Raiding in P1999 is nothing like raiding in classic.

[meadtj]

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

If you're reading this, my guess is that the title of this thread had captured your attention.

Now I've played on P1999 for several years now, on multiple characters in multiple guilds. Each one has been a raiding guild. I've dabbled with guilds such as Dark Ascension and The Mystical Order, just to name a few, and every guild I've been apart of has been first and foremost, a raiding guild.

Through these experiences I've come to notice that the way you're forced to go about raiding on P1999, well, it just isn't very much fun.

It's not very much fun because there's such thing here as fair competition. Imagine if you would, a game of chess where black has the official starting pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, and 8 pawns.

Now imagine you're black, and you're playing the game against white, who's starting pieces are: 1 king, 7 queens, and 8 pawns.

Just doesn't sound like equality.

Sure, if you've two basketball teams on the court, one's bound to have superior players, better strategies, harder training regiments, etc., but they're both going to sport 5 players, and each side of the court's got the same measurements, and both teams still abide by all the same rules and undergo the same penalties.

What I'm getting at here is to reinforce the idea that this whole "competitive" aspect of P1999 raiding is an illusion. From my experience, there seems to be a clear outcry to continue to focus on this same-old competitive aspect of raiding from the more efficient raid guilds. And why not? This is of course directly in their best interests. Why share when you can take more than the other guy?

There seems to be a second group of raiders who feel so vehemently toward a given guild(s), that the mere idea of not having the opportunity to take something from these most hated groups, simply boils them up from the very soul outward.

And that's about it. You've got the group who wants nothing to change because they're already getting theirs, and you have the group who may or may not be getting much, but what they're getting keeps them in favor of this same competitive system because when they do get some, they relish in the idea of imaginary bragging rights against the group(s) they hate so avidly.

If you don't believe me you can just run a quick scan across the forums at the myriad of flames from guild to guild. You've got people from TMO blatantly bashing other guilds, calling them names, ridiculing them, and frankly, being very unsportsmanlike for a very competitive, sport-like endeavor. It's not TMO I'm talking about though, nor are they the focus nor major culprit of this topic. It's all the guilds. You've got guilds hating one another, telling lies about each others members, blowing up in public channels, across voice software, all over the forums... The list continues.

So what's the damned point? Well, the point is, why are we still accepting this archaic outlook on this server? How is it fun to log out next to a raid target, leave your guilds common voice-chat program open, awaiting the call, only to log on, play the game for a grand total of maybe 5-15 minutes, then move your character(s) to another target or targets, then rinse and repeat the process?

Whatever happened to actually logging in and playing the game? When did Everquest raiding mean you've got to have multiple max level characters just to stay logged in?

It's not just about who gets the most or who gets the least. It's a culmination of principles and what's most positive for the community.

I for one would implore the server administrators to take another look at the state of affairs on this server regarding raiding. We can do better than this. We can do better than forcing the staff to come up with a slew of seriously ridiculous, arbitrary rulesets to safeguard an illusionary form of competition between a select few guilds and a large minority of the playerbase.

Everquest wasn't like this. Not on any server I'd played on, nor the server in which I was a guide.

I for one hear more disdain, irritation, and sheer flagrant hatred come from the current system than I do positives on how things are running.

Do we want better? Do the players on this server deserve better? Can't we do better than this?

I think we can.

I honestly well...thought you were gonna say raiding on this server was somehow different from liveservers. Not all this garbage. From what your saying this is exactly how things were pre-velious in EQ. Then velious came out and everyone else started getting trash from the other places or killing vindi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqrVl4MwWpg

[Autotune]

Kill stealing is legal in VP.

[Arteker]

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

Kill stealing is legal in VP.

and FE tried x2 times in vp but aswell did not worked .

[gotrocks]

**headdesk**

[Autotune]

I personally think what W8gamer posted was spot on and that it just completely went over Morganders head.

[Morgander]

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

I personally think what W8gamer posted was spot on and that it just completely went over Morganders head.

If what he said is true, then he cannot, by definition of his sentiments, concern himself with rules.

Removing the superficial non-mechanics based rulesets and continuing to be "the best", only enhances the idea of "best" by its very nature.

