) are the odd ones.
I find that FV is somewhat skewed as far as the economy goes. I also see a LOT of duping going on with FV characters /testcopy to test. Nothing wrong with it, but you can really buy(eer... start) a good char on test this way.