For me there would ideally always be 3 P99 servers up.

[Wakanda]

Originally Posted by wuanahto [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

thats even worse
endless cycling and losing characters over time is not a good feeling
joining like 2 weeks before a reset? why even
not the first character to do something? why even after
statistically a realistic chance of never seeing an earth staff or white scale in a server life window? why bother
lets say you get everything you wanted and you are a server first idol but this is reset number 86? not an achievement in hindsight
pull an all nighter with some folks and accidentally sleep cycle yourself but you gained a few levels? probably wont do that again

star wars galaxies emu with each major patch wiped the server and every reincarnation had less and less players. i personally maxed out weapon and armor smithing alt... once. i was not doing the 6-8 hours of strait clicking again

Those are valid points, but we both know a ton of people would return to P99 if a new server launches. The fact that people have been anticipating a new server for years actually ties in to what you said about people not wanting to join 2 weeks before a reset. A lot of people are convinced that they should just wait for a new server at this point.

And while you may enjoy playing on a server that has been hyper-inflated, over-farmed, and trivialized, the mass majority of P99 players crave a fresh launch. The launch of P99 supports this claim, but also the population decline of all three servers, coupled with people frequently asking for when a new server will launch etc. are also solid evidence of that.

Also I would actually argue that while it may be super fun for the well established players to have a monopoly on everything, it actually discourages a lot of new or returning players because they realize it's going to take them years to catch up when in a true classic version of the game, players would never have a 15 year head-start over newer or returning players.

There's also a lot I could write about how it's kind of discouraging to be a fresh player surrounded by twinks with $200K+ worth of gear winning /random on items you actually need, but ironically in a way this is starting to finally reverse due to the lack of economy. Things like Torpor and Cloak of Flames are suddenly dramatically cheaper than they were in the past, so in that sense a fresh start is probably easier than it's ever been if you don't mind solo'ing 1-60. A couple of years ago it was pretty daunting trying to start a new character though because all your friends already had everything, and you were years behind on the grind etc.

And also the declining economy makes winning the /random on an item much less rewarding. I don't even try to /auction stuff anymore because 99% of the time there's no market for it. Just not a fun experience IMHO.

[Wakanda]

Originally Posted by Wakanda [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The launch of P99 supports this claim

I meant to say P99 Green here. Been drinking a little bit [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But yeah. I totally understand why people don't want to leave Blue and start over, which is why I proposed having 3 servers. You countered that there should only be 1 server because people don't want to start over. I'm making the argument that the success of P99 Green shows that there is a significant amount of people out there that prefer a fresh launch over a static, stagnant version of the game. (Could prob use the success of the Quarm launch as an example of how much players love this as well).

I totally understand dividing the player-base can be bad, and has been bad, but at the same time, it's impossible to get a classic EverQuest experience from playing on the current iterations of the emulators we have. I actually had a real-life friend play P99 a few months ago because he loves classic WoW and how hardcore it feels. He wanted to challenge himself by playing P99 since it's supposed to be even more hardcore.

Within a few days he was making fun of how easy the game was after some random person gave him two wu sticks and a haste item, and 99% of the time he played the game he had Druid buffs. He convinced himself that EQ was actually a super easy game and that we're all just boomers who have never played a challenging game like World of Warcraft etc.

And I had to tell him that his experience on P99 is not even close to a classic experience and that he would have to wait until a fresh launch happened to even remotely understand how challenging the game can be when no one has any gear, and you can't even find a group or tank half the time, and have no clue how to get anywhere, or where your body is after you died etc.

[WarpathEQ]

All this is solved with my concept, 1 server that is always open for new character creation and is in active progression. When the server reaches the end of timeline all of those characters are automatically ported to the other closed server which remains time locked. The open server then resets and starts back on a day 1 release completely wiped and only available to newly created characters

Players would be incentivized to actually interact with both servers using one to actively level characters and the other to push the end game raid meta/competitive scene.

It would also create this really interesting dynamic where twinking would work way differently, essentially twinking becomes raid twinking because you won't have access to overinflated economy and endless gear until the open server timeline ends and your character migrates to the time locked server where everything is available in abundance.

It literally gives everyone the best of all worlds, automates the process of progression/resets. Keeps the game fresh for new and returning P99 folks, gives a home to the velious isn't classic enough crowd, re-ignites exp grouping and that new server feel, and still maintains the most competitive high end raiding environment that's ever existed in velious locked EQ.

To me the only real big things that would need to be worked out are:

1. Do we continue to allow 1 active character per server at the same time as this would now create an environment where you're effectively 2 boxing by both leveling a character and raiding on another character at the same time

2. Is there a minimum (level) requirement for characters to migrate to the time locked server when the open server reaches its end/reset. In the vain of how twinking would work (mentioned above) it would likely make sense to put a gaurd in place to prevent someone from just making a bunch of lvl 1 toons that transfer over to the closed server where they can twink them and level them. Would also likely depend on how point #1 is addressed as there would be a disincentive already if you can play 1 character on each server versus if you have to choose between leveling or raiding because all your toons are on the closed server.

[gokubutstronger]

I had a bad idea that would help out with the dying tunnel situation, but probably not possible to do.

Would be interesting to have EC be a shared zone between both blue and green, so people could buy/sell between both servers at the same time(when they both reach the same timeline). This would allow people to legally box their traders too, if you play on green you would just make a trader on blue to sell your stuff. Might need some advanced coding to stop players from opposite servers from buffing/healing each other though.

[WarpathEQ]

Originally Posted by gokubutstronger [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I had a bad idea that would help out with the dying tunnel situation, but probably not possible to do.

Would be interesting to have EC be a shared zone between both blue and green, so people could buy/sell between both servers at the same time(when they both reach the same timeline). This would allow people to legally box their traders too, if you play on green you would just make a trader on blue to sell your stuff. Might need some advanced coding to stop players from opposite servers from buffing/healing each other though.

Biggest problem is the economies of the 2 servers are way different. Blue is a much older server and was impacted by a plat duping bug meaning inflation is way worse over there, most items sell for roughly 33% less than on Green.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by gokubutstronger [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I had a bad idea that would help out with the dying tunnel situation, but probably not possible to do.

Would be interesting to have EC be a shared zone between both blue and green, so people could buy/sell between both servers at the same time(when they both reach the same timeline). This would allow people to legally box their traders too, if you play on green you would just make a trader on blue to sell your stuff. Might need some advanced coding to stop players from opposite servers from buffing/healing each other though.

Or they could just merge the servers now like they intend to do.

I feel like they are waiting to merge until they are fully ready to roll out Green 2.0, but it's like just merge them at this stage and let everyone have fun on one server until Green 2.0 is ready.