Frenzic's Rule Set Proposal

I think we're basically in agreement, just seeing things differently. I view the progression servers as successes as well up until maybe a year out for Vulak, two years at best for Fippy. Now they're just a drain and a huge missed opportunity. These are facts now, and history we can point and say "this happened, what now?"

The example you claim as a reason not to do locked, Al'Kabor, had a very low population due to a very unpopular, unstable gaming platform. That is also undeniable fact. The last remaining fact is that there is an absurdly large, untapped market for gamers who currently find the content elsewhere. This is a blanket fact not even directly related to Everquest, but across gaming in general.

We again can agree an arguable portion is there because of (lack of) price, but the numbers that are there for content are undeniable. It doesn't take a marketing team to find the obvious conclusions.

a) 3000 subs for maybe a year, trickling to nothing
b) 1000-1500+ subs for 3-5+ years minimum

One problem, there are no GM's left. They went kaboom. The ones that are left will not be babysitting the play nice policy or policing the server for griefers, they will be worked like a dog answering petitions that now sit in queue for over 7 days.

#2 with out the voting is a good idea. I agree with two different rule sets attracting the two different kinds of players. As Frenzic stated, I'm sure a guild will join the slower one just to be the big fish in a small pond. Perhaps GM intervention is the mechanic to deal with deliberate griefing? I've heard of those somewhere...

Hmmm

Of course some will want to be the big fish in the much smaller pond, and if they perform any antics they can be mocked for being so hardcore they did not dare compete on the ffa server...

I left the voting in because a significant number of people want the server to stop at a specific expansion, the only way to determine where that is, is via a vote.

I like your first point, a lot.

Second point makes sense if it we plan to stall it at some point. No issue there.

From reading every single post on the topic of new servers, it's pretty obvious that there are now three major groups of players that are all lobbying for their preferred server. There are small fluxuations but the majority fall into these three groups.

Server 1- Highly competitive server

• Expansions that unlock faster than normal
• Very little to no GM interaction

To me this server is more for the hardcore raid guilds. I don't see how many casual players, that includes casual raiders, would want to play here.

Server 2- Slow release server

• Expansions that unlock at a slower pace than normal
• Ways to deal with contested content
• More play nice environment where everyone can see the content

This is the kind of server I'm most looking forward to. I do like to progress, but I want to be able to relax more this time around. I want to experience the game with my friends that I was not able to last time due to raiding taking the majority of my play time. I want the casual guilds to be able to see the same content that I can see regardless of their play time. The instancing idea is a sure fire solution that would allow a play nice environment while still providing some friendly competition.

Server 3- Locked server

• Expansions will stop releasing at some point
• Players must determine ahead of time which expansion the server will be locked at
• Try to revert as many systems as possible to the expansion that it's being locked at

This server interest me as an alt play server. I would not play here full time, but I think it would be fun to mess around on from time to time. I would support this server only if the other two servers were being launched. This is more niche and therefore I believe should be the third server.

i think a lot of old players would come out of the woodwork if they had a chance to fight the classic raid bosses without having to compete for the chance to fight them. yeah, it might make the server economy pretty weird, but there are so many old everquest players that never got the chance to really experience the old raids. IMO instancing is a great idea that a non-vocal majority would really be drawn to. make the minimum raid size smaller than 36, though. heck, IMO i'd allow a team of 6 or 12 to attempt nagafen in classic -- they'd probably lose, but if they win with those low numbers, then they just had one of the most exciting experiences of their life, and they'll probably keep subscribing for more. and even if they lose it's still going to be a lot more exhilarating than sitting in a non-instanced zone at a raid boss' spawn point spamming harm touch and mage pets.

-- pharmakos

Not to throw another log on the fire but I would like to see Beastlord's and Berserker's allowed from the get go if the server is going to be locked before GoD or Luclin. Epic for Beastlord's is tricky (NPC's might need to be moved), but a Berserker should have no issue doing theirs.

