Champions of Norrath

[Hasbinbad]

As my venture into the realm of compromise, I would like to present an alternative to the 3 systems that have been proposed so far as I have seen (lassiez-faire [thank you Tiki for this wonderful $10 junior college word], enforced rotation, and randomized spawn times). It is somewhat of a hybrid system that incorporates the enforced fairness of a rotation, the direction of the more powerful parties involved, and some additional fun thrown in "for her pleasure."

I would like to preface this presentation with an acknowledgment of the fact that this system would seem to benefit my guild first. This initial advantage will be balanced to a degree automatically by the system as it would be put in place, as you will see.

The basic idea is for each guild who feels they are ready to raid should put forth a champion to duel-for-pick. This duel would be an organized server event held at a time which has been deemed mutually equitable by the leadership of the involved organizations.

The champion should be of a given class per duel, cleric vs. cleric, warrior vs. warrior. The class of a given weeks duel should be rotated via some random or ordered method. The champion should not be allowed to duel in consecutive contests. These checks make sure that one person or tactic is not consistently dominant in these duels, and forces guilds to be able to put forth a champion of any class.

The champion should be geared up by all members of their guild for this duel should they need it, but they should only be allowed to use what they can carry into a duel (no outside buffs etc).

The duel itself should be held at whatever location and be on whatever terms the involved parties can agree too (maybe iron this out beforehand).

The winner of the duel (or mini-tourney, should more than 2 guilds become involved) would obtain for his or her guild the right to first choice of raid targets that week. In a 2-guild setup, this would probably go down like:

<Fallen Heroes> wins the duel, <Angels of Light> loses.
<Fallen Heroes> chooses Cazic-Thule as their first pick.
<Angels of Light> chooses Lady Vox.
<Fallen Heroes> chooses Lord Nagafen.
<Angels of Light> chooses Dracoliche (for the sake of argument, pretend that he is a seven day spawn)

In a 3 guild situation, which at this point is much more likely than a 4-guild situation, each guild would get a major raid target for the week.

This will balance itself. <Fallen Heroes> cannot survive on Cazic loot alone, and will eventually take Nagafen first to try for the CoF, leaving Cazic for <Angels of Light>. <Fallen Heroes> might get 2 major targets a week at first, but with as fair as the duelling system is (or, if you don't agree, how fair you can make it), this simply cannot last. Eventually (or maybe to begin with), <Fallen Heroes> will lose the duel, and be forced to chose later.

[Cannot resist saying that although one organization might end up with 2 major raid targets per week, we kicked this servers ass first, we were raid ready well before you guys. We got dicked on our exclusive content rights {garnered by being ready early} due to the ddos's.. We would have had a lot of raiding without you guys being close to ready had everything been set up and stable beforehand, but c'est la vie right? Let's move on.]

As more content is added, it simply comes down to more picks, further allowing the GUILDS to decide how the content is split, while allowing for the spirit of competition to shine over the whole system, and allowing our guilds to, without being a dirty hippie, cooperate and come together as one in peace and harmony in our mutual pursuit of each other's blood.

Please take this proposal seriously, as I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. It can be polished and reworked if you have some major problem with it, but it looks really good to me, even should I be in the <Angels of Light> category. Please discuss this idea and help tug out the wrinkles.