TLPs 2023

Just because it has happened before in different servers doesn't mean that it will happen all in a single server.

Flagging/keying is probably the only thing that I hated while playing on mischief. Keying wasn't so much of an issue with the loot rule set but still would have preferred not to deal with it. I'm a filthy casual though and I admit that this is a casual friendly request.

Context: I was dedicated to sticking with mischief GoD and beyond, but life got in the way and I took a bit of a break. By the time I came back ~ 2 months later an old friend convinced me to roll on Yelinak at launch. Right off the bat I already missed mischiefs rule set, but I pressed on because it was nice having someone to play with unlike mischief where I went in alone. However my friend dropped after a few days due to work, we agreed I'd continue and help him level 2-3 weeks later when he expected to play again. I had fun running around during the post launch rush but by the end of June I was burnt out and told my friend I was done just as he was coming back. There was no way I was going to grind again without the added twist mischief had to take the edge off. If it wasn't going to be such a slog to get myself into raids etc. I may have stuck around longer.

My friend tried to go it alone and managed to level up like mad during the 76% Exp weekend. He gave up a few days after hitting 50, said he got bored and wished he gave mischief a shot with me the year before. Best part is the only reason he skipped mischief was his misunderstanding of the loot rules, thought it was truly randomized and that most items would be impossibly scarce.

Taking unique server rulesets and merging them into some super EZ-mode server is completely outrageous.

Double loot coupled with double named spawn rate is basically quadruple loot. You want no flagging/keying and zero AA grindings which eliminates two of the most fundamental aspects of this game. You want shorter raid lockouts so you acquire all the raid gear possible quicker so you can raid less. Again, do you actually want to play the game or just sign in with a maxed out character each expansion?

EQ is already the least time consuming it's ever been. What you're proposing basically takes away any semblance of playing the game. You'll get everything you want casually playing 1-2 hours a week. That means a vast majority people will get bored faster and quit faster. That's terrible business practice. DPG needs to find a happy median between rofl what a joke this game is and holy tedium this is just the worst time sink ever imaginable. Your proposal leans heavily to the former.

A basic TLP is manageable playing just 10-15 hours a week. That's a pretty casual setting and still less casual than live gameplay. TLPs by design aren't targeting the super casuals. It would just ruin the experience for too many and it would cause ghost town servers. There is nothing "unemployed gamer" about modern EQ anymore unless you're heavily into achievement grinding.

I would really like to see this time around 1 truebox and 1 non truebox with a kunark 1 month start. Also free trade on those servers would be cool. Random loot would also be cool on atleast the non true box server. After Kunark it would be fun to have everything released by lvl of the expansion, velious/luclin, pop/ldon/god.

Shortening raid timers will make people raid less? Okay then, I don't think you're open to having a real conversation lol.

If I normally need to raid NTOV, WTOV/ETOV, Kael, PoG lets say, but you shorten the timer to 3 days, I'd probably just to NTOV twice.

It's common sense? Double loot coupled with shortened lockouts? The average guild would tighten their schedule and concentrate on the better targets rather than doing a wide array of things to try and gear the guild out.

Take OOW era just for example. The average guild will do a COA split (easily done with 30) + Tacvi + MPG. Well, with double loots it's probably not even worth doing Tacvi anymore so that's out the window. Split COA x double loot x shortened lockouts is (((19 items * 2) * 2) *2) = 152 items a week vs 38 items per week in COA on a normal TLP. Why bother doing anything else when you'll be getting 150+ items a week excluding orbs just from doing COA twice a week? So yes, the average person and guild would see no reason to really raid more than that.

And let's talk about the downstream effects this will have. The average guild still normally raids COA during DoDh. Maybe not weekly, but it's done. Well after 20 weeks of getting 150 items a week (3,000 items) why would any guild bother doing COA ever in DoDH? That means during DoDH a guild would basically only raid one night a week, maybe two for miscellaneous flagging or boredom twice a week because I forgot it's half lockout. Demiplane twice and that's it.

We get it, your greatest sense of accomplishment in life comes from 25 year old video game achievements.

The rest of us just want to explore the cool old content for fun. Don't be a sad little gatekeeper lol.

