He Played EverQuest For 100 Hours - Should You?

but if I see <any> player in <any> zone on an Everquest server, that other player is from MY server, a community. Reputations and behavior matter more for one. The social aspect of guilding and playing <again> with that person is not a possibility in WoW

I reiterate, the population about you as a WoW player is largely a shell game and is illusory. It is in fact pretending to be more than it is. Try trading with one.

You can nowadays.
And with CRZ you could so long as they belonged to your battle group.

TLP is members only or as we know it sub only.

Hmmmm maybe now but those folks on TLP came from somewhere. I think there may be a number of returning peeps who wait for a new TLP to restart that would be the closest to new players.

The reason I wouldn't want a new player on TLPs is that a new TLP can be rather toxic as the greed factor of selling to gear to a whole server of folks who need everything. But maybe that has toned down in the last few years though the introduction of the encounter locking system indicates DB was still getting a lot of complaints.

Yeah though many still call EA hardcore compared to other games. Not sure whether that is more about EQ or other games. And all depends what you consider hardcore.

Like you as I get older I don't mind things getting a bit easier.

Agreed everyone has their own way to play the game.

I wish the issues Overseer was (I am guessing) created to address was handled in other ways. Other then the pretty thumbnails they could have achieved the same thing but just automatically giving everyone a choice of reward for each 24 hour period they log in. Overseer is not a game its just a delayed log in reward program really.

I agree there. The difference is one of the game wants you to join others at the top, the other wants you to hate yourself for playing it.

From my experience on the only TLP I have tried (and likely to be the only one I ever will), there is both a very active toxic population but also a minority of those who are welcoming to even brand new players. I don't think it's much worse or better than a Live server in either aspect just more concentrated with fewer locations unlocked and a lower "max level" threshold. On a TLP, a greater number of the players may be focused only on the raid aspects of the game and think that is the only way to play with the intent to recycle and repeat the same raids on each TLP that launches. The recycling aspect is, of course, not present on Live.

I don't think Live or TLP servers are good for newbies. Even if there are helpful people, you'd have to hunt too hard to find them. Newbies aren't going to do a bunch of work to find the helpful needles in the toxic haystack.

Maybe it would be good to have a TLP server built specifically for newbies. Make it free so that anyone can play and not worry about a subscription at first. Get all the newbies and helpful people on one server together. It would be expansion locked at SS so it has the modern improvements with the CR zone and the tutorial. It's level locked at 30 or so. No DB store items. The /claim command is disabled. No Krono trades. When you reach 30, you can transfer to any server that is at SS or later. Something like that could promote a helpful, cooperative environment which fosters organic grouping and friendships. When they transfer to other servers, they would likely have built relationships with vets who play on the newbie TLP and will be able to continue those relationships on the other servers. Something like that could actually lead to more true newbies becoming veteran EQ players.

It wasn't great, it was unique. There really wasn't anything like it back in the day. Sure there were quests that took multiple people to figure out, but most quests back in the day sucked. Epics and a handful of others were good, but those are the ones that stick out in peoples' minds, because their rewards were worthwhile. But once those things are figured out, people will just look up how to do them because trying to figure stuff out on your own isn't exactly fun, especially when it comes to obtuse stuff. Hell, people cheated to figure out stuff too, like during epic 1.5s/2.0s.

There would be not high level people to help others... I don't understand. TLPs arent that toxic. The forums grossly exaggerate.

Edit: Add in "if you arent trying to race" and then its less toxic and more competition.