I recently returned to EQ2 after many years in hiatus. I come back to find out my characters have been moved to the Maj'dul server. Since it's been ages, I decided to just start from scratch and create new characters. So I created an Iksar Illusionist and a DE Necromancer. I started playing and was doing okay for few hours, but one thing that I've noticed is that I haven't run across ANYONE in the lower level zones. It's been pretty desolate and I'm not sure if maybe I'm on a dead server or something. After a few google searches, I've read that Maj'dul is one of the most populated servers, yet when I did a brief /who search the most I saw online was 40 players max. That can't be right. Maybe it's the time of day or something, but there should be at least hundreds of players playing this game. It can't possibly be something under 100 players. So my question to you is this. Should I start over on another server? Which is the most populated server then? I'm a bit confused here as I was expecting much more players to be playing. It's pretty much a ghost town at the lower levels. Should I go to one of those progression servers? I'm a bit dishearten as I wanted to play but I don't want to be in situation where I'm basically playing a solo game. Are things like this on every server? Any advice would be great.
Hi, Maj'Dul has as good a population as you will find on any server. You are seeing the convergence of two issues: 1. The live servers have almost no low-level players. The great majority of players are at the level cap and play through current content. This is just the state of things. 2. We are at the end of this expansion's life. There is a new expansion coming out soon, so lots of people are either on the beta server to check it out or just taking a break until the new content hits. This will pass - once the new expansion goes live you'll see more activity on the server. I recommend that you look for a guild to join - it will make the world feel much less lonely.
I wondered about that because I didn't see anybody. At first I thought maybe I was in the wrong area of what not. Seems like there are now new players in the zone I picked. Oh okay. I thought maybe I was put on or started on a dead server. I was going to move to another server thinking it will solve my issue. Should I try one of those TLP servers or stick it out on Maj'dul? Kinda sad that there aren't any lowbies anymore. It's pretty much a ghost town. Maybe I can convince a friend of mine to join and we can level up or some such. The /who search I did wasn't promising either as there was an extremely small group of people online. Maybe you are right and it's a factor of two things causing this problem. A guild may help.
To find out how many are online across all zones, you have to do a "/who all". It will cap at 100, but at least you can tell that it's not a ghost town. (If there are fewer than 100 with a /who all, then it IS a ghost town.) Of course, not all will show up there; it won't show anyone who has their characters set to Anonymous or Roleplaying. Those WILL show up on a regular /who for your zone, although you won't be able to see level or class. In a couple of weeks we will have two things: New expansion, and Frostfell. Both will bring people back to the game in droves. That, and as Dilon says, many people are in beta, and they will come back for the new expansion. The few weeks pre-expansion often get pretty slow; that's just the way it is. Oh! One place where you may see lots of players is near the spires in these zones: Thundering Steppes, Nektulos Forest, Everfrost, and Loping Plains. If you're low level, you won't want to move from the spires, but if there's a dragon battle going on at one of them, it's loads of fun! As low level you may not be able to do too much damage, but if you get any in at all, you'll get loads of exp from helping to kill the dragon.
Thanks for the responses and explanation. I'll stick it out on my low level toons and hopefully things will get better.
Rivervale is a new server that just opened. There are people at all levels there. However, it is subscription-only. Kaladim is the Time-Locked Progression server that launched this past March. Kingdom of Sky just opened up there recently (they're capped back at the 2nd expansion there, in other words). This server has the highest population in EQ2, has people at all levels, and it's a lot of fun. It's also subscription-only, though. The four Free to Play servers are all a lot older, and house characters from launch day in November 2004 on. Most characters on them are capped high level players who are waiting for the new expansion, Blood of Luclin, to launch in December. BoL will increase the level cap from 110 to 120, so I doubt you'll be seeing more newbie characters there anytime soon.
This is a good note for the OP. If you're looking for easy levels at low level, you should participate in the dragon spire events. Just show up and do some damage on the dragons and you'll get at least 1 level per dragon until you get higher level.
Population in game varies by time of day and day of the week. I know there was always a big jump in game population in EQ during the big holidays. Probably the same over here.
I may actually do this. Although I do see folks talking in general chat and such on Maj'dul, the server still feels pretty empty. It's a lonely world starting at the beginning and I seldom come across anyone. I do /who searches and it's hit or miss on how many folks are online. It's probably what everyone mentioned here. Most people are late in the game already and some took a break waiting for the expansion. So I'm going to try Kaladim server. Maybe it's a bit better? We shall see.
I feel like people are being dishonest to OP. If you compare eq2 to almost any other MMO on the market today EQ2 might have one of the smallest player bases. So no matter what server you play on they will almost all of them feel empty. There might be a lot of people returning for the new expansion in December, but if CD is anything to compare to, most servers will feel empty again by March. This is one of the reasons people would love to see server merges instead of DBG continue to open up gimmicky servers.' With all that said, EQ2 can be fun to play.
That's what I'm beginning to suspect. Thanks for your honesty. I've tried various servers and they seem the same. I think a server merge may be best at this point. Kaladim wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it isn't that much more of people. I'm enjoying the game but it does seem pretty barren sometimes. Trying to see if I can convince some of my friends to play.
If you want to experience the game from low to high levels with others, your only chance for that is to find a progression guild. Other than that, most of the population is already at end game. And to experience end game on any server, you'll need to sub.
