[Tiggles]

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

The one single good thing that came out of the hilarious failure that was The Sleeper was their idea of a dynamic raid spawning system. They never actually implemented it, but the idea was sound: every qualified raid guild would get their own, like, weekly allowance of tokens with which to spawn raid mobs. This would only have to be for the actual top end raid content as people aren't destroying the server over the rights to farm planes. A token turn-in system would probably be abusable no matter how you do it, but I think something could be done with temporary alternate server shards that people can transfer to and from.

Something like this will be especially important in Velious because that expansion is all about raiding, being a non-raider during Velious is just absolute garbage. It's manageable during classic/Kunark because so much of the high-end gear can be bought, but Velious is the point where you're either in a top raid guild or you're nobody. The stuff you can do without access to ToV/ST-like content is completely worthless, you're just an unwashed plebian of no value if you can't raid during Velious. That's an expansion where being a casual player just isn't enough.

Imagine a server where there is no content except the raid bosses and their associated trash mobs, you can't go there and farm Sebilis by yourself or camp some rare spawn without competition. You can, however, transfer there to raid (and back to P99 afterwards), but only to the shard that your guild has been assigned. Nobody has access to more than one shard, and in order for a guild to qualify for a raid shard, they have to prove that they're actually a serious raid guild that deserves access to the endgame content

This would make raiding available to enough people without compromising the rest of the game. There would be no reason to stay on the raid shards outside of actual raid sessions since there would be no other content, and there is no unfair advantage for anybody. This is the only way to accomodate a playerbase where several hundred people want to raid but can't because there isn't room. This is how you emulate the fact that EQ had twenty servers, without causing problems in the leveling and grouping scene.

Nah