LFS (Looking For Servers)
 

I was curious. I am looking for a server that is basically the game EQ. Up to date or lagging behind the current game isn't important.

I want the old game experience with the exp bumped up a smidge.

It seems like there is basically the old game, ie, grinding. Or you have these servers where you ding lvl 20 in an hour and start with your epic (no thanks).

Any help would be great.

Creating your own server is probably the best way to go.

people aren't receptive to this type of question here, for some reason. kingly gave a good suggestion, though (not included in previous statement). bots can make it playable without people. or you can change some rules to make your player characters more robust or weaken npcs etc.

i haven't played live in over decade, so i cannot compare live exp to this. compared to when i played certain zones are beefed up for sure in emu. go to the right zones and you can level 5x faster than other zones etc... (paludal - dawnshroud - old seb etc gets you to 60 faster than anywhere else unless they've evened out the exp per npc, which few, if any, servers do)

out of the box, i think you get ~10% a kill in dsp from 21-mid30's and 1-4% per kill elsewhere type stuff... they must have packet collected with bonuses on, because those zones weren't that awesome on live in 2002-ish. they were better, but nothing like eqemu. (could have been a live change after i quit too, i guess)

i would bet peq or any 'legit / standard' eqemu server could be up your alley.

with public servers you'll have to experiment. check out the server's forums and look for more server info before any real effort playing a character there. i look over changelog and see if there's at least some recent posts -- a strong forum community isn't a major concern of mine, but it lets you know if it's being taken care of or ignored for years.

start with the ones at the top, as they are way more likely to be here 'tomorrow'

i make a separate backup folder for each server's files plus original files from ROF2 install. this way i simply copy/paste it into my rof2 directory and replace files.

each time you add a new file for a different server, you want to copy the original to the backup rof2 files folder. (spells-us, dbstr, globalload etc etc... some will have a lot of custom files and you'll want the original version backed up too, so the backup-rof2 files will take a little maintenance as you go and add new server files)

eqbackup folder
-imperium folder
-p99 folder
-peq folder
-original rof2 files

inside those resides a 'resources' folder to mimic the eq client installation directories. simple select all, copy and paste. plus, you don't have to re-install an rof2 fresh copy each time you want to revert back to standard files for any reason.

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beware of potential flakes:
some people build servers repeatedly and flake out a month later. so, keep track of similarities (word usage, location, themes etc). 1 guy scrapped server after a couple months, then immediately put up another and scrapped that one shortly after too. then did the same thing ~6-12months later, but this time changed his name before creating the 2nd server, and closed the 'first' shortly after, yet again.

more power to him and welcome to continue doing that, but those playing also deserve the warning before wasting their time. recognize when this is happening and avoid future frustrationl. another reason to stick to the 2 top categories of servers.

they have every right to do so, but it's not fun for anyone playing there either. it does happen and you should pay attention to avoid repeatedly making that mistake of playing on one of 'these' servers.