Live servers are dead other than end content. And Progression Servers are a fad that quickly turn stale. Solve this by creating Server Progression. Level locked servers that each use the Corinav system of instanced raiding. Think about it; we have all these ghost-town servers SIMPLY because of end game bottlenecking of content. Server Progression solves the two largest reasons why EQ has a mere fraction of its potential player base. (1) No more empty game world for live servers, since all end game players are on the same server. And (2) No more progression zerg, leaving the bulk of your player base in the dust (who therefore quit playing). I recently returned and playing on Corinav and the 1 to 50 game sucks because of fungi tunic. I met several Brand New Players who quit because twinks spoiled the experience. Another benefit is reduced number of servers, since live servers would eventually go away, replaced by level-locked servers: .....Server 1: Level 0 to 50, classic, .....Server 2: Level 60 expansions, etc. Agnarr will be a dead server I imagine rather soon. A POP locked server is not as fun as having the ability to eventually progress to the next expansion without going to the Monty Haul experience that is a live server. I chose Corinav over Agnarr for this reason.
Progression only works because it is gated. If you set up a bunch of servers as you suggest, you'd have population spread out over all of them, without the critical mass on any of them to be successful. There would be little sense of community, guilds would have a hard time developing or progressing, because people would be constantly moving server to server. No thanks.
I find it odd you call for level locked servers, then say you think Agnarr (level locked) will be dying and you chose it because it WASNT level locked. And I doubt people will want to start their new alt on a server that doesn’t have the benefit of using their higher level for support, gear, etc. People will level up and jump servers, and same issue would occur. I mean I guess some servers would have a dedicated base, but I donno. And from what I’ve seen with the server transfers and account transfers being issues at times, it’s probably not something EQ systems can reliably be able to do (mass server transfers at a constant rate).
the real answer is to make new servers a compelling vacation home, while allowing players to maintain a permanent residence on their server of choice. for example, john plays on agnarr, but event servers keep him interested and trying something new when they come along. but, he always can raid on agnarr and feel good being part of that stable community. the current mode of releasing essentially the same server once a year or more often just divvies up the population and effectively kills the prior server. by the time you are 2 TLP's past, you're basically a 45 year old 120 pound meth addict running on fumes!
I remember them saying at one point that they weren't going to release a progression server that would directly compete against another via ruleset. Many players complained previously about them doing this when we already had established servers that were healthy. Then they released Coirnav which competes directly with Phinigel. I wouldn't be surprised if the next TLP server is just a copy and paste of an existing ruleset.
This idea would do nothing to stop the top heavy nature of the game. The first wave of people would level up and finished the 1-50 content then move on, and then the 1-50 server would be as dead as the low level content is on every other server. Why would someone start out new on the 1-50 server after everyone leaves? When they could just start out on the 50+ server and have an economy to work with, friends to help them and guilds to join. New players will gravitate to the server that has the bulk of the initial population on it, and the movement of that population will drag the stragglers along with it, as they try to stay on a server that is populated. This multiple server idea would play out exactly the same way TLPs currently play out, only dragged out over multiple servers, with the hassle of transfers to deal with.
Doubt Agnarr will die... theres still a healthy population. A lot of the folks who only played for Quarm are gone and now the remaining folks are sticking around. Theres enough players to still fuel like 10-15 guilds that are still killing potime.
It doesn't matter what "they" say. Remember when Roxxly said there were no plans for a new progression server and then Coirnav was announced a couple weeks later? It's not her fault, they hadn't told her but the point remains.
A version of the ladder might work: Agnarr is what it is (LDoN Locked) Agnarr #2 mirrors off of Agnarr 3 months after the LDoN lock has been in play. Agnarr #2 unlocks GoD. All your characters exist identical on the mirror servers --move on, stay or dabble on both. Agnarr #2 locks at Omens of War (lots of endgame to keep doing, nearly everything Agnarr #1 is doing is obsolete). If the above is succesful, you might try one more mirror. This time you would stop at TSS as it is a highly replayable era in EQ (especially if they get the defiant gear set one expac later so the content isn't obsolete). Upsides: everyone keeps their names and progress. Some would come back to play for at least a while in the new eras. This doesn't break the Agnarr lock promise. At most this involves 2 more servers, which could even allow transfers in from other progression that is before the right eras. Downsides: mirroring means duplicating. If this is a issue the mirrored servers could always be "hotel california rules" in which the duplicate characters are stuck there. We don't actually know if Agnarr is viable in the lock, so planning to mirror/ladder or whatever it could be a moot point.
What ? One server with all level 110 players ? aka merge all live servers into one ? The zones of recent expansion are very small, and the /pick zone number limit is yet too high before triggering a new zone, the zone gets overcrowded fast. Too much problem to do stuff. The server would also be a big pile of lag and various others crashing problems because too much people on the server (We speak of 12 live servers merged into one).
I have said it once and I will keep saying it over and over again..."Its not about the server, its about who you play on the server with."
But some people just like to play with themselves. I play with myself all the time, as much as I can.
I always thought with them load balancing all the old zones that they'd combine all live servers with the same rule sets into one server. No reason to have 20 servers with the same rule set with load balancing. Just have 1 server. Not sure how many live servers have the same rule set, but I think it's most of them isn't it? They'd probably need to optimize some stuff in order to pull this off though, so I doubt it ever happens. With progression servers it's trickier because of the time locked progression. I suppose the OP idea could work with free server transfers. So start on the classic server, transfer to the kunark server when you want, then the velious server, etc, making your own progression at your own pace. The issue like others have already pointed out is that you spread your population too thin.
I don't think they have stable enough code for the live servers to handle even the amount of players that are currently on the servers. Merging all of them onto one server would be disastrous.
