A request from Ragefire: Luclin & Beyond

There are tons of guilds on Phinny clearing literally all of the content Velious has to offer in 3 nights (without burning out to boot!). "Choosing" not to do the best content the expansion has to offer because you're afraid of burnout sounds a bit wishy washy at best, unless you guys only raid for 30 minutes a night.

On topic, trying to turn every server into Phinegal isn't really going to accomplish anything. It's already been stated that they aren't going to change the ruleset of a server partway through it's lifespan. Whether you like it or not, they consider instancing to be a different ruleset, and so asking for instances on LJ/RF is a waste of time.

Additionally, the 6 month votes won twice now on RF and once on LJ, so trying to halve that duration down to 3 months isn't going to happen either.

Ragefire was launched on repurposed live server hardware which is why it couldn't handle the initial crowds and we got a queuing system and lockjaw. When phinny was first announced we asked for instancing the answer was the current hardware couldn't support it. People like to think they can swap in any hardware they want, but the history of offering free server transfers instead of forced mergers suggests that moving off hardware is something they like to avoid.

When phinny launched they stated it was running on the most powerful hardware of any server and could handle more players than any server before. It was specifically built to support instancing on a large scale with the most populated server the game has ever seen.

Would instancing work on Ragefire's hardware today? Pretty hard to predict. The pop is low so traditional raids spawning instances wouldn't be all that rare. On the other hand, megaboxers are common who would possibly spawn instance after instance farming away. The uncertainty of what would happen is likely a big reason they don't want to do it. Along with the fact that the people who truly wanted instancing re-rolled on Phinny long ago.

Thanks for your stances but I asked for none of that in any of my posts. I dont want anything less then 6 months, I dont want instancing, I dont want merge. If folks are happy on Phinigel more power to them.

DHS has always done things its way and not the consensus way. My members enjoy my guild due to this factor. Enjoy your game.

Sounds LJ is quite harmony now. A capable guild asks not to do Vulak and FI cares enough to take it down by gearing alts. Good to hear that.

You're displaying some serious ignorance of Vulak's massive loot table if you seriously think that FI's intent is to 'gear alts' from Vulak. Good to see that.

He's going off what an FI officer said in this thread. Might want to read the thread

I agree that instancing is the primary selling point for phinny.

I think truebox is really more of something they want to implement going forward because they don't like the box crew thing overall. It does not mix well with kronos. They just didn't want to change the rules midstream on people on other servers.

Perhaps on RF/LJ they could implement truebox code in instances only.

Truebox code / method is already part of the system when you zone..... on phinny
They won't do instances on RF/LJ let those servers take their course, they are far better off tweaking from the most successful servers.

You mean tweaks like new raid mob buffs and overhauls of decades-old aggro mechanics? I'd rather they think of ways to keep RF/LJ alive longer, personally. But I'm sure if we polled ten people we'd get ten different opinions for how to spend Daybreak's programmer time. Either way though, it's all software. It may be hard or it may be super-easy for them to do.Also you have no idea what they will and won't do. Daybreak has surprised everyone time and again.

I personally don't think it's fair that DGB created the environment that allowed for such negativity at the start of the TLP 3.0 cycle. There should have been some sort of GM/Guide support from the beginning. DGB messed up again with the 'forced rotation' business that ultimately they didn't even enforce.

So they created phini. The problem with phini is, the server wouldn't be as popular as it is if all the problems that happened on Ragefire, and then on Lockjaw hadn't have been so major. Lots of people wanted the longer lockouts. Sure, classic/kunark and even velious get very boring. I'd even argue that POP will get stale near the end, but after that, 6 months is a great timeline. The natural progression that was happening on Ragefire at the time was fine. TL, who was dominating the server was actually one of the biggest proponents of making things 'fair'. They helped lots of guilds get kills. Sure, they also took a lot of them, but they could. I thought how TL handled things was extremely fair. I think some of the guilds on phini are now experiencing this fact. Not everyone who raids is supposed to be in the best guild on the server. Some guilds, just like on live servers back in the day, are going to be relegated to being an expansion or so behind for a little bit.

If ragefire/lockjaw got instancing along with phini opening, I think phini would be a ghost town instead of those 2 servers. Of course the 10 or so forum warriors who aren't even 60 yet ,who can't even raid on phini, will probably come post and say that isn't true, but I feel like it is. Almost everyone I know that left for phini boxed themselves. They dropped their boxes because of instancing, not because of 'true boxing'.

