Too late for TLPs?

Aradune is in Kunark now. Mangler is well into expansions. Is there any point to making a new character on either, or is it best to wait for the next batch of TLPs? Rolled up some lowbies on both. Mangler feels so top heavy you can’t level. Aradune feels like a ghost town.

Aradune just launched Kunark. It's not a ghost town.

Every zone has tons of people and people rerolling iksar and such. Sure the wold world is probably barren, but once you get to any Kunark zone, people are LFG all over.

Selo has been thinning out the last couple weeks as we aren't getting anything from the company pertaining to it's future or the groundwork for the end game on the following ones, other than acknowledgement of insufficient staff. There is nothing announced for next year's batch of the same old, but selo and phony will both be hitting live early next year. Aradune and Riz will hit PoP later in '21 so I'd bet on not seeing another clone tlp until, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a more thought out event server unlike quarm was. Mangler I thought was almost as dead as coirnav now.

If aradune feels like a ghost town, a few days after kunark launched, I'd hate to see what it looks like in PoP... But I'm guessing you looked around a starting zone and got that feel solely from that. I haven't been there in a month or so, but you couldn't turn around without running into a 3-6 boxer (technically not allowed more than 2.. hAHahAhaHA)

Until darkpaw, daybreak, CN, vikselberg, or whoever else starts to show they still care for a server past the first year, I would suggest finding a live server to chill on.

They should stop releasing TLPs and see if people stick around past POP. My guess is they still quit. It’s not a Darkpaw issue it’s a player issue.

Mangler is showing 13 guilds clearing GoD content on their progression tracker, Coirnav had 10 in that era. Coirnav currently has 3 or 4. Mangler still has quite a ways to go before hitting Coirnav levels.

It would be great if they would care about servers past PoP

Mangler still going very strong and Omens releases tomorrow! Level cap increase and new AAs. Quite a few guilds and busy bazaar. Not sure why you wouldn't want to play there. I could not stand to play classic through POP again.

Also, the game just becomes so much better mechanics wise around Gates through Ro.

Pick an era you want to play in and go for it. Aradune/Rizlona population = huge. Mangler population = almost as huge.

TL;DR - Nah.

First off there is no mythical "huge drop in players" during or after Planes of Power on TLP. The Krono farners are largely gone after Luclin finishes its run, and the pick up group scene is decreasing even while the TLP is still in classic & just carries on decreasing. PoP is just when the next TLP arrives & gets blamed for the server not being as busy as it was in classic - in other words it was decreasing all the time but it's only when the next TLP opens that players really notice it, and mostly as they have a scapegoat. The only big demographic of leavers at that point are Krono farmers off to feed on a new body like migrating ticks, but they server-hop every time.

So new TLP don't really make any huge difference, a large amount of the TLP population is really only there for the grouping scene as that's what they enjoyed about the game, but it's really a comparatively very short-lived phase in EverQuest regardless of the server being TLP or not, Live servers went exactly the same way and that was without any TLP to jump to each year.

By PoP players are already doing far less pick-up grouping than in the early expansions, by TSS pick up grouping is all but dead. So it boils down to guild groups and most of us see the same pattern of cliques and friend groups develop, find yourself without a steady group to play with and you either become a boxer, rely on joining up with boxers, solo as best you can or quit.

A TLP each year is a good thing for the game as a whole, there will always be an audience that enjoys the early game when it is fresh, or at least recycled. And each TLP does keep a few guilds for a long while so it;s not a total loss, you just have to accept that all servers have almost an organic "life-cycle".

There's no one reason why anyone stops playing, every player may have had a particular goal in mind different to most others, a particular expansion they have no intention of ever seeing, or replaying or they just felt out of their comfort zone, and not everyone enjoys playing in an expansion where they have no experience, knowledge or memory of, only a few seem to enjoy the challenges that the game introduces or the player complexities that gradually filter in each expansion. Some just like the "simple" or more relaxed playstyle & feel overwhelmed by the vast array of abilities & aa that later expansions equip players with.

Only a few do play deep into the expansion, Selos only has what 2 guilds, Phinny has 3, Miragul has just 1.
Most players never really grasp that while the complexity broadens that you adapt & evolve as a player as you move through the expansions, your knowledge deepens a lot, but the overall playstyle doesn't radically differ while the pacing is quite different and the "goals" are more concrete.

TL;DR - Yes 100%

It really is up to the players to decide whether they play all the way from classic through to live. Darkpaw can't do much more than it already does, and if we the players have sensible ideas and communicate them well the dev team will usually take a look at the idea & see if it's workable from their side.

Many players still seem to hold onto the notion that there is some easy way to hold onto TLP players but there is not, there are no short-cuts to long-term retention, there's only hard work & good organisation, decent leadership & a strong desire to make it together and ultimately I think it boils down to fostering friendship, respect & skilled playing, along with a very "in the trenches together" kind of thinking.

Players could do a LOT more at an individual level though.
Better community cohesion, better cooperation, better teamwork, less "me, me, me" and more "we, us, this guild".
Every player in your guild is a key player, is an important player, even the ones who are a pain in the neck and everyone has a responsibility to look after each other, to help each other, not just the leaders.
Leaders of guilds are usually just players going the extra mile, or picking up what nobody else is prepared to do, Officers are just doing some extra work to try to make a difference, but it takes having a long term plan too, run a guild a bit like a good business in terms of organisation & acknowledging people's efforts & sharing the workload, and having a clear goal. I don't have all the answers nobody could have, making a guild a success is as much a team effort as beating any raid in the game, only its much more difficult & takes a lot longer. Everyone has to play their part and pull their weight while they are there.