Second this

Technically, no, because that would still be a "progression" model rather than a "classic" model.

In a progression model, the 'admin' defines the environment all players must play in.

With a classic model the player selects the environment they prefer.

If you delay each you let them develop organically and also since you've only got one opening at a time you don't have to worry about any getting a terrible population right off the bat.

(Not to mention for those that plan to eventually play through to Live wouldn't be immediately turned off)

Whoa... I was loving pretty much every post you made on this thread till this one. You had clear, concise and well thought out posts backed by facts and evidentiary support. However, this one is full of malarkey.

I was an original member of "Insidious Vision" on The Sleeper. I sat in the IRC channel for over a month, before the server even opened. The decision to go to Sleeper versus Combine was a guild wide vote. Reasoning ranged from "I don't like the name" to "such and such guild talking smack is going to be there." Not once did members even discus choosing Sleeper, because any of us thought it would be easier. Honestly, there was a large chunk of us whom were disappointed that the competition didn't pan out the way we thought it would.

On Vulak, there wasn't a major raid guild when it went live. Naggy went unkilled forever - in relative terms. Finally it was boxed by a bunch of mages, which became "Echoes of Elysium". Vulak wasn't even planned initially, which is one reason it didn't have a raid guild at the start.

People collectively don't know how a server is going to turn out before that server goes live. There will always be theory-crafting, but theories aren't scientific law. You can make guesstimates on your best judgment, but that isn't going to ensure that you "know" your server is going to be the bomb diggity.

The only way they can make these TLP servers work is if they make one geared toward competitive raiders and one toward casual players. It would officially separate the chaff from the wheat - among competitive raiders - and avoid baseless comments like this.

~Rulu

That's complete crap. I was in IV as well and was pissed they choose sleeper. I remember Krim talking about it and his reasons were clear. EVERYONE knew the big guilds were going to combine, so check the ego at the door. Anyone who voted sleeper did so to avoid competition and dominate a server, plain and simple.

The Vulak stuff I'm less sure about because I didn't play there. The same thing ended up happening though. Whatever server is titled "slow" will have a couple guilds that go there just for the chance to dominate. No doubt in my mind.

Getting the Fever!!! Fire these servers up!!!!!!! Those CoFs are not going to loot themselves!

Thank you for the kind words as well. I hope more people read through my ideas and add to them. I truly believe that this kind of server would flourish.

Irbax: You may have been out of the loop, but there were definitely EoE plans of a sort from day one according to some of the founders - they just weren't in a rush to set up shop because past a core of about a dozen people (shy of most raiding possibilities) they didn't have enough to get things rolling, so they looked for more like themselves - hardcores attracted to playing someplace with "more space" that were all doing it a group at a time or whatever and pulling them together into something, the mage kill of Nagafen was just the attention they needed to finish pulling people together.

Yes, it was less premeditated as a hive mind than Frenzic's wording implied - but at the end of the day it was a bunch of hardcores attracted to an "easier server" in a bunch of little cliques that joined together to make the whole that became known as EoE. Perhaps individually your plans didn't include forming something like EoE, but I know quite a few EoE (contrary to stress in game with many, I'm friends or at least polite acquaintances with more than a few) - and all of them knew that they wanted to be in something like EoE from the minute they opted to go to Vulak. It was just a matter of them finding enough other people on the same wavelength.

Hmmm

Vulak was an overflow server because Fippy could not cope with the amount of people trying to log in to it. I am fairly confident that that the intentions of those that played on Vulak on day 1 was merely to play EQ...

If there are 2 servers this time and they both have the same rule set, the hardcore raiding guilds will be split evenly across the 2 servers, they may state they want competition but they actually want domination, what Fippy proved last time was that the raiding guilds only wanted competition on their terms, hence why so many of them want it FFA with no intervention from GM's.

