Progression Server Poll Results: What's Next?

I started playing in 2006 during PoR and have been hooked every since. Having never played a MMORPG at the time it took 3 months to get through Gloomingdeep and all of the DoN progression tasks to make it to level 15. After I had finished them I asked in "general" what's next and was told there is nothing more. I was devastated until someone asked for a group in my range in general, it then took about 20 minutes to explain to me POK stones and which one to take to get to Kurns Tower. After that I learned about grinding and hot zones. Soon after I learned to call LFG when entering a zone since Pally's take forever to kill a mob but can always lay hands upon themselves and run back to zone in (JK). Calling LFG ultimately introduced me to someone who was leveling an alt and he actually explained the game, introduced me to level appropriate content, and introduced me to the wonderful world of Norrath in all it's basic glory (shout out to snowman/snowlord/snowflake, you will always be my EQ daddy). Since then every time a new server comes out I try it for a while with great expectations but ultimately end up frustrated. The reason is because the progression of the server is determined by people who have been there, done that, lets see if I can do it faster, better, more impressively this time, instead of wow this is cool I wish I could have been there when it first came out. I voted for the slowest option for that reason. Half speed, no vote, would be best the options as presented. I would offer another option if it's possible to program in and that is: an 80% option: if voting is allowed...80% of the server population that logs into their character at least once a week, votes to progress. Let me finish this by saying this "Daybreak, your core will never desert you as long as you respect us. Oh by the way have I told you lately that I love this game?

Kunark Fast Track is essential, otherwise we're going to have no room to put all the people who want to play at max level. Give us a shorter cycle to Kunark, then a bit longer in kunark than normal. no votes. and name the server Vyemm.

I hope classic keeps the 4.5 months or 6 months with no kunark fast track. Lots of people dont want to rush through things. If people get 50 and get bored / find theres nothing to do they can always make alts/take a break while the others enjoy the classic period while its best in game. The majority voted for slow unlocks and I think its mostly because of the classic/kunark/velous/luclin/PoP period.

Kunark fast track seems more like what someone would want if they voted faster paced servers.

I think there will be 2 servers just like the last 2 sets of progression servers. The only question is if they are both announced beforehand ( best ) or a 2nd opens later. If the population splits between both semi evenly the overcrowding wont be as bad. PoHate was barely touched on vulak for the first 1.5 months outside of a raid. I remember lots of times around 1 month in my group was the only one there with almost or full trash pop.

The point of the Kunark fast track idea is to give more room for people to XP without bumping heads nearly as much.

Theoretically they could try to just open the low level parts of Kunark and keep the L50 level cap while still sticking to their concepts.

To a bunch of us its a matter of logistics. We're talking what. Lower Guk, The Hole, Permafrost, Kedge, and Nagafen's Lair being the only top level group zones in the game for 4-6 months. Only raids would be fear, hate, sky, nagafen, vox, phinigel, and the hole for all of the people on the server. The simple fact of the matter is that things are faster now. people know the little secrets and have a bookmark to a wiki or to allakhazam or to any number of resources. spells are stronger, monk fists are stronger than they were. spending that long in classic EQ might just kill the server entirely. If it were up to me, id launch the game with kunark just for the fact that it takes 5 level 50+ zones to around 15, drastically increasing the amount of content available to people, allowing them to stretch their legs instead of spending 4 months camping /sup for experience cause there arent other options.

If the current options are not negotiable, then my vote would be for Maximum Nostalgia. However, if in an adjustment could be made, I would prefer Half Speed but with Velious on a 6 month timer and expansions after GoD on a 4 month timer (3 per year).

Actually let me be honest, in a perfect world I'd like the server to lock at PoP (or at the very least OoW), because later expansions were just too heavily instanced in my opinion, and that kinda killed the spirit of the game and made the world feel small.

I say yes to voting, this way if we get more classic minded people as the majority, we could possibly see this server sit in the golden age of EQ for longer than 1.5 years, which would be ideal IMO.

