Was hoping Velious would bring back players

Vaniki is working well? By what standard?

Vaniki - 1 week per: https://eqresource.com/serverhistory.php?server=Vaniki&range=1w

• High Count: 0
• Medium Count: 0
• Low Count: 1006 (99.8%) - Estimated Time: 6d 23h 40m

The cycle of the TLP is that everyone swarms at launch, some come back for xpacs, then they continue to hemorrhage people until they become a general wasteland of low population with a small group that wants to ride it through to live. We currently have 7 TLP's that never move above 'low' because the cycle mentioned above. Just create some revolving seasonal servers that dump into a live-destined server and free up the resources that are just idling.
They (seeming accidentally) struck a chord when they launched Mischief - they need to continue to evolve / innovate in the TLP space but the current model of one annual launch and lock-in until live limits their ability or willingness to continue to try new things. Once they release something, it's locked in for years and then they seem to be out of compute resources or ability to support more.

Yes and no. I would be ok with the first 3 expansions being 1 month each. It would also depend on the ruleset, mischief clone without true box this would be great. Luclin and PoP at 2 months (Luclin def doesn't need 3 months, and PoP needs more then 1 month with LoY/LDoN being practically useless and needing to be geared for GoD.) Then everything at and beyond GoD at 3 months.

I see with the great success Mischief had them making a clone of it. Eventually due to natural attrition they will need a server to merge with it and right now they don't have one, and they can't wait too long and have the new server so far behind that they won't see a merge for 8 years.

(off topic) Mischief was great but the true box ruleset killed it for me, because people just bought cheap laptops that barely ran it and ran programs to operate their armies while the other side people were left at a disadvantage. Also, with a majority of players being 40+ the lack of Decorum on the server was unreal. People with box armies rolled over people's "camps" and mobs. I can't count how many times i was ina group and some guy with a warrior a cleric bard and 3 monks ran up and would start killing mobs that were already engaged while laughing and saying, "it's a DPS race." there will always be jerks but the true box only, makes it worse. I can't wait for another Mischief like TLP.

Eventually due to natural attrition hey will have to merge Mischief. Right now, there isn't another server to merge it with. If they wait too long the 2nd server will be so far behind it will be 5-6 years before they are caught up and able to merge. I loved Mischief and if it were for a couple bad experiences within a couple guilds I would still be playing. One EU guild had a guy skimming loot and a couple toxic officers tried to defend them, and they started to treat me like trash because I wanted the guy removed from the guild. Then I tried to recruit with the "big guild" on the server and after amassing a ton of DKP and never getting any loot and being one of the top DPS's beating all but 1 of the others of my class. I asked when I would gain full membership, as I was well past the time they assured me of. They promptly removed me from the guild and discord saying "we've decided to terminate you application. The real reason was I had enough DKP to take whatever I wanted, and a new expansion had just unlocked a couple days before. They were more than happy to have my DPS and contribution on raids without me getting anything in return.

I cannot wait for another Mischief to drop, Since I am taking a break from the game for a little bit.

I am not sure what you are trying to indicate here? That they will launch a fast mischief server just to catch up and merge people into Mischief? That would be a first and seems unlikely to launch a TLP with the sole purpose of catching them up to another TLP... just start toons on Mischief.

Or are you referring to once Mischief is a live server? Because I will lay all bets it loses it's random & double loot and just gets merged into FV.

No, they will make a normal mischief clone. eventually Mischief will catch up with Live and it will slow down a lot and you will see an uptick in people leaving because not everyone wants to make 50 alts like p99. If they got rid of the ruleset, you may as well shut the server down because 90% of the people will leave, the rules are what drew people to the server. With a mischief clone running 8-9 expansions behind when Mischief does reach end game people will know there will be a merger on the horizon.