Well I believe the heavily customized servers will loose way too much player base due to the fact we the old dawgs are not interested in learning the game from scratch. Why throw away all the years of experience and knowledge about the game? То make a living we usually have to learn a lot of new things daily and when your hobby/chill game is again learning stuff.. you feel better off with netflix and chill.

I dunno why the honest and cool server owners decide to literally fork the game instead of using their technical skills and common sense to fix common bugs in the original gameplay to bring it to its best.

I swear when l2 off gfinal pts files were leaked, I could immediately feel the difference in any aspect of the game dynamics in comparison to any moded l2joke trash at that time. And the game, just as it was designed is is realy good! Just don't mess it up once and its gona be a miracle

While enthusiastic projects have my full support, still they need to be also oriented towards the player base to achieve great success.
I seriously sent the info about playinera and other customized versions to my friends and none of them was interested in learning a new game. Just too bussy in day-to-day life and thats it, therefore also no low rates.

i #pray for just 1 nice clean retail like project with good files and no p2w

What I never understood was why there were a lot of Russian modded servers (in the case of BFDR, extremely successful ones) but hardly any until recently for the Americas and Europe.

Its great to see PlayInera going really out there with almost a different game and Knight is extremely interesting with its low level approach to things. Khanda, it could have been great (Interlude in classic client) but all the fruits, exp scrolls and "helping hands" from classic (its x7 but basically you were always rocking at least double that amount), plus changes what really split what population it really had a negative effect on it. I agree completely what GS says however, people are seemingly unwilling to learn new skills on such an old game now. The same happened in WoW classic, you never see "meme builds" anymore there, only min-maxing everything since its an old game and raids needing the "perfect" setup all the time.

Anima is probably the best of these "custom" projects (basically not a c4/c6/GF/H5+ server in my eyes), in that it started from where Lineage 2 began and it is slowly working its way through the Chronicles whilst adding in good quality of life improvements (auto shots and offline shops for example). The admin is really passionate about what he does and really I do wish them well. Shout out to Firebird also, over a year online now with no donations and x1 rate C3 client, nothing but kudos to them.

It at least goes to show that even with all the crappy P2W cashgrab servers opening recently, there is still life left in this game and people passionate enough to create them. Basically these are what I would pick from if I want to play up to Interlude:

Proper old school L2 (currently c2)- Anima (launched 7th March 2020)

C3 x1 FTW- Firebird (Launched May 2019)

C4 low rate- L2-Reunion (Launched 1st June 2020, looking at their changelog they are putting work in to get that server as good as possible)

C6 low rate NO DUALBOX - Lineagedos (launching 27th June 2020)

C6 low rate DUALBOX - L2 Afterlife (launched 23rd May 2020)

Interesting custom low rate server - Lineage 2 Knight (launched May 2020)

Bonkers high rate custom server - PlayINERA (launching 27th June 2020)

kudos amrx for the fantastic summary +1

On the topic of modded russian servers I believe it is just matter of mentality.
I have played alot on ruski servers and in ruski clans and they usually use scripts and only care to win. If the server is imba they will just roll the imba classes and both the farm probably also bot the pvp
That might be the reason of the success of heavily modded servers because lets come straight to the problem.

We people are not as smart as we think and when we balance something we always disbalance other things because there is usually something we do miss. So any customization brings disbalance in unexpected places. Take for example steroids and professional athletes. Ever spoken to a professional bodybuilder? If you haven't make sure you don't laugh when you hear the teenager's voice

On the contrary I have the feeling the EU/US players enjoyed alot the game as it was designed and are sticking more or less to the core concept. However GvE type of servers have always been very popular. So I suppose its about the right mods.

Who want to join and test on my server?
Chronicle: Interlude
Patch https://mega.nz/file/Y8BgGYIb#CkUrmW_eJx0LcVXy9zSWEhE4QIqxrjFUYfsO1dKkwjw
PM with ID and PAS for your account