State of the Server and Variance

[Slave]

Greetings, players.

I am not the president of the server, nor do I serve in any official capacity. I have been playing since 2010, however, basically full-time, and I feel I have gained a healthy practical knowledge of Project 99 over these last 2.5 years.

The sad news is that despite recent population growth, the server is in deceptively dire straits. The ruleset currently in place for high-end raiding is counter to the Classic mechanic, counter to all laws of fairness, and Lead Developer Rogean has repeatedly opposed changing those rules, both through official statement and apparently willful neglect. This has repeatedly harmed the server in terms of population, when new players reach the artificial and arbitrary raid ceiling mandated by these choices.

The topic of Variance has become taboo here. Multiple threads on this vital topic, hundreds of pages comprising thousands of posts, were recently deleted from the forums. I ask the citizens of P99, is this a productive way to administer the server's forums? A large amount of population will soon reach this unnecessarily vitriolic raid scene of exclusion and quit, as has happened with depressing regularity.

It remains crucial that Variance on raid bosses be removed so that P99 can enjoy a Classic scene at the highest levels. No amount of developer stalling or high-handed erasure of accumulated knowledge in the forums will ever change that. I ask Rogean to reconsider this unreasonable stance, listen to the players and his fellow Staff, and remove this manufactured hurdle to players entering the golden age of EverQuest, the way they did in droves in 1999.

Yours,

The Arch Mage