Server idea. Arcade EQ?
 

First off let me say i appreciate all the effort many developers and server hosts have put into these projects. Developing a server is beyond my ability, but i come up with wacky ideas for them, so i figured i'd post an idea for a server that may appeal to a more casual gamer.

The Gauntlet.
This server starts the entry player in what ever zone the GM/Dev chooses. It is home base with the noobie gear type giver, the spell scriber and the skill trainer.
All new characters would be given spells to max level at 1, so they can scribe as they go. All skills set to 100.
A merchant would provide all epic 1.0 and all pieces of velious quested armor for all classes for 0 cost.
The basic premise is that you spend 5 min from character creation and equipping to get out and hunt.
Hunting areas should be progressive, but quick! 10x exp modifier. Crazy loot, but again scaled and progressive from fbss and other lower guk type loot on the pre-10 level mobs to planer/time loot on mobs in the 40s to top end custom loot on mobs in umm.. top end..
All drops should be made no drop/no trade.
Here is the kicker. Make all deaths permanent. No respawn, no exp penalty. You die, you loose.
A little spice could be added.. make it pvp?

Like i said, i am no developer, but I think that this would be an original way to go.. Not entirely sure it is possible tho.
Thanks for reading.

Funny you should mention this, as I've been toying with the idea of making the server I'm currently working on perma-death. Who knows how long until I finish it though.

Also, the way I would implement perma-death is kind of a hack fix, but I'll share it anyway. Every person starts in a zone, and like always are bound in that zone by default. Everyone also starts with a no-drop lore item called a Spirit Gem or something. There's only one NPC in this starting zone and when you give him your spirit gem he'll give it back and teleport you to town. This way, when a character dies he leaves a corpse with his spirit gem on it, returns to this starting zone and cannot get back into the world. The spell Bind Affinity would have to be taken out, as well as the Cleric Rez line, although I was thinking there could be some very high end items with 1 or 2 charges of rez.

The only problem with perma-death though is lagspikes at bad moments are inevitable and it would suck losing a character to lag. If there was some kind of way for the GM to determine when a lag death occured, then they could do some GM Resurrections, but I don't know if that's possible.

I think this would be fun.

Up until this point, it sounds exactly like The Abyss. Log in, you might as well be 70 (cuz you can get there in a day) and all the best loots SOE had to offer + custom buffed up ones. Spells, no effort. Just get them from a scriber. Free everything utility, no economy, no need for buff classes because there is a buff bot that gives level 1's 2500 hps. 5 mins from char creation, you are level 20. Epics? You can solo. Exp? Might as well make starting level 70.

Sorry, that is what "me bitching" sounds like. I like the perma death idea tho. =)

blarg.. no buff bots..
just the hp you'd normally get from epic 1's and thurgadin quested velious armor.
Some challenge integration there. If there was some way you could set it up where characters were not saved when you logged out or what not.
Log in play, for a couple of hours, log out.. next day start over if you want.. maybe try a new class you've never played before.
I don't like the too easy servers where you log in and you are god with no effort. that's just not fun eq to me.