Why are you so certain? This server has rotated one zone (Plane of Sky) for years on this server. It's been incredibly successful (as evidenced by the fact that it's still going after all these years). There's also been various other forays in to rotation (eg. see the player-agreed one formed during the Class C/R period). And for a long time the staff effectively enforced a rotation of one guild (TMO) by letting them monopolize the server ;)

Plus, I see stuff like player agreements on rolls as being the same thing, or at least in the same vein, as rotations. They're the players of the server coming together and agreeing to make the game better because the in-game mechanisms for deciding who gets what suck. And they suck several orders of magnitude more here vs. live because of the vastly increased player knowledge and vastly increased percentage of "neck beards" (which I'll define as people who play EQ as if it were a job).

The point being, rotations are not an anathema here at all. On the contrary, I see them as the natural server progression: over time the server keeps getting better and better as the players (sometimes with, sometimes without, staff help) improve the server.

I personally would love any initiative to reduce time sinks and allow people to do turn ins on similar quests.

What if another guild wants to contest Dain? Does it become a 3-way roll?

Could consider a buy in type clause as was present in some former rotations, where if a guild wanted to be added they would be tossed at the end of next cycle. However, taking size of guild into account would be nice too in that context but now I'm just dreaming :p

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

A 3rd guild wanting in should end the rotation, giving said guild an opportunity to prove able to compete in FFA. Then restart the rotation after a sufficient amount of cycles.

This sounds like a great idea. Allows plenty of time for turn-ins and allows the guild preparing to pull time to test the CH chain, buff up, etc.

Good idea, not sure it has to be a riot/am monopoly, but let’s make it happen.

This is an excellent idea, better than the idea of rotating even. This way if the guilds do want to continue to poopsock, track, and race for FTE they can still do all of that stuff as per usual, but then allow for everyone else to complete their quests before they actually kill him.

Either that change, or a rotation on Dain, would be a vast improvement over the current situation with little to no downside for anyone! I'll also mention this thread to the 15+ people that will be waiting along side me to hand in for ring 9 to Dain this weekend.

I think that neither Riot or Aftermath would agree to a rotation involving a third guild since nobody else has competed for Dain for months (non Earthquake Dains that is). Ostepop is on the money for what would need to happen should a third guild want to join in.

I would also be fully in favor of changing the quest mob to complete this quest, but I imagine it would be harder to convince the developers to make that change than it would be to get 2 guilds to agree to not insta kill Dain. It doesn't make any sense and sucks for everyone that ring 9 can only be handed in for an 18 second window once a week. And that 18 second opening can occur anywhere in a 16 hour window. That's crazy.