Would you be interested in a small group instead of raid server some day?

This is false. You 100% can take mercs in DZ raid instances that come from an AOC. Maybe you can't take them in newer expansion raids that are not AOC instances.

The "newer" expansion raids that don't allow mercs represent more than 3/4 of the game.

Maybe for early expansions you could just rebalance the content for a small group by simply changing some numbers around and disabling death touch, but the fights become progressively more scripted and involved as you go along and it'd be nontrivial to retarget them towards a single group without redesigning entire encounters. Realistically a server like OP suggests would have to lock around PoP or so. I can't see niche ruleset on an era locked server being a big hit.

You literally don't need to rebalance the POP era content to be done with "small groups." If that's what you want to do, you can literally do that on Agnarr, right now. You can do almost the entire server's content with 2 groups except: P4-Quarm of POTIME, and Rathe Council. That's it.

And I would venture to guess doing a few of the P4-Q bosses with 2 groups may be possible with the right composition, just that nobody has seriously tried it.

Definitely can do anything with about 20-25 people though, and that's plenty "small group" enough for bigger raid content. Basically: just play on Agnarr

The game doesn't exist after OoW. That's some other game using the same brand. to each his own.

72 person raids do not egual "challenging". You can make things "challenging" for lesser numbers. 72 person raids do not define an MMO either. Someone wanting a server that caters to the group casual plyer, or non-hard core raider is not anti-MMO either. This is only one server, there will be two, so no reason to fear you are being left out.

Although it may not appear so on the surface, Vaniki was very much tuned this way. Having expansions unlocked well beyond your level cap opened up raid level or better gear via challenging group content. I had fun there for a while but the server doesn't seem very popular.

The game is not really a challenge unless you make it one. Even still, people fail the simplest mechanics. Most EQ players' heads would actually explode inside even an m0 dungeon lol.

Based on the clues, OP might not be far off from the new TLP experiment.

Sure, in full / near BiS. You didnt clear it the first time with 2 groups, but i get your point.

SOME small group content has always been possible by doing 1 expansion back low man or in era lower tier bosses. Most expansion available in the 1 year cycle has small raid bosses. All of the content being small raid? Flex raiding would be interesting but that may be challenging to maintain the EQ feel without becoming something else. Maybe if it wasnt to extreme, like 36 man raids but this would take a ton of back end re balancing PER boss basis and lots of testing to make sure different raid comps can do it and still be challenging.

After many cycles players are starting to hate the feeling of having 72 players and steam rolling entire expansions , but that is the product of years of knowledge and being over geared coming into an expansion. Most people were not BiS in the old days and new expansions became a lot more challenging without that gear pillow. Combating this and creating new challenges would be ideal moving forward for TLP imo.

I do feel like raids need to take less time though, without compromising challenge. In fact maybe increasing the challenge in the mean time. trying to be a functional adult and suffer through 5-6 hour NToV / VT clears is not ideal. I would like to see something more than just reducing our damage and adding massive hp to increase difficulty. when MOTM was introduced it brought a lot more challenge to easy fights and stopped a lot of the box army BS but it also grief the entire population into having to sit through extra long fights....like Lady Nev in NToV /wrist and pretty much all VT

Moving away from time in fight = more challenge would be a huge win for me. specially in zones that have so many of that very thing, like NToV and VT

I am trying to make sense of what you said here.

OoW released 9/14/2004, the game stayed at level 70 for a bit over 2 years until TSS released 9/19/2006. There was a lot of and is a LOT of game in that 2 year worth of expansions. Level 70 got pretty stale toward the end though.

The thing is that is only 7 years worth of game in a 24 year old game. Tons of stuff changed over the first few expansions as well. I recall people being upset with the firepot room in Timorous Deep "trivializing travel" as early as Kunark and people quitting because of "eazy mode" in Luclin with the spires, the bazaar and the awesome experience in places like Paludal Cavern. Never mind PoK becoming a new travel hub.

In retrospect there is no "pure era" past original where there was also very little in the way of real game play either

I wouldn't mind the idea as such, but don't think its a very wise choice of how to spend dev resources. Also, thankfully only a miniscule amount of TLP raids are 72 man steamroll designs, so not a big issue as it is, and few raids last for more than a more "normal" evening gaming session (3'ish hours) after the first couple learning tries at the very least. (and if they do, you can usually come back the next raid evening and kill the last bosses)