I started playing on Coirnav a week or 2 ago and can say unequivocally it is the most populated server I’ve ever played on. Most of my play time has been limited to live servers. When I say populated, I don’t mean total population. What I mean is EVERY leveling zone I’ve been to has had 20-30+ people in it, even the less popular ones. I have never spent more than 5 minutes lfg, either. Most people seem to be out of group leveling an alt and are more than happy to let anyone and everyone join because of the way xp in groups works.
We're having nearly max raid attendance on off-nights right now, we're still recruiting new players at a pretty staggering rate. We have about 200 people that rotate through our raids fairly regularly. Why would all of these people be putting so much time into raiding on a DKP system if they were just going to leave to a new server? I just don't see this mass exodus that a lot of people are wishing for out of spite or whatever... at least not in my guild
I would think the new TLP will have more of the dead issue. People will not have that much invested in them when the other game launches a TLP.
I've joked about it on the forums here, but in reality, I don't really believe that Coirnav is going to die off because of the two new servers. The reality is that is going in to the Planes of Power expansion, and that is a raid-based expansion that is very much loved by many players. I'm sure that many guilds will stay and enjoy Planes of Power. The two new servers are going to pull mainly the following players: People that left Coirnav a long time ago because of the exp grind (if the new servers have better exp rate) People that haven't played EverQuest in many years that rediscover it due to the new TLP hype (depends a lot on advertisement and word of mouth obviously) Hardcore raiders that like the open world competition (because classic through Velious is very competitive in that respect) Players that started on Coirnav a couple expansions in, and don't have that personal connection with friends and/or a guild on the server yet TLP addicts that are currently on a TLP server that is in post-Planes of Power era If you are in a guild of like minded individuals that enjoys playing together, and you raid on a regular basis right now, there really is no reason to worry that enough of your guild mates are going to leave your server to join the new servers. Just my two cents.
I have 0 interest in these servers, outside of farming opening day tears. So many /exp to see how much xp till the next level ooc's to make. Team up with a few friends to make it look like we are 18 boxing.