Consequences for #1 in PoP..

Since DBG has been taking more action lately (most notably in the mass suspension/ban wave of 2016 for claim exploitation), can we expect the same treatment for those guilds that choose to exploit zone and encounter mechanics in order to complete content, including but not limited to; faster, easier, and/or broken? This seems to be a growing trend, and quite honestly is disgusting. Some guilds actually plan and work hard on content, and it's truly disheartening to see many requirements and feats bypassed/ignored due to weird exploits that only few know.

Would truly love to see some support for this, most notably by a "red post"! Discourage these kinds of acts, and smash them hard (finally) for being downright scumbags!

Typically the only time these issues are brought to light are name and shame posts, which then leads to others using same mechanic. Outside of active monitoring I don't know how this could be effectively enforced.

Donno.

There isn't any content that needs to be exploited in order for the top 10-15 guilds to beat any encounter in pop on opening day. There aren't any walk on the ceiling tricks to speed anything up. You can put any guild from AoS/OGC on down to Sad Dragons etc against any single encounter in PoP on Feb. 1 and the guild will win. Literally the only questions to be answered for which guild is #1 this expansion are who gets through PoStorms the fastest and (probably more importantly) who either claims open world Carprin, or is able to do Bertox with 36 toons. None of which will take any exploits.

No one should ever experience automatic consequences for being the #1 guild. To even suggest something along those lines is inane.

Bertox on a first clear with 36 makes me cringe. Not much room for error there.

Anyone taking krono bets on who clears PoP first?

Lol this statement. I'm fairly certain even the top 3 guilds will struggle and most likely wipe to something on their way to Quarm.

To even think that the other 17 won't wipe... hahahahahaha

So, I guess every vt guild should be at Quarm in... about 2 weeks? Seeing as 0 guilds will wipe to any bosses in PoP.

Let's see how that goes.

While I definitely agree there isn't any content that needs to be exploited - there is still some rough content at lvl 60-61 that isn't exactly trivial, even with a full VT geared raid. Not saying that it can't/won't be done, just saying I bet there are some who will still struggle with it.

There are plenty who will fail during the elemental planes if not sooner. But I still expect Quarm dead in 1-2 weeks depending on how some of the roadblocks, server crashes affecting lockouts, or outright bugs affect progression. Someone will make it through. A couple more guilds will finish by Valentine's Day, and then they will start to trickle in after that. I'd predict... 7-8 guilds finished before end of February.

No. No one will get banned. And frankly I don't really care. It's not going to affect my guild at all. We will do all content in era and everyone in my guild will have fun. Instances for the win! I'm pretty sure if there was a poll on my guild forums; 80% couldn't even name another guild on the server.

My guild was mentioned. Nice!

This reminds me of all the people saying that most guilds on the server exploit NToV and because of that, they will fail in Luclin because it's so much harder.

We have 20ish guilds (Phinnykills is missing 2-3 guilds) that have been farming Luclin for the last 2+ months.

I will say this now. We will have 15-20 guilds farming Elementals/Time before the LDoN opens. With at least 10 guild clearing all content within the first 2 weeks.

You might have guilds wipe once or twice here or there along the way, although I personally think it will be very few and very seldom. No one is going to fail and be stalled. The encounters are not hard, everyone has enough people who know how to do them and plenty of gear that they will be just fine. The only slow down will be that casual guilds will take a bit longer getting to 65, getting through stuff like PoStorms, and won't pursue flagging for Time as aggressively. When your raid force is made up more of 50% attendance people than 90% attendance people you may have to run through each stage of flagging a couple times to flag enough of a critical mass for the next stage.

Oh I agree, it will be an impressive split (and iirc you can't even 85% people in for Bertox since you have to click down.) But if you have to split Carprin for flags, might as well go for it instead of waiting 3 days. At least if you're trying to be #1. I imagine no one out of the top 3 would bother making the attempt.

The only consequence of being #1 in PoP is that someone will ultimately make a post about it and everyone who was not part of that guild will say one or all of the following:
- Grats on being #1. Nobody cares
- Wow bragging about a 17 year old game? You're so amazing at EQ
- Grats on exploiting content, I hope you feel real good about yourselves
- You weren't first this game is 17 years old, who HASN'T beaten PoP?
- Congrats
- Can you stop training us in storms now you f*@*&# a@*#&!@ ??

The thread will get nice and long and out of hand, stay up for about a week before inevitably being locked or deleted.

There will then be a big humbug about how the rankings for phinny should be done and if exploited guilds should count and who's REALLY #1 and who's the legit best etc etc. Here comes PoP boys and girls!

And this is the beautiful thing about Phinny as a server, people can still get stuff done at their own pace and not have to rush through content raiding 4+ days a week. The guilds that want to stick to their schedules, enjoy the xpack and still clear it in a reasonable time have the ability to do that here.

That being said those that choose to have a full raid of 90%+ raiders and push hard for server firsts should not be punished for enjoying the game how they choose. Some people get a kick out of the race, some people just want to see stuff again and have fun doing it.

In a kind of related/unrelated topic, have they data mined MOTM 5 yet? I could be wrong, but it seems like most bosses had more than 10% HP added to them.

Doesn't really make any fights harder except Bertox, Sol Ro, and Coirnav and only cause those are more dps checks than anything.

Thus the rush to open Carprin.

Phinny will enjoy this raid split benefit. RF and LJ? Not so much as I'm doubting Carpin spawns in picks. For RF and LJ, unless something changes between now and late may/early june, those servers will have to do Bert with 36 the first time around.

We did Bertoxx on test with 45ish. It was a joke. He has Motm5, and if you avoid his AE there's literally 6-7 bosses in VT that are more dangerous than him. It should not take more than 30-40 minutes to clear that event either with a full force. With 36 people...maybe an hour tops. If you can't do it in an hour with 36 then you can't do it with 60 people likely.

Split Bertox will be easy as hell for guilds with a half decent raid leader who does their homework.

I find it interesting how things have changed on this server. No longer is the concern "IF we can beat it", it's now "can we beat to all without a wipe". I remember doing PoP back in the day and wiping on the hard encounters a few times was pretty much expected. Especially since my guild skipped VT and went straight into PoP (this was in GoD era). RZtW was a real pita, but the excitement of finally downing him was one of my top 5 EQ moments. We were a casual raiding guild in the days before that was a thing.

Anyway it will definitely be interesting to see how PoP is with a fully VT geared force.

Knowing all the strats going in and the massive boost from TSS character changes and everyone having a ton of VT/EMP gear makes a big difference.

Yeah I'll just go ahead and say this. I develop all of my guild's strats and I'm not typically known for sharing (inb4 pffffft it's 13 year old content)

The room is rectangular.

Tank Bertox in a corner. Put the AE on a timer. Run the raid to the opposite corner on incoming AE.

Since the AE range is longer than cleric CH range - keep them all in a group. Have them cast group cures when they're not mid CH or next up.

There. That's the hardest part of the raid : solved.

You can LOS his AE -.- ... why are they going to run away, and why are you worried about healer positioning at all? Move two feet..dps..ae inc move two feet into hallway....ae out..move back in... zzzzz