Why is Red Dead?
 

Right before velious launch and through early velious, server population was at an all-time high; around 200+.

I went to Red as a pretty big skeptic and had some of the most fun I've had on Everquest.

What happened? What caused the server to fizzle out?

GMs?
YTs?
The Leaderboard?
<Empire> leaving?
Serverwide Chat?

Discuss.

Holo was doing epics for people that came over from blue that didn't want to pay 500k for an MQ for said pop spike.

All that was asked in return was the destruction of the Snout (who took Good Guys down with him)

To simply put it Everquest has always been a journey and it pretty much ended with the sleeper dying on a locked velious 30 pop server.

Corrupt GMs, questionable decisions (guild ban, xp bonus removals etc)

Ridiculously long periods of time in each expansion

Burn out

Non classic features

selective rule enforcement

weak minded players who lump into loser guilds to wait in line for gear then quit out of disgust

also 90% of people to ever play on red were terrible and needed to have their hand held.

Also leaderboard discouraged people to actually pvp

staff are monkies

EQ burnout is pure fallacy.

Admit it, we always come back for more self torture.

The barrier to entry is incredibly high on red. There is for the most part no one to level with, no economy to speak of, and it feels like a ghost town. The EXP bonus makes the journey to 60 rather quick on a solo class and the end game is a huge bore. There's only one guild to play, getting non vulak / dozekar items is incredibly easy, so you basically "win" EverQuest in a very short period of time. There's no EC Tunnel Quest so it's not as though you can go farm items and play the auction metagame; there's not tons of organic grouping going on to level alts up with; and everyone you play with at the end game has the exact same end game gear you do so there's little to no feeling of accomplishment. Couple that with the fact that there will never be new content and you have a recipe for boredom and disinterest.

Blue, despite having the same issue of a lack of content, has a [artificially] "competitive" end game scene which means it takes significantly longer to "win" the game by getting all your raid gear. This keeps the carrot on the end of the stick for you to keep on logging in. It also has a robust economy so for those who are interested in the metagame of acquiring platinum can participate in that. There is also an influx of new players to level up with again because when someone hears about P99 for the first time are they rolling up on a 19 person box or 600 person box? Couple that with the fact that a lot of people just don't like PvP.

All the talk about "toxic" player base and everything else just ignores the real fundamental issues with the server. A re-release, with a clear rule set, GM enforcement, a safe zone such as EC [yes guilds use it to buff up and prep, but the positives outweigh the negatives], classic EXP gain, and a higher death penalty; would all go a long way to driving up the population on this server. However, there will never be a wipe, and dramatic changes on this box where everyone has 11 vulak geared alts isn't going to generate any significant interest.

didn't read

Waiting for you to pop on that Mario avatar.