Everquest TLP - Aradune and Rizlona Servers (Now with real customer service)
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Gunnar Durden
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I started on Aradune day 1 and just never got going. It was impossible the first few weeks to progress solo and everyone was speeed racing their guild. So I went to mangler who was at LDON and played through GOD into OOW and the server was alive as fuck tons of actives. Felt like an OG post pop server. Then I fell off. Came back to Aradune just to scratch an itch and am gonna throw a ranger and shaky combo to 65. I’ve always preferred leveling to raiding so I crank a few characters every once in awhile. Will probably play through to OOW again. But comparing the life of the two servers at the same time in progression was how I started this derail and Aradune just seems to be raid logging where mangler had a huge leveling contingent. Maybe it spikes in the coming days. I mean, it is the end of the worst expansion cycle
DickTrickle
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There's no point in arguing with him because he goes back to his same old favorite arguments that he doesn't back up at all in any way different that someone else's opinion. I went out and checked MESS's DKP site and, yeah, there's no thinning of the herd there during this time period. And that's from a guild that was traditionally not that friendly to boxes.
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Xevy
Log Wizard
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As an officer of MESS I could tell you there's been ups and downs, but I think we've ever canceled one raid due to attendance, maybe two, and I think it was because they were literally on Canadian Thanskgiving and maybe New Years or Christmas? Our last raid was 42ish people, but we don't bring boxes and with summertime our numbers drop due to people being sociable. It's an ebb and flow based on where we are in current expac, near the end it gets shitty as people have what they want and are burnt out on the same raids, but even 2 weeks out from TSS we field somewhere between 42(the lowest we've had) and 52 people in this TSS era.
Many guilds have dissolved or fractured and we generally take small groups of their members, like 3-5 people at a time. These servers have attrition and we only lost maybe 3 people to Mischief (who were new, but pretty cool people) and maybe 1 person to classic WoW and a few people who dabble in BC WoW and maybe miss one of our raids for that.
Any given raid night we can field 40+ mains, no boxes though. We spam recruitment because some nights weird shit happens like 3 of our 6 clerics decide to not show up or 4 of our 8 tanks or whatever the fuck. The bright side is we have almost more than 1 bard per group now which is pretty great. The server definitely has downsized since say OoW but we boomed through some of the shitier parts like DoDH and PoR pretty well. We keep our eyes on other guilds sites to see how things are going and some are definitely feeling the hurt. A lot of guilds are heavily reliant on boxes and that means shitty players with larger chunks of the raid as their responsibility and boxers tend to love new TLPs which means you're gonna get fucked annually.
But yeah, there's still, what, 10ish guilds+ still full clearing into TSS which is pretty good. BT broke up for the most part and scattered and I think it still exists but leadership was passed around a bunch and besides some BT diehards I'm not sure many people that are in there were even in BT in Velious era. We took a crew from BT who left for whatever reasons and a bunch went to AD, who split from M&M, which is the try-hard poopsocky guild. Some of their more prominent members are degenerates removed from other guilds for being shitlords and bads, but I'm sure they tell a different story.
I only played Agnarr before, but from the people who played Phinny, Ragefire, etc that I've talked to have said it has held up surprisingly well and were especially impressed with DoDH with like 14+ guilds clearing Mayong in expac. PoR was less, but let's be real, fuck that expac. The hurt is coming though with the world opening back up, New World, etc I suspect we could be down to 4-5 full clearing guilds as soon as TBS.
Many guilds have dissolved or fractured and we generally take small groups of their members, like 3-5 people at a time. These servers have attrition and we only lost maybe 3 people to Mischief (who were new, but pretty cool people) and maybe 1 person to classic WoW and a few people who dabble in BC WoW and maybe miss one of our raids for that.
Any given raid night we can field 40+ mains, no boxes though. We spam recruitment because some nights weird shit happens like 3 of our 6 clerics decide to not show up or 4 of our 8 tanks or whatever the fuck. The bright side is we have almost more than 1 bard per group now which is pretty great. The server definitely has downsized since say OoW but we boomed through some of the shitier parts like DoDH and PoR pretty well. We keep our eyes on other guilds sites to see how things are going and some are definitely feeling the hurt. A lot of guilds are heavily reliant on boxes and that means shitty players with larger chunks of the raid as their responsibility and boxers tend to love new TLPs which means you're gonna get fucked annually.
But yeah, there's still, what, 10ish guilds+ still full clearing into TSS which is pretty good. BT broke up for the most part and scattered and I think it still exists but leadership was passed around a bunch and besides some BT diehards I'm not sure many people that are in there were even in BT in Velious era. We took a crew from BT who left for whatever reasons and a bunch went to AD, who split from M&M, which is the try-hard poopsocky guild. Some of their more prominent members are degenerates removed from other guilds for being shitlords and bads, but I'm sure they tell a different story.
