Lotta people play blue for nostalgia. Even old pvp players play blue for a little dose of eq in a more casual setting. Blue will always naturally have a wider playerbase.
The smaller group of hardcores who still want to pvp play red. Its a smaller crowd, but the population really expands according to the content available. After the initial spike on red, pop went down when pvp was basically over two zones. Added planes pop surged, but ultimately 2 dragons, 2 gods dominated or competed over by 2 guilds. Population dwindled to 50 primetime.
Kunark added another dozen targets, population quadrupled, but ultimately all big targets can be taken down in a matter of hours. As competition arose, pop peaked over 200, but that was with people competing over all major zones.
Then staff made mistake of announcing teams server, pop immediately fell off as people got false hope that somehow teams would turn the tide. Illusions of grandeur swooped over the defeated masses and they plotted their glorious return to this new server.
Enter Velious, low, mid content, group, small raid, massive raid targets all over the expansion. Faction and tons of quests to do for everyone. Competition available on all levels.
EQ always been about content. When theres less of it and its easily dominated by 1-2 guilds, it provides little incentive for new players to try to establish themselves and create other guilds. Just the way eq works.
tldr; content is king. velious = content = more population. Just as pop quadrupled with kunark, it will easily double again with velious permitted staff dont make the mistake of trying to split the pvp pop between two pvp servers.
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