I'm just asking because I really don't understand. I guess I also don't understand how they work. Sort of a time lock thing where expansions are released every 6 months or so? Why not just play on a server that has everything already on it?
It is a short term cash grab. People must have a paid sub to play there. The server starts with original content and then moves forward at some planned rate or based on a vote opening the next expansion at that time, repeat. Lots of live players have had nothing to do for months now outside of 1 day a week of raiding. Many have migrated there 5-6 days a week sometimes activating alts that had lapsed to box and relive some past glory or experiences. Good way to farm kronos, relive past times and shake off the minuscule content from CoTF and TDS have given them the past 2 years. One of the worst decisions the team made is forcing everyone into the current expansion to then continue to offer less and less in terms of content there for raiders and groupers alike. Leaving the majority of the population with a lot less to do then had they let them play a few expansions at once. Lots of retired and former players get sparked to play a bit for various reasons. These players left EQ at some point for various reasons and return to relive some older stuff with lots of people before fading out again at some point in time. TLP's often draw these people back for periods of time that otherwise wouldn't be back at all in many cases. Lots of people simply like to dominate the race of early stuff and then stop playing again once it gets to a certain point.
Progression servers are designed to allow people to experience EQ as it was first played. Unfortunately, just too many things have changed. By removing the PNP and allowing/ignoring the use of 3rd party software (beyond isboxr) they now are nothing more than a haven for box mage (the OP class) armies of RMTs. The box armies lock down targets and take over camps forcing real players to buy items from them with kronos or go without the items. RMTs can then sell kronos on a different site for cash. And yes, many people are foolish enough to buy the items and keep the scourge in business. DBG doesn't care because they sell the kronos. EQ used to be about working with others and experiencing grand adventures with a group of friends. I think that is what many came back for.
My opinion is that people try to recapture that 'first time they ever played EQ'. But such a thing is impossible, they cannot unlearn what they know about the game. So their attempt fails. So they demand another progression/early server. Then they vent their unhappiness at not finding the unfindable. Ad infinitum. They could just play EQ, and remember the past, enjoy the game as it is now. But I don't think they want to do that.
The point, for me, was to find real people to play with. Live servers are rife with boxers and mercs. Although there are boxers on progression, I've found that the type of player that prefers to group with real people gravitate to this type of server. It is also less stressful to catch up to others at level 50 to play effectively in their group than to need 105 levels and thousands of AAs.
point of progression severs? waste of time and money that could be spent on the live servers. There is nothing on the progression servers that someone can't do on the live ones. There is nothing that was in the game back then that is/was better then what is going on now. This coming form someone who started playing just after Kunark came out.
Here is one thing that won't happen on live. A level 12 ranger invited to tank in Unrest and gaining 2 levels in the main room with 5 real unrefined players and having a blast. Here's another; a level 15 cleric with her choice of Unrest, Upper Guk, or Cazic Thule because each zone has a group that can use them.
The progression servers are a fun way to play eq on a new server with a lot of other people who are returning after a long time away. They also bring folks to the live servers. I know I have spent time back on xegony since my return.
There are many people who remember playing back in the Classic/Kunark/Velious/PoP era when the game really was an amazing environment and different from almost anything else out there and want to recapture that. Progression servers are a way of getting back to that time when everyone knew the names of the different gear items (because there simply weren't that many) and people enjoyed grouping/chatting while camping different dungeons for the ever elusive items. Similarly the first raid experiences felt "epic" in the sense that you had dozens of people working together to defeat a dragon and it really was a challenge (even if in retrospect raid mechanics have grown exponentially more complex since those first dragon fights). The progression servers concentrate the population of people to the specific expansion content and allow for this type of reliving of the past (where else can you do a camp check and hear "frenzy, king, , exec..." or hear the infamous "live side to dead side!" phrase echo through Guk). On a standard server this isn't possible due to the way the populations spread out and tend to concentrate at the top end of the content (i.e. you can't find a group for unrest because everyone is busy farming latest_raid_boss_137) The progression servers really are fun. There are issues with the boxers, but for the most part it's nice to be able to login and pretend I'm 15 years younger and back in grad school.
I don't love boxers either, but at least on progression servers they are six paying subscriptions. On live, many times it's one (or no) subscriptions with 2 to 5 free accounts in tow.