I only played Agnarr before, but from the people who played Phinny, Ragefire, etc that I've talked to have said it has held up surprisingly well and were especially impressed with DoDH with like 14+ guilds clearing Mayong in expac. PoR was less, but let's be real, fuck that expac. The hurt is coming though with the world opening back up, New World, etc I suspect we could be down to 4-5 full clearing guilds as soon as TBS.
DickTrickle
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Well, that's more recent stuff, but what was your take during Pop through GoD, particularly last summer around Aradune launch?
Xevy
Log Wizard
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Uhhhh, I don't think we lost anyone to Aradune. Maybe like 2 people? Our PoP raids were always very close to full. Same with GoD. We even had sitters during some GoD raids (over 54 raiders on at raid time). But no, some of us went and fucked around on Aradune and skyrocketed their Krono with HG rathe mountains shenanigans, but no one went "OH WOW I'M STAYING!" Some people have done that with Mischief which is understandable as it's a fresh take on EQ, but like I said, maybe 3-5 people total.
I think Aradune took the annual TLP hoppers and a lot of freshees who caught wind of the PR campaigns for the 20th Anniversary and Brad's death. Though I imagine a lot of the hoppers have left Aradune for Mischief already. I'm sure Foaming can comment but I imagine Rizlona is kind of a haven for people who like boxing and working with non shitlord boxers and just getting stuff done with as little drama and bads as possible. So they're kind of their own thing.
I think Aradune took the annual TLP hoppers and a lot of freshees who caught wind of the PR campaigns for the 20th Anniversary and Brad's death. Though I imagine a lot of the hoppers have left Aradune for Mischief already. I'm sure Foaming can comment but I imagine Rizlona is kind of a haven for people who like boxing and working with non shitlord boxers and just getting stuff done with as little drama and bads as possible. So they're kind of their own thing.
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DickTrickle
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I'm not surprised that, for someone who actually played on the server, they too saw the same super healthy state I did at the time, where Mangler did not seem terribly bothered by Aradune or experience much thinning. When reality meets fan fiction.
Aradune did 100% have a pretty healthy batch of fresh people and I think the gimmick two box/GM ruleset was pretty appealing to those had sworn off TLPs in the past.
Aradune did 100% have a pretty healthy batch of fresh people and I think the gimmick two box/GM ruleset was pretty appealing to those had sworn off TLPs in the past.
My general standard as I've mentioned several times before for counting active mains from server to server is 50% and above RA 30 day for non OW guilds and 20% and above for OW guilds. Obviously mangler is out of the OW era so standard 50% and above applies to all. I do always look through under 50% RA to see recent raiders or lifetime RA's in order to also count recent apps. I normally never count guilds that do not differentiate between alts and mains on their DKP site as I've also stated many times before.
MESS - 48 active raiders. 50% RA thing didnt end up mattering here, only 1 person on their site under 50% RA and the last few haven't raided recently (dkp site doesn't differentiate between alts and mains, very possible only mains listed based on the DKP site they use as from my experience guilds who use that DKP site only list mains)
M&M - 46 50% RA and higher, 51 if you drop to 30%, no one who has raided recently listed below that.
AD - 22 above 50%, 31 if you drop as low as 30%, no one who has raided recently listed below that
BT - 27
GR - 43 (dkp site doesn't differentiate between alts and mains, they use their own dkp site. seems likely they list raid alts as some characters with super high RA have barely any spent DKP, but who knows. another reason why i normally never count guilds like this). Also fuck these guys for having a site that tries to get you to add a chrome extension every time you go to it.
MR - 34 50% RA and higher, 40 if you go as low as 30%
PA - 43? This may be the most insanely bad DKP layout I've ever fucking seen LOL. It's so bad it was hurting my eyes to just try and pick out anything. So this is a +/- a few number. Might include some raid alts that I missed who knows.
HD - 37 50% RA and higher. 45 if you go as low as 30%. (site doesn't differentiate between alts and mains, no clue wtf this dkp site even is so not sure if that number has alts or not)
Does europa still raid on there? I found their site but nothing is recent, a year or more since last post.
Those numbers definitely indicate a thinning over time. But I'm unsure why I'm even having to argue this? This is common knowledge for every TLP that guild rosters do indeed thin over time through each era. It's true on every single TLP and completely natural. It happens to everyone.
These were just the biggest guilds that I looked at that seem to be clearing content relatively quickly. Looked at some others that I could find either through the Mangler discord, the TLP recruitment channel or the progression list and they all pretty much fell in the 20-40 range. So like i said, a bunch of guilds with mostly 20-40 active raiders. There's a couple exceptions but not extreme exceptions above the 40. If MESS dkp site doesn't list alts I'm actually kind of surprised that they still have that many compared to other guilds.
