What about classic + progression in separate servers

A random idea, but maybe if there were a set of servers that were all locked up until a certain point. Say by sets of 3-5 expansions or something. That way people who want to go slow could be on the "classic" server that's up to Kunark or Velious, take there time, have people who aren't drastically higher level and people are playing more of the same content... then say when someone is ready (or maybe a guild as a whole) if they hit max, maybe they can then unlock a server transfer over to the next locked progression server.

Seems like it could possibly create separate sever ecosystems that have the players who want to stay in those ranges of content without pushing everyone else beyond... this would also allow anyone to start the progression experience without having to wait for a brand new server. I could see myself having chars on the different servers for when I want to play through different tiers of content.

Just a thought.

There have been many ideas tossed around with regards to progression & classic servers. The problems aren't a lack of ideas and suggestions. The problem is with SOE management, they're unwilling to provide extra resources to the EQ1 team to allow them to build, maintain, and support these special ruleset servers.

One thing they could do, and surely I can't be the only one thinking this, is merge some of the existing servers, for example fippy, and vulak, and create another progression server with one of the above mentioned rule sets. The players get what they want, and they still have the same amount of servers out there, and no additional resources are needed (in theory).

Absolutely, though that's why this idea tries to remedy that to some extent. For example if they turned the 3 servers into my suggested idea... you could have 1 classic server, and 2 other servers split between other progressions (maybe throw another in there to get better diversity). This would allow their to be a separate population on each server that can stay on those servers and progress as fast/slowly as they want... it could also prevent them from having to create new progression servers to get that progression experience.

There is clearly a market for this idea but SoE is more interesting in selling you air dropped weapons. Don't hold your breath for a new progression server of any sort, you'll end up 6ft under or in an urn.

Why not do servers like zones? Bundle them up so after a person completes the expansion they can move on to next server. That way people can start at any time not having to worry about catching up to another servers time requirements? Then EQ makes money by selling a whole guild Char transfers there is your funding? Pluss this will allow people who like Classic content to stay on the basic server. Combine reg servers together Allot better population when everyone flocks to the server they want. and 9 Progressive servers that they never have to deal with again well untill they make another expansion but you could just kick that onto a reg server and not deal with the new stuff because when you are level 85+ you might as well be on a regular server anyway?

I have a feeling that will never happen though so as a returning player. I want to start from scratch and be a part of a guild that does progressive stuff what should I do?

I agree, basically that's just what I suggested We're on the same page. Have different servers with different expansions limited on each and people can progress to new servers if they want the new content or stay with their current server and content.

This way they don't have to keep rolling out new progression servers to get that same experience.

Yeah, I got excited it is such a good idea. I hope they read your thread.

This idea gets floated here a lot, and I'm not sure if you guys just haven't thought it through or if you have an are really just angling for a backdoor classic server... But if you want a true progression setup, where it's possible for players to move through all the expansions and complete each in turn, this is the worst idea ever.

If you want a classic server, fine, ask for that, but don't pretend this "progression" scheme will give anything more than a nice classic server. What you've laid out would basically make it impossible for any guild to maintain a community and progress past the first two or three expansions.

Or maybe we actually want what we are asking for lol. Crazy thought I know that we didn't check with you before ensuring it's really what we want.

The idea is anyone could start a new character and hop on progression stage 1 server to do a classic experience, then when they top out they could go to the stage 2 server which has the next 3+ expansions or so and do another tier of content. So players who go fast can churn through it but not alter the economy and population content focus for those that go through slow.

The idea is to capture the pluses of the progression experience in a way that can be repeatable by anyone at any time as well as without having to shut down + spin up progression servers.

It definitely is the idea of getting a progression + a classic server, you shouldn't be so cynical.

As Machen pointed out, the problem there is with a guild maintaining any sort of continuity. Inevitably some players would want to move on and others wouldn't. It's hard enough to maintain the numbers to raid without new ways for the guild to get split up.

Some of the servers would also have ridiculously low populations so even if you wanted to play GoD you'd have to do so on an empty server.

It would work for casual players who like playing on low population servers. And it maybe would have worked in a world where there is massive demand for old EQ. But I don't think we live in that world beyond a certain point.

And yeah, I get that there is strong demand to a certain point. But I think we'd see that diminish very quickly over time as nostalgia wears off. There just really is not that much to do in classic EQ before Luclin because of the lack of AA.