As it stands now, on Ragefire anyways, we are forcing our guild into hard off nights because targets are up every day. It's too much raiding. There are 3 guilds, not including some of the ones doing lesser content, killing all raid targets. We have no rotation, we just don't step on each other's toes. It's not planned, it just happens naturally. None of the epic mobs are really contested.

Instancing would be nice on Ragefire/Lockjaw. At the moment, it isn't needed. Maybe come Luclin it would be nice. Maybe come POP, even better. If Lockjaw merged with us, which I feel, overall would be a benefit to both servers (healthy population again), sure, please instance the server. I know Faceless Insanity would probably dominate most of the server, and the balance that we have on Ragefire wouldn't be the same. That isn't a slight against FI, it's how their guild is built.

I think something is going to need to happen though on DGBs end. They're going to have to fix their mistake. They created this mess, they should do what's right. Ragefire/Lockjaw (or the merged version) should be boxing + instancing, phini should be 'trueboxing' plus instancing. That's my opinion. I'm happy on Ragefire, but I understand how TLPs work, and some things are going to have to be fixed/changed to help the future of the server.

Those good surprises like announcing phinny?
or bad one's like not mentioning the exp rate before hand?

Or how about the dupe plat during the RF/LJ transfer?
I think that was a real good surprise, some think it was bad just depends on where you fell at the end of the day.

In any case chances for RF/LJ to get some love = slim
Good luck I'm sure the last 2 TLP servers before RF/LJ thought the same thing about how their servers would get worked on....

While I agree with most of your post, I think you have the two guilds mixed up pretty dramatically. So dramatically that I feel that I need to correct it.

TL did a horse krap job if making things fair. In fact, I think the only officer in their guild that fought for other guilds was Jain and every single officer in TL (and AoS) talk trash about him openly, and especially in private. Before the forced rotations, TL lost 1 Vox and...I think...Maybe an Inny? Pretty minimal.

After rotations were implemented, TL somehow got away with implementing the most unfair rotation i have ever seen. I won't dive into that in this post.

Even on Phinny AoS (the new TL) has problems sharing. Racing for targets on Phinny have been rare but any time someone has tried to race, huge disputes have been the result. Anyone remember the Trakanon where Skykam ended up getting a 1 week suspension? I was in the teamspeak room with him an a significantly % of AoS officers when they were coordinating their trains against IVAS. They even went as far as to yell at their members for attacking the train as it ran past because the train ended up being dumped their own guild members instead of IVAS. This was probably one of the more significant disputes on the server but there have been others too. From what I have experienced, the officers tended to take a very selfish, childish approach when dealing with any situations.

On the other side of things, Faceless started a rotation on about the week 2 mark of the server; before the spawn rates were even increased! Most would agree that the first rotations were leaning heavily in Faceless's favor but, it was a rotation none the less. It allowed the top 3 guilds to kill all content on a regular basis.

Eventually, when the forced rotation came about, it was Faceless eventually campaigning for 24 hour kill times on targets but they still wanted to assert their server dominance by having FFA days in the rotation. This all still wasn't 100% fair since most of what Faceless campaigned for was designed to hurt the #2 and #3 guilds (the forced rotations created some huge disputes between the 3 guilds).

There is no reason, given the history of how Faceless has worked with other guilds, to believe that they wouldn't work with DHS to allow them to get raid targets. DHS has been an extremely respectable guild on any server it has been on and they take a more family guild casual approach to the game. This is why I am not surprised that they aren't going for Vulak, a target that still takes a lot of Phinny guilds more than 6 hours to get to. Maybe DHS could get to Vulak in a single raiding night but, I have to believe that they believe this raid would just be very draining for a guild of this format to do on any regular basis.

I believe that if a DHS group of players wanted to experience NTOV in era, Faceless would take them along and, given the history, I could see Faceless even offering up some non-rare vulak items to those players.



Back to the thread though, I really don't think a majority of the raiding folks on LJ/RF want to merge the servers. You end up having too many raiding guilds on a single server and it becomes an absolute mess. The only way it would work is with instances and, given DBG's past comments about instances on RF/LJ, I don't see it happening. I question if their is even a big enough player base on these 2 servers for them to even consider making the hardware investment to allow for instancing.