You were in MESS right Xevy? We had about 15 or so MESS people come over to TEB on launch mostly as a group. I know at least a handful that came had raided up to at least the PoP launch on mangler but not sure how many were still actively playing mangler when aradune released. Sazzabi was in MESS as well right? I think he's the only one that still actively plays aradune out of the bunch, but I might have Sazzabi's mangler guild messed up. Only reason I specifically remember the group was because they were unsure if I would let them in to TEB or not.
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From what I can remember, I feel like Agnarr and Mangler did the best job of that since phinny. Agnarr, even though it was a shit long term server, brought an absolute shit ton of former and current p99 players that had never tried a TLP before. There was definitely some good retention among those players in future TLP's. I never experienced more people who had never used the parcel system before than on Agnarr. Mangler also from my memory did a good job at bringing in a lot of new players that had never tried TLP's before.
Aradune, at least from what I saw and experienced seemed to bring in a lot more returning players who hadn't played TLP's since like the combine/fippy/LJ/RF servers than it did newer players. Covid definitely played in a part in bringing back those returning players who hadn't played TLPs in years. There seemed to be just a ton of people who had played TLP's before but had never experienced MOTM.
DickTrickle
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Europa still regularly raids.
My argument was never that it hasn't thinned. I even said It's rough on Mangler right now, more than once. Those are definitely modern day numbers that you posted.
I was talking specifically the PoP to GoD period and the summer in reference to your comment "Aradune launch eventually took a toll on the higher pop." Since you said you weren't talking about GoD+ then the "eventually" can't be in reference to that period or later.
The only big hit Mangler took from Luclin to TSS was this recent May/June when WoW, FF14, and Mischief took a considerable chunk. Everything else was gradual attrition except for the Covid/free TLP late spring/Summer period where there was actually a bump in active players across the server, that carried on for a good while. And, no, it wasn't just boxes.
That was the only thing I was ever making an argument about.
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Sieger
Trakanon Raider
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Agnarr is actually relatively decent as a long term server, long term so far, every TLP to make it past Underfoot has experienced massive population die off. Phinny and Selo basically finished with 1 guild or so. Fippy died before reaching the end in COTF. Coirnav is in a rough spot from all I can tell. Ragefire is probably the healthiest in that era but it also allows free boxing which lets guilds sustain longer.
Meanwhile Agnarr still had like 4 raid guilds and regular server events etc. It's certainly not a big server by TLP standards, but by the standards of late era TLPs or like half of the live servers, it has had more legs. Agnarr has a higher population right now than Phinny finished with or that Coirnav has right now, for example.
Meanwhile Agnarr still had like 4 raid guilds and regular server events etc. It's certainly not a big server by TLP standards, but by the standards of late era TLPs or like half of the live servers, it has had more legs. Agnarr has a higher population right now than Phinny finished with or that Coirnav has right now, for example.
Cukernaut
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It sucks for about 95% of the nostalgia-seeking folks or Kronolords that prey on them.
Beyond that, there's a solid 2-5% of the playerbase that will play past Prophecy of Ro for some reason.
Cukernaut
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Im 100% guilty as charged as an Early TLP guy -- not 100% because I wanted to be but at the same time I do have some things that turned me off from later EQ.
AA farming/inflation
Loot/Gear Inflation
It always seemed to me like the game continually stratifies into this type of stuff which always felt like a cop out from game design to me. Not saying that's everyone but that was the start of the curve for me where I got more and more turned off.
yerm
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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You need to either be self sufficient or have reliable friends. If you don't box and are socially awkward the game is hard.
Or maybe it's that early era EQ offers a game and experience that you can't often find in MMO's today. While later era EQ is so limited by its combat system that when they tried so hard to make it modern that it just became hyper annoying and you'll find a much similar but better and smoother experience in other current games.
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Cukernaut
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Its a fair point.
My only chance at real glory was when I was 6 boxing which was the height of my autism -- other than that it pretty much turned into off-raid grouping or pugging which got old fast. Grinding trivialized content after being fully raid gear always felt kind of dumb/annoying and a much different experience than that initial set of leveling for EQ.
If you arent boxing later EQ its pretty much lame and stale quick.
Sieger
Trakanon Raider
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There's a lot of later era EQ players, the EG7 release didn't give us much of a server by server idea but we've been told revenue between TLP is and live is about even. The average live player I know is much more likely to sub 4-6 accounts, all paid via credit card, and is much more likely to buy cash shop items, than the average TLP player. The average TLP player probably averages a big spending infusion around launches while the live players are kind of stable cows to be milked. I think that given EQ's finances it's probably good they don't only have TLPers or only have live players, I think their financial picture would look a lot worse if they only had one or the other. I think there's a reason they continue to do a live expansion each year--I think it literally keeps the lights on in a sense.
My personal take after having done every expansion on Selo is that they are two separate player bases that have only moderate overlap. I think it is unlikely any significant % of TLPers ever convert to live raiders.
My personal take after having done every expansion on Selo is that they are two separate player bases that have only moderate overlap. I think it is unlikely any significant % of TLPers ever convert to live raiders.
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