Funny, actually, shortened raid timers was done before, on Selo's. I played on Mangler and we had a TON of people quit Selo's to come to Mangler.

Do you know what the most common reason cited was, and by most common I mean like every single person I know, "raid timers are too short".

See heres the problem with shortened raid timers, when raid timers are shortened guilds are then forced into raiding more to "maximize" their loot gain. Now, the vast majority of people I have met (and I have led a top 5-6 guild on EVERY tlp) are very content witih raiding 2 maybe 3 times a week and no more. But every guild has a small try hard contingent that holds the guilds hostage half the time and through drama can usually force the guild into raiding the 5 days a week they want.

So what happened on Selo's was to keep up people felt like they HAD to raid 4-6 days a week because of the shortened timers and so they quit and went to Mangler where the timer was the traditional once a week.

So funny enough, Shortened timers DID cause people to raid less...they quit and went to the server where they could raid less and not get left behind.

You're right.

You don't want a real conversation because you clearly are too immature to take criticism. Its getting late, don't you have school work to do?

If all you want to do is explore old zones, make a heroic char on a live server and have a ball. It's clear with your suggested ruleset you don't actually want to do anything in the game.

Selo's was on a time crunch that forced guilds to gear as much as possible. Regular tlp cycle with double loot and shortened lockouts? Less raiding because there's literally no need to do anything besides the one end zone twice a week. Boredom ensues. Server dead.

You guys got to learn to ignore that Trance guy. He was the guy an entire guild ousted as a leader because he was a terrible person. His opinion on the game means nothing he just wants to try to abuse the system for his own benefits.

Now back on topic, a mischief 2.0 with actual extra loot like in classic-pop would be good. This new expansion era the loot barely feels like we get any extra with all the spell component drops and garbage on the loot tables. Would be nice to just be double loot without randomizing, free trade, and same xp speed.

As Mischief is random loot the evolution would be random NPC. They would even fight each others if they are on opposing factions. Ogres would control Kelethin, Trolls Felwithe, and creatures from the Feerrott would wander around in the Faydark. In Velketor's Labyrinth you would find Sarnaks and other creatures from Chardok.

The PC races would be exchanged for NPC races depending on the gender.
Male / Female

Dwarf -> Coldain m / Aqua Goblin
Gnome -> Minotaur / Kobold
Halfling -> Runnyeye Goblin / Bixie
Erudite -> Alaran / Witch (Cara Omica)
Human -> Skeleton / Zombie f
Half Elf -> Black Wolf / Jackal
Woof Elf -> Brownie m / Pixie
High Elf -> Crushbone Orc / Fairy
Dark Elf -> Deathfist Orc / Fire Goblin
Barbarian -> Snow Orc / Blackburrow Gnoll
Troll -> Mastruq / Noc
Ogre -> Gorilla / Golra (Yeti)
Iksar -> Lizardman (brown) / Lizardman (green)
Vah Shir -> Kerran m / Kerran f
Guktan froglok -> Fungus Man / Froglok
Drakkin -> Dragorn / Sarnak

This is just the thing to get more people to play on Vaniki!

Here we go. That and relaxed truebox from the start.

TSS start

There's a whole leveling path from 1-75 that many people haven't experienced, who else is sick of doing unrest, guk, chardok etc over and over again?

TSS start would be cool, but also no one is forcing you to re-roll over and over again

Yes, but would be nice having a TSS start rather than a TLP getting to TSS naturally. The leveling path in TSS is quite enjoyable and with top heavy TLPs the zones are mostly under utilized. 95% of the players on a TLP are max level by the time TSS is released.

Relaxed truebox would be cool as along as its not full box server. I don't mind 2-3 boxers just hate seeing people box entire raids.

Mischief/Thornblade were really fun servers, my main problem was the abundance of loot and some of the loot tables on mobs and bosses did not make sense for the effort needed to kill them .

I think if they took that ruleset, worked on a few loot tables to make them more in line with the mob being killed and cut back and not have the volumes of loot that was dropping and add Beasts and Zerkers as playable from Classic, it would be an interesting server.