As others have stated, for this to work we'd need a lot of the non classic features removed such as out of combat regen, RAF xp (please use classic xp tables), and disable the station store (or at least narrow it down substantially and expand it as expansions are unlocked).

On a side note: I'm super happy that you guys are listening to the community on this new progression server. Most of the people keeping this game alive are the die-hards that have been around since the beginning (so please ignore the people saying 6 months of classic will kill the server, if people get bored, they'll be back when Kunark unlocks). I'm also glad that a progression server is being discussed a lot sooner than the nay sayers had expected! If this is done right, I'll buy a year sub no questions asked.

Technically The Hole wasn't in for 2.0 until Kunark I think.

Kunark fast track is A MUST. Old EQ was great and all, but too long there will only cause problems.

I am of the belief, however, that Kunark and Velious should last a bit longer, and that the server should ultimately be locked at PoP. I know others want to go further than that, so please have two servers - one that keeps going and one locked at PoP and please let us know which is which before they launch.

Hmmm

The Hole did not launch until Kunark came out on Fippy.

Hmmm

I understand your point, however I believe you will find that a significant number of those bored players will instead turn to griefing as a way to relieve boredom, even more so if DBG really do take a hands off approach to policing the server as the staffing cuts would suggest.

well then, it seems we will be minus another zone, leaving only solb, perma, kedge, and lguk for 4-6 months then. awesome.

Indeed, even more so if they repeat the mistake of last time and only launch with 1 server on opening night.

I am one of the Classic crowd that is all for taking it uber slow, but I remember the high-end Classic fiasco on Fippy, so I can understand the other side of the argument. I would have no problem with Classic being only 2 months, IF the remaining 4 months that would have been in Classic get added to the end of Velious. Or 2 months extra in Kunark and 2 months extra in Velious, or whatever combination works the best.

My reasoning is that Luclin, while being my personal favourite locking point, was what many consider the beginning of the end of classic EQ, so keeping us in the pre-Luclin era as long as possible will retain the highest population for the longest period. Luclin is the first population drop off point, PoP is a major population dive, GoD is another big dip, and anyone still there after OoW is probably going to stick around until Live.

This may have been mentioned already, and sorry if it has, but being this will be starting from day 1 will the old school UI and graphics be at the start, so updates and expansions will be released? Or will all current graphics/UI's be present?

thanks.

Current graphics and UI. If you want the old player models, you can select them in the game options in the launcher. If you want a classic-looking UI, I think there may be some custom ones that try to approximate it on eqinterface. It's been a while since I've been to that site, so I can't say anything about whether they're up-to-date or not.

Dang, thanks for the reply. Would be so awesome if they would at least put the old school UI back in the game for this.

It's been over 10 days since the last poll closed .. does it really take this long to format a new poll and get it up on the servers? .. common lets get moving forward on this.

You remember wrong. I was there 18 hours a day from the two week mark until a week before Kunark, the trash you saw up was the Dark Elves from the Velious Era revamp. The classic trash minus the caster mobs cause no one needed that trash loot was always down, always sniped by exploiting/hackers, and always hotly contested.

Hate was so safe, people went AFK in it, teleported up one at a time to lfg, and xp groups were foriming inside Hate. On Vulak.

This isnt what I saw. Im talking t1 trash not t2. I didnt notice hate heavily camped till about 1.5-2 months in on vulak after a few double exp times. We even got several out in the open t1 named near ZI while there. We camped near/at zonein and had no tracker/didnt know named spawn pts. Got shield of the immac. A month in most of the time we were there the zone either was empty or just 1 or 2 other groups there tops unless a guild was raiding it.

Just to chime in, I never got to play EQ until a few months ago and I would love to play on a server with a really slow progression to get a taste of what I missed out on. This thread has opened my eyes to a multitude of considerations, and I'd hate for anyone to be frustrated and chomping at the bit through prior knowledge or updated resources and abilities, but I got excited about a progression server because I thought I'd get to play in the fabled game I've heard so much about without being rushed through until I found myself back in the current game (You know, in a scant few years ).