It's pretty clear to me that in classic EQ there wasn't enough to raid; if live was anything like p1999. Keep in mind that I didn't raid on live until about 2007. So I don't know what it was like back then. Did they cycle raids so that every guild had a chance at it? Is it possible that something in p1999 is different and that's what's causing the raid problem.
Maybe hte experience gain is too high and it's creating more high levels (raiders)? People know a lot more about EQ now than they did back then. Much more information is available via Allah. Players level up faster.
But the thing is, live had two to three times more players than we do. How did they manage raids with so many more people than us? It could be that even having more population than us they STILL progressed markedly slower and thus the conflict at the higher levels was less than it's here. Must have been a lot slower. Is the conflict here imagined?
Some people say instances are the answer, but they forget that changing classic EQ to what we want it to be misses the whole point of the server. But I will admit that some things ARE different; for example, we know a lot more than we did back then, and there're not nearly enough players on p1999 to equal what was on the live servers. But changing p1999 might inevitably lead to an experience that's not like classic EQ at all. That's the danger. But more than that, I'd like to see somebody offer an answer that doesn't use the instancing mechanic. There should be plenty of ways to do it. The question is: which is easiest to do and which most fits the character of EQ up to and including Velious?
Personally, I don't feel instancing fits the character of EQ in that era. Instancing wasn't introduced, as far as I know, until LDON. So I think the answer, if any, should be non-instanced. Besides, instancing is cliche and overused.
And are we willing to change p1999 to accommodate raiders? Are they the majority population? My previous post touched on this, but being a majority population is important if a server is going to change itself for that population. If you only have a minority that disagrees then you can live with that. But if you have a majority that disagrees because the server changed itself to appease a minority then you have a majority population that's not in agreement.
To explain this further, I will give an example. This server is not averse to changing itself, if it's necessary. We implemented global chat when population was low. This change made p1999 different from live. But it was necessary because most, if not all players travel and communicate. That precedent showed that we will change p1999 if we have to, given that some things are different from live and cannot be resolved by not changing anything. The question is whether changing how raiding works is necessary or not - dependent on whether raiders are a majority population.
Thank you.
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