Raid scene question
 

I've only been playing here on blue a (relatively) short while. I played on Red off and on from launch though, and I've followed the blue server from before that time. Having never raided and been a part of the scene though... how, why is there so much drama? It seems to take up all the GMs time, patience, and energy and just leads to GM/guide turnover and corruption. Obviously on Red things sorted themselves out naturally, but has there really been no good solution here?

I played on Stormhammer during PoP on live. That was the premium subscription, "legends" server. On SH, in order to kill any raid boss, your guild had to actually be a member of a rotation that was actually run (and enforced) by the server's dedicated GM staff. Each rotation window lasted a week where the guild had access to that spawn all week. And in order to be on rotation you had wait your turn and be on an eligible tier. Tiers were basically access to all raid targets of a similar stature/difficulty. Like Dain, Tormax, and Yelinak. So higher tiers meant access more rotations each week along with higher end stuff. And also IIRC, Vex Thal, Fear, etc raid zones were all zone-wide rotations. Guilds also occasionally lost a tier when they couldn't complete their weekly rotations.

Probably not something that the staff (or anyone) is really interested in. But I don't remember much drama regarding the actual raids. Just thought this was an interesting contrast between the two EQ environments where the raid scene was both dominant and of limited availability.

I got flame suit on, I'm ready.

The short version is that the server is extremely top end and extremely overcrowded and there is a very small number of raid targets.

Imagine playing musical chairs with lets say 1,000 people, and there are like 22 chairs

Imagine playing musical chairs with 22 people and 22 chairs. Your point is the balance is off but it’s not as drastic as you’re claiming.

It's more like playing musical chairs with 1,000 people, and there are 200 chairs ... but 22 fat-asses insist that because they can play a mindless game like musical chairs "better" than everyone else, they deserve to sit in those 200 chairs and no one else does.

But don't give up hope OP. First off, there's multiple levels of raiding, and the lower levels are absolutely still accessible to everyone. The highest levels (eg. Sleeper's/VP) will never be, but that's how EQ has always been.

The messy/terrible part of the raid scene is the middle part, and that part has consistently gotten better on this server. It used to be almost completely monopolized by a single zerg guild (let's say 150 people), and now it's monopolized by a single zerg guild and a few actual competitors (maybe 400 people). That may sound like damning with false praise, but it's not: the server does get better over time.

As for rotations, yes they are a classic solution to this problem (they were even used on some servers during the "classic era" of 1999-2001). But Rogean seems pretty strongly opposed to them (unless the players organize them, as we have done very successfully for years in Sky).

I still hold on to hope that he'll change his mind, but whether he embraces them or some other solution, I take solace in the server's history. The staff (slowly but surely) keeps making things better: again, consistently over the server's history more and more people have gotten the chance to raid. So who knows, in a year or two from now maybe they'll change things to open up the last missing piece of classic EverQuest (non-top-tier-raiding) to all 600, 800, or however many people we have who are actually capable of and interested in slaying dragons!

LOL... spot on!