When will the next Progressionserver start? :)

Sooo 3.5 years? I see what you're saying, but way more people have characters trapped on fippy/vulak (who got bored and left EQ until the new servers finally came along) than are currently enjoying the remaining expansions there. And that has been the case for years even while it was still progressing through expansions. I'll take the free transfer guarantee in a second over that again. Of course I'm presupposing they make a new progression server to restart when they end the old one. And I'd bet more guilds survived this way long term versus the lingering-death-by-old-age approach. They obviously can't make servers to suit everyone since every single person seems to have a different preference. But spreading people out is bad, concentrating them is good, and far fewer people are interest in expansions 9-24.

I can see them offering compromises though, say leave phinny as the one survivor till it reaches live. And one shorter nostalgia server that ends and is reborn.

And my characters have alot of hours into unique stuff that I'd want on live anyway, and would take way more than a day to get again. Not to mention all the stuff bought from the marketplace.

Having played on many servers including Vulak, I wish the threshold for free transfers out and merge away happened sooner. If Citizen has indeed surrendered on Fippy, merge it (or move it) to live asap.

It's difficult to apply population drop-off historically and on progression to any of the current newer progression servers as the rules are all different. While it seems that Lockjaw and Ragefire are following the Combine/Sleeper & Fippy/Vulak sort of population curve, they also are moving through stuff way slower. That's going to retain some players (I was in a Vulak guild that had 90+ people quit when Kunark opened "too early")... but maybe they do become much emptier post GoD/OoW as is predicted.

Phinny has the special ruleset you pay for, and will automatically make it to live and then be a live server everyone is paying to play on? (Kind of brilliant... and I do think once it catches live and they allow you to move to it via transfers the population will grow --as long as the Phinny rules aren't farmed out to current live servers).

I doubt we see another progression server before Phinny is past the level 75 content. Once past TSS it's a high-level game again (forever it seems).

As long as Ragefire and Lockjaw have some population they should be allowed to get to at least OoW before something restarting below them in era (whether from original again, or Velious or whatever.)

Quarm event 2.0 seems to make more sense for 2018, and possibly 3.0 in 2019 before another progression server. Ultimately it is up to Daybreak to have the internal numbers and vision to maximize the $ that keeps this all going. Maybe that is Phinny 2.0 in April 2018, but I have doubts.

No one's trapped on Fippy/Vulak. You can transfer your toons off to live. The reason people don't is because, as I argued earlier, no one needs a level 75 toon on live.

Nah we're just too cheap. I'd also note you can (far more cheaply than the price of a bunch of character transfers) self-restrict your progression on live. You can opt out of auto-granting AA, and by 75 the ez-mode stuff like defiant and out-of-combat regen are in. And mercs were coming soon anyway. I mean as long as we're listing lame alternatives like paying to transfer.

Speaking of lessons from history though, another thing people don't do is stick with a server till it progresses all the way to live. So we still need a better strategy than either of those.

They've been to the well too many times recently. Ragefire/Lockjaw/Phinigel/Quarm/Agnarr after nothing new for 5 years. If they try to go to the well again they'll end up with dirty water. Need to let everything settle for a bit before going to the well again.

They can do a Quarm event 2 that dumps to Brekt when done anytime now, and should by summer 2018.

It's actually the ideal setting to do something like "Luclin-locked Sullon Zek rules free trade loot truebox" no load balancing, no picks, Ragefire XP rate to start.

rewards tiered (and you can earn them all) for:

-making it to level 30
-getting 50 experience giving (i.e., not grey con) pvp kills
-beating a series of group-level targets
-beating a series of family/casual level raid targets
-beating all the raids Velious & Luclin

Or some other different flavor that is just as likely to be a fail if they tried to do it as a full-on progression server.

Great, because I didn't ask for anything. I simply said that instanced raiding isn't why I play on Phinny.

/boggle

Real census numbers would be interesting to see.

I think every server historically (outside of Zeks) has had more nonraiders, or at least more non raiders and casual guilds that do a little bit of raiding vs. serious raider population that is doing content in era.

Asterisk #1 goes to past progression servers that a guild can control the unlocks and/or the higher-end population ruled the votes (i.e., Vulak lost a ton of non-raider population that hadn't yet earned the level to vote when the Kunark vote passed --aka Vulak census would have looked very different in a few week range of time). Since we have seen a few servers now where the last population standing clearly was a raiding guild (though it is hard to count the anon low playtime people that don't raid. They pay for their month even if they only log in for 2 nights total).

