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Originally Posted by Champion_Standing
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Serious question tho Loramin. What is it about the current situation that makes you feel like you or people you are concerned about have absolutely no chance at contesting ToV or top end content? I really don't see why a guild that had a capable force would opt to NOT contest simply because they have to contest it. Is it really just a matter of wanting to make the raid scene a 0 competition game? Or have you really found that you get trained and rule lawyered out of every mob you've ever tried to get?
I like making fun of the raiders in rnf, but I've spent plenty of time with them in game. I was there on the first contested inny on this server and I was in ToV for the last repops so I have a mildly relevant perspective on it. Today I really don't think the scene is as horrible as the forums or other social media around P99 makes it out to be. It's actually boringly civil most of the time at this point. If you don't consider getting loot to be the sole indicator of civility at least.
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Ok, let's start at the end: you and I are both"old timers", so we both remember the TMO days, and everything that has happened since. There is no doubt in my mind that the current P99 raid scene is definitely one of the best in the server's history. Depending on your preferences maybe the Class C/R era was better, maybe it wasn't, but I think all reasonable people would agree that putting that era aside, raiding now is better than it's ever been ...
... but even so that's a pretty low bar. Before we had one guild that could "compete" (though as we all know, there wasn't all that much "competition" in that era ... although there was some). Now we have a few, and objectively those few guilds comprise more players than TMO did. Thus, there is greater access (more players get to experience) EQ raid content.
What I'm arguing is, why not take it further, and change things so even more people can play? If going from TMO (100 players, made-up number) to Core/Aftermath/AG (250 players, again made-up) was good (and just about everyone will say it was), why isn't going from 250 to 500, or 1000 players good?
If all those people are of the appropriate level, are appropriately geared, and are willing to learn (you can't require raid knowledge; new guilds won't magically be able to take say Yelinak out without practice), why add artificial constraints (ie. P99 raid "competition", which for like the billionth time has nothing to do with the actual game of Everquest) to prevent them from experiencing classic EverQuest content, on a server dedicated to that proposition?
Yes, the alternative is sharing. Yes sharing means less for the people currently getting everything. No, I don't see that as a bad thing. We went from bad competition (clickfests) on Shady Goblin and Scout, to a sharing system (rolls), and it's worked great. No one wants to go back.
So look it's not about whether I can "compete", or whether my current guild can "compete": I'm questioning the competition itself. It's unclassic and it artificially limits server content to a smaller subset of players. Rotations make that content available to more people: they let more people experience classic EverQuest. That's what this server is about.
And as for all the GM hardships you're listing, you're ignoring the fact that: A) the staff themselves "pre-released" a rotation system! and B) as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the work in a rotation system could absolutely be shifted to the players.
Let's say there's a gatekeeper mob a guild needs to defeat to join the rotation. You could make a staff member waste time observing, or you could say "whoever has ToV this week is obligated to send someone to observe new guilds wanting to break into the rotation; they have to show up, watch, and if the guild beats the mob they have to update the wiki, send the staff a PM, or do whatever it takes to elevate the new guild into the rotation." If that guild doesn't, they lose their next ToV rotation (which would require GM time, but not much and it should be pretty rare since no one will want to lose ToV), and next week's guild will verify.
That's just one very simple example of how the staff could design a system that makes less work for them. But let's not miss the forest from the trees here: while a rotation would require staff effort, so does the current raid scene. As Omni pointed out way back at the start of this thread, the staff is having difficulty supporting even that. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a properly implemented rotation system would have to mean more work for the staff: it absolutely could mean less.