Drelzna was locked down on some servers be certain guilds/groups of people to extort as much cash from anyone who wanted to get boots. There were also guilds that would hold the frenzy for weeks.

I'm talking specifically about vanilla through Velious here. Again, I've seen the GM guidebook from that period, and the PNP in it was pretty clear about this stuff (way stronger than the P99 policies).

Well, it happened. Drelzna, the frenzy, and eventually the evil eye all got this sort of thing happening where guilds would lock them down and only switch in other guildies.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, but we're talking 20 year old memories of a 2 year period here. It's extremely easy (and extremely common here) for people to misremember stuff from Luclin on as coming from the classic era. Given that I've seen lots of posts from that time, and again, nothing whatsoever about camp lockdowns in that period, plus that directly contradicts the GM guidebook from that period, I'm ... suspicious of your (and anyone's) memories.

So again like everything else here we should base our opinions on evidence, and for that we all really should be asking Rygar what he's seen.

Why wouldn't a guild, with the members to do so, not lock down the EE? You can easily rotate people in that don't currently have a manastone so your claimed rules would not be relevant. On fenin for the first year or so DPS trumped all -- everywhere. You could easilly have mobs stole from you if someone else wanted, if you wanted to risk getting blacklisted however, which happened to many-an-asshole back in the day.

Your logic is that of a P99 player, not like a live player in '99-'01. I'm sorry, but if you want to convince me that the GMs ignored their own manual in the classic era it will take evidence. Go bribe Rygar ;)

Hrm. I'm not so sure guilds are going to want to go around bragging about permacamping vital end game items like the manastone once was. And people who bitch about it risk getting blacklisted. But absence of proof is not proof of absence. Also it's interesting you mention p99 and the "logic" of it. The result of too many rats and not enough cheese. Same thing happened in original EQ, but even worse. You had 2 dragons and that was it. Kedge wasn't itemized. Capped level players slumming around CT for rubicite for their twinks because they had nothing better to do.

that was happening for a while with shralok packs.. nobody was allowed to even get on the list. it was "between friends" which meant "fuck you noob, who cares if they are lvl 20 mobs and im a 53."

The defining characteristic of GM-led rule enforcement in the original game was the wild inconsistency of it all. Rulings and interpretation of the "play nice policy" varied from one server to the next, from one guide/GM to the next, and in many cases a given GM/guide would rule differently for different players. Both the guides and to a lesser (but still significant) degree the GMs were notoriously corrupt and quite often favored some entities over others. The only example the originals set is an example of how not to run things.

Danth

Q
 

This is exactly why Blue sucks and Red is not so bad. Artificial rules about handing off camps to others and what not. Bottlenecks on key loots for MQs. Just let the players fight it out.