I've been playing EQemu about a year or so(obviously not on this account). Prob more, but not near as much as many people here. But ever since I've been playing, I've only seen a few servers with great ideas and great success.
Winter's Roar.....Definitely THE most successful, ever. The GM's on that server are very dedicated, and provide great gameplay for someone who loves custom PvE. I've always enjoyed playing there when no other servers catch my eye. It's always been a server to "fall back" on. Yet I don't play it very much anymore, I have to commend them on their work.
GuildWars...sure many of you will have your gripes, but the fact is, it was a well coded, most of the time stable, and offered basically as balanced pvp as you'll get on emu. Others have tried, but failed. I enjoyed playing it up until all of the controversy(which I won't go into. Either you know what I'm talking about or you don't
).
Those 2 are the ones that stick out in my mind. Others have been pretty successful, for example, Scorp2k, LoTR, Raid Addicts, and some others I can't even remember names of. Sorry if I left out some really liked ones, I've probably played on them but just don't remember the name.
The main determinant of how successful an EQEmu server will be, in my opinion at least, is how stable and bug-free it is. Players don't want to be on a server that disconnects you every 5 minutes, or everytime you attack jane doe uber mob it's corpse poofs.
Secondly, you have to have a good staff. A bunch of jerk-offs who don't know what the heck they're doing, or play huge GM favoritism, will ruin a server as quick as stability issues. Players do not want to play on a server with bad staff. Without the players, stability doesn't matter, if you want to run a successful server, that is.
Thirdly, legit is a lot more fun than semi-legit or non-legit. Summoning uber item #121334 is fun only for so long. Exploring all the big and bad uber zones on an unstable server loses its luster really quickly. Players, no matter how much they want to be high level and have great equipment, deep down really want to work for it. They want to be known on a LEGIT server as the highest level john doe class. It just doesn't make it glamorous to be able to
#level 60/65/70/whatever.
Also, content. What players like must be taken into consideration. How long will your content keep them happy? How hard and for how long is your staff willing to work to keep adding new content for often rude, unruly, and critical players? If you're going strictly PvE, you're going to have to compete for player base with the hard working staff over at Winter's Roar. They're a fine example of a balanced and content-filled PvE server. If you're going PvP(in high demand...it's very easy to make a bad PvP server, but it takes a whole hell of a lot to make a good one, it seems), you're going to have to deal with complaints about balance, complaints about too much PvP and not enough PvE(or vice versa), complaints about not enough killing, and just about anything players can find to gripe about.
As well another thing I see players wanting a lot, is less expansion content. There ARE some out there that want a completely patched to live server, but the majority of players I've grouped with, seen on the forums, killed, been killed by, heard talk in ooc, irc, and anywhere else you can find emu players, is that they want a classic server. They don't want any of the content that "ruined" the game(or so some say) of Everquest, and just want to go back to the roots(which most of us know is impossible to do, the zones will never go back to the way they were in classic EQ unless a server handed out warez which we also know is completely illegal
).
Finally, one of THE biggest problems I see with servers is the inability for new players to just jump right in the action. If a legit server(without #zone) has races just start in their starting city, chances are, you won't find someone to group with unless your friend is making the same race as you. This goes back to the jumping in part. You can't go into most legit servers alone and find someone to group with. And in PvP servers, if you just log in, you almost definitely will not find anyone to kill within your level range. The people that start on the server first are highest level, have the best gear, and generally own the server(this happened on GuildWars big time.). Generally, I think legit servers shouldn't have many expansions(if any). Customize the old world zones and have any expansion races you want(once again, if any), start in an old world zone and place GM/spell merchants for them there. This way, there is only the old world. Heck, do what many servers do and have everyone just start in the same place.
I hope some of you actually read that and maybe got some ideas for a server you want to create, or how to better a server you already have. I've never ran a server, but I've played on many. These are just ideas from a player, and from many players I've chatted it up with. Keep in mind, as a server op, the players are the ones you want to please to be successful.
Tips on making a better server..from john doe player
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