[heartbrand]

First of all, to argue that p99 has higher pop because people like classic more is a dubious argument at best. The other servers don't have a reputation as non-wipe, hacker free, boxer free, environments. Many of us are on p99 for the sole reason that it's the most "legitimate" playing field.

As far as expanding the size of the world with a small player base, I'd argue again that in fact pop could go up for several reasons:

1) Velious will be opened up to the smaller guilds which has far more content for them to consume with worth while rewards than Kunark does. Many NToV items are still amazing in PoP. There's enough Velious content to support 2 raiding guilds once the top dog leaves for Luclin. This just wasn't the case in Kunark where most items were droppable and over farmed for three years, bringing their value down to near nothing.

2) Luclin, with the AA system, requires a massive grind from players, meaning many more people will be online. Right now I have the day off with the kids still away at school. I could log on and game a bit, but what is there to do? Absolutely nothing. Luclin provides a constant grind of AA's, which means more EXP groups, more newbs finding groups to level up with who are grinding AA's, and more PvP opportunities.

3) Luclin has a slower raid progression than Velious does, which means it takes far longer to "beat" it. Velious was proven beatable in Kunark gear. Luclin requires farming VT keys, Seru and Ssra bane weapons, and some gear progression. There's finally focus items for casters, bringing them closer into balance with Melee's. Tradeskill's begin to matter more, giving people more things to grind in off time. There's more groupable mobs in Luclin with worth while gear, something that was missing from Velious which is basically a raider's only expansion for the most part.

4) The Bazaar opens up the economy to newbs who have an almost impossible time of gearing up on P99, because the economy sucks here. There's no point for high level NToV geared players to sit around in NFP auctioning off 500pp items. But with the Bazaar, we can finally sell these items, and help people get started on this server. Many people love playing EQ solely for the AuctionQuest, and the Bazaar provides that to them.

Yes, the world would be bigger on a small server, that's definitely a concern, but my belief is that there would be far more people online, probably consistently 150-200 during Euro hours, and 350+ during prime. I'd rather pop like that with more zones, than 40 actual people online during Euro hours, and 120~ in non raid prime time hours.

Solutions like a wipe server or season server have been tried. You're basically asking for a Crushbone PvP box which has shown time and time again to have a low interest level and lasting power of 1-2 weeks max. While the verbal majority on the boards seems to be the chest beating PvP'ers [many of whom are anonymous all the time in game and never seen outside of PoM tree during raid hours], the silent majority are people who prefer PvE on a PvP server. The prospect of 150+ more PvEr's grinding out AA's and tradeskills and bane weapons and what not should be tantalizing to the PvPer's. Think of all the fresh bodies you can grief, particularly with some of the OP AA's [which of course can be tuned to be a bit more reasonable, like we have done with recharging and resists].

Do I think Luclin will ever happen on Project 1999? Nope. They're trying to figure out how to remove mouse wheel scroll and force the classic UI on us. But I think it would be damn fun. Velious has been a let down for PvP, which shouldn't be surprising, there just isn't that much to do in Velious outside of raids. Kunark at least offered the grind to level 60, the item farm in Seb / KC / Chardok. Velious has goals that can be achieved in a weeks time of casual play outside of the log in every window for SF/Lodizal/Scout. There just isn't enough to do in Velious outside of raids to justify logging in for. Luclin, and later on PoP, fixes that. PvPer's should want there to be PvE incentives for the bluebies to log in for, because that's when the Beastagor's of the world can start slam dunking unprepared newbs like myself.


The End.