SF, what did we learn?

At launch wasn't it 12 months between xpacs? I think lockout timers should be reduced and xp rates increased. The only challenge in grinding xp, is the grind itself. The game doesn't get harder because of the xp rate, just longer.

I did mention there were other reasons, the OP points them out as well, there are of course many reasons people leave the server. I don't think there's some way that's going to stop completely. That's why I'm also trying to think of ways to get new people to join the server, even after it's a year or two old. Not having a long, drawn out catch up is one of them. It's probably not the only way, so what are some other ways?

To be frank, I don't see how locking at EOF would help anything. I haven't played EQ1 since EQ2's launch (you mentioned this should be more like EQ1, but personally, if I wanted to play EQ1 I'd be over there... but anyway...), so I have no idea how their community feels about their new locked server. For EQ2, there's a part of me that's like, okay, different concept at least... but, don't you think there would still be server decline? People would get to whatever the cap is, clear the content, and then what? I suppose it would encourage people to take their time more, explore things more, but there will come a point where they feel like they've done everything they wanted, and then they're gone. Perhaps it would be more appealing to new people, I don't know... But, that's not what FG is going to be, I don't see that changing in the next week, so there will have to be other ways to draw people in after it's no longer new.

So how long do you think it would take for people to get bored of 3 xpacs of content? I occasionally get bored on live with, what, 12, 13 xpacs? Permanently locked server is an awful idea. Nobody would stay permanently there. You would eventually get bored of running the same old content over and over.

I bet you also believe having 60 abilities across 5 hotbars make EQ2 players better at playing MMORPGs too.

Most people who want a little higher exp rate know it has nothing to do with difficulty, and everything about not wanting a blatant daybreak cash potion grab that is designed to fail and die because it makes barrier of entry to difficult for people who do not get in on the ground floor. So they keep popping them out yearly to grab a quick bump in exp pot sales.

...and we'll be making the same posts next year for the next TLP. Except they won't be near as lucrative as Stormhold was. Fool me twice, shame on me and all that.

I was rather hoping they wouldn't sell potions on FG (I don't think they did on RTT, but I don't actually remember), but that's probably just some wishful thinking. :/

Just off the top of my head (maybe others mentioned it before) make the lower level expansions have increased exp. So Vanilla's exp is adjusted (hotzone) when DoF opens...etc etc. Nothing crazy but enough to feel like you have a chance to catch up to people a little bit faster. Also would encourage more alts...maybe some groups for lower level people. Just an idea.

I agree with folks that think these new servers are cash grabs. It is what it is. *shrug*

What would make me more inclined to stay on a TLE server is the ability to transfer my characters there to live if/when that TLE server "died". If I could move my character from SH to my live server I wouldnt feel like she was left in a barren waste land. If they want to treat these servers as disposable (more or less)...well I dont feel my character is. Now shes on SH and I feel like shes just lost. I left a little while for personal reasons, came back and the server is just empty. I have no issue going to FG and I will find it fun and will play there exclusively as long as the server has life...BUT...if I knew in the back of my mind she wasnt going to be left to rot I would feel better about it.

I just tried out the new EQ1 server btw. Since nothing much was in SH I figured what the hell. I *hated* that it was PoP locked and I totally thought of it as a temporary thing while waiting for another EQ like game. I hated the thought of being held back by an artificial barrier. Even if it takes years to get to max expansion just knowing it would/could happen would make all the difference. Decided to give up there for a few reasons: most ppl got to max level (for vanilla) in a week-end, everyone is there (it seems) to farm kronos, and its the wild west of KS'ing ******** from what people were saying. Just in case anyone was pondering it thats my 2cp.

@ Kurzan

Ok, now you have on Stormhold the add-ons that most of the People voted for, but tell me "Where are the Players ?" Is there still a problem of itemization in Sentinels Fate ? If you were right all this Players should now Play on SH (and we won't see any of them on Fallen Gate, because SH will always have the better itemization now).

There is always a best item for any slot at any Level. If it is a raid-item then raid, if it is a drop from heroic mobs, then Play group, if it is a quest item, then quest. And If you wanna raid at high Level with good itemization, there are a lot of Servers now, where you can do it.

For me the problem is, that People always are saying "oh give me this and that and give it now" (even on the beta Server) and when they got it, they are loosing interest. Sad to see, they are choosing the same Progression now on Fallen Gate, it's like "oh see, SH didn't work in the long run, let's do it again !"

Of course they will. The server isnt opening because they are a friendly bunch. Its opening to generate a small income, which includes people spending loads of money on potions because the XP gain is so low. Same reason they wont remove krono from the server. Same reason they demand a monthly sub on top of that for a minimal of rework across all the expansions.

Its a hell of a lot quicker and cheaper to just open another gimmicky server than creating quality content and "fixing" the game running on the LIVE servers.