You, like the poster you've detailed herein, are both naturally bias toward your own cause.

Also, for all you know, I'm in TMO. I'll even go as far as to say that if I'm not currently in TMO, then I was in TMO. That's all the information I'm going to provide.

[Autotune]

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

If what he said is true, then he cannot, by definition of his sentiments, concern himself with rules.

Removing the superficial non-mechanics based rulesets and continuing to be "the best", only enhances the idea of "best" by its very nature.

You, like the poster you've detailed herein, are both naturally bias toward your own cause.

Also, for all you know, I'm in TMO. I'll even go as far as to say that if I'm not currently in TMO, then I was in TMO. That's all the information I'm going to provide.

I'm not in TMO, I was in TMO, and I have no cause concerning them.

The removal of rules in VP wasn't to allow people to claim they are the best. The reasons are clear as to why it is the way it is.

His point is that the bar was the same height when TMO entered VP (They had to fight with IB) and why should TMO lower the bar for others to make it even for them now.

Until staff fix VP, things aren't going to change unless Sirken has a change of heart concerning his CSR's workload.

These things are set pretty much in stone to only happen upon the other happening.

If you're talking about the rules outside of VP, nothing is wrong with them.

[gotrocks]

K. I'm out. done all i could. You guys go ahead and argue till your fingers fall off. 1000 people online at 530 on a sunday afternoon not healthy. server is dying. raid scene dead. everyone quit, this ship is sinking.

[Llodd]

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

K. I'm out. done all i could. You guys go ahead and argue till your fingers fall off. 1000 people online at 530 on a sunday afternoon not healthy. server is dying. raid scene dead. everyone quit, this ship is sinking.

If it was, I wonder how fast things would be 'fixed' [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anyhow. The only thing I personally wonder about is the amount of casuals that once they get to the higher echelons quit because they see no way of experiencing the endgame. That must happen, but to what degree. The influx of new players keep the overall figures quite high it appears. If there had been true competition in VP for the past 3 years or so, would the server population be even higher than it is today, would the turnover be less.

Without being able to measure that and the population being good, there really is no compulsion on the devs to change things, and yet if what i said is true (and I really can't see the opposite being true - "hey come to p99 where you have little to no chance of seeing the endzone unless you join TMO/whoever is topdog!!") they have shot themselves in the foot somewhat.

[Tiddlywinks]

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

If it was, I wonder how fast things would be 'fixed' [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anyhow. The only thing I personally wonder about is the amount of casuals that once they get to the higher echelons quit because they see no way of experiencing the endgame. That must happen, but to what degree. The influx of new players keep the overall figures quite high it appears. If there had been true competition in VP for the past 3 years or so, would the server population be even higher than it is today, would the turnover be less.

Without being able to measure that and the population being good, there really is no compulsion on the devs to change things, and yet if what i said is true (and I really can't see the opposite being true - "hey come to p99 where you have little to no chance of seeing the endzone unless you join TMO/whoever is topdog!!") they have shot themselves in the foot somewhat.

I think that this is absolutely something that needs to be looked into. We've seen it time and again on the forums where people quit for these reasons, but those are the vocal few. How often does it happen silently I wonder? It sounds like a very hard thing to capture data on, since the most direct method would be a poll of some sort, but if somebody has quit they are far less likely to see and/or respond to the poll. That's why a lot of services ask for feedback when someone cancels or discountinues use of the service. We could check the database and compare #of accounts that were active in the past to #of accounts active currently and try to compare patterns, but that sounds like more work than it might be worth.

The only option I can really come up with for capturing this kind of data is something like a poll for current players to vote on whether or not they are satisfied with the way things are, or if they would like to see changes, but we see those polls and this thread every single week and still nothing happens despite and overwhelming majority speaking out.

As a player I could see how it could become a little disheartening to continually see nothing done. It would be nice if something were happening besides the constant churn provided by these threads/polls everyday. That's not getting us anywhere.

What else can we do to determine how big of an issue this is? Aside from making polls/continue posting in threads such as this I'm at a loss.

Anyone else have ideas?