Feldon 
From EQ2 Lead Designer Kyle “Kander” Vallee on the EQ2 Forums:
Hello everyone,
I wanted to take a moment to tell you exactly what is going on with the TLE servers.
Itemization
We’re done with global adjustments to Kingdom of Sky loot. We know that some items simply do not measure up, and we are absolutely fixing/adjusting these on a case by case basis as we find them (such as the Gnorble earring brought to our attention today).
In this time, we have done a thorough pass on Echoes of Faydwer loot to assure the progression is significantly better than KoS and to make sure raid loot is absolutely better than heroic, heroic is better than quest, etc.
“Why Can’t You Just Make Raid Loot for Kingdom of Sky Better?”
This is a valid question. The honest answer is we are in a very precarious spot. The progression of loot on TLE is simply at risk if we keep increasing loot before Kunark. It will cause a chain reaction where if we continue along this path, Velious and expansions after it will have almost no progression.
Yes, most of this was caused by us doing a complete re-itemization of the game. We’re working to do things smarter as we move forward, so TLE players will have a better time as content unlocks on their servers.
Content Difficulty
Difficulty on the TLE servers for PVE content is being adjusted. We made another adjustment this week and we are constantly monitoring it. We are also trying to fix things that are outright bugs. We’ve looked at several of the KoS encounters that have not been defeated and we are adjusting down the stats for these mobs.
Because expansions after Kingdom of Sky were handled in a cleaner way by the development team, we believe once we get past this hurdle, things will smooth out and lot of these issues will be less prevalent for future content releases on TLE severs.
Echoes of Faydwer Beta
On a side note Echoes of Faydwer TLE content will be on Beta very soon, and we’d appreciate any time you can spend reviewing this and providing your feedback. We are shooting for the end of this month for making EoF beta available to players. Also, Fallen Dynasty and Nektulos Castle: Tribulation will become available when Echoes of Faydwer content unlocks!
In addition to everything else in this post, we’re knee deep in making some good free content for members between now and expansion 13. We are doing some fabled content plus some new stories in some “fabled” places. While we have a lot of cool things planned for this year for live content, but we are by no means giving up on TLE. It’s a busy year for the team, so please bear with us.
Deathtoll – We haven’t forgotten about you. While there are no PvP specific updates coming up, the team has been talking about how to address your feedback and we’ll share an update when we have it.
Thanks to all of you for being so patient and understanding. We’re here. We’re aware of the issues you’re having. We’re working towards making things better for our players!
Translation: This is lip service to how screwed up TLE is and it’s going to take a full sacrifice of an expansion for the gear and mob difficulty to level out, but the best part is we can totally ignore the 5 players left on the pvp server since theyre irrelevant anyways
Interpretation of comment “We wanted retro servers, were told no because it was nearly impossible, they broke down and gave us what we asked for, now we’re just going to bitch about everything.”
Too true….
I think TLE servers were a pet project by the EQ2 team (You can tell from the passion in the team) and it aligned with marketing. The problem is level 1-70 content was so damaged between 2008-2011 by the then lead designer who wanted to turn eq2 into WoW that it’s hard to undo it all in a few months. Multiple gear and content revamps back then are so hard to walk back 5 years later. The 1-70 content was so rich I hope it can be bought back a little bit to what it was.
I just don’t understand why all this time and effort is being used to work on the TLE servers when there are so many things patently not working well on the regular servers. Half the populations are gone after the plat exploitation mess and we are constantly having problems with server lag, many things not working as intended and a plethora of pretty much worthless loot. If I was interested in closing down the game, I think I would do most of what has been done lately. I’m soooo sad. This game has been a good deal of my world for several years now, only to see it get even worse after SOE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, can’t you pay attention to the game NOW rather than what it was 4 or 5 years ago???? As in RL, priorities need to be given to what IS, then when you have extra time and personel, go back and try to fix what was. I have to admit, I fail to see the reason for the TLE servers. Maybe I’ve just missed the point?
On a side note: Do it Feldon!
Soon. [tm]
Future forum is hopefully not:
“Real Soon Now”
Jerry Pournelle, Byte Magazine, 1984
I share the same hope.
How is leveling speed on TLE?
Back to a normal rate, when you needed to provide real efforts to gain exp?
Here’s what SHOULD be going on in TLE:
SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!
^ this. 🙄
Hard to disagree
I gave up on TLE a while ago, and likely won’t try again until they spool up a new server. It just wasn’t a great experience, what with all the imbalance and broken stuff – it basically just seemed like an extended beta. Hopefully a year or so of fixes and such will mean their next attempt is a lot better.
The speed of which stuff was getting unlocked was also a factor. What’s the point of a “classic” server, if you’re just going to be caught up to live within a year anyway.