Let's say that the server reboot takes 30 minutes. Taken/Divinity/BDA all send out batphones because 1x/week batphone really isn't so bad :D With 30 minutes people can clean up their RL activities and be ready.

TMO logs in with 70 people (hello new recruiting spree!) and splits their forces Maestro/Inny 20] and VS [15] and Cazic Thule/Draco [35] which are all easy kills and drop nice epic pieces while sending Zeelot to train anyone who dares to enter VP.

Meanwhile VD has logged out their mains at the ledge; they log on and leisurely kill Trakanon. BDA gets Talendor and Taken/Divinity grab Sev.

TMO splits again and port/gates back to DL for Gorenaire, which they get 5 minutes before the other guilds can finish buffing, while logging in precamped alts to get Fay. VD logs on the alt squad to get Vox, TMO logs on the (other) alt squad to get Nagafen (it's funny to me how that level restriction actually makes it harder for casual guilds to kill these dragons on P1999).

Zeelot is still vigorously guarding VP, and TMO now goes to kill those 6 dragons. Everyone else wipes out the epic mobs and goes home.

I think that's pretty reasonable, and by that count, TMO: 14, VD: 2, BDA: 1, Taken/Divinity: 1. In comparison, with the current system it's more like TMO: 17, VD: 1, everyone else, 0. And if Rogean decided to extend no training rules to VP, that count would equalize even more - probably TMO would still go for the Hate/Fear/KC split, which means VD would get Phara Dar and maybe another VP dragon or two. Plus, who knows, maybe Divinity decides to break the script and camp out for Venril . . . .

Anyway I'm just rambling here, but my point is this looks a lot more interesting and equitable than the current system to me.

TMO is already dominating now, but with a fixed server repop, at least there's more chance of smaller guilds raiding the mobs before TMO can get there.

Lets say all spawns are up at the same time, and since its a fixed date/timing, the smaller guilds and their allies are already ready and waiting for the server to come up. Even if TMO has the manpower to simultaneously take down 5 or 6 raid mobs at the same time, there's still more than 10+ raid mobs that can be claimed by the smaller guilds when server restarts. And this chance is already better than what it is currently.

As long as there's a server restart which will respawn all raid mobs at exactly the same time, and with the dates and timings known, smaller guilds can plan ahead, form alliances, gather and logout at the zones and wait for the server to come up and claim the spawns. No single guild will be able to raid 10 raid spawns at once. This gives every other guild a chance to get the ones that TMO isnt targetting right at the server up.

The above situation is way better than the current one we have in P99 right now. Anyone can see that.

TMO didn't always dominate. IB didn't always dominate. DA didn't always dominate.

Choices 1 & 2 are the easy route, if you just want loot.

Choice 3: Get a bunch of friends together that want to compete, that will track, that will batphone, that will organize a raid in minutes or accept failing until you do. Realize a strategy, execute it, and win. It doesn't happen overnight.

There basically is a vacuum right now. TMO is taking advantage of it by farming everything. But as with all vacuums there's an opportunity present for someone new...

I think you guys are underestimating the changes.

- TMO will buy more chars so they can camp stuff out
- Lots of people who have given up on the raid scene will come back and
- Be zerg recruited by the top guilds so they could go for multiple targets at once.

But anyway, the point is things would get interesting.

your entire scenario is off, pretty far off.

TMO wouldn't go for CT off the bat unless they absolutely had to. He is the hardest mob to get to and take down quickly.

Zeelot would be defending VP against who!? himself?

The order TMO would go after raid targets would be more like this.

VS > Inny&Maestro/Fay/Trakanon > CT(draco)/Sev

Everything else wouldn't be that high priority to TMO. They'd probably also manage to kill Gore last after doing vox/naggy with alts.

If you think TMO can't split forces and adjust depending on where guilds mobilize, you're fooling yourself. They will check trackers to see who/what/howmany are in each zone going for what target. This isn't their first rodeo and they have the numbers to split and take down targets like that. They've done it before.

VS will die within seconds of the server coming up, tracker will already know where you guys are moving, after seeing who all and how many they have on, TMO will then split forces and kill Trak, Fay, and inny/maestro at once if they can, or if they have to, contest/compete against a guild going for a target they want.

Also, no way VD gets a force (or anyone for that matter) to ledge and camped prior to a reset without TMO knowing. leisurely kill trakanon? don't make me laugh. That shit will be on lock to keep others out of VP now.

However, if they other guilds were to work together (by deciding who is going to what targets on a reset) they could force TMO to either pick and choose or greatly thin their forces over a wide spread of targets.

Because I don't want to spend 80 hours a week getting my pixels? I just don't care that much. This isn't rocket science dude.

And because I know you'll then reply with something along the lines of "if you don't want it, stop whining" let me preemptively reply to your reply with "Why is the server setup so that way?"

I'm down with repops, strategizing for next kill targets and splitting forces is fun as hell...
Also, zeelot wouldn't need to hang in vp....no one else can kill things there those dragons are safe

Well in my scenario Zeelot is defending against your hated enemy VD, who absolutely has enough keyed members to take down Phara Dar.

