If we are being forced to rotate...

Being able to actually plan and play the game instead of sitting around hoping something pop?
Sounds absolutly dreadfull! Twiddling my thumbs looking at an empty room is what I enjoy the most about Everquest!

That's a pretty funny, and somewhat relevant analogy. TL wants to "race" everyone and win, so they can feel good about themselves and brag about how awesome they are, when no one else cares to "race" them whether they acknowledge that or not. Most of us are adults who realize this game is 16 years old and that everything that there is to do has been done a thousand times over and just want to experience some nostalgia and not treat this game like a second job. Being the first to do anything on this server or any other server that is opened after this one, is not really that newsworthy and/or something you should feel should make the front page of MMORPG.com or something as if you've had some world/game first kill that all should be heralded and trumpeted throughout the game. And even if you are the first to defeat these post-buffed raid encounters chances were/are you did it by pet walling, where the only really skill involved is having enough mages in your raid to keep the mob focused on them and not the actual players.

And then when you refuse to play like them (read: play 10+ hours a day and sacrifice any real life relationships, obligations, etc.) or acknowledge their "greatness" they want to get all huffy puffy and point out how you are "bad" you are and "not as skilled" as they are.

I really wonder what some of these people are like outside of the game and if they are the same in real life, which I doubt because attitudes/ideals such as theirs don't fly so easily in the real world. Or what deficiencies they have or what voids they are trying to fill by "dominating" people in a virtual game full of pixels and imaginary characters.

I wonder if we could initiate a petition to see if DBG would do something like you said to give all TL members some super-shiny/fancy armor and weapons and the title "most awesome of the awesome" or something like that and see if that will appease their seemingly incessant need to be perched above everyone else so they can look down their noses at us. Maybe if DBG did that, then TL would calm down somewhat on its plans for global domination and sit back and chill with the rest of us and enjoy the game for what it is, a game.

Again like you said, no one is trying to "race" them to anything. If this was some new, fresh MMORPG that just came out or a new expansion just got released where there where still world-wide firsts to be had, then I could understand "racing" for those, which would be something worthy of praise and being admired for.

But again, beating a dead horse, this is a 16 year old game where there is nothing new to do or be the first to accomplish, so no matter how hard they try to justify it or whatever reasons they give they will never convince me that they are nothing more than some virtual playground bully or someone who didn't get enough attention or hugs as a kid that has to come here and assert their will on everyone else to feel better about themselves for their real life deficiencies.

I haven't played in 10 years or so, which means I am having to play "catch up" with the history of EQ and the guilds that have been around since I last played and what not. What has really gotten me is the fact that after reading posts on here and Reddit EQ subreddit that apparently TL did this same thing on the last set of progression servers. Like I'm not really surprised to discover that, but when is enough enough? Can you really not say this game is ancient by MMO standards and we (TL) had our day in the sun on the last set of TLP and maybe, just maybe we can still play this time around, but tone it down a notch to make others' experiences more enjoyable to keep this game and these servers healthy so that there are continued subscriptions meaning the game will stay around that much longer? The obvious answer up until the DBG enforced rotation was/is no.

All that being said I'm not so naive that I don't realize if for some reason TL vanished today and was never to be seen again that Apok or some other guild wouldn't gladly step in to assume the role of #1 most super-awesome guild and probably do their best to emulate TL and try and "rule" the server and act like asshats while doing it.

Right now the variance is up to 24-48 hours please lower this to maybe +- 10 hours max.

I think the transfers speak to how much "competition" was wanted.

It's absolutely hilarious that you are posting in this thread asking for +/- 10 hours variance meaning a total of 20 hours when the current is ~24 hours.

They have to go with a 12 or 24 hour variance hands down. Any less variance would cause a couple of big issues that I can think about:
On FFA targets (including all targets in Kunark for the first 2 weeks - a month) The amount of guilds showing up to poopsock a low variance mob will crash any zone out there.
If the variance is what others have been asking for 6 hours or so, guilds will be able to manipulate the spawn timers so the targets never spawn during prime time meaning 50-75% of the guilds that would have otherwise been able to engage these mobs would never see them.

Want to hear what's really funny? I've pointed this out in several threads and people enjoy discounting this. It's already happened and would take little time to re-balance said dragons in those expeditions.

I would also like to add to this, for perspectives's sake, this content was so badly designed originally that 15 years later they had to add Harbingers to spawn the mobs for people trying to complete their 1.0 epics. The developers knew that original content had this issue. They redesigned Everquest over the coming expansions and even spent the time 15 years later to change that content to be a little more accessible. Yet, to leave the content as broken as it is, and to offer us the TLPs is a little disturbing to me as a consumer.

The fixes that have been offered didn't really help. So instead of addressing it, they are forcing rotations, which no body really wanted. They are either making behind the scenes conversations with the guilds, or requiring the guilds to police themselves. Lastly, Rotations are just the happy medium that the bigger guilds have accepted because it means they have at least a chance at the encounters. At the end of the day, most of us know that it is really bad for anyone involved.

Expeditions would be nice. Leave the world spawns to people that want to race. Leave a week timer for raid expeditions, and make the loot no drop. And a byproduct would be an introduction of these expeditions to live where they could really be used there too.

Either way, most of us don't want to race. We want to clear the content while retaining lives, jobs and family. Most of us would be hard pressed to face the content and clear it all in the week even with expeditions.

