TLP Expansion Unlock Pacing

Moving away from the 8-week/12-week cadence is the easiest way to improve these servers. Specifically, 12-weeks is too long for an expansion pre-UF. There's a reason we see massive population crashes during PoP and OOW: they're too long and people get bored to death. We don't need 4 extra weeks to level up. PoP leveling takes a weekend, OOW takes a 4 hour XP pot (not even), TSS takes a lesson burn and ceremonial elixir of scholarship click etc etc.

These 3 easy to implement changes would result in a way better product:

1) OOW/DoN goes from 12 to 8 weeks.

2) PoP/LDoN goes from 16 to 10 weeks.

3) LDoN launches 2 weeks after PoP launches.

Or, leave them as is and just make a Mischief loot rules server and avoid the post PoP crash. (Though the LDON thing is probably right, no one needs or wants LDON to be it's own expansion.)

I like the idea of them combining both PoP and LDoN as it would allow an alternative to XPing in BoT or Fire while also working on the charm Aug. It might also make the LDoN armor sets relevant for a change. Is there really much harm in opening augments for armor sooner?

I'd like to see a max of 12 - 16 weeks at any one level, with sensible split of those weeks between expansions.

switch to a 2 year cycle for TLPs

Orrr you are missing the reason for dropoff entirely and are bad at reading a room. There is a reason the private servers are still alive and kicking.. It isn’t because unlocks are too slow. TLP drops off after POP because most people hate post POP. (Agnarr is still a top server). Do you not remember EQ used to have a year between expansion unlocks? With high player counts for the full year? How is it fun to grind raids for 2 months and go totally obsolete the next day? I remember as a kid farming HHK and druid rings for plat, if I do that on an 8 week TLP i may as well have not played because I will be so far behind. It takes a full weekend of no life faction grinding for velious armor, if not more, and then it is all irrelevant a few weeks later.

Id personally love 4-6 month unlocks or more up until POP and then start the 8 - 12 week unlocks for the expansions people hate so it makes it to live faster.

Talk about not being able to read the room. In no world would longer unlocks help a new TLP server maintain a population. The big exoduses on a TLP are at the end of Kunark, the end of PoP, and the end of the level 70 slog.

8 weeks for each of Classic, Kunark, Velious and Luclin are OK, but Kunark tends to drag on. The excitement for Velious is high, but it is hard to continue logging in during the end of Kunark once you have your epic and have killed each of the few dragons 4-5 times. That could be fixed by releasing Classic and Kunark together for a total of 12 weeks.

12 weeks of PoP is fine, but it's the 4 weeks of LDoN after it that really makes the server drag. Since LDoN end game content is very weak, guilds typically end up raiding Elementals/PoTime for 16 weeks. Considering a lot of the player base hated GoD and haven't given it a real chance on TLPs, raiding Elementals/PoTime for the 15th week in a row isn't exactly motivation to keep raiding. The solution is to drop LDoN 4-8 weeks into PoP, then drop GoD 12 weeks after PoP.

The level 70 slog of OoW/DoN/DoD/PoR is espcially bad since DoN is terrible and PoR doesn't even give new AAs to chase. There literally becomes nothing to do outside of raids, and only logging in for raids is the first step towards not logging in at all. I can't think of a way to fix the slog, but dropping DoN and OoW at the same time or 4-8 weeks into OoW is a good start.

So...

1. Release Classic and Kunark together for a total of 12 weeks.
2. Release LDoN 4-8 weeks into PoP, then drop GoD 12 weeks after PoP.
3. Release DoN and OoW at the same time, or DoN 4-8 weeks in.

I deleted your nostalgia trip from the quote because its irrelevant. Stop bringing up private servers. They are free to play and hold no weight to any discussion regarding TLPs.

Agnarr holds a special place in my heart, but there is no metric where it is a top server. It's spends the entire year at low pop, which is the same tier as vaniki/zek/ragefire pop.

I would love a slightly longer release then current:

• 16 weeks Classic>Kunark>Velious>Luclin>Planes of power
• 12 weeks for no level cap raise
• 16 weeks where level cap is raised

That for me a solid balance between those who want faster unlocks and those that want slower unlocks.
I personally would want 20/16 but I do realize that is too long for a large part of the players. I do like the longer unlocks idea for Classic to Pop, but think that alienates a large group and thus a slightly fast unlock would be a nice balance.

