Mischief/Thornblade: Give us Accurate Server Population Count for the First Month

Many said no but offered no reasoning? What would it hurt??

I wouldn't hurt at all and it would help players make an informed decision as to the new server they wanted to choose. The code already exists so it would take zero effort to implement.

My best guess is that it's just contrarian forum trolls being obtuse and playing ForumQuest.

I suspect many of the naysayers are trying to suck up to the developers by shouting down anyone that dares to make a suggestion. This fanboy/clique/tall poppy mentality exists in many MMO communities and its unfortunate. They want to pull anyone down that wants to improve things. Sad.

For those that are coming back to EverQuest TLP servers to relive the nostalgia, you have to remember that toxic forum trolls have never gone away. They are still plying their trade.

Joining each of the class channels gives you a reasonable ratio generally. Sometimes clerics are more likely to opt out to avoid getting begged for rez, but otherwise generally people don't opt in/out of general channels based on their class. It's not perfect but it's pretty accurate.

No. Those who know what's what know that the devs have repeatedly denied such requests. It's actually against company policy, so it's not even an option for the devs. Telling people this isn't sucking up to the devs, it's just trying to help disseminate info since the devs aren't actually likely to respond.

Why bother? You only have 2 to choose from (per the title of this thread) so if you don't like the population on one then go to the other.

I dont think exact numbers are needed, but I am definitely curious as to how well the player base split itself up between the two servers

Are the caps for the same for all servers? Do TLPs have different caps than Live?

Live servers never get close to the server caps on newer hardware anyway.

TLP can actually go up to around 6k online players but after around 4k there is a very large increase in lag for anyone on the server so it is usually capped to around 4k online players.

No. Yes.

Devs can and usually do adjust the cap on a TLP as it matures, and there aren't as many /pick zones being generated. It matters much less after a year, since a large portion of the server population will simply shift to the next round of TLPs.

Just to be clear, are you speaking specifically of Daybreak here? You keep mentioning 22 years, but in the early years of EQ (Verant/SOE days, but long before they sold off EQ) they absolutely displayed the server population numbers on the server select screen. The highest population servers usually boasted around 2,000 players during peak times; server launches often saw 3,000+.

Once other MMOs started popping up they began hiding this information, I always assumed because they did not want to broadcast the declining population health of EQ. At this point I think they should just reveal those numbers again -- that decision is over 15 years old at this point and clearly EQ has weathered whatever concerns were had at the time.

You're a day late & a dollar short.

I might have missed if it was mentioned anywhere in the thread...

The original / early EQ servers were P3-600's.
The first while (and up until a while before WoW opened, as others had mentioned) EQ did list the populations...

They were around 2000-2500 when it would report the server was "full". There may have been as high as 3k at Kunark(?) but these figures are going off of what I can remember seeing.

** Edit - considering technology in 2000, 2k connections to a P3 is considerably impressive!

I remember that too. Right before wow i was doing /who all's a plenty on FV. Unrelated - I find it amusing when I see comments of "big group multi-boxing was a thing" from the start and remember our pc hardware back then. What a joke. I was on FV a lot and it had a social, active community. I heard of one extra box up to 2004 but in all the years from 2000 till then I never once had seen a single box.

It'll be easy to tell the population in 2 months when its lower than 100