Proposed Bobbybick Dev Requests

Not so much SoD itself as going into UF without full SoD gear was a little rough. SoD content is pretty easy.

SoD gear levels were a little low considering how visibles got upgraded multiple times. It's not really a problem because SoF is fine and UF is friggin amazing.

It's important to remember there is a vast difference between leaving an expansion with every character (or even any character) in full best in slot gear versus leaving an expansion with an adequate level of gearing to be able to reasonably beat the next expansion without gearing related difficulties.

Most expansions outside of classic zerg guilds you will not have a lot of the first happening, but that probably shouldn't be (or rather doesn't need to be) the bar for whether an expansion has "enough" gearing. Only a few expansions really feel like they leave you with too little gear to reasonably complete the next expansion without gear related issues.

15 : Make Phinigel Autropos non mezzable.

I don't actually believe that doing anything to OW will have any, or very little impact on the current size of guilds. AoC's, the TLP cycle, and the growing TLP player base is what has caused guilds to become so large.

There are several things guild leaderships have learned over the years since the introduction of AoC's on phinny that have lead to this. Look at the last two TLP's as an example. On Mangler, there were a ton of guilds larger than the OW guild until BT formed and merged a bunch of DZ guilds together. Even after that, there were DZ guilds close in size. Or look at Aradune, there is a DZ only guild very close in size to TEB and several other guilds with 100 or more man rosters. These are DZ only guilds on both servers that didn't form with the purpose of OW and still have 100+ man rosters. So why is that?

It's a result of what everyone has learned over the TLP's since AoC's came in.
1. Regardless if you are a DZ only guild or an OW guild, how big your guild gets doesn't really effect loot in any meaningful way that would prevent you from doing content. You can always split raid.
2. Because of the TLP cycle of generally getting a new one every year or two and the amount of tourists in early era's that only come to play certain expansions, if your guild isn't boasting at the very least a 72 man roster in the Classic-Luclin era's, your guild is dying. You are just counting the days until you have to either hang it up, be absorbed in to another guild, or merge with another guild. The latter 2 options become less and less viable as the TLP progresses. So what did guilds start doing over the years if they actually wanted a chance of lasting? Over recruit, and never stop recruiting. Absorb any guild that comes your way. Generally speaking (i'm sure you can find rare exceptions to the rule), a healthy guild who wants to stay on the TLP long term needs at least a 100+ man roster going in to PoP because you know you'll lose a significant % of that before GoD happens and if you aren't absorbing other guilds it's just downhill from there.
Players know this too. A very common question is do you plan on staying here for the long term? Players who want to stay on the TLP for the long term flock to the already largest guilds on the server knowing those guilds have the best possible chance for surviving the longest.

In short, doing anything to OW will either do nothing in terms of size of guilds, or have very little impact on it. Every guild who wants to last will still over recruit, and never stop recruiting because how big you get doesn't matter with AoC's.

It's not until you get to the end of Luclin where you even come close to "needing" a full set of raid gear to be considered "well geared" for the next expansion. If you counts things like the plate cycle gear and HoT gear in Velious as group content (which mostly you should in a TLP context), raid gear is really not even required to have a "full set of quality gear." This is true in Kunark and Classic as well, Kunark has a lot of "gear slots" not even adequately covered by raid drop options. Classic you don't really need raid gear period if you consider farming Hate/Fear planar to be a group activity (which it may not have been back in 1999, but it certainly is in 2021.) PoSky and the Dragons have some of the best items in Classic and they're definitely worth farming for raid guilds, but you can get kitted out in more than enough gear to say, tank Trakanon with defensive running, without completing any PoSky quests or getting any Dragon loot. And tanks have the highest "gear need" in early classic.

This 100%. I said this from day one of Selo, and I faced massive backlash from tons of people in my own guild who just hated having so many people on the roster. Most of those complainers are "cyclers" who never made it past GoD anyway, and thus were functionally worthless to me as a guild leader who started Selo to make it to live. Lots of guilds on Selo locked their rosters when raids got full, none of them still raid here, most of them merged into my guild.

I told a friend the other day who is in an Aradune guild that "isn't recruiting", that that is his guild leadership saying "we plan to not be here long term." And that's fine if the guild leadership is open about that, but I think the members need to know that too--if you're in an early TLP guild that has closed recruitment, that guild's leadership doesn't care to be around long term, simple reality.

Yep. Ultimately, in the TLP world, if you intend on maintaining any long term viability, you gotta do what you can to mentally keep the door open to people coming and going as necessary, and having a huge pool to work with early on leaves you options later, which is literally what has kept us going all the way to live. wild ride, for sure, but we're like 12 days out from making it as a result.

Uhm no, that wasn't what I said... but you wanted an example... and if we go by the standard of a "full set of gear" then Kunark is bad... just like all the others you mentioned... you just wanted ONE example... and now you mix VP key in (which wasn't even bad to get) and how do I know that? well we did it on Phinny BEFORE the "fixes"

I'm a little confused about what you're even advocating here Zinth, you seem all over the place.

An ellipsis is not a comma, please stop. I can't keep reading posts in Chef John cadence.

Shout out to Chef John and Food Wishes.

I read the whole post but you are correct on this, guild size dictates your chances of long-term survival, loyalty is a fake currency, if as a leader you think loyalty matters you are kidding yourself, guilds stand or fall based on opportunities they provide, loyalty for sure exists but long term it holds little water vs opportunity.

DZ -focused guilds will attract players who want that and OW-focused guilds will attract players that want that - each is providing opportunities, and the bigger the guild the more they can split-raid to bridge the gap between a large force & a large amount of gear needing to be farmed.

Another key point here is in attracting enough Raid Leaders or people curious about being involved in raid leading, far easier to mentor people who want to try it with a large force to work with and more opportunities to get to lead raids in a large guild.

Small guilds do have a few advantages, they can get far more gear drops per player than a large guild so they can have extremely well-geared players, a small guild can also function like a really well-oiled machine & it would not be wrong to say many small guilds can definitely do more with less.
However - small guilds are massively vulnerable to being negatively affected by part time & seasonal players, every guild has them, their small size also makes main changing far more problematic, not only are they likely to be losing a highly geared player, they could be losing a key role and what they get as a replacement will be very weak in comparison.
Ultimately small guilds, even the most fiercely loyal & highly skilled ones will need to expect having to be absorbed by a larger guild at some point, or quit.

So player joining large guilds with a long term view and planning on sticking it out till live really are making the smart long-term choice.