Honest question, i'm curious how the veterans see the 85 TLP shaking out. Obviously I think there will be alot of tourists who mess around for a couple weeks, but ultimately don't stay. Other than that, how many active raid guilds to you think it will have? Will it have a functional economy?
I'll wager Medium population max for the 1st 6 weeks Medium to low population after 8 - 9 weeks Low population after 3 months.
I suspect this is an attempt to grab some of the population that plays the TLP servers (as opposed to real servers) because they were away from the game for so long. This set-up gives a fresh start in the modern EQ without being anywhere near current content. If it works to any extent, it could draw some of those long-absent folks back to real servers away from the nostalgia servers. To look at it a slightly different way, it gives an opportunity for the TLP crowd to start on a server that is much closer to current levels, and as such they might be inclined to move their characters to a real server if/when this one peters out.
Trying to play the game again with a level 75+ toon is the reason why I started on TLP server. It is not fun without some build up and learning of some of the abilities over time. Getting so much at once is brutal.
The real question is, what players will call this server home? My guess is not many. Itll be busy for launch because it's novel, to be sure. But it'll be nothing more than a vacation home for the majority of tlp players.
There is exactly zero similarity between a level 1 character in an original starting zone and a level 85 in HoT. Now you will say, "of course not! That was my point!" but the thing is that almost nothing beyond basic commands are the same. There is no buildup. If you're one of the TLP-holics you only think you know how to play EQ. I'm not being insulting or degrading, that's just how it is. If I take some time away from playing my 110 characters I need to spend time knocking the rust off in order to be able to play when I come back.
I see the server struggling. You're thrown into the deep end on a timer. So you're trying to level up, gear up, find a large enough social circle to raid fairly hard targets considering your gear/exp level. And competing against the guaranteed krono farmers locking down everything imaginable and ensuing drama. HoT group end zones are really easy and will next to impossible to play in no matter how many picks. It seems like an uphill battle. I raided in a top guild from Velious to Underfoot (which destroyed our guild). I've come back every couple years and play for a few months in the group game doing the progression until I top out. I really would like to raid HoT to EoK and replay RoF/CoTF with people as I really liked them. So I am a poster boy for this server but as much as it interests me, I don't think I have the time to make a go of it.