Anyway, my point is that I think if the reboot time was known in advance, after a few rounds the smaller guilds would be taking something like 4-6 targets every reboot.

Who is leading VD in VP? Most of VD's quality raiders have all left, I don't see it happening.

VD isn't just going to snag their 24 left over keyed members, walk into VP and leisurely pull Phara Dar lol. If you haven't heard, TMO made it a nightmare for VD to even walk around in VP, much less test pulling techniques and camp spots.

You are, by far, overestimating every part of your scenario.

FYI, i'm wordy, and fully expect reactions of TL;DR, but to the OP, hope this helps you in some way to understand more about the top end raid scene, and why it is how it currently is. Efforts are underway to help change this by my guild and others' guilds, but it takes a long time to get away from the poison that has been present for so long.

Welcome aboard, always nice to see a new face!

As you didn't post names, or what the situation was, its hard to determine which play nice policies you believe were breached. I know you did not post this information in an effort to keep this civil and not be a flame post, but it also hinders anyone's ability to determine what the situation was, and what you believe was against the play nice policies.

In an effort of full disclosure here, I am a member of TMO, we often get blamed for things. You gotta have a thick skin when you're one of, if not the top end guild. Its also why we must be vigilant in defending our name and why so many of us often post on threads like this. It is not a response to a feeling of guilt, it is simply a response. After all, as you pointed out, you're not naming names or the specific situation.

Sometimes one person (not everyone) in "guild A" complains in their Ventrilo or guild chat about their perception of an issue of what TMO did, which will of course mean that their whole guild now thinks TMO is doing something wrong. Its possible they are 100% correct, but more often, rose colored glasses are applied for what they believe was done wrong. I know this, because in the past it has happened to us, and the situation was reversed where we were the ones complaining about what was done.

If our guild is able to get to the target mob first (not trash around it), and engage it, we've been accused of things such as leapfrogging for instance. We have also accused others of the same act. Some of the top end guilds have thrown javelins at mobs when they only have one person in zone as a raid target is being engaged in an attempt to claim "First to Engage" when their raid forces have not been present. I have no doubt, we've also attempted this maneuver.

I'm not saying that it is right or wrong, just saying that this type of thing has and does happen in the top end raid scene.

Keep in mind though, that racing for a mob is just that, a race. If you or your guild engages first, good for you... our standard policy is to not touch a single mob at that point until whomever engaged first has either wiped or won the encounter. If that means we camp out to avoid adds beating on us, we do that. We are not in the habit of helping others prevent their own demise allowing them to win an encounter by cleaning up a mess they created for themselves. If they did not clear a path to the raid target before blindly rushing there to get FTE and trained themselves, we will likely stand and watch them die. This isn't because we dont like them, but if we as a guild are after a target, there is a reason we're after it, and thus helping another guild get it prevents us from doing so. Often after we kill the target, we help the other guild by rezing their folks along with our own. Its not animosity we hold toward them, it is our desire to make the kill.

As to your comment about GMs watching, this has been done many times in the past by Amelinda and others, in addition the upper end guilds have sent GMs petitions with their fraps and screenshots of the situations as well in an effort to show the situations encountered. The GMs are not there at every high end encounter, but they're there at many of them just invisible. Just because you cannot do a /who GM in the zone you're in, does not mean they are not there watching ;)

I dont read a lot of other forums about what is going on over here, because I believe they likely present a skewed view by people who have either never played here, or due to their own issues no longer play here. There has been a bit of an exodus lately due to lack of new content, along with people complaining about unfair treatment by GMs etc. While the new content issue is true, some is people being a bit shall we say "unhappy" with not getting their way. I point no fingers when i say this, it is just a simple fact of life, if people dont like something they often dont continue to do it.

GMs have asked time and time again, "where's your evidence" and we have had to become cyber sleuths evidence horders, and constantly frapsing everything in TMO and in the other top end guilds along with being a premier raiding guild. When the evidence is presented, its not always looked at immediately, there have been complaints by people about it taking too long to get answers, or rectify some "wrong doing". People have left over this type of thing, claiming GM favoritism of TMO or "guild X", but the GMs are volunteers and not paid for their time, yet people expect them to be beholden to "working" on the server 24/7/365.

We as a guild were even raid suspended for a week due to our "wrong doings" from a situation that had happened a month previous. We then presented our own evidence of the same situation, and a few days later the evidence we provided was reviewed, and our suspension was lifted. There was no apology of a mistake, and in fact we were told we "likely deserved it for something else anyway", and not to discuss that we were unsuspended until after it happened at midnight.

We followed what we were told by the GM, and surprised the heck out of another guild when we were killing mobs again at 12:01 AM. This resulted in claims of GM favoritism, secret handshakes, and that we had sacrificed a goat to the god Horace to get our suspension lifted. There's even a fraps out there, of someone saying in their guild chat that we were all of a sudden breaking the rules, but that "TMO gives 0 fuks" about following the rules. The simple fact was, it took time for the GM to review the evidence, but it was SOLID evidence.

As in all things, take everything you read on the internet with a grain of salt, and learn to read between the lines. Ask people here what they think about the raid scne before with several top guilds, and how it is now, and evaluate for yourself before taking what someone else says as gospel is my view.