Server History Lesson?

[JurisDictum]

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

This is a really interesting read. I started playing on p99 in November or December of 2014 but it wasn't until two years later I really started raiding. As such I've mostly just heard tales of how things used to be.

Can someone shed some light onto how it used to work in terms of rotation of VP etc? It seems today like there is nothing being rotated except for the 10th ring war. What would it take to re-introduce a rotation on VP and NToV stuff? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Basically Casuals were allowed to compete only with each other rather than against the hardcore raid guilds (but they couldn't raid except for on causal weeks). The problem was BDA was a borderline case because it was a massive guild with some raid history.

When left only to compete with casuals, BDA basically behaved exactly like TMO when facing casual guilds. Trains, petition quest, and poopsocking. Therefore it diminished any sympathy or respect for the guild until it left.

The rotation was never complete (always excluded the best stuff that we found at later, was being RMTed) and never allowed guilds to raid on their own time. The powers that be always thought it was really important to preserve "competition" -- because that's what EQ is all about (they literally said stuff like that).

But we all dealt with it. But I and many others really got disenchanted with this server once they screwed up the raiding. Back in the Golden Era, when we were taking down Rampage and breaking into NToV, everything was a kill-race. Not merely an FTE race.

Everyone had to be logged in as the Dragon was being pulled to camp and kill the dragon. Something went wrong with the pull? Drop it, the other guild gets a chance. Raid wipe? The other guild gets it.

So for guild in general, it was way more involved and fun. But the guild leadership (of both top raid guilds) was basically engaging the staff like a bunch of D.C. lobbyists to get the raid rules changed to something they thought would be an advantage to them . We eventually ended up with the crap rules we have today that hardly anyone likes. Those were a product of a few people scheming for pixiles.

Something that's hard to see now, is that we thought we were on our way to dominate the Server as 1 guild. After Rampage quit it looked possible. Over time I've come to accept that the "competition" is never going to end. It's a limbo not a competition. You can't kill all 20+ targets in the game without another raid force getting some.

[Mytral]

Thanks for everyone's input thus far. I understand each post is from a certain perspective and each individual has their unique view, but when taken with a grain of salt, this thread really paints quite the picture. One that I somewhat understood, but never fully appreciated until now.

I hope Pantheon creators read this and learn from some of these lessons.

Cheers!

[Phenyo]

Swish ranting about BDA? Some things never change

[fan D]

tldr

everyone from ever era loves vonhammer <3

[azeth]

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

tldr

everyone from ever era loves vonhammer <3

vonhammer was universally loved, true.

[Pescador]

Ahhhh man this thread has some nice history in it. I joined TMO in classic before they had even killed forgot,, andayed through Kunark, and ended up quitting before epics were released. I think I spent some absurd number of hours at pained soul and never got the medallion piece and finally decided to just MQ my trak tooth to a guildie and move on. This was before people ever really MQed that piece since everyone was still trying to get their main VP keyed.

Anyways, when I quit TMO pretty much had a monopoly on everything, and I think that was another factor that caused me to quit. Its just not as much fun when every major target is batphone and is almost a guaranteed kill. I remember I would sometimes log in within 5-10 mins of a batphone and still miss out on a trak kill even though I was camped fully buffed at ledge. That's how efficient and numerous we were. It blows my mind that they were able to keep that up for another two years!

Nothing but props to zeelot and the rest of the officer core who literally spent years building up the guild from scratch. I remember when we teamed up and eventually merged with DA and got our first Trak while TR watched that everyone kind of knew we were on the verge of something big. Then after the merge we followed it up with a streak of Gore + Trak + VS after a repop and suddenly we had all the momentum and never really let up. I know TMO gets a lot of flak, but there's something to be said for what they achieved. I'm glad I left before everything imploded but I'm.happy to hear they kept up their success for such a long time.

I just started playing again a few months ago and it's kind of sad to see that almost all of the familiar names are long gone.

[Baler]

my only post on this this...
P99 should be a documentary video.

[azeth]

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

my only post on this this...
P99 should be a documentary video.

Its really an insane story and journey, if you actually were able to get candid posts/info from the real conspirators.

[Brut]

Only thing to really take from the history is that limited content, long respawns, too top-heavy playerbase and stagnated content = bad times.

You can point fingers at BDA or IB or TMO or whatever A/A for ruining this and that, but ultimately these things always lead to people poopsocking dragon spawn points/zerging. Someone will do it at some point, since they want the loots just a little bit more, these and those are greedy and don't deserve it as much as we do, so they take that extra step further to be more likely to get it, then the rest follow suit, until everyone's sitting on the spawn point poopsocking it. Casual rotations were great since they proved it. People get along being nice for a while, but eventually it happens.

If you want to solve the problems and everyone to get to slay dragons without socking it or merging into 100+ player batphone zerg forces, it's either gotta be a GM enforced massive server-wide rotation that means ridiculous half-year waiting lists, or some semi-instanced weekly repop stuff.

[skarlorn]

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

If you want to solve the problems and everyone to get to slay dragons without socking it or merging into 100+ player batphone zerg forces, it's either gotta be a GM enforced massive server-wide rotation that means ridiculous half-year waiting lists, or some semi-instanced weekly repop stuff.

Here's another solution. GM enforced dissolution of all raid guilds. If you want to raid, you have to join the new server raid guild <The People's Dragon Raiders>. There's no ability to rotate becaues it's always one guild getting all the dragons. You can raid as much or as little as you like but never will you be denied by basement lurkers.

Instead of using DKP to award members the chance to get loot, a system similar to DKP is implemented, but it's very different because of one fact: Mobs no longer drop loot.

Nilbog will implement a custom code that gives you an item every time you get a raid kill. It's called Big Boy Buck (BBB) and operates like a point of DKP.

As I said, you don't bid your BBBs to the officer core... because that Trak you just killed? No loot. That's right, he didn't drop anything. Instead, you have to go to a new Quest Mob that Haynar will implement. There's one in every major city. Her name is "Mommy" and she will crow about how proud of you she is. Mommy has quest text dialogue so that you can trigger various rewards with your BBBs and all you have to do is go to the right Mommy who awards the items you want and then turn in your BBB after queuing appropriate quest text.

Furthermore, Rogean will implement a system where every time you earn a big boy buck (kill a raid target with the People's Dragon Raid Guild), a /ran 1000 is rolled. If you roll 990 to 1000 you also get a piece of loot that would normally be on that target's loot box. This will keep the hardcores addicted while still allowing for casual comrades to progress and get the items they truly desire (like getting a telephone in north korea).

I now realize I have just described the LFR system implemented by Blizzard in Cataclysm.