How man guilds are going to stay on Selo until it reaches Live?

Sincere question,

I truly doubt I'll have the play time to keep up with this server, but it does have a lot of positives. Are there guilds planning to roll on Selo and stay on Selo when it reaches Live?

Reaching live relatively quickly is part of the appeal for me, it’s a nice way to learn the game since 2005/6 for me and get a character to max without skipping almost everything in between. The fast unlocks will hurt me as well though due to limited play time this year, but I’d expect many to make it all the way.

My suspicion is not a single raid guild will actually make it to live and be caught up. Keeping 50-60 people engaged at this pace for 2+ years is going to be tough. If a guild stands a chance they need to be recruiting like crazy to keep their ranks filled because burnout is going to kick in for a lot of players.

For the group game it is going to be equally as tough but I imagine there will be some who make it to live but I also suspect few will actually be caught up and current when they get there. Eliminating "casual" guilds by nature means most guilds are going to have high expectations for playing time which can create a lot of stress and burnout for anyone who thinks they have the time to commit but in reality they only fantasize about having the time and don't have it.

Attracting new blood to the server along the way to fill voids in both types of guilds is going to be interesting also. Increased rare spawns means guilds can farm extra gear faster for new recruits and new recruits can level faster to catch up but a guild cant dedicate to much time grooming these recruits trying to get them caught up or they risk falling behind themselves. Leadership is going to have to spend a lot of time trying to balance things and determine what aspects of things can be skipped for now and revisited at a later time when doing them will be more trivial and less time intensive. Both sides will have to do their research about every expansion and have as much knowledge going into them with a game plan before they unlock.

Lastly there is the very real issue of people just not wanting to progress past a certain point even though they say they do. Some people don't like visiting uncharted territory in terms of content and mechanics or revisiting things they disliked even if its only for a short time. If these people reach the point that EQ no longer feels like EQ to them its going to be a pretty tough sell to keep them around until end game.

Best of luck to everyone that actually plans to race to live as I truly am interested to see how this plays out and if anyone is actually going to be successful in doing so while actually completing everything along the way.

in some of the post 80 expansions, i dont even know if itd be possible to get flagged for raid zones even with reduced lockout times and flag drops.

and even if it is, the pace youd have to raid at just drives home that this is not a casual server and DBG was delusional to label it as such

They already dramatically increased UF flagging.

2 Years is child's play compared to most of the TLPs, especially with content remaining fresh and not stagnating with 3 month / 6 month + lockouts until the next thing.

For the top guilds I'm reasonably sure the fast lockouts will keep them far more engaged, not less.

i know, but enough to do it in 4 weeks? and if so, id imagine thatd be damn near every day raiding

Maybe 2 guilds - not many can really raid 7 days a week indefinitely to keep up for two years. Better chance of dying within 2 years due to excessive sitting than many people keeping up.

They did something like triple the flag drops on test. It's going to be fast.

If I enjoy it I will and then transfer my main/s to my live server home.

I dont know how many will go all the way, but it's a good way for all the folks who quit pre-PoP or pre-GoD, and are over on Pantheon forums speaking as if Classic-Velious is the only era of EQ that should affect Pantheon design, despite that they quit before actually seeing later EQ eras, to see firsthand how later EQ expansions improved the game.

Engaged and realistically being able to keep up at the pace needed for two strait years is a different thing. If they put this race in vegas I would be betting against any making to live and completing all content. For the raider that's all raids and group content and I don't mean just doing the bare minimum but actually being hardcore and knocking out all of the merc and partisan tasks and challenger achievements.

People are going to get stomped in the later xpacs for a long, long time.

No one is going to be geared up for TBM raids when it drops or even months after it drops. I would even say a year in some instances.

I see 2 guilds max making it to live. Rest will quit before then.

A lot of these people clamoring for this haven't played on Live in a long time I don't think and don't know the difficulty of later xpacs

Faceless is planning for longevity and will be around on Selos long term.

I think this server will produce a whole new type of burnout in its players, but it might keep a viable population all the way there just for the novelty of the bonuses being offered. I see every hardcore person here talking about how 3 month unlocks were horrible because people would lose interest and stop playing at about the two month mark of farming the same raid content. It's true, but the implication that short unlocks will mean less burnout I think is incorrect. I'll be interested to watch the experiment at any rate, and will definitely mess around on the server because of the high xp rate since making alts on Coirnav is brutally unfun

Arent we all just waiting for pantheon?

Also the next set of TLPs they launch for the 21st anniversary are going to have a major impact on Selo/Mangler population, same way it always does for old TLPs

And the amount of actual achievements in early EQ is child's play compared to some of the later expansions. Just open up your achievements tab and scroll through what all actually needs to be accomplished by anyone claiming to be hardcore. It took the best guild on live 2 months to beat TBL and as far as I know they are the only one to do it so far (this might have changed in the last week since they announced their victory). Yes you will get the nerfed versions which will be easier, you will have the guides which will make it easier, and you will have reduced lockouts which will make it easier. The question is how many people can truly keep up with the pace in uncharted territory for many. Its one thing to spend countless hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over again and its a whole other thing actually doing something new at this pace.

They should have named Mangler "Fippy" instead, since it will be a dead server 30 seconds after spawning.