New server announcement feedback

I think this decision shows a real lack of confidence in the work of the darkpaw employees who have developed content beyond LDON. With six months to come up with a new and exciting rule-set, you've decided to block everyone ready for a new tlp experience from seeing the vast majority of Everquest.

These decisions were greed-based, nothing less. It isn't about what you want.

I think this is exactly what the majority of players on TLPs want. Sure you guys may say servers post PoP are successful because a few guilds are still running but it is nothing compared to TLPs pre-PoP era. Phinny was the new kid on the block so it is kind of an exception to the data, no?

If you aren't on Phinny or Ragefire, you likely (likely, as in not 100% of everyone) move to the newest server to relive classic-PoP.

IDK but it seems like a lot of people going for Aradune are complaining about PoP lock yet they would abandon the server in that era for the next one anyways. Was hoping Rizlona would not be locked so the few who want to play post PoP could make it happen through boxing.

Thank you for your reply. I can see your point. It's the same view many of the players that prefer to play 1-2 characters have when others play full groups or more. I suppose we will not know until the server opens but hopefully that is not the case.

Not sure why people think TLP servers are not popular past POP:

I can't wait to sit back and laugh at all the Aradune drama when folks realize these GMs are nothing other than members of guilds on the server unfairly applying the restrictions. The furious forums posts and subsequent bans of the OPs will be hilarious.

They need to combine PoP, LoY, and LDoN into the same unlock. People quit after PoP because they're basically stuck there for 5 months.

We're definitely not special snowflakes. There are enough of us that we've got to at least be a moderate-sized snowstorm. The rare few of you saying "PoP-locked is perfect!" on the other hand seem to stand out a bit.

Incidentally, there are also people trying to explain, for clarity's sake, why they're not keen on the new servers locking in PoP. Labeling everyone who doesn't share your opinion as "whiner" isn't particularly productive. "Just because you think something is better does not make it so" goes both ways.

@dreamweaver. Because of my immense investment in Mangler and the amount of people that depend on me here, I cannot get excited about these new servers even though freebox has been my most sincere request ever since the failed truebox experiment was launched - something I've wanted even more than fully-instanced group content.

But since there are so many people here asking for a freebox non-PoP locked server, consider this: remove truebox from Mangler for all the players that are not content with a freebox server that caps at Planes of Power. Allow transfers from Mangler to Phinigel or Coirnav for players that want to continue on a truebox server, and accompany those transfers with free packages of +exp potions for each character transferred (or maybe an extra heroic character bump for any transfers to Phinigel). You then have your freebox TLP server, possible population bumps for Phinigel and Coirnav, and your PoP-locked servers.

I am guessing your data shows that PoP locked servers will be worth the investment of launching two of them, and this is a solution that would try to give a little of something that many different kinds of people want, as broadly as it can possibly be given. Please try not to ignore the many players on Mangler, like me, that have wanted and asked for freebox AoC servers all of this time but nevertheless continued to subscribe and support this game - but cannot now take advantage of Darkpaw finally listening to us.

Can't the "pro-lockers" just stop playing past a certain expansion, while the rest keep moving beyond it?

I mean, if they have as many players that want locked as they say they do, they shouldn't have any problems finding other like-minded players to group/raid with to keep doing the same content until the end of Time(see what I did there). Everyone else can keep playing the newer content as it comes the way they want to as well.

Why do we have to segregate expansion play?

Not sure why Phinny data is thrown around as some accurate glimpse of TLP data. First server with AoC after the disaster of making a TLP in the modern gaming scene where 90% of players just could not raid at all made it to the 2.0 era with a thriving population. What TLP has rivaled Phinny guild #'s post PoP since?

that would only be interesting if Mangler were reset to classic... then we could join... but joining at where ever late state you are at now? no thanks

they actually hired staff for this, so I am guessing they will be working from the office, but I could be wrong about that.

I'd come play catch up on Mangler for that.

I'm not sure how most of Mangler would feel about being forced into choosing no-more-truebox, jump to Coirnav without at least some of the people they've played with, or jump to rapidly-approaching-live on Phinigel, but I'm also not sure how many people on Mangler still think that truebox is accomplishing anything positive.

You have a good point, but my post with the screenshots does still show great interest in post-POP content. Coirnav and Selo had flawed rulesets and Coirnav was dealt a big blow with the release of essentially a clone with better XP. I would say Mangler is around the same as Phinny was at this stage, they don't all report into the progress website anymore, and while the new servers will deal a blow to Mangler, it won't be nearly as severe as it would have been thanks to the POP locked rule. I guess the idea is for Mangler to be the server for people looking for the 70+ game at the moment.

I don't think anyone denies that a large chunk of the playerbase do the initial run then move servers as they are launched.

What is being questioned is the idea that locking to PoP somehow magically insulates the server from that. People left Agnarr when a new server came along just the same.

All PoP-locking does (imo) hinder initial uptake from the other chunk of the playerbase who - at minimum - want the option of going the whole way to Live before they put 18 months into a character.

If everyone on Mangler was offered a transfer to Agnarr, how many would take it? There's your real number of people who want to lock themselves to PoP.

It's the biggest weakness of my suggestion, I acknowledge that.

The alternatives are for Darkpaw to reverse their course and make the new servers non-PoP locked, but I have to believe they have a reason for making this decision. Or to release a third TLP or possibly even a fourth TLP (non locked variations of each playstyle) but that's a hefty ask and would split the populations right at the start - bad for guild recruitment and server population stability. Or maybe even clone Mangler, but I honestly don't know if that's even a viable suggestion.

It would just be nice to have a non-PoP locked freebox AoC server at this point, and there are a lot of us that have been waiting for it for a very long time now.

This game has shown time and time again that people only care about content up to PoP. It's obvious that TLP servers are now seasonal, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to pump resources into anything past POP.

Personally I think OOW is the final "EQ" expansion, primarily due to spell runes. Having to battle it out with other players over camps in zones for spell runes is really where this game shines. Once that goes out the window with instanced everything in following expansions, it turns into a bad game.

But despite some of us liking up to OOW, most only give a about up to POP, so I can't blame them. I just wish there was another selos style server or something that didn't give us 6 months of classic->Kunark. There just isn't enough content in both of these for 3 months each.

This post isn't directed to Whoops, but I wanted to answer that last statement/question for anyone who actually thinks truebox is accomplishing something.

Regarding truebox accomplishing anything at all, anyone on Mangler that hangs out in any of the 4-6 general channels for more than a hot minute knows about a certain bot guild that sells Time loot every week, and has been doing so for a good while.

So if you are on Mangler, and you have any questions about whether truebox actually means anything more than hot garbage, hang out in gen chat every week & you will know what truebox means when you see the bot guild selling end-game loot for awhile now.

Does DPG know about this guild? Of course!
Are they doing anything about it? NOPE.

Are they going to actually be able to police an ENTIRE server of people that decide that 2 characters per person isn't good enough, when DPG has stated all along that they don't have enough money to hire GM's for this magnitude of policing required? If I HAVE to actually answer this question, I'll answer it by the fact that a bot guild is OPENLY selling endgame loot, and nothing is being done.

Now all of a sudden this company has enough money to police boxing? okay....

In terms of percentage decline, Ragefire. Ragefire settled into roughly its current population level when Phinigel was launched, and has maintained basically the same population ever since.

There's also an interesting thing happening. The players that only want to play through PoP left Phinigel when Coirnav launched. They've been repeating the classic->pop treadmill on Agnarr and Mangler since then. It's not a surprise then that newer servers haven't had as much population post pop, most of the players that wanted that stayed on Phinigel.