Nice to Meet You! :-)

[Medris]

Hi Everyone!

Now that Menden has shared the news about my taking over the Lead GM spot, I felt like it would be a good time to introduce myself. I’m sure many of you may remember me, but there are a lot more of you that I haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet. For the past year or so, I’ve been more active in a back-of-house role, helping with Guide program administration, staff hiring, policy documentation, and other aspects of leading the CSR team.

My P99 journey started back in 2017. I learned about the server and was intrigued by the opportunity to relive the classic EQ experience. About a year after starting to play, I applied to the P99 Guide program, hoping to relive the other part of what made Everquest so special for me; I was a Guide on EQ Live back in the day, and I have to admit that I may have enjoyed Guiding even more than playing. It took a little while to get a response, but in April 2019, GM Llandris eventually reached out, asked if I was interested in doing an interview, and - long story short - I’ve been a member of the P99 staff ever since.

Over my years on staff, I’ve had a lot of great experiences. I’ve had an amazing time working alongside some of the most passionate players around, who ultimately decided that they wanted to give back to the community by volunteering their time in a new way. I’ve had a chance to work with and get to know both GM’s Menden and Galach better, who became some of my closest confidants. And, I’ve had an opportunity to get to know many of you - a group of amazingly passionate players, who love the game as much as I do (and more). And, it's all of you who make the P99 community one of the best around.

Now that I’ve shared a little about myself, I’d like to share a bit about my style, my beliefs, and some of my priorities regarding P99:

• Transparency: I tend to be a pretty transparent person. While this doesn’t mean everyone is privy to every piece of information, I do believe in providing direct & transparent feedback on things. I also hope that people will give me and my team direct feedback - it’s the only way we’re going to get better.
• Respect: I believe that our player base deserves respect, both from each other as well as from our staff. Just because someone made a mistake or broke a rule doesn’t mean that they deserve to be spoken to in a disrespectful manner. Similarly, the P99 staff also deserve that same respect in return. As I mentioned, they are a group of passionate individuals who volunteer their time to give-back, and ultimately try to make the server a better place. You will not always agree with the staff. The staff also won’t be right 100% of the time - myself included. It’s ok to get frustrated with a decision we make. But it’s never ok to disrespect or abuse my team.
• Team Organization: I’m a strong believer that if everyone has shared responsibility for everything, that really translates to nobody has responsibility for anything. As such, I hope to introduce some clearer role definition and responsibilities for our staff members in the near future.
• Special Events: CSR activities are - and will continue to be - the primary role of the P99 Guide Program. That being said, I also have a goal to drive more staff-supported dynamic event content. Whether a large-scale seasonal quest, or a smaller event to break up the monotony of sitting watching auctions in the EC tunnel, I believe that these types of events are fun for all involved - both staff members and players alike.
• Raiding: I am a believer that the P99 staff are overly involved in the raid scene, and have been for a long while. I believe one of the drivers for that hyper-involvement is the overly-complicated ruleset, which creates a lot of the lawyer-questing many of you deal with today. This isn’t to say that there may not have been reasons for some of those policies to be implemented in the past (extreme min-maxing, loopholes, etc), but I dream of the day that our raid policies are simpler, and new players don’t feel like they need an elf-law degree to participate in raids here. Does this mean that all raid rules are wiped out, effective immediately? No, nor is it in my sole discretion to do so. But - I do pledge that this is an area that we will be looking at closely.

Overall, I have high hopes for the future of P99 servers. I strongly believe that our server has unparalleled quality when it comes to recreating the classic EQ experience we all know and love, that our staff is incredibly passionate about that mission, and that our community is one of the best around. I’m looking forward to continuing to get to know many of you as we make the server a better place together.

I’ll see you all in Norrath,
GM Medris

[spoil]

It sounds like we're in good hands. Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the dedicated staff are doing to keep the fun times going for us nerds.

[WarpathEQ]

Congrats Medris!

Thank you for the transparency and outlining your goals as the dude! Especially looking forward to the adjustments to raiding and getting back to a place where the game is played in Norrath and not in discord!

#NukeTheToxicUNDiscord
#DiscordIsNotClassic

[shovelquest]

Hello Medris! Thanks for all the work. Enjoy the view from your new office!

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[Moll]

Nice to meet ya!

[Rygar]

Medris, I beg of you: Bring back real death!

As you may remember from your days of guiding on live this was never a thing, there was never even a command for a guide to summon your corpse to EC after rotting. Let all who enjoy this game remember the fear of losing your hard earned gear. You simply dont see this today where everything is "easy mode".

While we're at it: item reimbursements are out of control. This should be for scammer reimbursement or confirmed bugged quest only. If you trade to an npc, mess up a quest hand in, or drop/destroy an item let it be gone forever. This is undue GM burden that will burn you out, free yourself. Let Norrath once again feel as we once did long ago on live...


Edit: oh yeah, no more transferring items to other characters from raid kills, even if you are on the kill log. Let's be honest: that is just ridiculous and can easily be exploited

[Scroll]

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

Medris, I beg of you: Bring back real death!

As you may remember from your days of guiding on live this was never a thing, there was never even a command for a guide to summon your corpse to EC after rotting. Let all who enjoy this game remember the fear of losing your hard earned gear. You simply dont see this today where everything is "easy mode".

While we're at it: item reimbursements are out of control. This should be for scammer reimbursement or confirmed bugged quest only. If you trade to an npc, mess up a quest hand in, or drop/destroy an item let it be gone forever. This is undue GM burden that will burn you out, free yourself. Let Norrath once again feel as we once did long ago on live...


Edit: oh yeah, no more transferring items to other characters from raid kills, even if you are on the kill log. Let's be honest: that is just ridiculous and can easily be exploited

You must be a blast at parties.

[tonyadams]

You mentioned wanting to simplify raid policies. Can you elaborate on specific changes you envision, and how you plan to balance player fairness with a more relaxed environment?

Incredibox Colorbox Mustard

[Rygar]

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

You must be a blast at parties.

I'm literally advocating for the purpose of this project. Everything I describe was how everquest was from 1999-2001 whilst paying $9.89/month + retail copies of game/expansion.

[Medris]

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

You mentioned wanting to simplify raid policies. Can you elaborate on specific changes you envision, and how you plan to balance player fairness with a more relaxed environment?

Incredibox Colorbox Mustard

Tough question :-) the simple answer is that I don’t know yet.

I know the outcomes I want to achieve - a simpler experience for our players, which should also translate into more straight forward petition rulings for our staff (which, I also think will reduce the turnaround time on raid issues significantly).

I’ve been a GM on the server for a while. If I knew the perfect silver bullet to get there, I would have worked to implement it already. What I’m going to push for is to seek out some ideas with these goals in mind and try some things out.

Are we going to get it right on the first try? Very unlikely. But as long as we’re trying things and learning together, we can only get better.