Forethought

Salutations Adventurers,

News of the 20th EverQuest anniversary and fresh Time Locked Progression servers on the horizon perked my ears up quite a bit. My friends and I, most of whom have quit long ago, started discussing a "wish list" if you will of what our perfect TLP would include. Some leaned towards a more hardcore experience, however most wanted to play casually, as our days of planar poop-socking are long over.

One thing we all came to agree on was probably not surprising: If two servers appeared, one casual and one hardcore, my hardcore friends would rather play on the casual server so we could all play together.

While there were many things that we couldn't decide on, such as PvP, flagging, unlock times and True-box vs Multi-box, we were in solidarity with a Firiona Vie rule-set server.

As the weeks went on, we paid more attention to the forums, reddit, the "20th Anniversary Server Community" Discord server, etc. We felt increasingly confident as we saw an overwhelming amount of players voicing that they, too, wanted to play a casual Firiona Vie TLP server.

Our high hopes turned to complete disbelief as we read the announcement revealing what Daybreak Game Company had planned for the 20th Anniversary of our favorite game, Selo and Mangler. Both servers demonstrate a complete disconnection between the company and the player community.


Let's dissect this a bit...


Selo Features

• Luclin Launch
  • This decision strips the classic EQ launch experience from players returning to play for the 20th anniversary. Words cannot describe the magnitude of this mistake.
• TrueBox Server
  • This is likely a pro for casual players, however this feature exists elsewhere and is not new or unique.
• 30 day Expansion Unlocks
  • This feature lacked careful consideration as to what casual players really want. Expansions will be rushed and players won't have the time to nostalgically explore the world. 60 to 90 day unlocks would be more realistic to appeal to a casual player base.
• Highest TLP Experience Bonus
  • This is the ONLY bonus to this server, however the 30 day unlocks completely negate this.
• Reduced Instance Lockouts
  • Hardcore players benefit from this, not casuals.
• Increased Rare Spawns
  • This is a good start for a casual server, however more is definitely needed.

Mangler Features

• Original Classic Launch
  • This is positive, but isn't a hardcore feature.
• Lowest TLP Experience Bonus
  • Introducing more tedium into the game doesn't necessarily equate to "hardcore".
• Increased Death Penalty
  • This is a slightly hardcore feature, however it doesn't scratch the surface of corpse runs.
• TrueBox Server
  • This is likely a pro for casual players, however this feature exists elsewhere and is not new or unique.

Selo Suggestions:

This server should be a haven for returning casual players, promoting the free market economy that makes Firiona Vie the most popular Live server to date.

• Introduce the Firiona Vie rule-set which creates a better economy. Krono sales skyrocket in a free market. Casual players can more effectively gear their characters out and have more fun playing the game.
• Reduce Expansion Unlocks. 60 to 90 days would do. Preferably 90, however we feel that most casual players would take 60 over 30.
• Slightly Increased Rare Spawns (+50%). This makes it easier for casuals to attain items.

Mangler Suggestions:

This server should be known as "EQ Hard Mode"

• Reduce Instance Lockouts. This caters to hardcore raiders who want to completely gear their mains and alts out in every expansion.
• Slightly increased monster base damage (+15%). This will let Mangler live up to its name.
• Slightly Increased Rare Spawns (+50%). This slightly increases the speed at which hardcore players get rare loot, which will slightly offset the experience penalty and increased base damage. Higher risk, higher rewards.

In Closing,

Daybreak Game Company is in a unique position to deliver a 20 year anniversary present to their loyal customer base. Let's hope that they listen to their community and deliver a pair of servers that everyone can find enjoyment playing.

Thank you for your time.

Cliffs: need FV loot on Mulligan TLP Mangler TLP.

why, why did we need another topic on this.

Why does a FV rules server need increased rare spawns to more easily give casuals loot they can already buy if they want it?

yawn

It's just 2 casual things, not necessarily anything deeper than that.

FV loot is casual friendly.

More rares is casual friendly.

