Isn't it time to find out what lies in the future for the servers?

[Swish]

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

Here's my proposal for what to do at the end of green timeline:

Merge green and blue. This server would be the museum server and would have everyone's characters from green and blue intact with all their gear and titles from botb and all those histories and memories, and you can still log them in if you want, but all the raid mobs and quests are disabled.

At the same time the next green server would launch fresh, and if you want to actually *play* everquest you need to roll on the new green. All your elf pixels still exist for history's sake on the museum server, but this would incentivize people to participate in the new green server and avoid further splitting up the populations. When green 1.0 launched I was honestly pretty baffled that people were actually sticking around on blue and continuing to raid there. I have a 60 epic torpor sham on blue and I don't think I've logged her in once since green launched.

Not everyone wants to start again, and sometimes you stick with your pals.

[Skarne]

Sucks when all your pals quit 2-3+ yrs ago…so now you’re stuck by yourself de-leveling your main with raid gear down to 4…just for the journey to 60 yet again where you can make new pals.

[Ooloo]

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

Not everyone wants to start again, and sometimes you stick with your pals.

I know, it's just that I dont see any other solution that doesn't result in further and further fractioning of the p99 population, which will *ensure* the ultimate end of the project. Upsetting the few people who *only* play blue and refuse to start over would still probably be a net gain in population and an injection of fresh vitality for the whole project.

[cd288]

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

Here's my proposal for what to do at the end of green timeline:

Merge green and blue. This server would be the museum server and would have everyone's characters from green and blue intact with all their gear and titles from botb and all those histories and memories, and you can still log them in if you want, but all the raid mobs and quests are disabled.

At the same time the next green server would launch fresh, and if you want to actually *play* everquest you need to roll on the new green. All your elf pixels still exist for history's sake on the museum server, but this would incentivize people to participate in the new green server and avoid further splitting up the populations. When green 1.0 launched I was honestly pretty baffled that people were actually sticking around on blue and continuing to raid there. I have a 60 epic torpor sham on blue and I don't think I've logged her in once since green launched.

No offense but this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard.

Green was fun but I haven’t logged on there nearly as much as I have blue these past couple months. I’m having a blast on blue right now. If I wanted to just perpetually reroll on progression servers and have my prior server be a ghost town then I’d go play TLP

[Ooloo]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No offense but this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard.

Green was fun but I haven’t logged on there nearly as much as I have blue these past couple months. I’m having a blast on blue right now. If I wanted to just perpetually reroll on progression servers and have my prior server be a ghost town then I’d go play TLP

Well sure if you play on blue obviously you won't like it.

[Ooloo]

I mean there's no other alternative. Only a finite number of people at any given time even know about p99, and of those a smaller set are able to play regularly. If you keep bifurcating that population by opening a new green but allowing people to continue on the old server as if there is no new server, you'll keep shaving that population down eventually. The ultimate goal of the project is to experience classic EQ, which to me consists of the journey from vanilla through velious.

Think about the experience of starting a new character on blue, or even green right now, as an outsider. It's so topheavy there is nothing to do but rush to 60 and then hopefully get in the back of the line in some guild capable of raiding. That's hardly a classic experience, it's more of a specific type of late-stage p99 server experience now.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I know, it's just that I dont see any other solution that doesn't result in further and further fractioning of the p99 population, which will *ensure* the ultimate end of the project. Upsetting the few people who *only* play blue and refuse to start over would still probably be a net gain in population and an injection of fresh vitality for the whole project.

It isn't a "few people" who only play on blue. If that was the case our population would mirror that of Red[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] At peak hours there can be 1000 players on Blue. Unless you have any evidence to suggest the majority of the player base is boxing?

There are hundreds of players who haven't (and probably will not) switch over to Green. Removing or gimping the Blue server would just make those players quit. It isn't like they will suddenly want to roll all new characters from scratch on Green. They have had the chance for more than a year now lol.

Having hundreds of players quit wouldn't solve the population split, it would just reduce the number of people playing P99.

You are going to have another problem as well when Green 1.0 is rolled into Blue: A lot of THOSE players will not want to give up their hard earned loot (legacy items, raid items, etc.), and they will want to continue playing those characters on blue (after the merge). Those players would probably quit if they couldn't play their characters anymore.

I think everyone here would agree it is better to have two servers with 700ish players instead of one server with 700ish players[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

EDIT: I think what will end up happening is the dumping server (blue) will end up having a larger population than the subsequent Green Servers. Probably something like 600 players on Green and 1.2k players on Blue. This is because all of the people who want to play their awesome characters will primarily play on Blue, and everybody who boxes blue/green, wants to progress over again, wants legacy loot, or wants double the raid targets, will roll characters on Green. I don't think this is a bad outcome to be honest, and one of the things P99 was missing for a long time was multiple servers to choose from, which was something live had. Even having 2 servers that people can play on simultaneously give both the hardcore players something to do, as well as the casuals. I am excluding Red obviously, as their sub 100 population for years shows most people are not willing to box red/blue, even before Green was released.

[Ooloo]

Live only had multiple servers because of the population. Well, they had pvp servers and non pvp servers. P99 now has 2 pve servers that combined have a population that might sustain one original live server in late velious.

My point is that if you keep repeating this process, you will keep spreading a finite population between more and more separate pve servers that are all at the same stage of progression. You either have to upset late-stage green or late-stage blue now. Or, you can bank on the fact that a sizeable portion of both populations *will* hopefully reroll on a new green progression server.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Live only had multiple servers because of the population. Well, they had pvp servers and non pvp servers. P99 now has 2 pve servers that combined have a population that might sustain one original live server in late velious.

My point is that if you keep repeating this process, you will keep spreading a finite population between more and more separate pve servers that are all at the same stage of progression. You either have to upset late-stage green or late-stage blue now. Or, you can bank on the fact that a sizeable portion of both populations *will* hopefully reroll on a new green progression server.

I think you are missing the point. They will not keep opening Green Servers. They will almost certainly roll Green 1.0 into Blue, and make a new Green 2.0, maintaining two servers indefinitely. That is the only logical way to keep P99 going. That way people can play their awesome characters on blue, and anybody who wants to re-progress can roll again on Green. Since you can box Blue and Green, there should always be a decent population on the subsequent Green servers, it is just you will end up seeing more players on Blue than Green. The only reason why Green 1.0 has more players is because a LOT of Blue players missed the original progression, and wanted a shot at it. Now that they have had their chance, there will be less people willing to go again, since now they have the awesome items they were looking for, the experience of progression, etc.

This isn't unprecedented either, games like Diablo 2 have been doing this for years (dumping ladder back into non ladder), and it was fine.

[Ooloo]

Yes but many blue players don't *want* green to be merged in. And many green players don't want a merge either. So you will inevitably upset somebody, the question is which demographic really sustains the project?