One thing I've learned from Velious release: Nobody gives a shit
 

Four years of Kunark killed Red99. Not even Velious could bring it back. Maybe they'll get teams right after Empire gets through beta testing Velious.

cringing..

unemployment line

Wot? Op Obv. a mad person who isn't in <Empire>.

Haven't played in two years so I give less of a shit than most. But if they were hoping that Velious would bring the server back, you have your answer. I still think teams is troll and I doubt they do a cyclical server, even though they talked about it after I posted the idea. If I'm wrong and they're really going to do more servers (or another server ... I'd play on a new blue server) then I hope Empire and whatever blue guilds do a great job of beta testing Velious. Ain't mad at Empire ... Gongshow's stream was great.

But for dumb shits who make posts like yours, the line forms to the left.

http://i.imgur.com/UVTm8sD.jpg

The jist I get is that most of the top tier guilds competition has a history of being bad at politicking and diplomacy.

How many guilds find themselves on the wrong side of the big dogs and unable to enjoy content? All of them, and some for different reasons than others.

I am not sure what hand the latest crop of players can play when they recruited most of Empire's blacklist, etc.

Just saying OP's outlook seems based on the above consistent mistake made over and over again.

Then you know the state of the server isn't Gongshow's fault. I have never seen him unreceptive to making decisions that would improve the health of the server.

He's the best leader the emulator projects have ever had, possibly even better than Rexx (memory is a bit hazy on the Heresy days).

Not sure which mistake you're referencing, but I can respond to other bits of your post.

Factors which played into the stagnation of Red99:

1. Holocaust ban

This sent a message to the player base that Rogean was not ok with high end competition that might interfere with the top guild's ability to sit atop the server unchallenged for two years while running an RMT ring that Rogean et al were perfectly aware of.

Who wants to compete after Rogean sent that message?

2. Four years of Kunark

Not complaining ... it is what it is. I contributed jack shit to the thousands of hours of development it took to get to this point. When I posted on Reddit that Daybreak Games should hire the P99 staff, pay them for their invested development and run commercial, live P99 servers, I was actually being sincere. Yes, I was also taking the opportunity to troll the P99 staff for allowing Nizzar to run an RMT ring for two years, but my sentiment was nonetheless sincere.

Look at how the new TLP servers have turned out, with level 25 mages killing dragons. When Daybreak acquired EQ, they layed off most of the development staff. They simply can't afford to duplicate what P99 has done. It seems like an obvious solution to me ... let the P99 staff get paid for their work, sign a contract that allows them to continue running their free servers and put a P99 server on the live log in list.

I don't know if you've seen the subscription numbers for the current TLP servers, but I would expect a live P99 server to draw 5-10k subs for the first few months, which would make Daybreak potentially $75,000 plus a month for anywhere from six months to five years.

3. The Crowfall conundrum

Not sure if you're following the development of Crowfall but I posted a thread in main server chat talking about how they solved the fundamental flaw of MMORPG's: the flaw of permanence. If you watch the intro video for Crowfall, they talk about how MMO's are like a game of Risk that lasts years. It becomes clear over time that one person is the winner. If there's no mechanic for the game to reset, then it stagnates. It eventually becomes fun only for that one person (representing the dominant guild in an MMO), and then eventually isn't fun for that person/guild when the rest of the audience leaves.

So what I proposed was a cyclical P99 server where you do three months of classic/kunark/velious then wipe it and start over. Rogean seemed to like the idea as he discussed it in a Sirken stream, proposing further that they could copy the characters onto the live server at the end of the cycle and prior to the wipe, so that you never actually lose your characters.

On a server like that, with a fully developed and tested velious at the end of it, the end game guild politics would be completely different.

lol, noone would play that shit

What? Crowfall, that funded at $1.7 million after Brad McQuaid couldn't raise 800k? Or a cyclical P99 server that Rogean already discussed on a Sirken stream?