I don't really have any interest in doing 55-60 in Chardok so it's certainly not everyone that takes that route.

Good thread to bump.

There are a few people on this server, like Maner, who say that "EQ is life" and believe that it was actually intended to be competitive, despite all evidence to the contrary. I can only assume they failed at every other ACTUALLY competitive activity or game in their lives and have fallen back to this one, which rewards either having utterly no life to the point of sitting still and watching a door open sixteen straight hours a day, or mooch off of those who do while being nothing more than a warm body required to fulfill the dps or heal numbers required.

Believe me, there are a LOT of people out there either experienced or familiar with P99 who look at the people you are referring to and just shake their heads. There is a depth of neckbeardery that no words can sufficiently describe.

The truth is it is rare for someone to level there first character in Chardok. It's usually only those that have a good amount of platinum and played the server for years. I've only Chardok'd for money myself, and once when I was raiding a lot and working a lot and didn't have time to beef my mains' exp.

Unless you plan on paying a 200k (which takes most people months to farm), you need to a certain class at a level in the mid-late 50s (1 cleric being the exception). Chardok are one of those things not intended by Variant that people love to bash, but the impact on this server is less than you might think. It tends to concentrate in high turn-over populations (hence, they were too impatient to level normally).

my mom watches these old korean flicks.

I'm new to P99 but played EQ back when it released. Can someone explain what the crux of this argument is about? I read this whole thread and nothing described sounded really any different than EQ was back in the day.

A handful of guilds dominated the choice raid spawns/dungeons. People had alts parked and continuously scouted for spawns and engaged in forum espionage and such to get the jump on guilds (when mobs died, when guilds might be assembling to do Vex Thal or whatever).

The whole batphone thing was SOP but whether it was mandatory that you participated depended on guild. We were a "casual" guild (casual then was raiding 4-5 nights per week) and still used the whole batphone technique to try and take advantage of spawns in off-hours but couldn't always assemble enough people.

I really don't get the Chardok reference. I remember that being a choice spot to grind because a well geared/skilled group with a good puller could pull huge numbers of mobs and AE them down continuously. I never recall that ever being looked down on or considered any sort of exploit (or maybe I'm not understanding what is being described here).

I only just started playing around on this server so none of this is that relevant to me as a lowbie but I was just curious. Based on this thread alone it *seems* the classic EQ experience has been pretty accurately achieved. lol. GMs almost never interfered with guild squabbles or disputes. Everything was hashed out on the forums in high drama fashion in a rant forum called "The Shit List" much like this one. As far as the classic EQ experience goes this all seems par for the course. :D

On P99, the entire zone of Chardok is pulled in 1 pull and AoE’d down. The standard procedure is to assemble a group of wizards/enchanters/clerics and have the wizards outside of group AoE the shit down to low life and then gate out of the zone. At this point the “inside DPS” wizard will finish the mobs off and get XP for every single mob. The entire time chanters are stun locking the zerg of mobs and the cleric uses divine aura and heal agro to get the mobs grouped up properly.

The problem is that these guys sell “proxy” spots (where you just sit in group and leech XP…you pay a premium platinum price for this)…So you can imagine that continuously pulling the entire zone every 20 minutes and selling group spots for 2k per pull equals a lot of levels and money changing hands. It’s a RMT cesspool and it has made it where people can level from 50-60 in one weekend (NOT CLASSIC). heaven forbid if a Monk needs to go camp the Pipe for his epic - you must buy for 3k from some Wizard sh!tlord who has the zone on lock down or sit and patiently wait for one to drop and then buy it.

Classic Charok AoE is killing like 10-20 mobs at once, not 200

Chardok straight up ruined this server

regarding the batphone: many people have mute settings on for when they do not want it to wake them up or for work hours. most high end raiding guilds wont mind if you choose to sleep at night like most people do. It just means you will miss a kill. No raiding guild expects everyone to be awake 24/7. but those who happen to be available are prepared to raid. I'm in Aftermath and i cannot attend all the raids, it is not expected for everyone to make 100% of the raids, heck i usually dont make 50%.

but you have a point about the arguments over the raiding rules. people will fight over them because there is wiggle room and some people wont have a productive conversation with other people.

Well, I don't think it RUINED the server but it's definitely been one of the worst parts that has contributed to the massive overcrowding / alt armies at the high end.