Anything to remove repetitive farming is casual friendly.

Stuff like that...

this is the founding principle of everquest!

An account made today spewing the same exact words that is in multiple posts. You know if you "Casuals" played the game as hard as you forumquest, you wouldn't be casuals.

• Luclin Launch
  This decision strips the classic EQ launch experience from players returning to play for the 20th anniversary. Words cannot describe the magnitude of this mistake

This is not a mistake, finally a server that is somewhat new, throws a whole different wrench into launch, leveling paths, gearing up etc. And finally a server that might have a healthy population past GoD as no one is burnt out from 9 -12 months of class/kunark/velious for the 100th time.

If you and your "friends" have actually been paying attention to the forums like you claimed then you would know the general consensus is that Sell is fine as is and only needs the "Casual" tag removed, so only question is how is DBG going to fix Mangled.

This is a unique post, not a copy/paste.

It doesn't necessarily, however a 50% bonus to rare spawns would make it feel more casual.

I'm not on a "forumquest". I also didn't copy this from others and wrote it myself with the input of friends on Discord and Steam. On the topic of launching in Luclin being "new", that's a misnomer. It doesn't generate something unique, as any player on previous TLP's would be able to make characters at the launch of Luclin -- Beastlord anyone? The goal of 20th anniversary servers is to bring back additional players (revenue) that haven't been TLPing 99 times already. If these anniversary servers fail to pull in additional players, they will have failed.

I respect your opinion, however it's a far cry from reality.

Making a character at launch of luclin on previous TLPs and the entire server starting with luclin unlocked are not even closely related. The fact you try to infer this is hilarious. That's not even mentioning gear paths, AAs,mounts etc. There is a huge difference.

As for people that "haven't been TLPing 99 times", they would much rather come back to something new and different then the same thing that has been released for years now(Classic start, slow, slower and slowest exp gain and 3-6 month unlocks) and probably the reason they stay away, when you see essentially the same server being released year after year with non significant changes.

Selo Feature
Luclin launch is a plus, there's been way too many Classic-Luclin rehashes because virtually every server starts in classic and Luclin or PoP is where the most quits happen.
Truebox was never the answer, it just hurts the honest 2-3 boxers who invite others.
30 day unlocks are great. I may be an atypical casual but when combined with the major xp boost I like it.

Utterly mystifying that Selos wouldn't be free trade loot.

The reality is that there was always a vocal minority of players who wanted FV rules and the removal of True Box on the next TLP that posted in this forum. When the announcement was made, the vast majority of potential players were angry at the fast lockout timers and the slow rate of exp on Mangler, and were angry that there was not a server for "ultra casual" players despite promises that there would be. Their voices initially drowned out the usual complaints about True Box and FV rules. As time went on, people had their say and lost interest in these forums. When this happened, the vocal minority was able to re-establish their posting monopoly - albeit with a number of people who were willing to argue against them now.

The vast majority of potential players don't care about FV, and most that do oppose it. It's never been anything more than a fringe issue.

Most of the people who care about whether or not the server has FV rules oppose it?

I'm going to love hearing what that's based off of.

Based on what has been said on these forums before last weekend but after the announcement.

I completely agree that something unique should be made, however I feel that a Luclin Launch is a critical miss. A FV ruleset casual server would be monumental in comparison.

Interesting perspective. It makes sense, however I still think that 30 days is too fast for real casual players to explore an expansion. Maybe ~60 is a more realistic number to keep things fresh and have less people burn out.

Odd. I don't remember that. But if you say so.

EDIT: you edited your post after my reply but am too lazy to fix my quote.

Yep, just got a better memory than you, that's all.

I mean that or you're just making it up to support the argument you want to make.

We can agree to disagree on that and choose which option seems more logical here.

FV is the most populated Live server in the game and what makes it unique hasn't ever been attempted on TLP. The Zek rule-set is a fringe issue, not FV. If you have any data to suggest otherwise I'm open to suggestions.