If I remember right, patches would start at something like 8am EST, and we would get an estimate of how long it would take. Again, if I remember right, that estimate was hardly ever accurate and and could end an hour or two early or late.

I doubt any guild would be opposed to simulated patch day repops, or be opposed to them happening at different times(randomly) so that the EU players we have don't get totally screwed.

patch day kills were usually the only way under-dog guilds could get some kills...especially on bottle-neck/key mobs.

since everything is up on patchday, the top guild can't watch everything...giving the under-dogs an opening.

imo, this system was a tremendous part of what classic EQ was...given the mission of the server to recreate classic experience as much as possible I think this is a good idea.

it's also an idea that has been brought up before, and I believe GMs have said that they can't do it without manually popping the mobs as they are afraid that folks would intentionally crash zones forcing a reset to spawn mobs.

Simulated patch days would give smaller guilds a shot at raid content on a regular basis, and force even the larger guilds to race in a more traditional manner for content. This sounds great.

The developers clearly work hard on this server and do a fantastic job. If they ever get around to implementing something like this, I'm sure it would be a tremendous boon.

Whether we ever get simulated patch day respawns or not, it would sure help things out if variance were kicked to the curb. In conjunction with that, any mob whose spawn timer is a multiple of 24 hours should have 6 hours added to its spawn time to make sure that it will gradually appear in all time zones.

That would take many hours of poopsock off the server.

Of course, removing variance AND adding simulated patch day respawns work have the most impact. Together, they would mean that all the 7 day mobs would likely be killed by different guilds (since you can't be in two places at once) and then 7 days and 6 hours later... multiple guilds would still have a shot, because all the mobs would be respawning at the same time.... rinse repeat every 7.25 days.

Then it's not a simulated patch day... It would become a ... well not even simulated.. it would basically be every mob in the game randomly respawning at the exact same time. In order to simulate it like a patch day, it would have to be announced ahead of time. Typically it was estimated when the servers would come up from a patch in classic (usually after a 6 to 8 hour downtime), so it would be sometime in the afternoon... We would have to set a window and let everyone know what it is.

"All mobs will be respawning between 2 and 5 PM EST"...

Seems like kind of a cheat.

Then you don't actually have the downtime.. so people are on the server already, have been killing mobs.. waiting for the random respawn.. hell I bet you raiding guilds would already select out the first target they want and be poopsocking the hell out of it. And in the case of Dark Ascension with their bajillion strong raid force, they would most likely have split their raid force and be poop socking multiple raid mobs.

It wouldn't work out as well as you guys think it would.

Oh and don't even recomend taking the server down to accomplish this.. Raiding guilds are still the minority compared to the rest of the server and we aren't going to inconvenience the masses to appease you.

And I'd also like to mention, when the server is patched.. it happens typically overnight, and is down for 10-30 minutes, and is always unannounced ahead of time.

So....are you saying you don't like the idea? :p

/duck

I don't like that there are windows on classic mobs anyway, there simply weren't windows in classic. Kinda sucks =(

I know I know poopsocking would be insane, but given the amount of guilds around, at least the initial respawns after a big patch or downtime, would spread out the content. It's not like IB or DA or Divinity could get Draco/CT and mobilize for Maestro/Inny or Naggy or Vox. *shrug* There's just far more people who know the content now than there ever was on live.

Gotta be a tough balance. But a year into live servers, there were way more CoFs and Crys spears out there. Prolly due to more server downtime and those repops happening. They feel very sparce on this server.

During 'simulated patch day respawn' day, pvp is enabled in all raid zones, your char is locked out for a day upon death in those zones, and /petition and /report are disabled for anyone tagged to a raid guild.

I want permanent DA, Invis and a front row seat though.

Patches are equally as unpredictable here as on Live. As someone said before, even if they gave you an estimate that the server was going to be down for eight hours, it was rarely a reliable one. Sure, they told you longer in advance, but that doesn't change whether you have a real life commitment in the next eight hour window or not. I also don't think that patches being less predictable is that much of a bad thing.

I see the problem with simulating it while people are still able to access the server. That's fair. But if you do what I suggested (just respawning raid mobs every X number of patch days, where X is how many times more patch days we have compared to Live during the classic time period), then you don't have that problem. It wouldn't take long for someone to research what "X" is. Hell, I'll even do it if you want, it surely wouldn't take that much work.

Also, the fact that *most* patches happen at night, seems like an easy problem to solve, since that's largely a choice on your part (except in the case of emergency patches, which probably shouldn't count towards "X" mentioned earlier), and I'm pretty sure some arrangement could be made where you guys mix it up a little. Granted, it would make you the target of even more silly conspiracy theories as people try and allege that you're purposely restarting the server while some guilds have the least members on, so I can see why that wouldn't be fun. I still think we don't necessarily have to always patch during the time where the least players are on, and I don't think this is such a ludicrous idea that it shouldn't be considered further.

The idea behind bringing down the server when the least number of people are playing are to inconvenience the least amount of people. If Rogean says that the raiding guilds are a minority, then patching the server during prime to be a convenience to a minority of raiders, goes against that plan and something he appears to be loathe to do, which makes sense to me.