For a recent (2011) Velious release reference, Fippy Darkpaw completed Velious (minus Sleeper's Tomb)
within 6 hours of release. Granted, they had MQ exploits galore, OP mage pets and monks, out of timeline spell/damage tables, revamp Hate/Fear loot, OP harmtouch and armies of SK. Yelinak and Zlandicar were not spawning properly so they were not part of the initial takedown. The Sleeper was released 21 days after Velious opened up.
http://web.archive.org/web/201110081...ws/show/498730
On P99, it all depends on on the implementation of Donal's BP and zone stability. 200-400+ people in Kael trying to kill Vindi, Statue, Tormax on opening night is going to be a shit show of lag and training.
Nearly every fight in Velious is a tank and spank or the AE can be avoided via line of sight. Most of the content simply requires DPS to know what they are doing and remove themselves from the fight before the AE goes off or keep themselves healed appropriately. If the fight requires being hit by the AE, then players are already in good enough resist gear with buffs since the cap is now 255. People already have large amounts of self heal clickies between Soulfires, Reapers, and Worts. Players have had 5 years to stock pile Prayer's of Life for healing AE damage, how many of those are still on active accounts is highly questionable.
If released with the original version of Donal's BP (20 second CH), then anything can die as long as the main tank doesn't die within one round of attack/AE and you can corner block the AE. Even the 30 second cast time version will result in the same situation, just need 50% more clerics to achieve the same rotation.
If released in the current state it exists on beta with a 30 second cast time and buff that prevents another cast from landing for 7.5 minutes, then it will come down to proper CH chain maintenance, which nearly all encounters in Classic/Kunark do not require. If guilds didn't practice on Beta, then there will be a learning curve for those guilds.
As for Sleeper's Tomb, you can start farming the primal golems and yard trash with 10-12 players. You can kill the warders with ~24 players. It would be possible to do it with fewer, if we had a classic version of buff/AE stacking, which was considered an exploit by the SoE devs when they disbanded Conquest back in the day.
In early Velious, there are 5-10 ST keys available each week based on the spawns, then it drops down to ~5-6 a week a few months into. Depending on the top tier guilds acquisition of ST keys and willingness to work together (if it is even needed), Primal weapons will be farmed by the end of week 2, week 3 at the latest.
Lodizal and Stormfeather will be FTE races the moment of release and sockfests indefinitely.
