How do you measure a severs success?

[Thorpa]

Personally I default to population, after all, as this is a MMO-based emulation.

Secondarily I could see "smooth stable and working" as a personal goal for the developer/s. However once you launch and run a server with its individual implementations those goals are met.

I'm mainly posing this question to those servers that have "peaked" and are now ghost towns but the devs never seem to take kindly to suggestions or even an inclination that the server MIGHT be done for.

Personally I've played on almost all of the servers and I know what works long term. I feel if you do anything outside of what would be considered total custom (THF, Shards, EZ) or total Legit (p99, TAKP) you're hoping for a year at best with a 100-200 population for some of that time.

[provocating]

I am sure that population is how a player gauges success, so the most successful to date in their eyes is p99.

As far as the developer/owner success will be gauged in if they accomplished what they wanted to.

[Shiny151]

I think it all depends on the initial goal of the server. Years ago I created a private server for mostly an out-of-the-box PEQ experience for friends only.

After a long hiatus I recently resurrected the server but opened it up for the public to join. To me it doesn't matter if there's 400 people on or 4. My goal was primarily getting old, mostly former EQ friends back together at their convenience. And I always enjoy a new friendly player.

I receive the occasional suggestion on server improvement which I'm okay with. However, my time is limited as is my knowledge how to do more advanced things on the server so I have to weigh those options.

In my opinion the high server populations are not always the best.

[JimB_1958]

If you are having fun running it...

And people have fun playing on it...

It's successful

[Karnon]

To each their own I guess. Though I agree some may like that huge population, it really depends. My main play server is a solo/duo server. Even though their normal online pop that I see is 30-40, it's somewhere I can play and was stable. I enjoyed the creation there.

My friends all got in to wanting to try this game I rave about and so I am working a server for them. So 8 friends on 1 server is perfect for me, because I get to share it. I miss the community more than anything. So glad Emu is around for just that. I won't even get into everyone's vision for their servers. I LOVE trying the low pop servers to see what a dev dreamed up for their (grand?) creation.

[EQEMU2010]

Xalmat you making anything new ? or just keeping CoN and LoF for now?

[provocating]

I am creating something new, but not an EQ server. I have three, that is enough.