Well in fairness his primary point was that we simply want a classic server and are disguising it as a progression request lol... but the guild one is a fair point.

With that said I don't see how this would introduce many new problems... So an example

Player A maxes out with half his guild the other half slows down and doesn't want to progress. Chances are on a regular server that person or that group might just go ahead and switch guilds anyways, to one that does the content they want. On a progression server you will already run into the case where new stuff is unlocked and slow or new players are left int he dust as the server populate moves on.

Also you say it's already hard to enough to maintain raid numbers, if group X is already on content C while group Y is on B and doesn't want to move on then they already *aren't* raiding together, at least on content C. I mean the idea is this wouldn't be servers split up by one raid tier or even one expansion, but 2-3 expansions or so, maybe even some overlap, the idea being when a whole guild progresses to a point and wants to move on they can and the lower population wouldn't be split between multiple progression servers but consolidated in one.


The idea is we already have had progression servers where each one starts with classic... then the whole server state moves beyond that and it alters the game world pretty largely. The economy drastically alters, more zones come into play to split people up (especially ones that introduce additional lower level zones), etc. All of these things are made worse by small EQ populations on these servers.

Also if a person who didn't jump on that progression server in the beginning wants to experience that intro part they simply can't. The game server world has moved beyond it and altered beyond it. So they have to wait for another progression server, hence many requests for a new progression server.

This way there would always be an initial state server for people to start up on, as well as stages along the progression path. Each server is a world locked in it's own state and one that won't have the world/content/economy changes that progression servers have... and players can start a character on that "classic" one whenever they want as well as have characters progressing through each of the stages.

I could easily see myself spinning up a new character on the initial stage of this progression on top of having one that's maybe on the 3rd step of progression. The nice thing is say step 3 is PoP I could be on a server where the entire game world is frozen at that state, I don't have to worry about missing out on the time period where the server will leave me behind and completely alter the world.

Of course this is purely random idea spouting but that's kind of the point of a discussion forum, to discuss.

So what happens when a player takes a break, and his guild moves on to the next server, then he comes back? Now he is stuck on the previous expansion server and won't ever have a chance to catch up with his friends. Everyone takes a break from time to time, so the whole set up is going to slowly cause guilds to disintegrate as they progress, until they reach a point where there are not enough players left to keep going. And then everyone starts over from the beginning, because there is no other option.

Guilds need recruits to survive. Attrition is a very real aspect of Everquest. But a guild that is well along in progression will have absolutely no one to recruit from.

Take the current progression servers. EoE, Citizen and Kuk Clan have ALL benefitted tremendously in the last six months from new players joining the server and quickly getting up to speed and raiding with us. On the system you've proposed, none of us would have access to any of those new players. Nor would we have any ability to reach backward and help them work through progression, unless we started new characters at the beginning and played through the whole thing again.

The whole scheme of course completely ignores casual/group players, who would be stuck and unable to progress past velious or so. Yet these players have always been a significant portion of the progression server population, especially earlier on.

Or take the situation of a player starting a second account to level an alt to box. Impossible on anything past classic under your scheme, without once again playing through the entire progression up to the point you are at.

On top of all this, do you really think Sony is going to devote 20 servers to progression, or that there are enough players interested in progression to fill twenty servers if they did? There are enough players for the first few months to fill 2-3 servers, each time they start over, and after that one server would be sufficient. With this scheme you would end up with 1 well populated classic server, maybe a hit or miss kunark and velious server depending on when guilds are coming through, and 17 ghost towns--15 of which would probably never have players reach them at all.

How would it be any less of an impact to you when your guild leaves you behind and there is no one but you and a few other stragglers left on the PoP server to play with, and absolutely nothing you can do to progress without a guild?

This isn't much different than on a normal server... on a normal server you'd be in the same problem, you come back and the entire guild is on completely new content and you're trying to play catch up... so you have to grind through older content to get there etc... In this case either:

A) Your guild has a version of itself still left on this server so you could play with any other guildies still in that content
B) You search for a new guild where all guilds are at the same broad state of content so it's a whole lot easier to find one that's doing your content

This exact case wouldn't be true, but what you would have is new players making it to your current guilds "tier" and looking for guilds, or your guild could be on all stages where maybe some guildies like staying in lower content taking their time and recruiting lower players and if those players speed up they just feed into your higher tier guilds population.

