Beware the Ides of March
 

Rooted dragons will be the downfall of p99.

Something that has always set p99 apart from other Everquest emulators is the competition aspect of the game. Whether it was the days of TMO or Aftermath / Awakened vs Casuals, there has always been competition in killing the most sought after Raid bosses in this game. With rooted dragons, competition has NOT been removed from the game, but i believe it will be unsustainable in the future.

In February 2018 I joined Azure Guard after the CSG Alliance broke up, we were capable of killing most mid level targets but struggled in ToV. With the help of my guildies, we leveled COTH mages, made clerics, recruited more people and were able to compete in TOV against the likes of Tempest, Aftermath, and Core. It took close to 6 months to do but our first Vulak that we competed for and killed with AM, Temp, and Core in the zone was EPIC.

Fast forward to rooted dragons. COTH Mages, DA idol farming, and petition flame wars are now somewhat less relavent but here's the cost. You need 60+ elf pals to kill most targets in ToV now, (10+ clerics, 5ish Warriors, +DPS, Support, etc). While this does not remove the competition aspect from the game it changes it in an unsustainable way. The server elite have said "its not about loot, its about denying pixels", which is true however worded poorly. Lack of pixels is scarcity which will drive the value of those pixels up.

The server elite have enjoyed their exclusiveness for quite some time but now that you can't be exclusive and attain pixels, the value of pixels or will to login is dwindling. Blame it on summer BBQs or whatever but the truth is getting 60+ (a conservative estimate) for Vulaks, Vyems, etc is not going to be sustainable for long. With Classic WoW, Green99, and other games on the horizon, if you *need* those numbers to kill those dragons there will be less and less people available.

The staff do the best they can and implementing rooted dragons decreases petitions in some ways but at what cost? This sever was the last bastion of true competition. I told someone from Aftermath once, "I'd rather lose KT to you guys 10 times in a row and beat you legitimately once rather than have him rotated between guilds".

Many of my former guild mates and competitors are now in a larger guild and know this isn't me coming off as salty. I hope for p99's sake that i'm wrong, it's always nice to have a game to come back to when winter/free play time/no bbq season allows. I just hope this doesn't kill the game.

These are just my thoughts and opinions and not that of Azure Guard leadership.

Beware the Ides of March...


TLDR: Rooted dragons suck, one giant guild is the same as a server rotation essentially, bring back competition.

I've corrected your post, thanks.

Anyway, weren't Azure Guard pulling 60 people recently for raids, until most left to join Riot?

It seems that AG need to do a Riot and bring together more people by merging with a few other guilds. There has to be room for a 3rd Zerg Guild.

Riot and AM actually competing for rooted dragons. It even brought competition to a new level. Pulling everything to the entrance was dumb imo.

This server is so top heavy, I don't see a time in the near future when a guild won't be able to field 50 players for an engage. This is with WoW classic and Green99 still incoming.

I, for one, enjoy the rooted dragons. It makes engages and fights more enjoyable and involved for everyone and not just the 5 monks with idols who are pulling to zone in.

Rooted dragons are my favorite change to this server. Crawling ToV feels classic and it's worth the time investment instead of logging in for a batphone for a 5 minute fight and logging out again.

I would say most people wether in am or riot are having more fun now than ever. Being able to go back and forth and compete with each other is a good part of the fun. The level of theory crafted turning into actual pulls over the last couple weeks have just been insane and add to the level of fun for everyone, moreso than pulling dragons to the entrance.

No more handouts at the zoneline... work for them loots!

Can confirm Littul is not upset; he's a good dude. Shout out to my PNW broskis.

Littul, I disagree that rooted dragons will kill the server. Something I've noticed, and I'm guilty of it, is when people are in the raid scene for awhile, they forget it's something of a community in itself. There's a huge portion of the player base who doesn't know what a Vulak is or knows how to safely cross SG.

The rooted dragon meta is just that: a meta. The developers force the players to play within certain parameters, same goes for any meta change in any video game, and this meta change only affects the raid scene, not the entire server.

I think the only "threat" to P99 is WoW Classic. Green will be a fun side-quest for most players, a permanent home for some, and ignored by even more people. WoW Classic is going to draw a lot of players out of P99 for a long time, but I suspect that population will trickle back in once people have gotten their fill of WoW nostalgia.

It sucks how AG put a ton of work into setting up for live pulls in ToV only to have the rug pulled out when we were at our peak. It feels like we got robbed, but there isn't anything to be done about it now. The current meta calls for large-sale north ToV crawls and not a dedicated core of players doing the heavy lifting. Maybe the next meta change reverts it; maybe it makes it worse; maybe they drop a meteor on ToV and rewrite the entire zone. It's a meta change and it won't last forever.

By your own admission fewer people getting top tier loots is a good thing, yet at the same time it seems that's also what you are complaining about.