I would also love no trade all loot, and trivial loot code (=>15) for all but epic drops. But that will never happen.

Something else I would love to see, is an adjusting of the secondary loot awards to match the shorter timeline.
i.e. xpac missions that award a secondary momentary reward for success that can be used to buy gear/spells be increased by a factor close to the shortened life span of the content.

So if an xpac is live for 12 weeks on a TLP vs 52 weeks originally, it would be nice to a see an increase in the reward of factor 3 or 4.

I'd really like a seasonal server that goes up to PoP and then resets. Maybe have 3+ month expansion unlock times or so. However, given that the server infrastructure is not burdensome to DPG (since it is deleted and starts over) they need to invest some money into improving that early game experience specifically. Things like Old Freeport for example, maybe a bit new content every year or so, and so on. Learn from the private server scene.

Why should they cater to private server players? Would there truly be anything they could do that would pull those players away from the free server they are already playing on? I highly doubt there are thousands of untapped players that are just waiting for Old Freeport to come back so they can pay $15 a month to come back and complain about something else not being classic.

It’s not the cadence… it’s the timing. Most TLP hit the PoP / GoD era right around the time a new TLP releases.

As they coincide, so do population drops on existing TLP as folks jump to new ones for a myriad of reasons.

Speeding up unlocks doesn’t change this; only spacing out the rate at which TLP are released.

Cadence, timing, rulesets of past TLP vs new ones, lots of factors

If your guild isnt raiding LDoN you should find a new guild immediately.

People usually quit during PoP because there is a new server that comes out.
The GoD-OoW era increases difficulty substantially for guilds, so smaller guilds who arent splitting content will have a much harder time clearing, which leads to frustration and guilds failing.

If you pay attention to Mischief, you will see that there was not a huge drop off during PoP>GoD because noone really cared about the new server as much, and alot of people who did were still raid logging on Mischief.

The smaller guilds that would usually fail during this era were geared 3-4x better than previously and were able to keep clearing, so the attrition wasnt as bad.

Nothing you do to a server is going to make people play through expansions they dont like, and unfortunately (while wrong) a majority of EQ players dont care for GoD+ content. Mischief was the closest thing to a server that would allow the casuals to continue into later xpacs because you received so much gear that even with 45 individual average players you could clear everything.

Classis should always be 4 weeks, or released with Kunark and be 12 weeks. Just like it was on Mischief.

6 months till PoP, for most ppl coming back to play nostalgia

1 second post PoP, for only few who still have a ridiculous plan to play all the way to live.

Inaccuracy here imo.

"Agnarr is still a top server."

• Top? Yeah, idk about that one my friend. It's still alive, by no means would I describe it as Top implying it is flourishing which it surely is not.

"No life faction grinding for velious armor."

• I definitely would not describe the faction grind as requiring 'no lifing'. It was pretty easy, especially if you were raiding. Not even in the guilds doing OW we'd cruise in while they are killing raid targets in kael and tag'em for big sexy faction hits and then you could clear behind the throne room. There were tricks to this, camping, picking over, cothing. I won't go into detail but it was fairly easy to get right back into a fresh pick behind the throne room and clear it again. Faction galore. E Z P Z

Now, I don't disagree with everything you're saying. There are definitely expansions I could do without, none of them being classic-pop. I love every one of those bad boys.

I'd actually like a longer time frame on one of these TLP servers. The only era I feel drags at all is the level 70 era. and even that is almost entirely because Prophecy of Ro is just kind of bad, omens ,dragons, and depths have alot of fun content outside of the already good raids, whereas prophecy is just sort of bad all around.

8 weeks for level increase, 4 weeks for same level xpacs, LDON and TBS release with their prior expac in the order and are ignored for the server rule. If 5 guilds don't beat an expansion before the next releases, the server immediately merges to vox and a new server is created. Sell heroic characters from kunark on that boost your level to 10 levels below max so its easier for new people to join the server after launch. FV loot so that hand me downs are possible to get people into the fight faster.

DON is also bad