The new time-locked progression server

There are ways to emulate mac on your PC, that's how many are playing on Al'Kabor.

You don't need a mac to play on it necessarily, people have found ways to get it to run on windows. I don't know the details but have heard people say it's doable.

It takes a lot of time no doubt, but it's also a permanent progression server eliminating the need to implement a new one. AND people can start/end whenever they want. If people quit your guild, instead of backflagging all the way from Classic with random characters to improve your numbers, why don't you find a guild one expansion behind yours (or in the same expansion) and merge. There shouldn't be drama with guilds if it's all instanced.. unless you're one of the people that just looks for drama. At any given moment, instead of posting on this thread, people could just join the next guild that is starting. The only issue might be controlling the mass amount of population that this this great idea of a single server would inherit.

It is fun to think about the rules for a new TLP server. One item to fix seems to be how overpowered characters are for the first expansions compared to the content. There are things that could adjust that, but it depends on how hard and costly they are to implement.

1) having a global damage modifier. Ideally normal mobs would be set to twice as hard (ie twice as many hit points), named 4 times, and raid 8 times, or some such thing. That would really add some difficulty back to the game.

2) having a secondary progression such as levels. If they could level cap the server, start it at level 50 and with the Kunark expansion (so there is more content at the very start). Every month the level cap is increased by 1, so after a year the server is capped at level 62. But, the expansions are unlocked as they are currently, perhaps even reducing the time to 6 weeks minimum plus 2 weeks of voting. But it means that unlocking expansions very quickly has to be done with characters capped at much lower levels.

3) consider making all no-drop and attuned gear also have the Heirloom flag, so you can reuse anything you get for your alts (similar but more restrictive than the no-drop rules on FV).

I don't know who made the comment earlier about it's like people wanting to go back to High School, but that's not comparable. High School =/= EverQuest. I still play Goldeneye, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the first Halo, etc. It's about liking an old game. Does it mean if I play the original Zelda, or watch a move like.. i don't know.. Apocalypse Now, that I want to go back to the "better days"? No, it means I like it. I'm sure we all have outdated hobbies, I like original EverQuest. And unless they release it EXACTLY how it was, there will ALWAYS be something for people to complain about how the server should be. The best way they can do it, is figure out a way to permanently implement progression servers in the game, so that they don't have to keep releasing them, and people can start over on demand. And to fit the interest, they should release each expansion as it was, when it was, minus the necessary nerfs. That way nobody can complain.

I do agree with the holding of hands through content that people want. There should be a little "get over it" on the GMs side. Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it. Original EverQuest wasn't always "fun", but that's what intensified it. That's what made good groups good. That's what made zones scary, you might die and have to spend 2 hours getting back. That's what made loot/quest items worth it.

The thing is, people being able to start/end whenever they want to does not make for a successful server. Half the reason the population is so high on these servers is due to the hype, the anticipation, the months of rumors, the excitement of starting over again with a ton of other people all at the same time. Knowing there will be competition is a big draw for many. This server would be empty after the initial rush. And Nolrog is absolutely correct that backflagging would be an insurmountable issue for any guild that wants to actually progress. It won't be as simple as just merging with another guild. With players spread out across all 20 expansions, most likely there won't be another guild at the same level, or one expansion behind you to merge with.

Your idea also completely screws the casual/group players. They'll be stuck in velious probably. You're not going to progress past NToV or AoW with a pickup raid of casual level 60's. And if some do make it by, when you hit Gates, forget about it. Even most raid guilds will be stopped at this point. In the entire history of EQ, only a very small handful of guilds have ever beaten Gates of Discord at level 65 with no out of era gear/aa's (if I'm not mistaken you can still count the number on one hand.) It's a whole lot easier to do now than it was in 2004, not even in the same ballpark really, but it's still far from trivial and most guilds that have tried have not succeeded.

Overall I've gotta agree with Nolrog, worst idea ever for a server. Unless your goal is to have a permanent classic through velious server, because that's what this would end up being. Too bad about all that dev time wasted on the other 17 expansions.

Crazy... you're so sure the outcome of a hypothetical idea that never happened. Likely story is your wrong though. In all actuality the reason the server population is low is because of the competition on targets, and the rushing through content. Nobody likes logging into their level 18 character to find out someone without a job already killed Nagafen. The offer of progression at your own pace will be great, just look in the last 3 months how many progression guilds tried, and failed. Throw them all into one and viola! You've got yourself a guild probably doing well for itself.

I like this analogy. And I'll agree with you mostly.
But the kind games you listed are easy to release and re-release. Platform games probably cost companies pennies to repackage. No hassle and no maintenance required. Just repackaged and promised a few "new" bells and whistles here and there; then let the profit flow in.
An online game such as EverQuest is different as it needs constant attention. So the trick is what is profitable for them to do. The "attention" the past and present TLP server's have gotten from SOE is proof enough that they aren't running these servers for charity or community good will.

So why didn't the server population suddenly explode when we hit instanced content? If open world content and competition are the only reason the population is low, then it should have shot right up as soon as we hit Gates and that was no longer an issue. We haven't had open world competition on anything more than a tiny handful of mobs for over a year now.

Also, you're delusional if you think the population was low during classic/kunark/velious, when the "worst" of the competition was taking place. Fippy was packed to the point you often couldn't find a place to exp, and Vulak had a decent healthy population back then too.

The population change is more a matter of time since inception than anything else.

That's always the goal when people post this nonsense, always. And the plan is always full of a million holes and always places ridiculous restrictions on everyone else. Their pace is the only correct pace and everyone else is a jobless loser that is ruining the game for them.

