For the record, I don't have any doubts that the policy would "work" insofar as how stringently it can be enforced. I don't want to bore everyone by repeating myself, but again - the idea that this policy would go over well on P99 gives way too much credit to the P99 playerbase. If this policy worked on live, and I'm assuming it did to some degree, it was because things were different: it was a different time, with a demographically younger and more serious playerbase, and a faster timeline of events. It was an actual investment to play live EQ, and conversely the GMs were actually compensated. Guides were more readily available, and players were for the most part more interested in experiencing new content rather than locking down camps or zones. The fact that it was a brand new game with undiscovered content alone makes the comparison to our intrinsically flawed facsimile 15 years later completely incoherent. Any policy that existed then should at most be merely taken into consideration rather than transplanted and applied here in a literal sense.
I also take issue with the idea of implementing this policy on P99 because it's presented under the assumption that, because P99 seeks to recreate the classic EverQuest experience, we therefore
must take into consideration every facet and every minor detail that was etched into live. The P99 staff would be the first to tell you that this is not how they do things, nor is it how they planned on doing things. There are plenty of things from live, including certain aspects of policy enforcement, that they very consciously chose not to adopt for specific reasons. EverQuest live policy would forbid them from restoring decayed player corpses and reimbursing items. Character name enforcement on live, as demonstrated by a slew of parodical P99 threads, was so broad-brushed and loosely defined that our current CSR staff would have to dedicate most of their time to that alone. By recognizing the difference between swearing and swearing
at someone, they're more relaxed about public-channel vulgarity.
For obvious reasons, P99 is basically EQ For Adults. There's a certain pretense that one almost has to surrender to when deciding to go in on an emulated EverQuest server as an exercise in childhood nostalgia; something between masochism at worst, and a kind of jovial self-deprecating unseriousness at best. So many things that were enforced during '99 - '01, when a huge percentage of the playerbase consisted of kids and young adolescents, will seem outdated, outmoded, and glaringly anachronistic today. We want our nostalgia trip, and P99 is willing to give it to us, but we have to be able to make fun of ourselves to some extent in order to enjoy it. When people start taking Project 1999 too seriously, that's when the guy who decides to solo camp some god-forsaken mob for six hours at three o'clock in the morning gets harassed by some other guy quoting a newly instated rule that says the spawn must now be rotated lest he incur the wrath of the overworked volunteer staff. Just leave the guy alone. Let him have his camp, go find something else to do, and be thankful you aren't him.
I barely remember this rule on live, and I played obsessively from launch day in 1999 until the first day of Luclin. It definitely helped to maintain a respectful atmosphere in game, but it was hugely contingent upon GM arbitration - if a guide wasn't able to step into a dispute within minutes of a petition, nothing would get resolved, and things would escalate to kill-stealing and name-calling and training, just like they would here. Still, it was definitely a deterrent, I have no doubts about that - deterrence is the most crucial part of any law enforcement, and without it there'd be no reason for laws. No one wanted to get guides or GMs involved if it was avoidable, so players took steps to avoid getting into contentious situations - they'd make sure they're not hogging a camp for too long, they'd be more mindful and respectful of other players - they'd treat other players as if, you know, there's an actual person behind the keyboard. That doesn't happen without coercive credibility. If players realize that enforcement is practically nonexistent, they're not going to take the rule seriously or even think about changing their behavior, and that new rule will become exploitable and the staff's worst nightmare. And remember, during this era on live players were much more willing to modify their behavior because there was new content to explore - they didn't want to waste their $10 per month arguing with guides over silly camp disputes. For some people on P99, that's the whole point of the game.
There's also already a policy in place on P99 to address excessive camping and the corpsing of items, which was mentioned a couple times:
Quote:
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It should also be noted that if you camp out or leave the zone (this includes dying/"corpsing" items), you have forfeited a camp.
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Granted, they can just pass the item to someone else, but if you suspect someone is doing this and they've been camping something for a stupidly long time, I'd just go ahead and petition anyway.