Not sure if any of you know or would be interested at all, but EQ1 is going to bring out a new progression server, I don't know when or any of the rules yet. But I'm thinking of giving it a go again. If enough people are interested we could form a guild, it wouldn't have to be a raiding guild but we could if that is what people want. I can't say how long I would play it guess it would depend on the contacts I can get in the game. More fun when you already know people in game. I'm guessing it will come as close as they can to its beginning. suggestions are being posted on the EQ boards. oh and if your not interested maybe someone you know would be so let others know.

As with most things in life, we often tend to remember the positives, and not the negatives.

Having checked out Project 1999 recently (out of morbid curiousity, just to see how accurate it was to original EQ), I can tell you that original EQ is pretty nasty. There's clearly the call for those types of servers though, as evidenced by projects such as P1999, so SoE can certainly fill that niche, but you're not going to see the populations we once had. Not by a long shot. P1999, for example, has maybe 600 people on prime time. That's it.

The other issue is that a lot of our good memories come from Original / Kunark / Velious. Maybe even Luclin and on. But some people LOVED Kunark and hate Velious; others LOVED Velious and hated Kunark. Others wouldn't want to go back to a time before Luclin (and AA's). So when do you stop the server from progressing? Everyone has a different idea.

Also, the issue (at least for me) is that a lot of classes REALLY sucked back in original EQ. I loved my Ranger to bits, but he didn't really start to shine until Velious. Before that he was pathetically squishy, and not really fun at all. I remember distinctly HATING Kunark. Drolvargs would beat him to a pulp.
My alt, a Bard, was also more fun in later years when things such as /melody came in (I think that was the macro name), saving player's carpals everywhere. And only very recently with the advent of instrument modifiers on armour, Bards were able to melee and still get their instrument mods, allowing for a very different gaming experience than the singing minstrels they were once delegated to.
Another example - Warrior in original EQ (and even Kunark) had MAJOR issues holding aggro with merely Taunt, and in fact the knights made far better tanks back then. Not a fun time for them.

I won't even get into the experience gain speed, hell levels, corpse retrievals, life before SoW, etc. So is all of this worth the fun memories of the EQ tunnel markets, open PoH / PoF raids, and so on? Maybe. Maybe not.

EQ progression servers are a lot different than the original live game. That said, they are extremely popular to begin with and have very healthy grouping opportunities. Raiding, in open world content, is cutthroat. There is some chance that this time around all raid content will be available in an instanced form to alleviate the need for guilds to sit on spawn points for 12-24 hours at a time, have cell phone text lists set up to get people to log in, etc. That said it's never clear exactly how it will end up.

I will be playing on the new TLP server as the guild I was in is going to be re-activating. I played on Fippy and had an absolute blast until the guild I was in broke up in DoDH.

I've been playing a little on the Imperium emu server. It's alright.

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I don't think they will bring back the real early days of EQ some of it has been lost. It might not have the population that it did in the beginning of the game, but a lot of people seem to like the idea. I would go back on my Ranger in EQ but its been to long, I tried it a few times and was totally lost in where to go and what to do. I do think I'll be playing on a lower lvl until the new server comes out, just to refesh myself on the game and where things are at.

I for one am a bit tired of the games anymore its all solo and easy mode. A person can reach max lvl and never grouped with anyone. I'm not even real sure I would care for the corpse runs and all the stuff from way back when, I just would like a game where at least you need to group some to progress. If the server doesn't last then that's the way it goes, things come and go.

Yeah, I'm not saying I disagree. Most MMOs these days do cater to solo mode; but of course, the solo mode caters to *us* - the people who played MMOs from the start, but now have careers, families, kids, and various other responsibilities. Many of us no longer have 12+ hrs a day to commit to the old-school slow, torturous grinds. In fact, some of us (myself included) are lucky if we can spare more than an hour or 2 a day.

But it's a catch 22. It's the long, torturous grinds that built that community. So I don't know what to tell you.

That said, I had a look at the precedents for EQ's time locked progression (TLP) servers. The two on the go right now (Fippy and Vulak) are *NOT* what we consider classic. Sometime in the last few years, changes were made to pets, SK's HT, Monk fists, and a few other things, and apparently they can't unchange them for a TLP server without cocking up the live servers. As a result, pets are insane. Groups of Mages and Necros can easily lockdown spawn areas and tackle anything and everything that spawns. Monks are walking around at level 50 with 20/26 fists, and at 60 with 22/24 fists. And 3 or more SKs in a group can insta-kill Naggy or Vox using HTs once the dragon falls to 30% or less.
Add on to that the corpse runs are no longer around, even on TLP servers - you respawn with your gear (which isn't necessarily a bad thing); hell levels are gone; people box like crazy (in some cases, boxing an entire group and sitting in popular camps 24/7), and various other changes too long to list....this is not our classic EQ we knew and love(d).

Now, despite all this, would I make a character and log on every now and then to say hi to folks and maybe do some low-level grouping? Maybe. I suppose it depends on whether or not it's FTP or requires a membership. We'll see.

99.9% chance this is going to require a membership.

It looks like EQ is doing a beta server to test things. I haven't been able to play it yet but when I can you can find me on Jollenar or Jollanar Druid name will depend on when they let me have.