Definitely interested in this. Is the notorious ability bloat not as bad originally? Hopefully...
EQ2 has a LOT of abilities. You get them from leveling up your class as well as from the AAs you choose. If you tried to put them all individually on hotbars, you would end up with four or five hotbars by the time you hit Live.
The good news is that EQ2 also has a pretty good hotbar macro system built in. I figure out which abilities work good together, and put them all in one macro on my main hotbar. So, I will have like a button for damage, one for debuffs, another for stuns, etc. It will fire off the abilities from top to bottom when you press the button for that macro. It will queue up to 1 ability (1 current and 1 to fire off after that one). Then it will stop executing that macro. Hit the key again, and it will start at the top again, and go down skipping any that are on cool down.
I then create some hotbars and make them as small as possible, and put all of the abilities for each macro in to those hotbars. That way when I click the macro button on my main hotbar, I see the cooldowns of the abilities in that macro visually by looking at the small hotbars I created. In this way, I have 1 button to press (for damage as an example), and I can see what abilities in that macro are on cool down, so I know whether to press it again.
In short... yes EQ2 has ability bloat, but it is possible to manage that bloat to your advantage. EQ2 has a lot more than just pew pew pew going for it.
-What's the difference between TLE and TLP?
It's essentially the exact same thing except someone named it TLE in EQ2 and TLP in EQ1 because reasons.
-What's the timeframe on this EQ2 TLE "reaching live" or whatever the case may be? Like how much time can I expect to be subbed?
I could be wrong, but their last TLE server, Kaladim, was started in 2020 I think, and it is in it's 7th expansion right now. I have no idea how long it will take to reach Live, but from what I am told, most TLE servers end up getting merged in to a Live server at some point when the population gets really low.
EQ2 TLE suffers from the exact same burn out issue as EQ1 TLP servers.
For the most part, the Faydwer expansion and Kunark expansion are well worth sticking around for on the server. Faydwer is mega nostalgia, and Kunark has epic weapons that look pretty bad ass.
-Can you play for like, an hour a day (max) and make solid/quick progress? I can nolife launch (for like, two days / 30 hours) but after that it'll be an hour every couple days probably.
Yes. 100% yes. EQ2 pretty much nailed the ability to be a casual gamer and still play with your friends and catch up pretty easily.
One of the best features in EQ2 for this is the mentoring system. Basically, you can group with your friends that are much higher level than you, and they can mentor down to your level. You gain a bonus to your experience from the people mentoring you. While they are mentoring you, their gear still works and their abilities work. All the mobs that were gray con to them before they mentored you now are conning what ever they would at that level. In this way, the people that mentor you can also get credit for killing named mobs for the first time that they missed when they were leveling up (killing named mobs for the first time gives you AA experience).