Rotations =/= handouts

[Splorf22]

One of the obnoxious fooleries that seems to be emanating from some of the more enervated members of TMO (and quite a few members of FE) is 'you guys just want handouts'. Usually this is rapidly followed by 'might as well give everyone epics and trakanon bps in ec' or other strawmen.

This may not be obvious to the members of certain zerg guilds, but there is a substantial difference between getting an item and fighting a dragon, and it involves the dragon. Now, I am not criticizing the zerg guilds for zerging. Variance makes this necessary: you have to have warm bodies to track, you have to have warm bodies to log in at 4AM, and if you do all that work you damn sure don't want to wipe, so you have a few extra warm bodies to give you a decent margin for error. So if you can log in 30 people at 4AM, you get 50 at 6PM. Thus was born the zerg.

The pernicious aspect of zerging, though, is that you begin to see the mobs as loot pinatas that you whack for free goodies. There is no challenge or strategy, all that matters is who can log in the fastest. I remember Dolic saying he enjoyed the challenge of forming groups quickly. Please forgive me if I am not impressed at your group forming skill - not that you need it when you have 50 players anyway. The game becomes all about the pixels and the competition from the other people who are there to whack the loot pinata, and not about the camaraderie or the thrill of the chase. The actual fight is no challenge.

TL;DR: If you choose to roll with 50 players so you can relax and smoke a joint, I have no problems. Just realize that that is your choice, and some of us find the content moderately challenging.

[Ravager]

Dey terk er merbs!

[citizen1080]

Spawn more overlords

[goshozal]

If you choose to roll with 15 players so the 3-year-old content is still moderately challenging, I have no problems. Just realize that that is your choice, and some of us find the race to engage to be the only remaining challenge.

[Yinikren]

Race was run imo, no fun when you are only racing yourself.

[Autotune]

anything that isn't seen as direct head to head competition = hand outs. That is the mind set.

[Ele]

Like you said, I think part of this whole issue stems from people skipping over the idea that PvE still means that the players have to compete with the NPCs within the environment. However, most guilds are readily able to compete with the Classic/Kunark NPCs within the environment, so people have to impose other constructs of "competition" such as imposing time barriers (partially due to variance, but which nonetheless escalates to leap frogging, tracking, batphoning, etc), PvP (ala red), KS groups (within a FFA, xp=loot system), or simply training the other guild. That isn't to discount that EQ is a persistent world with a limited number of resources each week, which is a reality that must be dealt with in some manner. I sometimes like to think that P99 is some elaborate thought experiment run by a university or .gov to see how people interact with each other and build a society.

Another part of this issue is the mindset of "I had to go through it, so everyone else has to suffer the same as me". This sudden shift in the server raid scene causes people to question their choices, and people don't like being wrong. As an example: if a first group of people has about 500 collective tracking hours in a single week to get a majority of the targets, the first group of people are going to be understandably upset if a new group of people come into the raid scene the next week and the second group does not have to exercise that same barrier to entry that the first group of people did. However, the first group of people must acknowledge that they never had to go to such extremes, but made a choice to do so.

[happyhappy]

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

If you choose to roll with 15 players so the 3-year-old content is still moderately challenging, I have no problems. Just realize that that is your choice, and some of us find the race to engage to be the only remaining challenge.

Other side of the coin, it's your choice to play a subgame you made up instead of the actual game.

[Splorf22]

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

If you choose to roll with 15 players so the 3-year-old content is still moderately challenging, I have no problems. Just realize that that is your choice, and some of us find the race to engage to be the only remaining challenge.

In the end though, this is a meta-sub-game that you made up. Saying that people that are playing real EQ are getting handouts is just silly. That is my point.

[Ella`Ella]

Raiding has almost nothing to do with pixels for most of us. It really comes down to, "did we get the FTE and will we win the lawyering..."