Asterisk #2 goes to Phinny because of the sheer number of raiding guilds successfully raiding there. I can believe that raider accounts are the majority on Phinny. Even if they were 10% I don't think it matters though.

Agnarr has lots of raiders, but at any given time there is a lot of unguilded low levels around too. So it depends if those characters are alts on raider accounts or not.

While Daybreak knowing if an account has a character in a "real" raiding guild and telling us could be interesting to know I'm not sure what the point matters anyway unless they decide to launch a server with the raid window function and the ability to access instanced content with more than a single group turned off.

Asking on these forums is unlikely to illuminate much as it has always seemed like the harder core raider voice is highly represented here.

The person I was replying to in my post you quoted stated they do not raid at all, ever, and had no interest in ever raiding. That is the very small minority I was referring to, as most people are least dabble casually in raiding.

A server with live EXP and autogrants from Luclin onward, where expansions unlock instantly after the end target is cleared with a Quarm sort of timeframe would be interesting.

I'd be curious to see how far in raiding guilds could get before a lack of gear catches up with them. I know on Quarm we struggled against Simon Says MPG, Txevu Zun and Jelvan due to AEs mostly wrecking people with defiant gear instead of Time-Tacvi raid gear. Lack of Cleric Epics and later 1.5/2.0s would be rough since I imagine many wouldn't want to spend the time camping them.

I'd think if you stacked gear on a few warriors you could probably make your way pretty far pretty quickly.

Fair enough.

The mushy middle (dabble casually with some raids at some point) would make sense to the be the largest group.

______________

The never-raids are an interesting thing though, especially if they also belong to the seldom logs in club. A player that is both of those but pays their sub is an interesting thing, basically free $ to Daybreak as the game is already way too huge at all levels for them. But that's the rub, unless Daybreak wants to tell us how many people play like this, they are a practically invisible but possibly sizable number of people.

If a person has only played in serious raid guilds the past 5-10 years I think you'd have a sense there is very few of these no-raid/little playtime people. I'm in a live server guild where I am a "seldom log" and there is maybe 100ish truly active players, but another 2000 in that guild that will login within a 9-12 month timeframe (but then, some could be raider alts). That guild also has several hundred characters that haven't logged in for years.

On Phinny I was in a "casual" guild with 800+ members at one point. Maybe 75 truly active, and definitely 300 or so abandoned characters. So again, were the rest no-raider/little play mains or just alts of raiders?

Is this really true though? There is probably no way to know for sure. On a server like Agnarr or Phinny it might be true, but across all of live I'd be amazed if it wasn't closer to 50/50 or 40/60. A server with public raiding might have more casual raiders, but otherwise the people who aren't in raid guilds really wouldn't have any way to be raiding. I think it's an interesting question and would love to see the data, but I doubt the gulf between the populations is very big regardless of which side is larger.

It is really true. 100% non-raiders with zero interest in raiding are very rare. Even casuals desire an occasional raid an expansion or 2 behind, or the occasional pickup raid.

jeskola was talking to me. I don't raid. I've done it in the past and I'm just not interested anymore. I have 8 level 70s with 300-800 AAs each. I acknowledge I'm in the "very rare" category of players.

Well, I'll give you credit for sticking with your theory. It's just that, though.

Yeah, I don't see how anybody could know for sure without DGB releasing data. Based on what I see anecdotally I wouldn't have thought there were many raiders on Live servers. TLPs are probably much heavier with raiders, but it's hard to say how that balances with different population levels on different servers.

The amount of people willing to prove their stupidity is astonishing. Please flame this and prove me right. LOL

Would love to see a new progression server open up. I literally have a group of 40 - 50 people wanting to restart on a progression server when it comes out. I'm fully aware that's not enough justification, but we can't be the only group, and history has never shown an unsuccessful progression server.

Err, I guess it depends what you mean by successful. I could definitely make an argument that neither Sleeper nor Vulak were very successful.

Either way, you have to at least recognize that hypothetically, if they keep releasing new progression servers in high enough numbers and close enough together to previous progression server releases, at some point there will be an unsuccessful TLP. There is a limit here.

Just adding my 2cp instead of spamming with a new thread;

Can we please have the next TLP server be SLOWER progression? 6 months (3 months if no level increase). As a casual player I have no chance of completing anything in-era on Phinigel. Besides every server made doesn't have to cater to the entire player base

Also please don't ever bring voting or boss kills into the scheme again, Phinigel, Lockjaw and Ragefire popularity should prove that fixed unlocks is teh win...