Shout out to everyone in Resolute, Original Gangster Club & my own guild Rosengard III on Phinigel, and to all the guilds & players in all the older TLP - you're doing something the vast majority of the players & guilds on your servers didn't do, and that's surviving this long and it's very hard to do that so whatever you are doing it's worked pretty good.

Ask yourself what you want from EQ, it's a lot harder than it sounds.

1. Do you want to enjoy a busy Pick up grouping scene?
2. Do you want to join a guild & work together to take down all of the raid bosses.
3. Which expansions do you want to re-live for nostalgia's sake?
4. Which expansions did you miss playing through in-era & do you want to play through any of them in-era?

5. Do you have the time to play consistently & often?
6. Are you a seasonal player or need to take long sabbaticals for family/work?
7. Are you only interested in playing part time & have other games you are far more committed to?

There are a bunch of other question you can ask yourself but those will get you started.
No need to answer them all here, it is yourself who needs to know the answers.

Once you have that you will be in a much better position to think about which server you want to join, TLP or LIVE and you will also know if you "missed the boat or if you are really ready to jump onto a current TLP or wait for the next to open (probably in 2021).

Things to bear in mind, these opinions are just from my own experiences on Live & TLP servers so YMMV.

Pick-up grouping doesn't last long on any server, from classic to PoP it starts out as a lot & decreases every day until by PoP most of the grouping is in-guild only. If that's the type of EQ you want to focus on, expect to server hop from TLP to TLP every year barely ever making it beyond velious / luclin and don't go blowing a lot of money on Marketplace bags or lots of krono, you won't make enough use of them for it to be worth it.

TLP servers are not well-suited to players who are casual, seasonal, or who need to take a lot of big chunks of time off for family or work, you will get left behind and/or constantly depend upon your guild to keep catching you up when you can play.
Guilds/guild-members are usually happy to help you if you have taken a few months off every 2-3 years, much more frequently than that and they will grow weary of catching you up after each of your extended vacations, good will does run out.
If you are casual go to a live server, it will take a while playing alone to catch up to the current expansion but once you make it there it is way easier to stay current on a live server with 12 months between expansions.

TLP servers move through expansions FAST. You will have to be somewhat selective about what goals you have for each expansion, most players simply will not have time to get everything done that can be done in an expansion in the 8 to 12 week time each expansion is in-era on a TLP. Plan your goals, plan what you can live without doing in-era & give yourself "breaks" from doing all of the stuff you want to do if you start getting frustrated or you will burn out.

Skuz offers a lot of excellent advice. Deciding what your overall time commitment will be is the single most important step, IMHO. A lot of people will debate the meaning of "casual player" (you can even search and find whole threads about it on here!); I consider myself a casual player, and I average about two in-game hours per day. I also play other games and have gaming friends outside the world of EQ. I strongly encourage people new to or long-absent from the game to start by running a new toon solo on a Live server to get a feel for what the progression speed is like. This can be done for free! TLPs don't differ much from Live in their speed at lower levels, you just approach cap sooner.

If you want to see the major content, you have to join a guild no matter which era you start in or which server you choose. To that end, your primary objective isn't to reach level cap ASAP, it's to show how much progress you have been able to make solo in order to impress on a guild recruiter that you know a thing or two about playing your main class. Are you geared up? Have you maxed all of your relevant skills? Have you banked any AA? Are you completing achievements? These are all things you can do solo, and it shouldn't take more than a few weeks time to have your main presentable to a recruiter. You don't have to be at level cap.

Aradune is far from being a ghost town once you get past level 30. There is negligible difference between starting in Classic or Kunark, IMHO, and Kunark just unlocked there. A lot of good levelling zones that are left alone by the plat farmers. If you don't have your heart set on the Classic experience, Mangler is at an excellent starting point. You have the advantage of the tutorial being unlocked (way out of era), which will give you a nice set of visible starting gear. You can also pick up some good non-visible starting pieces for cheap from PoK vendors. The point is, it's a lot easier to start solo now than it was in-era; if you can't get to 50 on your own there, and start earning a few AAs, you're doing something wrong.

If you want to play the modern game, Coirnav is still an option. You can legitimately go to its current level cap of 75 solo with any class, by following the Hero's Journey route. Not only do you get to start with the tutorial gear, you have complete global Defiant Armor drops, also way out-of-era. (I expect this to change when the more recent TLPs get to that point.) Coirnav doesn't have quite as many guilds as the others, but the ones there now are all active. Plat is generous because of all the extra drops.

TLPs are not the be-all, end-all of the EQ experience either. Don't completely dismiss the option of playing full-time on a Live server.

A week into Kunark and people still question if it's too late to join a server or worth waiting 2 years for the next one. How ridiculous.

It's best to play something else. The GMs are pretty much as bad as, or worse than P99 when it come to corruption.

Aradune is a ghost town? Hardly. If you’re basing that off of newbie areas then you have a very limited scope. There are still like 3-4 instances of general chat, there are upwards of 1k people online nearly at all times. You may have to level a bit, but I imagine if you go to zones like Kurn’s and Unrest you’ll find lots of people to group with. I saw even saw 8 people leveling in Black Burrow the other night, I imagine there’s more in Crushbone. There’s plenty of time to catch up, and most raiding guilds are still doing hate/fear, vox/naggy, and sky in their raid rotation. Now is a great time to join the server!

They'll be gone next expac so don't worry!

Yep, I wish we could have a key phrase that just makes the person stop posting and say "Play wherever you want"