Nice to Meet You! :-)

[Medris]

Hi Everyone!

Now that Menden has shared the news about my taking over the Lead GM spot, I felt like it would be a good time to introduce myself. I’m sure many of you may remember me, but there are a lot more of you that I haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet. For the past year or so, I’ve been more active in a back-of-house role, helping with Guide program administration, staff hiring, policy documentation, and other aspects of leading the CSR team.

My P99 journey started back in 2017. I learned about the server and was intrigued by the opportunity to relive the classic EQ experience. About a year after starting to play, I applied to the P99 Guide program, hoping to relive the other part of what made Everquest so special for me; I was a Guide on EQ Live back in the day, and I have to admit that I may have enjoyed Guiding even more than playing. It took a little while to get a response, but in April 2019, GM Llandris eventually reached out, asked if I was interested in doing an interview, and - long story short - I’ve been a member of the P99 staff ever since.

Over my years on staff, I’ve had a lot of great experiences. I’ve had an amazing time working alongside some of the most passionate players around, who ultimately decided that they wanted to give back to the community by volunteering their time in a new way. I’ve had a chance to work with and get to know both GM’s Menden and Galach better, who became some of my closest confidants. And, I’ve had an opportunity to get to know many of you - a group of amazingly passionate players, who love the game as much as I do (and more). And, it's all of you who make the P99 community one of the best around.

Now that I’ve shared a little about myself, I’d like to share a bit about my style, my beliefs, and some of my priorities regarding P99:

• Transparency: I tend to be a pretty transparent person. While this doesn’t mean everyone is privy to every piece of information, I do believe in providing direct & transparent feedback on things. I also hope that people will give me and my team direct feedback - it’s the only way we’re going to get better.
• Respect: I believe that our player base deserves respect, both from each other as well as from our staff. Just because someone made a mistake or broke a rule doesn’t mean that they deserve to be spoken to in a disrespectful manner. Similarly, the P99 staff also deserve that same respect in return. As I mentioned, they are a group of passionate individuals who volunteer their time to give-back, and ultimately try to make the server a better place. You will not always agree with the staff. The staff also won’t be right 100% of the time - myself included. It’s ok to get frustrated with a decision we make. But it’s never ok to disrespect or abuse my team.
• Team Organization: I’m a strong believer that if everyone has shared responsibility for everything, that really translates to nobody has responsibility for anything. As such, I hope to introduce some clearer role definition and responsibilities for our staff members in the near future.
• Special Events: CSR activities are - and will continue to be - the primary role of the P99 Guide Program. That being said, I also have a goal to drive more staff-supported dynamic event content. Whether a large-scale seasonal quest, or a smaller event to break up the monotony of sitting watching auctions in the EC tunnel, I believe that these types of events are fun for all involved - both staff members and players alike.
• Raiding: I am a believer that the P99 staff are overly involved in the raid scene, and have been for a long while. I believe one of the drivers for that hyper-involvement is the overly-complicated ruleset, which creates a lot of the lawyer-questing many of you deal with today. This isn’t to say that there may not have been reasons for some of those policies to be implemented in the past (extreme min-maxing, loopholes, etc), but I dream of the day that our raid policies are simpler, and new players don’t feel like they need an elf-law degree to participate in raids here. Does this mean that all raid rules are wiped out, effective immediately? No, nor is it in my sole discretion to do so. But - I do pledge that this is an area that we will be looking at closely.

Overall, I have high hopes for the future of P99 servers. I strongly believe that our server has unparalleled quality when it comes to recreating the classic EQ experience we all know and love, that our staff is incredibly passionate about that mission, and that our community is one of the best around. I’m looking forward to continuing to get to know many of you as we make the server a better place together.

I’ll see you all in Norrath,
GM Medris