With all due respect, Sirken, you're no Solomon.

[goshozal]

A better analogy would be:

Server staff sets up a dogfighting ring. Guilds are the dogs. Only the most vicious and relentless dogs get enough to eat (loot). Dogs fight for three years. After the first year, one top dog emerges that is a freaking machine at killing the other dogs. He ends up getting almost all of the food, and he hoards it, burying stockpiles everywhere and rewarding other dogs who join his pack. Every now and then a good challenger comes along, but for the most part it's a one-dog show.

Then the server staff comes in one day and decides that they're tired of the noisy dogfights, blames the whole debacle on the dogs, and now all the dogs have to figure out how to divide the food, or all of them will starve.

Conveniently ignored is the fact that there isn't enough food for all the dogs to eat their fill.

Or, if you're not an analogy fan:

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

Roughly a couple dozen high-value targets, spawning approximately a couple times a week. I'm no mathematician, but this translates into about 1250 spawns per year, not factoring in drop-rate rarity.

P99 blue has over 1000 players online at peak periods and between 400-500 players during lower population periods. Given the server's age and the result is a recipe for disaster: A mature server with high demand and low contested spawn rate, and no new content for over two years.

I understand the Dev's frustration, but there has to be some recognition by those who run this environment of this problem. It is a problem that wasn't experienced in classic Everquest because expansions were far more regular than we will ever experience on P99.

In classic Everquest where expansions were released annually or sooner, the more "established" guilds would progress on to harder targets, leaving older content for younger and newer guilds. This helped contribute to a more balanced raiding environment.

Everyone playing on P99 wants to experience "classic", at their own pace, but some of the "slower progressing" players have caught up to the most established players, and we have reached a boiling point. There just isn't enough content to meet current demand, and a solution is going to require a combined effort of negotiation between the player base and the server admins to work something out. Barring players from content is only going to create frustration, and players will leave. This will change the landscape of P99 indefinitely... for better or for worse.

It needs to be said that the majority of P99's player base truly appreciate the efforts put forth by Sirken, Rogean and his team to provide this venue for those of us who quite frankly don't want to play "modern" games. There is obviously a strong market for people who prefer the classic experience that comes from pre-PoP Everquest without the taint of newer expansions, and right now P99 is the only way to experience it. We also understand that Velious content is being worked on feverishly, but until then... how do we meet demand without bloodshed, and without content bans that punish players from doing exactly what this server was created for?

The answer (to me), seems fairly clear: There needs to be enough content to meet demand.

The players can't create more content, and the developers can't make players who have been forced into content-starvation behave more considerately to each other.

There needs to be a compromise that not only involves guilds, but also involves the Dev team of Project 1999 to come up with a strategy that alleviates content starvation. Current demand has reached critical mass, and this is why we are seeing the intensity of shit-flinging that has brought us to this point.

I would like to request that the Devs to at least consider presenting the population with a content-based solution that will help alleviate some of the stress and strain on demand for spawn rarity.

In turn, guilds need to acknowledge that until Velious comes out, we are all challenged for content in a mature server environment. In addition to ideas that have been presented, it is also going to mean some in-guild restructuring that promotes policies for loot distribution that encourages a main-vs-alt mentality, and enforces zero-tolerance attitude towards non-NBG behaviour (which spawns RMT). This is, after all, what started this debacle. TMO's particular raid-style attracted this kind of player, and this is the biggest problem I feel they faced as a guild. It burned them, badly. Hopefully they have learned from it, as many others certainly have from their tragedy.

As hard as it may be, until new content is available we all have to try to acknowledge that other players who don't share our guild-tags are trying to accomplish the same goals that each and every one of us are trying to achieve. While there may be a market for selling raid content, this behaviour is undermining the entire reason that we all started playing here. If the shoe was on the other foot, would you want to experience project 1999 in any way other than the way you have been? If the answer is "no", then it's time to change your behaviour a little bit, as much as it might suck right now.

Other Suggestions (pipe dreams maybe, but since we're throwing out ideas... why not!):

Open up another blue server... from scratch (this could mitigate some of the demand, possibly permanently.)

Remove Variance (this would decrease the spawn timers enough so as not to be harmful to the "economy", and absolutely would alleviate some of the stress)

Poop-socking ends... period. In fact, if devs could brilliantly figure out a way to detect poopsocking and make it impossible to "camp in" within a certain radius of a contested spawn... this would be ideal! Sure it's not classic, but this situation isn't classic either and needs some patch-fixes to solve our unique problems.

Random "Server Repop" events, at least twice monthly. The one that happened over Christmas has got to be the best demonstration of inter-guild cooperation I have experienced on P99... ever. It also attracted veterans who gave up on the raid environment of blue P99 long ago... which speaks volumes about the critical situation we have here. More events like this will likely create a healthier, happier and friendlier environment.

I look forward to future posts on this thread.

***edit disclaimer: My opinions are my own, and not endorsed in any way by my guild. But I logged into Server Chat to see Sirken comparing himself and the staff to King Solomon the Wise. And I just hate bad analogies. Solomon would have never initiated and perpetuated such a mess, and he would at least have taken responsibility for it if he had.
***second edit disclaimer: hoards, not hordes.
***third edit disclaimer: I like edits.