Quote:
Originally Posted by Byrjun
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I'm guessing you haven't actually read the multiple threads about this, because the affect this has on the server has been talked about to death. To recap:
Let's discuss a situation where there's Raid Guild A and Raid Guild B. Both of these guilds are full of players who play p99 for the competitive raiding scene. These guilds have been splitting the limited content of Kunark + Vanilla and have been waiting for years to compete where the game actually starts getting a bit more difficult - Velious.
But wait, Raid Guild A has a couple of very rich players. They buy 7 day Velious access for all of their Warriors and Clerics, as well as some Druids/Wizards and others. Raid Guild A then farms full sets of Kael and/or SS quest armor for themselves. Now their Warriors and Clerics have much better gear than Raid Guild B has been able to obtain. But that's not even the worst of it when you consider the keying situation in Velious. 90% of the raid content is in WW. To get there, you need to port to CS. But to be able to zone with the port, you need a key on your character, which is a ground spawn in CS - so you have to travel there before you can get ported there. The problem is that you need a key to get through SS into CS, which is a huge bottleneck when you're trying to get dozens of players through on day 1.
So, the real day 1 of Velious hits when everyone can zone in. Guild A is porting into CS while Guild B is waiting on the docks in Iceclad. By the time Guild B is running across Iceclad, Guild A is engaging on raid targets. The integrity of the day 1 raid competition is completely destroyed, because Guild A was able to take advantage of a 7 day headstart to bypass day 1 time sinks, bottlenecks, and gearing. This creates a snowball effect - now Guild A has quest gear, raid loot, ST keys, and all kinds of other advantages that will have an affect on the upcoming months of Velious raiding.
Yes, it is a problem and yes, it does affect people who aren't buying in.
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Glad to see someone take the time to type this out.
I'm still boggled that so few people seem to care about how ridiculous it is, that real-life money will get people such an advantage in that first week of Velious. I also have been surprised so many people don't seem to understand the magic of 'being there for release of an MMO expansion' and that it's being taken away from us unless we fork out $500.