[Kergan]

1. I disagree that a lot of people would stop playing if they lost their gear in a fresh start. People come back and start fresh from bans, this would be no different, with the exception that newer players would have a more level playing field, encouraging higher server population. Personally I think it is an argument that the older, better geared players use to fend off the threat to their gear pools.

Why would you base any argument on what people who get banned do? Regardless, there is a huge difference between fucking up and paying the price and having something earned legitimately taken away from you. That would be akin to saying people who get caught robbing a bank should feel the same about having that cash taken away as someone having a legitimately earned paycheck torn up in front of them.

2. Developing wealth on a blue server with no pvp competition is easier than doing so on red. By removing this ability to transfer wealth, it stops over night fungi twinks from griefing (it will also reduce the amount of one sided resourse trades that the guides have to investigate to rule out RMT). These hurt server population, both ungeared new players from blue and existing red players, they don't help server population.
The 'vocal minority' argument has no evidence to support that it is actually a minority, merely an opinion statement to try to add the appearance of legitimacy to a claim. In fact this section is all based on opinions stated as if they were facts backed by evidence. In my experience most players don't even come to the boards to post, you can look at the lack of diversity in posters to see this is true.

I disagree that it is more difficult to amass wealth on red. First off, it's not a 1 to 1 exchange rate. Secondly, there are approximately 20-25% of the people but the same exact world.

I don't see how blue to red trades hurts the population, you don't give any specifics why you think it does either aside from the admittedly true statement that guides/GMs have to investigate these one sided trades. But how does extra staff time translate into something hurting the population? The fact you now have a twinked out blue player looking to exp combined with the fact that he/she is highly incentivized to do so in a full group means a lot of legit newbs in rags are going to have a nice gravy train to ride. I've experienced it first hand leveling up my SK, when I'm essentially powerleveling some warrior who is asking for bronze drops to upgrade his rawhide. We both benefit and everyone is happy.

I also think there is plenty of evidence that new players are welcomed on red even if PVP isn't their focus, considering the two largest guilds that comprise the majority of players on the server 50+ state it pretty openly.

3. Open server as a progression style server for release of expansion material, using prenerf as GM event items merely gives a method for new players to come to the server and still obtain prenerfed items, post nerf. This will help ensure people that come on board later will actually have a chance to get a slice of the pie, without having to pay big money for an item and gives them the chance to get no drop prenerf as well.

For the 100th time in this thread ... really?

I think I misunderstood what you were saying. I took it as the prenerf period would cease to exist and those items would only be obtainable via GM events. I'm in 100% agreement about things like a guise or manastone being available via GM event after the prenerf clock has run out, and I'd even go it a step further and have some sort of hotzone type events where the prenerf version goes back in for a week or two randomly.

As for the 100th time comment, I didn't mean in this thread, I meant for the 100th time overall, just occurring in this thread if that makes sense. I just feel that topic has been beat into the ground at this point, people are either strongly in favor or strongly against. I happen to be strongly against it.

4. Give an incentive for people to join the guide program to increase their ranks. Say for every hour of time put in they receive a 'guide point' to be spent for gear, XP, faction work, etc, etc for their characters. This will offset the fact that they are spending their 'game time' policing the masses instead of xping/gearing their toons. Just because there is a lack of people to enforce the rules isn't an excuse to not try to find a new method for accomplishing the enforcement of those rules. The current method doesn't do the trick, arguing to continue down this road will do just the same ... nothing. I'd rather see the occasional 'innocent' get the shaft and the bulk of bad players get what they deserve. The ironfist method will provide a legitimate deterrent, the current method, obviously does not.

Like I said, in a perfect world we'd have plenty of people to enforce a great set of rules. I'm not arguing with what you want, I'm just saying it isn't realistic. Putting any sort of incentive on being on staff is going to attract the wrong kind of people. You want people there because they really love doing it and for no other reason.

And agree to disagree on the innocents getting punishment.