Empty world been done?

[Shendare]

Yes, one difficult decision is how far back to support clients. The most supportive would go all the way back to Titanium, but then you'd be missing out on a buttload of spell graphics and effects, races, item graphics, item icons, and you'd run into Highpass issues between clients.

Give up on Titanium and go back to SoF, and you have many improvements in that regard, though SoF isn't particularly widely used. Bump it up to Underfoot, and you're in much more stable territory in all of the above. However, you're cutting out the userbase of people who only have, and only have access to, Titanium and SoF. I don't know what the Titanium population is right now, but from what I've been told, SoF usage tends to hover around 5% of players on a given server.

[MarcusD]

I think that's an awesome idea. Really the engine is the best thing about EQ, and the zones I would say. I wouldn't worry about people playing and progression and all of that; I am a noob here but what I have seen is you can't count on having players, just build what you want and love and if it is really cool word will get out. Also advertising helps (p99 are pro's at advertising in sneaky ways)