Been keeping an eye on The Sleeper. I have very little faith in the developers' ability to actually get it right, they show zero ability to do it or even willingness to try. They constantly post stuff like "we might keep /melody in because it's cool" or "we're considering re-balancing the classes a little" and their lead dev literally claimed that warriors never needed proccing weapons to hold aggro (and his avatar is an epic warrior so I fully expect him to sneak little "features" into the server that make warriors overpowered). They have no intentions of removing things like the map and other non-classic features like that because, quoting their lead dev, "nothing wrong with a little convenience." Browsing their forums killed my faith in their ability to make the server legit and accurate. Reckon it'll be like VZ/TZ except no PvP.
They seem very dedicated to the server, but every time one of their devs or prominent beta testers post, it just screams "I have no clue what I'm talking about." The server seems worth trying just for Velious content and the ability to two-box, but I wouldn't count on quality being any higher than the countless shitty amateur servers that have sprung up over the years. They literally just don't seem good enough at it, and they aren't devoted to making things classic. They're happy to leave shit non-classic wherever it suits their favorite classes or whatever, not understanding that this will alienate most prospective players. When I tried to explain that seeking out the classic factor wherever possible was what made this server so succesful, they didn't even seem to understand the idea.
They won't even move to a proper forum but insist on sticking with the absolutely terrible one they have, lacking common format syntax and a search function which makes it completely impossible to navigate or post properly. However, they seem pretty likely to actually get the server up and, judging by the amount of time they've been working on it, can at least be expected not to disappear after a month. I suppose if it isn't a total failure then enough player feedback might get them to understand that the key to a good classic server is to actually strive to be classic. I just hope their lead dev isn't as oblivious as he sounds in his forum posts. I encourage anyone who tries the server to be critical and give them a lot of feedback so it doesn't die out, P99 has set the bar pretty high and nobody will succeed with a shitty half-assed server. The world really needs a 2-boxing server of decent quality.
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