Originally Posted by Mistle
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It was funny watching the history of the second try at progression servers unfold.
Fippy was the first (I'm not counting the 2007 ones, they were a different story). On this server you had to beat the content to open a vote for the launching next expansion. Fippy was super popular, so much so that a second server was opened (Vulak). This was back in 2011 so p99 hadn't achieved the legendary status (or notoriety) it has now. People WANTED a nostalgia server and this was finally their chance. And the evolution of the server really showed this. 9 days to complete vanilla, 13 to complete kunark, 16 for velious, 13 for luclin. I don't know what the completion dates were after this. It got funny after that. As I said, the progression servers were seen as nostalgia trips for most the players. Not many players felt any nostalgia for GoD, and the vote to open it failed repeatedly, especially thanks to the poor behavior of the raiding guilds at the time talking down to the more casual people who wanted to experience their nostalgia as long as they could (sound familiar?). It did eventually pass, and from then on the population hit the shits, first raiding guilds leaving because of the stonewall, then everyone else leaving because the vote succeeded and it was no longer nostalgic EQ. The server still exists, but by 2015 there are posts mentioning that there were zero people in the bazaar (note: Takp, which currently tops out just over 200 people, normally has around 35 bazaar traders for comparison), and its only slightly behind the Live servers in progression.
The overflow server from Fippy was called Vulak. This server is dead. The casuals left with the death of nostalgia and there wasn't enough people to feed the few raiding guilds left enough people to maintain their rosters. Posts as far back as the beginning of 2014 were complaining that the server no longer had a population large enough to advance. It somehow managed to stagger its way to SoD on the backs of one terribad guild, but they are gone and no one expects Vulak to ever advance further. Any hope in 2015 was ended by Ragefire and Lockjaw.
Four years after Fippy was Ragefire and Lockjaw soon after. The main difference with these servers was a nod to those who wanted slower releases of expansions (basically the casuals who wanted to maintain the nostalgia factor as long as possible). They have six month unlock timers. Or, they did at first. This is changing as the nostalgia population quits. Both of them are as far as I know still in Luclin for a while yet, but having learned from previous history, DBG is increasing the expansion rate to 3 months after PoP, since the nostalgia casuals will quit then and Vulak proved the raiders won't stay if the progression is too slow. Notable about these servers was the failure to address the extreme power disparity between classic content and modern class balance; the servers were notorious for botted mage armies camping literally everything in the game.
And now the much faster moving Phinny, obviously aimed at the raiding population, with no votes that hamstrung earlier server progression. Instancing to prevent cockblocking, only "trueboxing" allowed.
Sometime this year there will be another progression server (basically already confirmed). Smart money is it will be after Phinny hits GoD and the same casual population collapse that hit Fippy and Vulak strikes; the new progression server will pick them up.
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01-29-2017, 10:46 AM
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