Essentially those aspects aren't that much different, you play with people who are doing your same content, this just ensures your on a server dedicated to those people on the same content, your progress with those people, fall behind, or catch up all in similar ways... just your little fish bowl isn't altered by unlocking expansions or others progressing, meaning mostly higher density of players in your tier of content and the economy isn't massively altered by the next tier of expansions (think tradeskills that mean nothing due to a next tier etc).

I mean look at it this way... you have 3 progression servers, say they all have low populations doing 1-60 old world content, but in this system the 1-60 server would always stay with the same content restriction to 1-60. Basically if this were the only progression server experience all 3 of those progression servers populations would be reduced to one that would be larger. Then when 70-85 content gets unlocked 1-60 still can survive off of tradeskills and the item economy of 1-60 until they are ready to move on. Guilds could still persist across all of these to some extent, and this is such an alt and box heavy game each Guildie might have char in each stage of progression... the key is they can slow down and enjoy their content and the world and ecosystem built around that content without having to fastrack, unless they want to.

That makes no sense... I say this as a casual player (though I've played since beta), I want to stay 1-60 without the economy and population shooting up to lvl 85+ when I'm just 45. I like to take my time and enjoy the content and I'd have a much greater chance of playing with those that do the same in this case.

I don't understand what you mean? How is this impossible. You *already* have to play through the progression to say go from 1-90... except with heroic characters. This is no different. Your *content* is the same, just the content is sub-grouped in servers that cap out based on the ranges.

See here I can already tell you posted such big responses without even fully reading what I wrote lol. I specifically suggested a server could be a range of 3-5 expansions, or whatever. Basically you could turn the current 3 progression servers into this setup and have it be three tiers of progression that you work through *and can start at any time without waiting for a new progression server*. A 4th would probably round it out a bit better though.

Well for:

1) This isn't much of a worse scenario than currently if everyone is busy doing later content, you already run into this issue
2) Your guildies might have lower level alts doing the content
3) You can find another guild, the point is on this server all guilds will be people doing this tier of content so should be easy, though of course you could just keep a guild across each of these servers

Don't have the time to respond to everything, but... The population "shooting up" to level 85% when you are just 45? really? It took 3.5 years for the progression servers to reach level 85. We spent over a year locked at level 70 alone.

But my point was, take a setup where you have the 20 expansions broken into 3 groups. Classic through God - level 65, natural cutoff. Then OOW - SoF, another natural cutoff before mercs come in. And finally SoD through live.

Now say you are a casual player who has enjoyed the group game on the starting server for a year or two, and decides it's time to move on. You've done all the group content, and want to move on to the next tier. Your only avenue to progress is to beat Tunat. Not only that but you must beat Tunat in era, with no level 70's or 85's or 100's coming to help you, because 65 is the cap for the server. This is something no casual guild has ever done, so the only avenue is to join a hardcore raid guild and stop playing as a casual/group only player. Or just stay on that first server forever. Of course, then you have the added problem that the hardcore guilds beat Tunat years ago and no longer exist on your server, so there isn't even one to join if you decide you want to.

You most certainly do not. I just leveled a new alt to 85 and jumped straight into Underfoot content without ever once having to kill Naggy, Vox, Trakanon, Quarm, Tunat, OMM, Ayona Ro, Mistmoore, or Brekt. I didn't have to worry about flagging for Veeshan's Peak or Vex Thal or CoA or DPoB. I didn't have to worry about completing any particular group content, either. In fact, the toon has never even stepped foot into most of the expansions.

*sigh*... I never suggested any time frame... shooting up could be while I take a hiatus for 1-2 years etc. Or say right now, if I want to start a new character and have the proper progression experience I can't. You really are trying to read too much into things and make what I say far more complicated and pointed than it is lol.

Ok why do you have to beat Tunat... I mean in this hypothetical we are creating an entirely new type of ruleset server why would we limit you to killing Tunat to progress? Why would we change so much else yet for some reason you can't use a little imagination to change that one aspect. Want to solve your problem in our imaginary server, we remove some of the restrictions that are currently on progression... or allow alternate ways to unlock the next servers.

This is quite simple to conceptually work around.

Ok, what are you arguing against lol? You either:

A) Had to do or kill something , and progressed to get to 85, hence you went through *some* progression of content somewhere to get there, never once did I specify you had to group or kill naggy or vox... why do you keep assuming so much.
B) PLed and that kind of defeats the point of doing "progression" anyways
C) Bought a heroic upgrade, hence why I specifically said "except" heroics lol