nah, you're forgetting your #1 appeal : longevity.
You haven't just provided a past time where people go 'oh wow thats neat!" and play a month and move on to something else. Because this has strived to be close to classic and been done so extremely well we stay. We whine about the stupidest of things, but we keep logging in. Which is the real feedback, when it all comes down to it.
With the 1999 classic tag you would have gotten the same 10k faces through the door. You wouldnt have kept 1k around logging in nightly and god knows how many more come kunark.
You also have to factor in how many are here that *weren't* around in 1999. It's astounding the amount of people i've walked through lower guk and mistmoore and sol b who simply had never, ever been in those zones.
In a lot of ways, this *is* 1999 for a lot of people that weren't there in the beginning. Some people really are shocked that Breeze wasn't always there at 16, that newbie quest armor isn't supposed to be there, that they can find a ton of people in EC tunnel and Oasis at all hours.. etc..
You merely need to hit the EQC forum to see the fruits of single-mindedly obsessing over getting anything and everything completely classic. If this server mirrored that flag banner as opposed to the 'lets get it as close as we can on the fly, come try us out in the meantime anyways' mantra that's prevailed on here, we might never have held the numbers we have for this long.
That's why you'll always have factions on both sides of issues, whether it's ganking out manastones and guises, whether there is boats or teleporters.. UI issues like this one, and the neverending 'why is my class nerfed!?!?!' threads. Not everyone knew what it was like back then, and it's silly to assume that everyone here even cares. You care, of course, and you're calling the shots. So that's what really matters, at the end of the day.
Just believe me when i say: you got the top 5% from about 10 different servers here, and you're going to want to seriously consider two full servers come kunark, because while a typical Verant Server in 2000 may have had 2k people on it, they sure as hell weren't all level 50.9999 and ready to wreak hell on one another and RnF. And all the ones who went afk for kunark are about to reawaken. You were caught by surprise by your own succes when beta ended and live launched the first time. Be ready for the chaos this time.
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As a selfish personal request, any chance you can leave beta open after launch? For the times we feel like goofing off without the 2k people who were 'too uber and angry' to participate in beta? I'm going to miss that place.
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