Staff - Players - TMO, a Treatise on the Future of the Server

[Splorf22]

Alarti is dead on with variance of course.

If your model is 'lets get some friends together and kill content a few times a week at set times' then everyone can clear their schedule, the guild has 65% raid attendance, and you need maybe 30 people for EQ raiding so 30/0.65 = 50 people/guild.

If your model is 'lets track 24/7 and batphone 30 people at any given time, then zerg the target down without any particular attempt at strategy because if we take our time the other guild will leapfrog us' then realistically people are going to be working or whatnot (unless they are in TMO, everyone knows TMO is full of 100% unemployed people) then people are going to have more like 35% raid attendance, and you need maybe 40 people for your raid and suddenly your guild has 120 people.

Basically a P1999 raiding guild is a euro guild + an american guild merged together so they can kill stuff 24/7.

[Tiggles]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Alarti is dead on with variance of course.

If your model is 'lets get some friends together and kill content a few times a week at set times' then everyone can clear their schedule, the guild has 65% raid attendance, and you need maybe 30 people for EQ raiding so 30/0.65 = 50 people/guild.

If your model is 'lets track 24/7 and batphone 30 people at any given time, then zerg the target down without any particular attempt at strategy because if we take our time the other guild will leapfrog us' then realistically people are going to be working or whatnot (unless they are in TMO, everyone knows TMO is full of 100% unemployed people) then people are going to have more like 35% raid attendance, and you need maybe 40 people for your raid and suddenly your guild has 120 people.

Basically a P1999 raiding guild is a euro guild + an american guild merged together so they can kill stuff 24/7.

yeah good idea remove variance and eventually TMO will split into 2-3 guilds and then poopsock each other and train and claim FTE.

then you will have to worry about 2-3 guilds of better players stopping you form getting charity dragons.

[Shiftin]

Originally Posted by Alarti0001 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You seriously don't know why?
Variance

Maybe the only time i've agreed with Alarti, so there's probably some merit here Nilbog.

On live, you KNEW what day nagafen and vox were going to spawn. I led pre-kunark raids here and we literally scheduled them on open forums. Usually, we could, even on non patch weeks, go straight from one dragon to another, because they both respawned in a small window that was predictable.

Yes, they had a +/- 6 hours (or whatever depending on the mob, never remotely close to this level), but you could plan raid nights. On Tunare, by late velious / early luclin, we had 4? 5? guilds capable of downing most notable raid targets. They all had 40-50 members, some more casual than others, but you knew what you were getting into when you logged on each night because it was posted right there on our calendars "X Y and Z are probably up tonight, we'll kill some of that then maybe hit Q to farm some stuff".

Variance here forces guilds to be far larger than they truly want to be, because you have to have enough people guilded in enough time zones to respond to mobs that spawned at completely insane times AND have the people to track for those mobs. If you don't, you don't get the mobs. It is a cold war-esque arms race that inevitably escalates to giant guilds sitting 50 people each on VS spawn point when nothing else is "in window" - something that was almost impossible on live because either lots of things could spawn or basically nothing due to patch days that reset spawn timers and small variance windows.

Nilbog, I really hope this was nothing more than a tongue in cheek comment and you actually do understand the sociology of MMOs to some degree. There is more to what you describe as "the classic experience" than the pathing of greater skeletons. It's not a single player game.

To the OP, you're re-writing history. DA/TMO and IB/TR had at least equal parts in the escalation of hostilities. The reason there is effectively 1 raid guild has significantly more to do with rogean, after 6 months of not doing the things he exclusively had the power to do, gave exclusive power to a GM who was more concerned with being liked by players than enforcing the rules in a consistent and accountable way. Going from Uthgaard to no GM to Amelinda getting both servers dumped on her and snapping far overshadowed any fun I was still having killing the same stuff every week.

Everything I've read by ambrotos seems significantly more reasonable and level headed, which is why i'm back to logging in from time to time. I'm all for the server's continued existence, and as soon as velious beta goes live, i'll be right there every night on the test server, just like I was with Kunark, helping to get it ready to go.

Cheers.

[Razdeline]

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

One huge difference that I've witnessed on p99 compared to my eqlive server experience is the massive amounts of players per raiding guild.

On classic live, I'm not sure if it was the inter-guild conflicts, lack of enough loot to go around, or generally wanting to compete, but there were never guilds this large.


Why so large, raid guilds?


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I wonder who hes directing this at? IB was always known for doing more with less players, we downed mobs with 20-40 players consistently.

[Supaskillz]

I still don't understand the push to eliminate variance. How is it not obvious the problems this would create? On live people were not as dedicated or aware of how raids worked at this point in time or something, because we all know what would happen here with no variance. Multiple guilds would have the spawn timer and be sitting on the spawn point when it spawned. While I agree variance creates an incentive to make large guilds, removing variance creates what in my eyes is a bigger problem.

[Slave]

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

I still don't understand the push to eliminate variance. How is it not obvious the problems this would create? On live people were not as dedicated or aware of how raids worked at this point in time or something, because we all know what would happen here with no variance. Multiple guilds would have the spawn timer and be sitting on the spawn point when it spawned. While I agree variance creates an incentive to make large guilds, removing variance creates what in my eyes is a bigger problem.

Duuuurrrrrrrr --- FTE shout.

[Supaskillz]

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

Duuuurrrrrrrr --- FTE shout.

so whoever is lucky enough to be the first one the aggro list of the 100 people sitting under the spawn point gets the kill? cool raid.

[Tarathiel]

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

Multiple guilds would have the spawn timer and be sitting on the spawn point when it spawned.

this is where a rotation comes in, a classic solution to a classic problem

[Slave]

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

so whoever is lucky enough to be the first one the aggro list of the 100 people sitting under the spawn point gets the kill? cool raid.

100 times better than variance and tracking for days, batphones, and giant guilds.

[nymphloa]

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

One huge difference that I've witnessed on p99 compared to my eqlive server experience is the massive amounts of players per raiding guild.

On classic live, I'm not sure if it was the inter-guild conflicts, lack of enough loot to go around, or generally wanting to compete, but there were never guilds this large.


Why so large, raid guilds?


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Awesome Star Craft cake bud! Zerg ftw....