[shorttin]

Originally Posted by Byrjun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm guessing you haven't actually read the multiple threads about this, because the affect this has on the server has been talked about to death. To recap:

Let's discuss a situation where there's Raid Guild A and Raid Guild B. Both of these guilds are full of players who play p99 for the competitive raiding scene. These guilds have been splitting the limited content of Kunark + Vanilla and have been waiting for years to compete where the game actually starts getting a bit more difficult - Velious.

But wait, Raid Guild A has a couple of very rich players. They buy 7 day Velious access for all of their Warriors and Clerics, as well as some Druids/Wizards and others. Raid Guild A then farms full sets of Kael and/or SS quest armor for themselves. Now their Warriors and Clerics have much better gear than Raid Guild B has been able to obtain. But that's not even the worst of it when you consider the keying situation in Velious. 90% of the raid content is in WW. To get there, you need to port to CS. But to be able to zone with the port, you need a key on your character, which is a ground spawn in CS - so you have to travel there before you can get ported there. The problem is that you need a key to get through SS into CS, which is a huge bottleneck when you're trying to get dozens of players through on day 1.

So, the real day 1 of Velious hits when everyone can zone in. Guild A is porting into CS while Guild B is waiting on the docks in Iceclad. By the time Guild B is running across Iceclad, Guild A is engaging on raid targets. The integrity of the day 1 raid competition is completely destroyed, because Guild A was able to take advantage of a 7 day headstart to bypass day 1 time sinks, bottlenecks, and gearing. This creates a snowball effect - now Guild A has quest gear, raid loot, ST keys, and all kinds of other advantages that will have an affect on the upcoming months of Velious raiding.

Yes, it is a problem and yes, it does affect people who aren't buying in.