Talk to any resident over on Stormhold if they want to re do everything when they are the people who actually tried the content that will be on FG, with extremely small changes, no. They will not. They will create a char there to get the rewards on stormhold and then jump right back to Stormhold.

There will be like 1 or 2 active raiding guilds on FG and they will be shutting doors in KoS, just like when the downfall for Stormhold began.

Badum thissss, surprise! \o/

Speak for yourself. There is a large desire for a perma locked server, again look at agnarr on eq1. Maybe you get bored with live because they totally ruined the game at this point. I won't even play live because of how terrible it is now, it's like a completely different game then it was at it's best. I would rather be perma locked in a good expansion than have new expansions that are terrible and game breaking...

And I bet your brain is too small to handle options, if you don't use it, don't put it on your hot bar. Your exaggerating about 60 abilities. But do I think we should dumb the game down and make it so there are only a handful of abilities... no...

If the xp is slow make your character better. So you can kill more or harder stuff faster. That's one of the main points of the game... No wonder you get bored with the game. You just want to fast forward to the end click a few buttons and be given a win... That's not how the game started, it's not how it should be now...

Actually, I quite enjoy live. I get bored of OLD content. Which is why I don't play TLE. I have one toon there and I just can't stand running butcherblock for the thousandth time. I don't want to grind fallen gate for another few hours. I've run each starting zone dozens of times. When you run out of content, you run out of players.

Based on the popularity of the expansion locked server, I would expect DBG to be looking at creating a new PoP-style expansion that branches the game away from the expansions that come after PoP! Something only available to the "locked" server. Gotta do what brings the players back!

There are still some itemization issues on Stormhold, primarily because Fyreflyte just doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with them and all of the stuff that he's been working on for weeks with Fallen Gate. But generally speaking, they're relatively specific and not anything like the widespread gear problems that plagued TLE since it launched almost 2 years ago.

Why aren't there more people playing on Stormhold now? Three reasons:

1. Significant itemization and progression problems throughout the lower tiers. Most T5 and T6 raid content with bosses not worth killing, and loot that wasn't worth getting. Also contrasted with some loot that was boosted completely out of progression compared to what it was originally (many items in Lavastorm and Everfrost, and other specific items like Tarton's Wheel). Problems also occurred with itemization throughout the T7 and T8 content. The itemization when RoK launched was positively bizarre. People were getting better fabled gear from heroic zones like Sebilis, Chardok and Chelsith than they were from actual raid zones. Raid bosses in Veeshan's Peak were dropping legendary items. All of this really didn't start to get sorted out until late last year when Fyreflyte took over itemization and there were marked improvements from there on out. But, by this time the damage was done.

2, General instability with the level of difficulty, and the developers unable to balance the content for months after KoS unlocked. Stormhold whipsawed through content that was laughably easy for the first two expansions, to content that was ridiculously hard in KoS (raid trash mobs autoattacking tanks for 3x their maximum health per hit). And if you managed to kill those raid bosses, the gear they dropped did not help at all with further progression on even more difficult content. And this was not just an issue with raiding. Soloers were being killed by solo mobs, groups would get destroyed trying to just get past the first group of heroic mobs in SoS. The single largest drop in the server's overall population occurred between January and April of 2016. Eventually these issues were addressed, but again, it was too little, too late for most folks.

3. Because there aren't more people playing on Stormhold. I'm not being snarky here. The first two issues I've talked about above have effectively created a population death spiral. People left in droves, word out mouth turned negative about the server and more people stayed away. There would be small population increases when new expansions unlocked, but they were short lived. People want to play where other people are playing, and want to avoid playing where they're not. And you can't fault them for that. As the level cap increased, and fewer players were around, the incentive to play there diminished. If you were interested in raiding, there was only a handful of raiding guilds that managed to stick it out who were also clearing any of the content.

Now, speaking more specifically to the raiding scene, it's also just the case that as EQ2 has gone on, raiding has gotten more involved. I think there's a pretty high nostalgia factor for the more "tank, spank and joust" fights that were prevalent in the game early on. By the time you hit TSO, you start getting into some fairly complex encounters that, speaking frankly, a lot of people did not (and do not) enjoy, and they drifted away from the server at that point. Maybe they experienced their "golden age" (whatever it may personally be for them). Maybe they just didn't have the time. Maybe they remembered all of the frustration their guild had with TSO and SF years ago, and just didn't want to relive it.

Regardless, what I can tell you is that none of this was strictly about the rate at which content unlocked or how fast folks did (or didn't) level up. It was a combination of factors, some of which have been addressed for Fallen Gate. I guess we'll just have to see how it all plays out.

Experience - 100% agree....while its nice to get to enjoy all the quests in classic through low experience rates it would be nice to see a bump with each expansion for the tier prior to current. Or just overall if its easier for devs. For the love of God I hope collection exp was nerfed. Just having folks plow ahead through collection exp was laughable.

