Bard swarm kiting or zone disruption?

[Naethyn]

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

If its over 4 mobs you can pull off the kite.

[shovelquest]

& charm it, and haste and sow it and zone!

[loramin]

The problem is, until the staff make an official ruling, if a player follows this advice, they can wind up (as Zell did) with the staff mad at them.

But, it turns out one crazy person made a collection of such rulings awhile ago, and there actually is a ruling, which dates back to GM Sirken (emphasis added):

Originally Posted by Sirken

as far as dungeons go, they are made up by camps. no person or group is allowed to own more than one camp (unless theres no other players around contesting the zone/camp). so if you are in Crushbone, or Mistmoore, or Unrest, or any dungeon, and a PLer is claiming more than one camp, the PLer has to give up one camp (as chosen by the person that owned both). if the PLer refuses to give up one of his multiple camps, you should /petition in game and then take a camp.

as far as swarm kiting bards, some earlier poster hit the nail on the head. the problem isnt that bards round up a hundred mobs; the problem is that it TAKES SO LONG to round up and then kite down the mobs, and as previously mentioned, can prevent anyone else from seeing a pop for over an hour. ive seen this in OoT, DL, and OT entirely too often, and i have told players repeatedly that if you can not find a mob because some one is kiting more than 4 of them, feel free to peel one off. no staff member is going to give a player grief for peeling 1 mob off a bard thats kiting an entire zone (or an entire island in the OoT situations).

So, it seems the official ruling (until a GM pops in here and says otherwise) is that Zell was only "in the wrong" only because he didn't meet the "you can not find a mob because someone is kiting more than 4 of them" condition ... or that the staff member involved was new and not aware of this ruling.

Technically it appears the standard is that you're only allowed to take from a bard swarm if you can't find a mob (and it's unclear how long you have to spend trying before you can give up and take from the swarm).

But, others have already mentioned why practically you can probably do so anyway ... and personally I feel like the staff should adjust this condition to be something more like:

Originally Posted by Proposed

If a player has noticeably more than 4 mobs (it can be hard to count swarms exactly) and it appears to be all the mobs of that type in an area, you can take from them.

Again, P99 and its Play Nice Policies are all about sharing. Everything in the camp rules revolves around a single spawn point or small cluster of them. Allowing Bards to take all the mobs near FV (and everyone else has to go into the death area if they want some) just feels un-P99 to me.

[cd288]

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

exactly this

also, its not like we're advocating for you to go looking for bard swarms and rip them off

but if a bard rolls through your stuff and is being annoying, absolutely rip that shit

Yup. Although usually I will leave them alone unless they are in certain zones. COM if there are multiple groups there exping? Dick move. I'll try and mess up your swarm for that.

Velks where you're causing massive trains etc. due to buggy pathing as you try to pull a bunch of stuff to the ground floor? Dick move.

[Jimjam]

You guys are pulling off single mobs? I try to xp steal them with pbaoe on my wizard.