New Progression Servers?

Abused? LOL.

What research went into a random loot server?

I am, however, flattered.

Likely lots, they knew a free trade server was at the top of the most requested TLPs (also proven by FV being one of, if not the, most popular Live server) They also knew botters locking down high value targets was one of the biggest complaints Classic->PoP for TLP servers. So they came up with a solution to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Randomize where the loot comes from, and give lots of it, but let it be free trade. Just because no one was on here specifically suggesting it doesn't mean they didn't put any thought into it or w/e angle you see to be going at with this research thing now.

You're just contradicting yourself.

Care to elaborate?

I'm still waiting on a DIal-up / LD / Act of God simulator server.

Server announcement, "Server is set to Fall 2000! That's Fall 2000! Your network speed is set to 2000. Bad weather has taken out a router in .... DENVER, repeat DENVER. Log in disabled, do not log out if you are from DENVER. Unless you live in San Diego area, ping spikes enabled."

You have to clear a plane to have the server reset to a different era. Best it can do is 2002. Also contains ~la module, where server can activate Korean bot armies.

You claim there isn't enough evidence for a pvp server. You present nothing to support this case. You say therefore a pvp tlp shouldn't exist. You then claim there was no evidence needed for a random loot server for it to exist.

Free-Trade TLP had been requested quite a lot, across a bunch of different threads it cropped up frequently, though it started out as just a small crowd asking often it did grow.
A bunch of folks had suggested something different to Random Loot but a way to reduce the Krono-Lords "monopolising" spawns, several suggested methods to do that were proposed but the Random Loot idea actually was better than those when paired with Free-Trade so kudos to the dev team on that one.

I would love to see more PvP in EQ myself but I think the idea of that being any new open world PvP server is a dead one, instanced PvP maybe has a chance and if EQ ever experiments with Cross-Server tech that would be the type of playstyle I would use to test it out initially and I would modify the shroud system to do it with (the devs theoretically could create PvP specific-tuning for shrouds way easier than messing with player spells and revitalise & repurpose them) but the simple lack of interest in PvP playstyle is so weighted against investing in anything PvP it's unlikely to ever gain any traction no matter how many good ideas there are it's pointless if only a handful of players want it.

How about a middle-ground. Add a experience bonus to those that flag red. I believe that would be a fair take.

If I was playing when Miragul came out I would have played on it for sure. Probably for two months before quitting, but that's me on any TLP. HoT on Live was the last time I did any real pick-up grouping, and it was a blast. Miragul would have recreated that with even more population than I had when I did it on originally.

While I understand the argument for removing Truebox on any server once it hits a certain number of expansion releases, Miragul shouldn't have suffered from this initially because launch is when there are enough people to not need more than one or two characters. I don't know the history, did it fail right away, did it drop off after a couple expansions?

Heroic toons are fun, you don't have to gear them, or buy spells or AA's, you just login and go, 15 levels past when things slow down exp-wise. I totally understand why DPG thought it would be a good server, and I wish they had been right. I expect its failure had more to do with the "everything past RoK/SoV/SoL/PoP is garbage" crowd. My guess would be that it was built and not enough people came, despite HoT being a challenging and fun group-level expansion.

The thing with PvP is that it's been dead a long time, where as Heroics and HoT were both well received at the time and after the fact (raiders not-withstanding). So they need more proof to do something like a PvP-TLP than they would for other things they have more faith in. It was said when Mischief/Thornblade launched that when they try interesting things and fail, it makes it harder to do more interesting things. Miragul probably didn't help with that, but I'm glad they took another shot.

Before anybody accuses me of being an anti-PvP shill, look at any recent PvP thread around here, especially in the Veteran's Lounge, and you'll see me defending their efforts. I do actually want EQ PvP to be successful, not for myself so much, but for the game's benefit. But I don't want them to take a leap of faith without some kind of crowd assembled to catch them. That hasn't seemed to have happened, even when the options to do so were completely free and required little effort. Those failed efforts make me sad, not happy.

I do think the PvP community on Zek has made some great points in recent times about how PvP could be improved, because part of the problem is that it's broken. I don't know that DPG will ever have the spare time to fiddle with it, given the state of the rest of the game. But who knows, maybe some dev will have a crazy idea that is simple to implement and they will let them take a shot at it at some point. Never give up hope, but don't lose your mind over it either.

I don't think this would make PvP any more attractive at all.

At this point I think PvP needs to be something people can choose to jump in & out of as and when it suits them, such as it could be with instanced short term battle scenarios, like a sport/battle event with a limited time duration then you go back to whatever you were doing before.

I.E. you can sign up for a "scenario" and be warped there once it has enough players signed up for it, then you play through that scenario, get your points for activity or whatever then go back to where you left off or a nearby safe spot.

The idea of an always on PvP environment just has too little appeal to succeed.

Omg DBG, look at all the PVP $ you are missing out on!

I don't recall claiming that, maybe I did but I don't recall, however perhaps you're referencing where the devs said that exact thing. Someone else quoted it in this thread. I also didn't claim there was no evidence needed for a random loot server, I said that was devs solution to people locking down high value targets and the compromise they made to enable a free trade loot server (which did have alot of evidence in favor of).

Just have to log into FV and check the server pop, then log into Zek and check the server pop, that's all the evidence you will ever need to see why they are not interested in spending the money to make one.

OMG Momma dankpaw! Look at all that sick juice you're missing out on!

Anyone want to raid sky?

You must be referring to all the PvE players. PvP 34 + 39, and likely some of those are the same people, let's say 50 subs to be generous.

It's an old story.

It's like "The Last Surviving Confederate Widow" server. There are people whose sons fought and died at Normandy who crave PVP. But they want it. One woman lost all four sons but one, and I sometimes wonder, have I led a good life?

Still? They are 120 years old. Good on 'em.