Not a good sign....

Using win the race was a poor choice of wording on their part, more than likely it will be "can you beat OMM" before the deadline rather than who wins first. That would be a silly move on their part for some of the reasons you stated, more casual/less hardcore players will fall behind.

From a live server standpoint, this kind of server is healthier for live guilds than new persistent servers because it ends; less chance of their players getting enticed to stay on a TLP.....

Wash your mouth with soap and bleach your eyes for even thinking that and making me read it.

I was actually hoping that the next 'different' server would be a true classic server sorta like Phinny (but letting Phinny work the bugs out as it has done thus far) - not a race by any measure. Oh well... back to work on an !

Haha right.

lets guess the raid composition of the winning guild!

my guess is 4 warriors, 8 Clerics, one shaman, one Enchanter and 58 wizards and mages!

I would put some necro and monk too but if debuff still exist on that server then mages gonna be pretty rare and u can count on a lot of enchanters with charm pet.Samething with druid if there is animal in the zone.

We do not know for sure of course, but I doubt there will be any mom buffs as they are due to end when PoP launches and they already said pets return to full power with Luclin on the TLP servers, so a server already open to OOW certainly will not have any pet debuffs either.

There must have been a business case done that showed another progression server being more profitable than making updates on standard servers, but I personally wish the focus was put back on standard and not just in a once a year expansion, or a couple of anniversary events.

Of course it's more profitable. Tons of people blowing their cash on Krono's to get a leg up and a few bucks here and there in the cash shop for potions. All this on content that was finished years ago.

A couple of Dev's time to patch up some fixes here and there is way more efficient than creating brand new content for what it brings in the short term. At this point they are reaching a stage where they can just continually recycle all this old content for quick cash with minimal staffing.

The funny part about that is Wizards and Mages were actually pretty awful during OoW. It is only due to recent changes that can't be easily reverted/negated for special ruleset servers that they will be any kind of decent.

I digress from the original post and have to agree with Sheex. For all intents and purposes, its a special ruleset TLP targeting a specific expansion - however, because this essentially will affect everyone potentially - I don't have a problem with it being brought up over here.

Now that is out of the way, the general opinion of my team is this...

Will the end reward be worth reallocating our time and resources away from Live server & TBM farming? The main answer is, "probably not". We really need to see some real incentive and be shown what the actual reward of winning this thing is, because I'll be damned if I am going to waste 2-3 weeks of everyone's time for a new mercenary contract, illusion, ornamentation, or something else that is rather generic.

Peering into Uncle Sheex's Heart Tree of Furure Telling, my money's on a dumb title like "the Basement Dweller", a mercenary skin of Mojo the Helper Monkey, or an epic, epic crown ornamentation. Looking into the future beyond, here's one happy Quarm "winner" celebrating ultimate victory:

I'm sold.

Since 99 here...ah yes another one of those. Seen it...Wow, DaoC, yada yada, just take away from the live server pop....ive got to say live now since well..you know. EQ 101: You have a live server population. You create servers to emulate old school replay....it draws from the live server pool. You create Quarm,..you draw more from the live server pool. Guilds suffer summer doldroms and now you then take more from your own game and thin it out (live servers) even more with Quarm. People on live servers are going to quit. I think its a stupid business move. Stupid. Merge servers instead. That would be a smart move...then tinker with that quirky lets try to get people who played before and are playing now to grind back through that old . You are killing yourself by spreading out your eq population.

Except the I don't think people from Live are going to really take the bait on this. In fact, most people I have spoken to hated Omens expansion in particular. Wasn't that the expansion that was officially boycotted? I can't remember.

Omens was boycotted because of the disaster that was GoD, combined with SoE's desire to release expansions as quickly as possible with a general disregard for the quality of the game. It basically was boycotted for being the expansion after GoD, not because of the merit (or lack thereof) of its content.

I personally love Omens, and I don't really know why people would hate it. I could definitely see it not being their favorite, but I can't think of anything particularly awful about the expansion that would inspire a hatred of it.

Talked to a few people that also play EQ 2 and they said they are getting a similar server, have similar things coming up and have had some other recent things that likely relate to EQ. From what they said the EQ 2 community always get more details and gets them sooner so I wandered to their forum to check things out and found a few things.

1) Apparently they have had a massive round of server mergers over the past year there. Taking 3 servers and combining them into 1, leaving them with 7 servers left. I suspect that will be happening here and relates to the code work they keep talking about.

2) They provided a lot more details about the "race" server there. There are rewards for reaching certain check points along the way and for being the first to reach the finish line. So if you reach x check mark you get prize 1, reach y check mark you get prize 1 and 2, etc etc. It is also stated there that the server will undergo a complete wipe shortly after a guild wins and the server will be spun up with a different "race" shortly after.

As for the race server, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. Many have mentioned how the summer lull hurts guilds. Yes the weather pulls people outside, but the biggest part of the summer lull is the fact that everyone is bored and there is nothing to do. The question becomes why log into EQ? Everyone has been done with the group game stuff for months and only logs on for raids. As for raiding, we have all been doing the same few raids every single week for the past 6 months and I don't know anyone who isn't bored of that. You can call for more expansion content, but even with an expansion 3x bigger most people would finish it in 3 months instead of 1 and we would still be in the same position. So in many ways this server is the extra content/anniversary stuff/something to do that everyone keeps asking for while providing DBG another revenue source.

Will it draw people from the Live (or TLP) servers? Yes, but those people already weren't logging on since they had nothing to do except to raid those same events for the 50th time. There is no reason people couldn't do both with this new server providing a reason for people to remain interested in EQ while they play there and make their 2 or 3 raid nights on Live. It also has the potential to attract some of those that have left the game. I do not like the TLP servers personally, but the number of level 85 - 104 toons on my Live servers have been increasing faster than the rabbit population around here. Nearly all of them are people who returned due to those TLPs and are playing on Live servers as they wait for TLP unlocks or playing with Live server friends they met on the TLPs.

Edit: And the mere mention of a new expansion should be taken as a good sign. It means EQ Live servers are still a viable revenue source that DBG is willing to invest in. This can also been seen in all the other changes that have been coming out and all the Guide events. I've seen more Guide events on my server the past 2 weeks (nearly 1 per day) than I had in the previous few years.

Omens was a great expansion and has fun raids which do not solely depend on your dps.

Beating MPG pvp raid trial for the first time felt pretty epic.

"Quarm" server based in discord era where the object is to kill OOM.

Nice job there.