New P99 = instanced?
 

Aren't all the new raiding rules basically moving towards an instancing scheme? With the guild tiers, server repops, additional repops, it basically results in handing out loot to any guild that wants to make an attempt, even though there are more capable guilds that are being prevented from going after those same mobs.

So that's reserving mobs for a specific group, while disallowing others a shot at those same mobs. Sounds a hellova lot like instancing to me. And I thought being non-instanced was a fundamental part of what made EQ so much fun back in the day, the open shared-world nature of the game. Otherwise how does it really differ much from WoW?

Are people really happy with this new scheme? Sure I see some good numbers online, but could it be the impending release of Velious giving the population a boost? Do people have the same feeling of accomplishment when taking down a boss, knowing that they didn't really earn it the hard way, because it was handed to them?

I wonder how Velious is going to play with this new instancing.

I think the new raiding rules are amusing at the least.

I'm really just pumping your post cause I want you to sent me a tell on whatever toon you are leveling so we can be secret lovers again... PST.

pump

Interesting troll.

If you ever played on live in the 20th century you'd remember Player Nice Policy was more or less respected. The high raid targets were contested, killed on spawn and that is what is happening even with the "new rules". The soft (older) raid targets were "most of the time" left to a organised cycle for lower tier guilds.
GM even monitored some recurring incident and tried to keep the PNP respected.

You can argue that on some servers, at some period in time there were high end guild cleaning every possible loot boss to block others progression but it was never the case on all servers or for a very long period of time. The way TM0 "ruled" on P99 is actually linked to the way this server is designed and of its very particular population and is far not representative of how EQ was back in the days.

If you let me go deeper on the two aspects :
1- Project 99 is a non progressive server. That means no raid content ever becomes "old". After a handful of years or farming the same content over and over it became obvious that different rules than "FFA" should be applied in order to actually give things to do to the player base.
Since you ask about Velious, the introduction of new content will obviously make the old one, if not obsolete, at least less wanted. So even without rules you could expect Vulak guilds to be less keen to crush Trakanon on spawn.

2- The original population of P99 was mostly made of nostalgic old raiders disappointed of low-playtime-friendly modern mmos. So it happened on this server exactly what would have happened on old EQ if you threw the 10% most hardcore raging jerks of every top tier guilds on one server. And that situation, after a few years, obviously needed to be controlled.


Now about the use of the word "instanced". You are VERY wrong.
The first reason is that it is not, instanced. You can put whatever rules you want, keep a rotation on raid targets and respawn some low spawn mobs, the game is still not instanced. The world server is still one and no parallel instance of the universe is allowed to exist.
That's not just a roleplay matter. The game is not just Trakanon or Nagafen. The zones, the dungeons, the xp areas, everything is open. And you still need to ask for a CC if you want to go to Guk, you still can ask for a rez to the Disco group if you wiped, you still can meet your group at Shrooms at peak hours without having to invis because the place is crowded. THIS, not the rules, make the game different.

The rules merely forces people to be mildly nice. To be very honest, I would consider a friend and respect anyone who is crazy enough to actually play such a unforgiving, slow and ugly game. We'r a family, play nice.

I'd rate the accomplishment of killing 15 year old content on an emulated server somewhere in between putting my shirt on correctly and wiping my own ass.

lol

Interesting; you can't solo those 2 activities?

Lol, interesting troll? OP is totally right :P

Innocent is mad and very threatened in this thread its pretty hilarious /popcorn.

Short answer is that people cried alot about wanting raids and loot since the expansion timeline is much longer here than live (which leads to alot more 50+ players), so they changed the rules in unclassic ways and started GM enforcing things like raids. Sorry it happened but it's that way now because people couldn't play nice (or beat TMO).