FWIW the ruleset that I am most in favor of is: no rules. Do whatever the hell you want and quit bitching. That would require the most talent, strategy, teamwork, whatever you want to call it. Camping is for lamers.

Training, Kill stealing, griefing. There would be mass petitions every time a raid boss spawned. Just imagine what Abacab would be doing without any fear of reprisal? I know every little mob glitch myself. I could train a guild trying to killa boss without them even knowing who/what/where it came from, I assure you.

And you wouldn't stop camping either. The fact of the matter is, people that are against camping want to kill mobs, but they dont want to have to wait for them to spawn. Wow is that way ------>

EQ was that way on many servers too. Everyone knew exactly when mobs spawned so no one had to camp for them. That was classic for many people. Have people forgotten this?

No, it was just decided against.

I don't disagree with you. Variance makes the camp worse than it should be. It has opened up can of worms because people believed that nobody would actually do it. Variance should be removed, but at this point it isn't going to stop camping either. It would also throw the concept of roll calling right out the window since guilds would know when a boss is gonna spawn and plan accordingly.

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99 needs a server split or 2 to breed some healthy competition and community support for the high end guilds instead of half the server fighting each other over scraps. Do it now and let the other 2 servers catch up before Kunark and things would be drastically different. There is no other method that will make a difference, regardless of the ruleset it will be the same drama with different methods.
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I still stand by this as the only way to actually make a difference and foster both competition and some basic humanity between players.

It wouldn't use much more bandwidth since the player base won't likely change that much, and it's not like the server files are huge.

P1999 FFA - let the hardcore faceoff with likeminded competition
P1999 Rotation - let the casual mingle and still progress at their own pace
P1999 PVP - Racial team PVP - pew pew

So... how much are you donating a month to make this happen? I mean I can't imagine the server costs per month being cheap, and no way nilbog is going to foot the bill so people can "feel good". Nilbog or Rogean got a cost/month figure for us to mull over?

I'll donate a working kedge.path file I created if yall don't have that fixed yet =P just throw it in the map folder server side

seriously, I doubt donations would be an issue. It's a virtual server copy, 3 servers does not mean 3X cost

Its not the files, its the hosting that I think costs them money... I could be wrong... but I think the server hositng as well as all the anti DOS stuff is the pricey thing here... P1999 is not run from a computer in someone's basement :P

So in your mind, having 15 people afk for 3 days is the same as having 24 people "at their keyboard" and responding to roll calls every 30min in "shifts" on top of variance being increased (which it should). So instead of poopsocking while AFK for 3 days and responding to a roll call on a boss pop (current rules), your saying a guild will be able to keep 24 active people at their keyboard taking 30min shifts, for potentially 14 days on a boss? I know we shouldn't underestimated the length at which human retardation can go but I find that hard to believe. Even "if" they manage to man 24 people 24/7 for 14 days straight for the next 9 months (which i highly doubt), the constant pressure from outside guilds contesting them will eventually wear down that guild. At the very least it will stop them from camping multiple targets at the same time allowing for more targets to be available for the other raiding guilds.

It's 1 thing to ask someone to AFK online for a week, no one can be on their computer 24/7 pooping every 30min on call in "shifts" because that's just about the stupidest way they can spend their time while getting minimum reward. Guild size would need to increase to about 120 members to implement your "shifts" good luck convincing them of doing that shit and tell them it'll be 8 months if ever before they see their own god loot.