[jwargod]

Originally Posted by kaev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

EQ is the big tent that RL political parties pretend to aspire to but actually loathe and fear. Here people with wildly divergent attitudes co-exist uncomfortably in community. Sure, there are guilds that try to create a certain uniformity within their ranks, but in EQ they are just another aberration within the community, they never define the community.

That's why Rogean's ugly, horrible, loathsome, & unclassic tiered raiding system was and is a stroke of genius. It broke the "our way or the highway" hegemony of the single dominant raiding guild that threatened the chaos & conflict that are the lifeblood of the p99 community, and it did so in a way that fostered the return of the conflict TMO had smothered with their success. Likewise, the class R rotation was bound to be a temporary thing. It surprised me that the rotation lasted as long as it did, because it was an attempt to resist the rebirth of the healthy chaos and conflict that make EQ's native social environment fun.

You can see this illustrated also on our inadequately populated companion server. The fatal flaw of Red99 is not the cancerous little wannabes with their fungi twinks haunting lowbie hunting grounds. It's not the huge non-classic XP bonuses. It's the domination of the raid game by a single entity, which is as toxic to their community as it was to blue. With no interesting conflict between groups the server is like a diorama, lifeless and pointless no matter how cleverly organized.

Neat little thing I found in another active thread.