[Delekhan]

It's not realistic to expect people to understand all of the nuances of this matter, heck even Seal Team did not anticipate all of the complexities of Sleeper's Tomb. As each key drops and months pass, it becomes abundantly clear that it's just not a sustainable situation to keep the sleeper asleep indefinitely.

The drama only becomes more intense every single cycle and the number of players that want to end it grows and grows. Eventually either you wake it or it is woken for you. It's a fallacy to assume that waking is simply a choice by one or two individuals because contrary to popular belief, guilds are not authoritarian regimes. Once a critical mass of keys has been obtained, it's only a matter of time. 6-12 months asleep is a good expectation for any Everquest server. The better the guild relations at the top end, the closer you can get to 12 months.

Due to Warders on p99 being 48-hour windows (6 day +-24hrs) and the Golems being 24hour windows, it pretty much turns Sleeper's Tomb into a 24/7 sock and kills any guild that attempts it for a long period of time. That is clearly a huge problem, which forces rotations. Rotations are kryptonite to competitive players, so if it were to work, on future servers, you would want Key parity at Velious launch so that by the time Warders can be killed, it would require cooperation. That way, neither guild has a dominant presence and is forced to rotate the content to get their warder loot. In theory that should keep the competitive players on the back foot for a longer period of time. That sort of scenario may keep the sleeper asleep for at least an additional 6 months I think. You do run the risk of alienating the competitive players who could splinter off and form a new guild and blow up the agreement. (given P99's history, this is actually quite likely).

So for the next P99 server, I would recommend the top guilds compete for keys immediately and hope parity of keying takes place and dramatically increases the number of players desiring Warder loot. Maintain good relations proactively and arrive at a rotation agreement as quickly as possible and find a way to keep the hardcore players content. Avoid competitive ST so that socking is side-stepped because that will only lead to waking.

It's a mess of a situation, I can assure you all of that. In the end, if you want warder loot it should be your goal from the moment Velious drops, otherwise, it's unlikely due to the tsunami of politics and drama that arises.