worst/ funniest experience on p99

[skarlorn]

Yeah, seeing the internal shitshow of BDA during the end of its lifespan could definitely be counted as funniest/worst.

The Downfall of BDA
As Remembered by Filbus Furyfoot, Chronicler of p99, Lord of the Misty Thicket, Guardian of Rivervale, and Pro-Rustler

When I joined in early 2014 as a bright eyed young halfling, the guild was still server good guys, content with middling content and letting its members have lives. Most notably there was the "AM" crowd mostly led by Cloki and the "PM" crowd led by Chest and his cronies. It was like being in two separate guilds if you showed up for AM and PM raids. Almost like the guild was borderline personality. One was sweet and nurturing, the other bullying, clickish, and loud.

Late '14 marked a blanket raid ban due to some TMO bullshit. TMO was basically disbanded and I remember a batphone saying as much got me to log back in. Suddenly we could kill targets because they were up. The pixels rained in (relatively). Soon after, Chest and other guilds negotiated the infamous C/R/FFA rotation.

This is when the irony strikes; we didn't know it then, but casuals getting pixels turns them into absolute shitlords. The pixel vending machine didn't slake our leader's thirst, it only made them hungrier. Chest and Anthrax were fucking ballistic on the forums and in game against TMO(FE), IB and all the past years of cuckolding they had endured at the hardcore's hands. And while Sadad Sharif was still technically a co-guildleader and a great force of level-headedness (love u lacie, sadad), they were correctly spending more time in RL and less time in EQ, only showing up to reap the benefits of an increasingly corrupt loot council (as well they should have! pras streetjustice)

Chest and Anthrax were so fucking bad at RNF it led to massive PR problems. And the PR nightmare got worse when Chest started steamrolling over smaller guilds trying to do their first fear clears just so we could show up and AE it on the drop of a hat. Not that we needed to.

This led to a mutiny. As far as I know, Gats pulled Cloki back into the game and convinced him to create Omni to save the AM crew from Chest & Co's Shitlord Tyranny. This split was basically due to terrible RNF skill at the end of the day COUPLED with the fact that Omni could be guaranteed epic-level pixels without the soul-crushing work of raiding.

If you stayed in BDA you ostracized everyone in Omni. The groupthink hate went so far that I still get a little salty when I see an Omni tag, even though the vast majority of them were people I liked the most. Especially Cloki! But they were honestly greedy as fuck and really weakened BDA, the guild we all once loved and wanted to see get stronger.

Enter Nibblewitz the Shadow Wizard. You may not know of his exploits, but Nibble was a lead force in crushing the rotation and implementing the ridiculous Gorenaire gatemob. Basically, the new proposal was that if these small splinter guilds like Omni couldn't kill a Gore on its own at any hour of the day, they shouldn't be allowed on the rotation for mobs like Faydedar (LOL). It was a presented with the intent to fail so that BDA/Taken/Div could blow the rotation up. Nibblewitz has shaped the face of the server, and you probably don't even know who he is. To give you an idea of this tiny wizard's power, I recall when he hit level 60 and cast his first spell. He gated to Faydark and the entire zone crashed. I knew he was destined for greatness, but not darkness....

The sickening thing here is that at this time there was enough desire, momentum, and skillful players in BDA that in the hands of a more competent raid leader, we absolutely could have started competing with the TMO/IBs. What we needed was directive and some education. Our forums were aflame with vets wanting to push to Class C, but dear Chest's 2 rules were: 1) NO DKP SYSTEM and 2) I WONT COMPETE WITH THEM. The years of cuckolding had truly scarred them.

So instead we started batphoning and shitsocking aggressively to crush the casuals. I remember a time when we had like 40 people logged on in seb for 8+ hrs to secure a Class R Trak. This became our new norm.

But, more pixels only sours the casual's heart. We were steadily losing our best members to boredom and burnout; Velious loomed and on launch day we boasted over 100 raiders (at this point I rarely raided with BDA anymore. I didn't like the bully mentality and indian giving loot council system, staying only because of some close friends and fear of being ostracized - vent was also a complete shitshow of nerds talking about sport ball and other unimportant things)

As the months of Velious dragged on it became clear BDA would be caught in a ceaseless cycle of HoT and Vindi. Burnout happened faster than you'd believe. Our good players got their HoT gear and simply logged out. Our best players helped us kill a couple low grade NTOV mobs and then ditched out when they realized our leadership neither had the balls nor the leadership skill to manage pushing further into the raid content.

At this point I was living in Australia banging my hot asian girlfriend, not playing EQ at all. I sided with the Great Enemy and posted certain youtube videos as a way to get myself permabanned from these forums (as you can see I returned, a forums posting addict drenched in the bukkake of infamy), so I can't be too sure what happened, but it's easy to guess...

Constantly losing numbers and the soul-crushing boredom of HoT/Vindi wore on BDA to the point that when Phinny opened it seemed like a golden paradise. They could finally be casuals again. Instances! No TMO! Glory glory, hallelujah. In a splinter move that dwarfed the destruction of Cloki's insurrection, Chest & Co torqued away all of their remaining loyalists and warmbodies to bring them to Phinny. I imagine they were genuinely happy over there for the first six months or so...

But it was a rather short-sighted play. Where do you go when the Phinny burnout happens, when you're slugging through the same content that made you quit EQ in the first place? Do you go to Agnarr? Obviously, you're too sick mentally from a lack of healthy RL social circle to quit playing altogether. So what do you do? Who the fuck knows.

The leadership failed to realize that p99 is a slow burn game. It really does behoove the casual mindset. Log in once in a while. Play it hard for a month. Then don't play for 11 months. If you have the personality for cucklord raid guilds, great, there are 2 cucklord raid guilds where you can sacrifice your RL for meaningless dragon pixels. The big mistake taking BDA, once a giant server good guy, and using that force to crush the little man.

The casual receiveth the pixel and his heart turneth to ash, so sayeth the Lorde.

P.S. There were many great people and good players in BDA. The sad thing is they all got shit on for so long. A lot of the officers were also fucking great and fun people to play with. Honestly, too many for me to name. I miss a lot of you guys and hope you come play on p99 again. It's really pretty fun if you do it right [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]