Let us play too!

Your argument is more flawed than a 5 dollar hooker.
Harbringers weren't brought in because of the lack of design. Harbringers were brought in because a lot of these encounters were solo-able or doable with less than a group. People would do these encounters just because they could and with a long respawn timer, the people trying to get 1.0 epics were blocked.
The Harbringers dropped no loot except the epic pieces.

Who is saying noone wanted rotations? I would say the only guild on BOTH servers that didn't want rotations was TL. So to say noone wanted rotations is kind of odd to me. Before rotations, the only guild getting kills was TL so obviously everyone else wanted a piece of the cheeze. Rotations on Lockjaw were set up before the updates to the dragons even came about.

Also you can't say the conversations were behind the doors conversations when they were talking to the designated people from each guild about these rotations. The fact that the guild were being very very stuborn resulted in a rotation that didn't favor anyone very heavy at all. The fact that TL chose not to set up a rotation before made them lose out big time in that first rotation.

it's actually pretty simple... TL do not enjoy being no.1, what they do enjoy is being better/ one-upping other people. that's what drive them... aka EQ PvP on a blue server.

Either way, most of us don't want to race. We want to clear the content while retaining lives, jobs and family. Most of us would be hard pressed to face the content and clear it all in the week even with expeditions.

This.

I had a longer post written, but I'm going to leave it at this, since I don't think anything I spend time typing will change your idea anyway. This content is 15 years old, and was causing issues for people trying to complete their epic. It doesn't matter if it could be soloed, look at the content and how fast it dies now. It won't get better.

To some, i guess I can respect that that is what you enjoy about Everquest. I think most of us came back to this server to enjoy the content itself. Not have to fight tooth and nail for it.


As far as rotations, I might have misspoke. I will directly say it: Most people that I know would prefer to be able to kill the content on demand. That rotations and spending time at a mobs spawn, is less than desirable.

Also, an hour or two to mobilize a force with the new mobs, is crazy.

That may be true.

I'd be highly interested in seeing this whole TLP 3.0 done again from scratch, but starting with two servers from the get go this time. One server for people who want to "race" where everything is FFA and has an accelerated timeframe/unlock schedule and another that enforces some kind of rotation, brings back the PNP and has a more laid back timeframe/unlock schedule.

I'd bet TL would be nearly by themselves on the FFA server that they want so very badly and the server would be so barren that they would probably have trouble spinning up more than 2 or 3 instances of Lower Guk in primetime, once the server had been out a few weeks. The server would almost certainly die out so quick it would make the Mayong server look like it had persisted forever.

Then once TL realized no one wanted to play their way, then they would most likely transfer over to the rotation/PNP server because they wouldn't have anyone to look down on or "one up" as you put it, because it seems kind of obvious they need the attention.

Most of us came back for nostalgia and the unique community experience that EQ offered/offers that almost no other modern MMORPG does. If TL didn't require an audience to show off to there was/has been nothing stopping them from going to a live server at any point and "progressing" through the content at their own pace. They could put self-imposed restrictions on leveling and equipment if they wanted to keep it fair and "in era" and wouldn't have to share with others, since they don't like doing that because most of the other people on whichever server they chose would be focused on the current or one of the most current expansions content. They wouldn't have to do what they are having to do now and sit around and wait another month for Kunark to unlock so they could get new shiny loot and race to unlock Velious and so forth and so on. There would be no virtually no constraints whatsoever in place to hamper their "playstyle"

So yeah I'd love to see something like that to prove what an underwhelming minority their idea of fun is compared to most other peoples' idea and prove the world doesn't revolve around them. It really says something that Ragefire had over twice the population of Lockjaw and by the time all of the free server transfers are said and done that Lockjaw will clearly have the bigger population. And it has less to do with the 3 month/6 month argument and more to do with the attitude of TL, Apok, and a few other guilds on Ragefire.

All that being said, to get back moreso on the main topic of this thread, I would want a variance that doesn't allow guilds like TL or others like them to sway it to their benefit by forcing as many raid boss spawns into the FFA time slot as they possibly can.

It was causing issues for the epic because respawn timers on live servers were VERY long and when you can solo the content just for the fun of it and there is no server message for someone to see when that mob was killed, good luck ever finding it without sitting on the spawn point for days.
On the TLP servers spawn timers are an average of 36 hours. So that's one big boss every 9 hour. Not bad. I am just saying this particular argument for instancing is quite flawed and you might want to find a new argument.

As for the rotation again, get a group together and kill one of the gate mobs. You can put yourself into a time slot for killing one of these mobs. 3 hours is PLENTY reasonable for a guild to mobilize and kill the dragons and Inny. If it is your rotation, you don't have to sock it, you don't have to sit at the spawn point. Just have people ready and have people on call to mobilize. Get ahold of people on social media or through texts to log on when the mob pops.

It is really quite simple and it is as close to on demand as you are going to get. Instancing is just too much work to get to virtually the same result but instancing would also drive a lot of hardcore raiders away or, at the very least, hardcore raiders would log on 15 min a day to kill a target than log back off.

Funny Mabb ( name change! ) is bringing this up and he isn't even on RF. He's on LJ. Go back to RF with your crap Mabbu. We don't want you or anybody like you here.

You literally moved to Lockjaw from RF too. He's just as entitled to be on that server than you are. Stop being so toxic? Or Try to be less toxic, if thats possible.