How hard is it to get a Blood Orchid Katana?
 

http://wiki.project1999.com/Blood_Orchid_Katana

I understand it's in VP and getting a key is a pain in the dick, but once you're keyed, is VP dominated by one poop-socking guild and even after that, does the mob drop it at a rate that it usually rots on the corpse?

Took me 750 raids with TMO. Less these days because everyone is using DKP. I don't think merit-based loot guilds exist anymore? Anyways, it will never rot since it's highly desirable and usable by a large number of classes. You gotta join up with some of most intolerable people on the server for an extended period of time and by the time you earn it you'll most certainly have an unhealthy relationship with RL / game balance. Raiding here is a sickness. Just don't. I definitely fucked my life up playing here. Get 60 and move on with your life. Please.

Haha ToV scares me for that very reason.. Heck i've never done anything in Seb, Howling Stones, Chardok, Plane of Fear, Siren's Grotto.. Never done anything special in Velks.. And i've been on P99 since 2016 haha. I hope that is enough end game content to keep me busy without ever having to enter that ToV joint... Like you said- That is where maintaining my real life, and EQ will become one of the same. Don't let me enter that zone!!!

Paradigm Shift uses loot council for loot awards and regularly competes in VP, and has competitively killed many NToV mobs, including Vulak (during a team up with AG).

I like to think we aren’t that intolerable.

We used to call you Paradiggum(s) in Rustle. Just throwing that out there. Loot council is generally looked down upon by the majority of the server these days due to bias issues inherent in the system and I personally am glad (basically) everyone shifted over to DKP. Me raiding 750 times to get an item is insane looking back, but that's what you deal with in merit.

That isn't to say that TMO didn't hook me up. I loved the guild and the loot system made sense before FE merged and ruined it.

We have not totally shaken the Paradiggum moniker... either way, I think we generally do a very good job with loot. In any LC system there will be some loot drama, but I think we avoid most of it.

At the end game, upgrades are so few and small that unless you are gearing up an alt, you can go weeks or months without a meaningful upgrade.

Forgive me. Keep in mind I'm speaking from a privileged neckbeard viewpoint and haven't been in a real... casual guild since like 2012/13. In your position you need to make sure what few and far between you get goes to someone deserving and I agree with merit in that case.

Realistically, 6-12 months of raiding with one of the 3 guilds that do VP. You will have to be very lucky that you: are able to attend a Druusk raid, attend it when the katana drops, and have enough dkp / loot council clout to be next in line.

Tmk, paradigm is dominating vp except on earthquakes maybe

I prefer loot council tbh

We used it on my phinny guild with each Archetype having a LC representative so one for Melee, Casters, Priests, and Hybrids. As the guild leader I only had veto power but could make suggestions. In the event of a tie I created a position named the Ombudsman who was elected by full members wnith no officer or LC member being eligible to vote or run for that office All LC decisions were made in IRC and the logs posted the following day on our forum for full transparency. Worked really well but we only went up to PoP so I'm unsure how that system would fare in later xpacs.

Making the charter for an EQ guild really is half the fun of running one. Never found the other half of the fun but there was plenty of frustration and ungodly amounts work which amounted to a second job