No more chaser items please, and here's why

How many times have we been down this path before?

Really all this comes down to is the elite caste of the game (raiders) complaining about territorial infringement who already operate in the group space with impunity. For starters this is not OMM and the raid game should not claim exclusive domain to everything. People bring up OMM as being the deathknell of the low end raider and that gear was not even tradable. Never mind that mudflation and focii decay long killed off any raiding in expacs 2-3 releases back. OMM at least gave those people something to do and as usual, the ultra high end raider farmed them with just as much ferocity, if not more. This debate has nothing to do with cheating. Its just the same old tired player driven caste system and ideology. Anything like these chasers goes against the grain of exclusivity that raiders covet or any elite demographic. Its the virtual equal of the best eats in town opening up in the slums and charging reasonable prices. The privileged will complain, but still fill the joint up. They will complain louder when they have to wait in the same line as the garbage man or civil servant to get a table.

Besides, those who complain the loudest tend to farm the longest. Most of the most accomplished raid-o-holics tend to have either the plat to spend or alts that might be geared with raid gear already needing items like the ring or cloak in order to maintain that level of character power. Which is fine. Plat should actually be worth having in EQ in order to drive a halfway decent player economy and anyone who sat in the zones for days putting up with the bull only a chaser item can create certainly earned it. Truth be told outside of Krono, collection items and whatever the most sought after food/drink are at the time, what is there for the bulk of the player base to buy other than the usual plat sinks that are nothing more than additional time sinks?

opening up laa to all toons doesn't ruin it for anyone. the analogy in this case would be making 999 of these items available on claim for all accounts. it doesn't make the cloak any worse for someone who took the time to farm it, it just decreases its market value because they are more accessible. it's the same thing as when aa are autogranted, but the xp isn't returned to players that bought the aa earlier.

one thing that hasn't entered the debate is that these items can be passed to friends or alts after you've upgraded them. i have the mm ring on my main. i spent time hunting a second ring for my cleric friend, but never saw a second one. i expect i can upgrade the slot thru raiding fairly soon, and be able to pass it to my group geared friend who will probably use it for a long time. if nothing else, the mana regen on it will be better than what's available on group gear for a long time. when he's done with it, he can give it back to me to use on my alts. if the item was no trade, i would have felt guilty taking it in the first place. i would have felt like i absolutely had to camp another while the content was still available. this way, i have some options and can still pass on a great item to a friend in the near future.

further, the gear from revamps has historically been lore but tradable. this led to a similar set of problems. trains, ignoring nbg, and ooc fights are just the tip of the iceberg. yes, these types of zones tend to bring out the worst in people. i would have preferred that the majority of the gear be attunable rather than just two chase items. instead, we had a couple of zonewide rares that are by far the best items available to group geared players that are the only tradable items. in the end, they had the same effects on the community that leave a bad taste in the mouths of many gamers, myself included.