Itemization - I don't mind wooden chests and irrelevant drops in classic and sometimes no chests...its part of the experience. My issues with itemization were too many blue stats out of dungeons which trivialized all content. Sadly, I was out of town for the large part of beta so didn't get a chance to take a look at anything. I hope its somewhat better than SH.

Gameplay - quite frankly, classic is about HQs and Prismatic, after that everything else is really whatever. DoF is similar, Ring of Fate and Peacocks. I am doing this to enjoy the content not be overly challenged. Just challenging enough where its not so face roll its 1 groupable.

FWIW, I think us doing "testing" on Stormhold should make FG a better place.
All the broken mobs will have presumably been fixed (from any mob with adds in KoS, to a bunch of broken charm mobs in EoF, but especially KoS, TSO and now SF).
Itemization should be a lot better and more balanced with an actual living dev doing it.

Vanilla and DoF raids are presumably going to be easy (as they were on Stormhold), since it's mostly tank, spank and joust.
Then the difficulty will pick up in RoK and TSO with more complicated scripts.
And then eventually I'll want to find the dev who thought it was a great idea to put a stun/mana-drain/crit-reducing reactive on every mob and have him play my toon in some raid, just to see how "fun" it is.

You are extremely naive if you think this server will last with any sort of reasonable activity after KoS. There might be 2-3 raiding guilds prior to that, but once KoS comes around we are back down to 1.

Stormhold has 6 raiding guilds now and none of them will be doing any raiding what so ever on the new server (To my knowledge). People will have characters there, but only to get the rewards unlocked on their home server.

Kurzan's post of TLEs at launch is very accurate. I'll add the voting to unlock expansions + 2/3 yes required to advance disaster. These were the first EQ2 TLE servers, were bound to be problematic and certainly were. Compare the original EQ1 Fippy/Vulak to current Agnarr its amazing the differences and I think the same is happening here.

My zerker was first fighter to 50 on either TLE and if combat XP is actually 50% slower, some say 3x slower, than it was that is a daunting leveling rate... It also cripples latecomers to the server, alt-making, (how many of the Stormhold people have multiple max levels?). I haven't seen anyone ask for a drastic increase, but anything lower than what last TLE started with will be very painful for most. They did amazing work to fix itemization in lower tiers, t5-t6 raid loot which is almost exclusively for Fallen Gate. Night and day improvements were made I just hope those who choose to return aren't turned off immediately when they see leveling is slower than it was previously.

I'll assume vitality potions are also a thing, hopefully they'll hold em' back a week as anyone who doesn't invest in chaining these while leveling will be left in the dust.

Rip should've waited 5 minutes on the FAQ. Seems like XP pots/vitality will be a thing from the jump. Stock up or get dusted.

Looking at the FAQ then

Experience - Still going to be a terrible grind, because they're pushing ahead with a reduction to exp even in comparison to Stormhold and RTT. As several people have said this will most likely be a barrier to new players at launch, few players will want to roll alts under these conditions and as the server continues will deny any new players joining. Anyone under the impression that having less players on a server that punishes groups anyway will mean more groups is unfortunately mistaken.

Fix this by introducing higher experience gains, group bonuses, a sliding scale as more expansions are unlocked or adding veteran baubles to existing players. These baubles would grant a level 50 character in DoF for example.

Itemisation - Without changes to combat mechanics, melee damage in comparison to the current magic damage, this is going to have to be used to try and balance classes. While I recognise that the ethos is that active play has to be rewarded, melee classes have to the means to compete, as it stands with stat caps they've got no chance.

Fix this by unlocking stats such as WDB and ensuring that melee classes are able to gear up and compete. I've yet to see the newest changes to gear but my concern is that without reversing those melee nerfs it won't be enough to provide balance.

Gameplay - Pretty decent class balance through the TLE EoF all the way out to TSO. Introduction of sweeping changes to melee with pretty limited discussion with SF hit the server again. I notice now we're going with Channelers and Beastlords, introducing combat mitigation and all the stats at launch, tuning encounters to be more difficult. Whilst I don't want to be negative without providing feedback, but it just seems like we've decided to ignore all the lessons of Stormhold and create a whole other failure.

Fix this by reconsidering introducing classes that weren't at launch. Focus on what was learnt from Stormhold, grinding exp, over tuned encounters and poorly discussed changes meant people left in droves.

After reading the FAQ the cash grab is definitely on for this server, not to be unexpected. They're returned XP to launch values but allow you to buy XP pots and vitality day 1, allow out of era classes to be purchased, you're going to want the 750DBC mount that gives +30 ability and CA also...

Conclusion: XP is going to be brutally slow if you don't pay to change it, balance is TBD based on what they do with this combat mitigation, hopefully whoever tuned KoS isn't making that decision anymore.

Get ready for the wild wild west on the 27th, with 1 week beta-tested Beastlords, Channelers, and people dinging 50 from chaining xp/vitality pots on the 29th.

Yup, that FAQ pretty much confirms this is gonna be a ghost town in no time. Have fun guys! I'm passing.