What's the reason

[Sear]

Originally Posted by heartbrand [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

A lot of people here chiming in who didn't even play classic. The majority of people who play MMO's do so to progress their character. Maxing out your character in classic EQ takes only a couple of weeks if you play hardcore, maybe 2 months max if you play more casually [which people playing a EQ EMU usually don't]. Once people hit that ceiling, the vast majority will stop logging in until there's something new to do, which means the pop will drop like it did last time to the low double digits. A wipe makes it "exciting" for 1 week, maybe 2 weeks tops, until it already becomes very top heavy.

Also everyone will be a bard/druid/shaman/wizard.

Pal, no one gets a Manastone, dragon loot, and Plane of Sky quest armor in one week. I'm not hardcore but it took me months just to hit level 30 here.

I thought the classic progression (vanilla -> Fear/Hate -> Sky) was pretty solid for keeping hardcore players on the hook with new things to do. It's easily the most accessible for casual players.

Not my box to run but if my pop had dipped too much simply because there's a finish line at the end of Velious raiding, I see no better option than just taking the endless loop approach instead of being pressured to feed more expansions to hungry players in a vicious cycle. There's always going to be a lifespan attached to a finite amount of content.