Server populationFollow

The live servers low level population is next to nothing. If you want to group up at low levels I would suggest a TLP server.

Such as Rizlona or Aradune since they are the two newest servers.

Everybody on live servers use the tutorial and Crescent Reach to start their chars. Nobody does the early levels in the old school starting zones.

I started my first new chars in over 10 years last week, in CR, and I did see other people in the zone every time I logged in. I also know you'll see others in the tutorial zone.

You're better off starting in Crescent Reach these days rather than the old world cities. The gear that you can acquire at low levels in CR and the surrounding area is much better than you can get as a new player in the old world. Tutorial gives you a good start with gear equal to Crude Defiant gear, which is actually better than a lot of the guild raid drops from several of the early expansions. You won't find anyone in the early expansions anymore for that reason. You might stumble across one every so often playing it old school on a regular server, but that is infrequent. Most players on the regular servers are concentrated in the newest expansions. Before Daybreak took over the game, SoE did all they could to discourage players from lagging behind so the players base would not be fractured to the point where nobody would be able to find groups or guilds to play with. They want everyone in the latest content. That's why there is Defiant gear. It makes content trivial so you can speed through the leveling up process and get up to speed with the mainstream. Without it, you would have to level through each expansion in turn to get geared up, and that would take too long.

Edited, Feb 15th 2021 3:01pm by animekenji

P1999 is excellent, though, and it's been around a long time so you can "commit" to it to the extent that anybody commits to playing a game.

I played there for several months a while back (years ago now) and had a great time and I definitely felt I was reliving my original experience from 1999-2001. Yeah, it's true, though, P99 is a real eye-opener in terms of reminding players how challenging and difficult the original game was. These days I tell other players, especially relative newcomers, whenever they complain about some "challenge" in the game that they have no clue what a real "challenge" is. Many can't believe that there was a time where if you died in a difficult place you might never get your corpse back and consequently lose all your gear permanently.

"It's not Classic really"... well, it would require a time machine to play "Classic really." Frankly, a lot of the Classic experience was because we were all experiencing it for the FIRST time and the truth is "you can never go home again." But P1999 is far better a simulation of Classic EQ than any of the official TLP servers. And I've played on several of those, and enjoyed the experience, but they are REALLY "not Classic really." Not even close compared to P99.