Appropriate:
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” - George Carlin

If you aren't willing to keep up with the majority, there is already a special ruleset server that allows for progression at your own pace. It works almost exactly as you described. It's called ANY EVERQUEST SERVER. You don't need any ridiculous flagging code for that.

This is a MMO - there are other people. If you are unwilling to play at the pace they are playing, then go get yourself a merc and stop trying to force everyone else to play at YOUR speed. Putting in a convoluted flagging system is not going to force people to wait for you to log on for 30 minutes every other Sunday.

I wish they'd make a freaking "classic server" thread and leave this junk there. Or the deluded people who think they can play EQ casually yet also keep up with current content by locking people into it for months at a time could all just be redirected to World of Warcraft.

Like kreugen said, that is always the goal. People are always going to want more as well. And the reason it didn't explode on instances...who starts progression halfway through??? That's excluding the better part of the game completely. If that's what you're after, there is a guild called immortal evolution on trakanon.

Quite a few do actually, we get new people showing up on Fippy every day. But it's not because the content is now instanced and there is no competition. Actually a lot of people who have come recently to the server that I've talked with have come because they played classic through pop or Gates, they played live the last few expansions, but have never played the middle ~10 expansions and want to try them out.

At any rate I was responding very specifically to his assertion that competition over open world raid mobs is the only thing holding the population back.

If your goal is a permanent classic server, then why not ask for that and leave off all the nonsense about progression? Maybe because you know it will never happen.

Partly yes, but we had a large population drop at about the time GoD activated.

Some people think it was the activation of GoD that made people quit at the time. Other people think it was the two repeated failures to vote for it (which only delayed it a couple of weeks). But at the same time we also had Vox open, and I know a lot of people restarted there as well. And at the same time SOE also activated free-to-play but not on the progression servers, so people who wanted to bot more instances but didn't have the money went to other servers. And someone on free-to-play doesn't even have the option to check out the servers to see if they want to start here before paying (and they may not even know that prog servers exist), or if they find info on them they are misled by the main EQ site into thinking we are still at PoP.

I don't think it was any one reason, I think it was all of them. Some left because they didn't want progression slowed down, some didn't want it to progress as quickly, some only wanted the early game, some wanted free box characters, some wanted a totally fresh start.

That's part of why I think SOE should experiment with Vulak and open it up to FTP. See if people want to at least play through the second half of expansions in progression, and have the free opportunity to try it out. The extra people might even bring back some folks who left due to low population.

Or maybe I'm not greedy? EverQuest is a multi-player game. Permanent classic server would be fun.. until there's nothing left to do...

And are you trying to convince me that Fippy is getting an explosion in population? Stop dude...

Simple.. a large amount of players join these progression servers, realize they will never be able to get anything done due to one guild locking it out, and leave. There are people telling me they won't even try the next one for that reason.

The main thing holding back population, IS competition over targets. And nobody wants to play the game after it's instanced, let's face it, that's when it starts to suck. Those ARE the reasons the population is low. The only reason it's packed during Classic, Kunark, and Velious, is because that's the only expansions worth playing. After that, the only good stuff is raiding, which you are locked out of.

Well, that was an impressive amount of contradiction in one post.

Then I'll simplify it more, since you're still having trouble understanding:

1.) Join a progression server
2.) Locked out of raid content by one guild, so you play up until Velious doing other things, then
3.) the only content worth playing is raid, and you're locked out
4.) You leave the progression server.

Sorry I used big words and logic before.

Playing on a regular server with self-imposed progression is not the same thing, unless all you do in the game is kill mobs. Even then without that xp cap in it cruises by. I've tried it a couple of times. The big missing thing is the economy and vibrant tradeskill community matched at the appropriate level. I'm not going to defend the person who logs in for 2 hours a week though. A misconception is that most of the people wanting a slower progression are mainly casuals. I'll tell you I could spend a whole day on EQ and not kill a mob just doing tradeskills and stuff, if things go too fast and what you make becomes obsolete by the time you can finish all the quests or farming it's a real bummer.

I don't think perma-classic works either for the reasons a lot of others posted, but also because I think people want things to look forward too. Sometimes a casual guild is just not going to be able to do certain things until they get a bit of a boost from the next expansion in terms of levels or gear. It can be real frustrating if guild alliances, etc just don't seem to work out to hit some of the high end stuff. Not that they want to zoom to 95 and experience a trivial encounter, but they might want to be L65 with some generic PoP stuff doing NToV and have it feel like a challenge. I think you find a lot of guilds doing stuff a couple of expansions behind.

I also think even with the ripping of the current TLPs that Fippy wasn't so bad, though I'd like it tweaked. I left in the middle of OOW and admittedly in my other posts would like a slower (but not static) timeline. I think the biggest thing that got in people's craw was the vote itself. It didn't work properly, there were always conspiracy theories in the early expansions pitting the slow vs fast sides against each other. Whatever they come up with, just post the dates the sever will move to the next expansion and that will get rid of a lot of drama...and please have a slow and fast server next time to give people a choice ;p

Just wanted to say thanks for the tips. I spent the better part of the last few days trying to figure this out. There certainly do seem to be ways to do this, but a lot of stuff that I'm not really compfortable with. I'm actually pricing out a cheap Mac just to play this, but I'm not sure if the folks that are waiting with me would be willing to go that far. I guess we're just going to wait it out for a new server, it seems like the several different ways to get that old experience are out there but they compromise my morals.

Again, thanks for the advice, it was a good learning experience.