I've seen that on live servers. I didn't much care for EQ in 2004, when I first started playing it. I like the merc, out of combat regen, the pok books, guild lobby, etc. I did corpse runs in the past, hated it. My time to game in EQ is limited, having to run across multiple zones to get my armor, weapons, and other items back was a waste of time. I like many of the basic changes to the game. Otherwise, I would be spending my money elsewhere.
I leveled a rogue to 50 on Ragefire from scratch which means my butt was grouping pretty much 100% of the time from lvl 5 on Orc Hill all the way up to the Planes raids. Id say that easily 75% of the people that I met on the server were others like myself, people that have been away for years that are only coming back to this game solely due to the progression servers to re-experience old memories and to make some new ones. Easily 90% of the groups i joined contained 6 different individuals playing one account at a time with the rare occasional person that was 2 boxing a second account of our group for buffs, heals, etc. I like that they also try to make the experience slower and the content a bit harder with no gear/mercs and that for the most part everyone is starting out on equal footing (outside of the 6, 12, 18 or 24 mage box armies).
I play on a progression server because I never experienced in-era raid content. I also quit playing during PoP so a progression server will allow me to experience the content I missed out on without it being trivialized or obsolete.
If you can find a group on Live, it will probably be more fun than grouping on progression servers. I haven't rolled yet on TLP, but I've watched many streams of people sitting and camping a room in Lguk or killing giants....and it looks like 'stick-a-pencil-in-your-eye' boring. Live has the added benefit of more complex quests, HA's, and missions. There are 2 reasons why people will say Live grouping is too easy: 1.) their group is stacked 2.) they are just grinding mobs or doing the easiest HA's If you actually do the Live server progression through an expansion's Tiers (any of them that are level appropriate), you will find some really challenging encounters, that will wipe you if you do not read up on them and develop a strategy. I guess you can't really sit and camp a piece of gear on live, but sitting in the same spot for hours staring at the empty hole where a mob is supposed to spawn has never been appealing to me So in summary, I think Live server grouping is more fun.....assuming you can find it. TLP will eventually get more complex group encounters, but as of now, the early expansions are really really basic and easy
Necromonious, the problem is that a huge percentage of the population on TLP all had quit whenever the content started getting challenging and they'll do it again. For those people "challenge" means running naked across Karanas hoping that SoW doesn't run out
Seriously! Ok, breaking a camp in a TLP-server dungeon can be hard, especially if you have a non-optimal group makeup. But from there it's just your puller bringing 1-2 mobs in to your little camp for hours and hours and hours, how is this fun? And camping items, really? You are paying money to stand in place staring at a wall because there's a 50% chance that a named mob will spawn there sometime in the next 1-8 hours. And then they have to pray some jerk doesn't just run up and steal it? I am all about nostalgia but none of that seems fun to me. I guess everyone on TLP assumes their char is going to "grow up" to be a hardcore raider or something, because the group game is very lacking. At least raiding is some kind of a challenge with the buffed TLP raid mobs, albeit an exploitable one
all these people justifying their newbicity should just admit that the only reason they play progression is because they are bad, and lack the skill to take on the double digit expansions that are available immediately when you start out on a normal server (too overwhelming, bad genetics). its ironic too because the try hard pros also play on progression, for the sole reason that they can monopolize the market and dominate the race to end game easily versus these said newbs, which makes the newbs distraught.
Progression servers hold a lot of appeal for multiple play styles. They tend to be heavily populated, by a majority of players all around the same level with which to group with, during all hours not just during peak hours. They recapture nostalgia for players and allow you to experience new content or changes that were made from expansion to expansion over time rather than having to take in all the changes you may have missed if you have not been playing all of the last 16 years. The are an additional revenue stream for DBG and introduce additional players to live servers. They are an easy source of cheap Kronos. You get to play thru each expansion era as content is relevant rather than ignoring 90% of the content on Live. Downside is the content is pre-instance EQ which means lots of waiting on spawns or spawn camps that often take forever, but with good company to BS with its not as tedious.
A lot of us quit EQ for a huge chunk of time and the live EQ experience is just so completely foreign and desolate for leveling. TLP is EQ I know and there are people there to level with me and my 7 alts.
Quoted for truth. One char at 28 and 5 characters at levels 7 thru 9. Always a group to join. It's fantastic.
