[Autotune]

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

Top guilds usually have 5-10 "core" members who are usually friends from others games or in real life. They're super hardcore and play a higher-than-average amount of time and aren't discouraged or setback by failures but learn from their mistakes and improve. If you have 5-10 dedicated members then the rest is ultimately just filler that you tell what to do when and they show up and do it, hoping for a handout.

If you have this dedicated and knowledgeable core, recruiting dedicated people is easy. You just need a good system online system in place including VOIP, DKP, Batphone (mass texting), and requirements for continual membership.

You also need people who enjoy/will do the bitch work for promotional activity such as making cool videos. These videos serve the purpose of attracting new people and bolstering the confidence of the guild by keeping morale high.

If I had more time to dedicated to this game I could easily set up all these systems. I'd need about 5 other dedicated people with diverse skills and access to pawns to do tracking and reporting and managing of different class archtypes on raids. I could then write an algorithm and web interface to let designated trackers input time of death for every target and have running clocks with probabilities of spawning, which wouldn't be difficult and vastly increase the chances of getting to targets first by prioritizing targets most effectively. The hardest part is finding dependable people to man the guns without deserting or screwing up.

Ultimately it comes down to having a dedicated enough group of people that will log on when they're told and are willing to tough it out for long hours if necessary. They also have to be willing to listen and follows orders such as stacking specified resist gear as necessary (again, a nice graphical interface to tell people what gear to wear in each slot based on class for each kill would be helpful here). Further, leaders must understand and exploit others' diverse reason for playing P1999 in order to keep motivation and morale high (even in the face of failure starting out against the corporate giant TMO). It doesn't help either that Classic Everquest is a zero-sum game so the more work one guild does must be matched by the other in order to win so the water just keeps rising with fiercer and fiercer organization and time spent playing until players start cracking and giving up because it's just too much to handle.

Man is this sounding more and more like a job. Why would any sane person put this much effort for e-peen status?

or you could just wing it like a pro...