I'll agree to being out of the loop for creation, I wasn't in EoE from day one. I do know that my group did not play on Vulak, because it was an "easier" server. We started a week late, because we didn't know EQ released a new set of progression servers. We literally saw an online ad for it while looking for another game to play, logged in that day without doing any research and said, "The name Vulak looks cooler, lets go there." I have a hard time imagining that there weren't other people who made decisions simply because they just wanted to play EQ.

My group was Cona, Garibold, Leaok and Justin Bieber (me). We actually joined a different guild at first, I can't even remember their name now, but with the exception of their necro and a couple other people, the raid we attended made us cringe with inefficiency. We wound up getting picked up by EoE in the middle of a raid where both guilds were contesting Inny. We all dropped our tags and got tagged on the spot by EoE; your friends will know who we were.

You are welcome. I try to be fair and truthful to the best of my personal knowledge. That does not always mean I am correct. Please continue your quality work, because I'm eagerly looking forward to the end result.

I personal did not experience people talking about it and I was a highly active participant. If you can remember me, I was Rulu the Gnome Warrior. Due to my high play time I tanked pretty much everything at launch with Zugbuk and Along. I invited everyone to my groups, regardless of their class, because I wanted to make sure our melee weren't going to be left in the dust. I also continued tanking at cap, because I wanted to make sure others in the guild would hit cap in a reasonable time frame.

I was not one of the people who voted for Sleeper and I recall the vote being very close. I do not personally remember "everyone" voting for it, because they wanted an easier life.

This has nothing to do with ego. I am a passionate, aggressive and loyal person who will defend the people I care about (might explain why I love to tank) - I cared about a lot of people in IV. Sometimes these qualities are a good thing and at other times they are not.

Just to be fair, I can easily see Krim saying that and with those specific intentions. Not an attack toward his character, but because the guy was a straight up competitive strategist. I played with him in "In Virtue", he led the guild as Krimzin and I knew him on Morell-Thule as Xziled. He was the best guild leader I ever had.

By the way, who were you in Insidious Vision? I don't remember the name Frenzic, so you may have to jog it with what your race/class was and some things you did early on. Even though we may not agree on this or even future issues, you were still a part of IV and I would like to reconnect, because I loved our guild.

I read about the first 10 posts and then most of this page. Having played on both Fippy and Vulak since the beginning and up until about 6 months ago, there were a culmination of things that killed the servers.

The first and main reason was rampant uncontrolled hacking. They fixed that relatively early but many people never came back.

The second reason was the GoD block. Many people never wanted the server to advance past PoP and others thought it should continue a set time after content was beaten. There was little middle ground.

Fippy was still fairly healthy after the failed GoD votes but the 3rd and biggest spiral of population other than from the hacking were the 4 straight level 70 expansions and they took a huge toll as the population rapidly declined. Some expansions had very little content and should never have been treated as a major expansion.

There was a great post during the level 70 expansions about which expansions should be released together in the future.

Anyway, I like the idea of expansions opening 6-8 weeks after the boss dies as long as many expansion releases with low amounts of content get combined.
My idea of a good release would be:

Classic and Kunark launch together, keep it there until 3-4 months after all mobs are dead.
Velious launches, keep it there until 2 months after all ST is cleared.
Luclin launches, keep it there until 2 months after VT is cleared.
PoP is launched, LDoN and LoY 4 weeks later. Stays in these 3 expansions until 2 months after Time is beaten.
Gates is launched, Stays until 2 months after Tunat is beaten.
Omens is launched, 4 weeks later DoN launches, DoDh opens 2 months after both Vish and OMM are down.
DoDh is launched, PoR is released 4 weeks later and TSS opens 2 months after both bosses are killed.
TSS launches, TBS is released 4 weeks later, SoD is released 2 months after both bosses are killed.
SoF is launched, from this point on, all expansions can be released 2 months after end boss is killed.
15. Seeds of Destruction
16. Underfoot
17. House of Thule
18. Veil of Alaris
19. Rain of Fear

Anyway, I would play the heck out of a server like that.