Another note is I think it was mentioned to sync the expansion releases on RF/LJ/Phinny and I absolutely do not agree with syncing them. If anything they should offset these servers as much as possible. The reason why I say this is because some folks actually play on Phinny plus the old TLP. If you sync all the expansions, I have the feeling that RF/LJ would lose another 10% of the population since I think Phinny is the more healthy of the 3 servers plus the time investment on level on phinny would have been so much larger for these players that it makes phinny the more logical choice.

We've had a few times where Thylex spawned while we were doing other targets. I coordinated with DHS to go in and give TOV a shot. We did the same with AoW last week and guess what... DHS killed it. Good on them!

As far as "how we operate", I think maybe you are referring back to Classic and early Kunark when lack of targets forced us to be a bit more overbearing than we are required to be in Velious and beyond. Just an fyi, no one knows what FI is or how #FacelessCares operates... I'm willing to bet that no one knows that Darth is no longer Guild Leader and that our officer core has nearly COMPLETELY changed since the officer core of Classic and early Kunark.

Oh wow, just noticed you were the guild leader. Good stuff! Darth wasn't bad but he could get a little unreasonable and unpredictable at times in certain situations (got dead babies?).

I could see Sil, for sure, working with any guild that approached him although, I am sure, there will never be a 50/50 split on any important targets but there is no need to even consider that in the current state of the server.

I won't bother debating opinions with you over the first part of your post (btw First was the major officer in TL vying for cooperation between guilds, contacting officers, not that Jain wasn't either, this is a fact), but I never said FI doesn't work with DHS. If you read what I wrote, I said if we merged, they would have 3+ other guilds now to work with and they (FI) have the numbers and force to make the rest of the guilds on ragefire have a dramatically fewer raid nights. Again, I wasn't slighting FI at all.I was stating if we merged now, it wouldn't be the best idea. My entire post was predicated on the future, and that the current state of Ragefire is fine.

Thank you for the reply though, I wish you would have read my post fully first because we seem to agree on things for the most part. Maybe it was too confusing, sorry for that.

Why does it matter whether I find them good or bad? You stealing my clever little rhetorical device from when I questioned your "tweaks"? The point wasn't that I want nonspecific "surprises" from daybreak, the point was they constantly surprise us so don't pretend you know what they'll do. And you forgot adding pickzones for newbie zones in the first place. Then adding pick zones for higher level zones despite saying they wouldn't. And adding a new server (lockjaw) despite saying they wouldn't. The crazy charm and aggro changes. Then of course Phinny. Oh and the XP increase on phinny. And there was the bard epic fix. And transfers being offered all over the place. I'm sure there's more.

And no, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they indeed do some server merging. And there is actually a precedent for it, if your memory is short. Despite vulak.

nt

Actually sir, I think you need to read the thread again:

"The drop off in attendance is steep this go around. 2 months in and most mains are nearly fully BIS. Hell, some alts are getting Vulak and AoW Loot and there are really only the rare Vulak drops that are still worth even doing the mobs for. Keeping interest is the biggest challenge facing TLPs."

This does not mean we do Vulak purely for Alts. You're an idiot if you think that is the case.
I said, "some alts are getting Vulak and AoW Loot".

Examples: Alt Warriors are getting Jaelan's Katana and BOCs, alt Wizards are getting their ancient spells, alts will be getting Palladius Axe shortly, alt monks are getting legs off of AoW. Vulak's loot table has 24(ish) items of which 3 are actually going to alts.

Also, I'm not an officer, I'm the guild leader.

Back to the subject at hand:

I agree with Gremin for the most part on this. There are upsides and downsides to merging servers of which I think the downsides win. There are many upsides to instances however. I wouldn't be opposed to them.

Seems too many people here are overly concerned with how other servers are doing. LJ is doing fine, the people who play there are happy with how it is. Other people's opinions of how raiding here is, who gets what targets, and how guild leaders are working together is frankly none of your concern. This is the very reason I am against any kind of merge and I hope it stays that way.

Fair enough with First being so heavily involved in the rotations but the rotations would have never come about if not forced upon them is what I was trying to say.

I did rant on about other things but that was more of a rant covering the whole thread rather than specifically focused on your post. I probably should have been more specific about who I was replying to with my different rants lol.

I think we are on the same page with all of your points and I just wanted to comment about the TL being angels and FI being stuborn little devils rhetoric happening.