The Vulak Standoff

I'm asking for sources because its unverifiable, and is being used to say "it's designed to be that way". No, you can't say that it is. It might be what it eventually became, but intent is important. Holly spouting nonsense 18 years later as opinion has little to do with what the original designers "intended". For all we know, they would have loved instancing and there was a serious limitation that prevented it in 1998. Instead of leaving it to ambiguity though, you doubled down on their intent being competition, while i argue that, for all that is known, the intent could very well have been to "work together" on a raid mob, across multiple guilds, to acquire the kill. Both claims carry equal credence.

The rules have drastically changed over time. If i'm up to date on "current rules", it's whomever's raid does more dps, gets the loot/kill. If we travel back to when this content was in era, raids didnt even exist. I highly doubt that THAT was the intent, for a 6man group to get the loot off of Vulak because their group did more damage.

Ring was itself, not original. Original he just spawned in when without the Thylex even.

No guts no glory, be the better guild and beat them both.
May not hurt if some flurry drakes agro them as they are moving to try and attack vulak either.

Yea, IF they were to make a "new answer" to things, it would likely be something like an OMM banish on Thylex dying along with some flurry respawns or similar - to make it an actual challenge.

Again, you don't need sources to understand that open world raid content was designed to encourage guilds/raid forces to compete with each other. If competition was not intended you wouldn't have seen week long respawn on raid targets and would have instead had faster respawn to allow more people access to it.

Yes, the rules have changed over the time but that doesn't mean it was ever intended for guilds to DPS race each other for a raid win. Just because raid forces are not intended to have a DPS race, train each other or other means to disrupt each other doesn't mean they are not intended to compete with each other.

Is this for real? Do two guilds just sit around waiting like this? Why would they spend time doing this?

Good point and correction. However, that was the same problem to the one we have now. The standoff. While you didn't need to clear lords/ladies to spawn him he would summon all the mobs to him if you didn't clear them.

The ring event was the solution. And it was implemented in Velious era still and not something done in later eras.

Actually, heck, even having more memories now - THAT version was actually the second... Original he was up with everything else, and he would just summon any Lords and Ladies still alive to him upon engage if you attacked him without them being clear. (Like CT in Fear, but only for Lords and Ladies)

A solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Classic forums.

Ring event was implemented post Luclin from my memory - although not that deep into Luclin.

I recall learning of the "Ring of Fire" in AC (and it's subsequent removal) quite a while before Vulak was turned into a ring event. (Part of why I had personal hesitation about it working properly when I'd first heard of it)

Sure I do. For example, I don't believe that competition was a part of it at all, and am stating that the intent was to bring mass people together to down a raid target. Week long respawns were implemented because they wanted to limit the amount of raid loot out there, and keep it "prestige" and rare.

Please, tell me how that assumption can be incorrect.

Same rules apply for my "assumption" made above. Just because it's open world, doesn't mean its intended to be competitive.

Bringing people together to challenge targets as a raid force doesn't change the fact that it was also to encourage competition between those forces. You can see it from the long spawn times of those targets and the changes that got made over time to make it harder to predict when they would be up next

I find it a bit silly to think that the limited amount of open world raid targets with long spawn timers (and later randomization added to spawn timers) was not intended to be a competition between the various raid forces.

Infact, it can change the "intent". Clearly, the spawn times got changed over time and harder to predict in order to randomize it to allow other time zones/certain day players the opportunity to kill it. We have EU players, morning players, etc. People that only play at certain times would never even have an opportunity to band together in non-competitiveness to slay their dragon.

I gave a perfect example up above thats fully applicable.

We can do this all day. I'm going to stop at this point and hopefully you understand what I'm doing. I don't think that you're wrong in what it is today. I don't even think that I'm right in the hypothetical was, nor do i need to be. I'm just saying you're wrong in that it's "designed" or "intended" to be a certain way, when you do not know. You can't know. So stop spouting it. It is competitive now, and has been for some time. No doubt. But you do not know how it was intended or designed, only what it grew into.

It got changed to make it easier for other guilds/raiding forces to compete instead of a single one able to keep them all on lockdown due to differences in play schedule. If they wanted to remove the competition they would have lowered the spawn time as well to allow for more people to experience the content instead of forcing them to compete for who could do it.

It doesn't take a leap of logic to understand that content that was designed with long respawns was designed to be competed over. Given the fact that they also changed the respawn timers so that it wasn't as easy to predict and lock down the content also shows they wanted it to be competed over rather then just be beaten by who ever could kill it first and predict the schedule.

Not to mention we are talking about end game content from the second expansion which means they had a pretty good understanding of how competitive raiding guilds took things by that point.

Imagine only having enough people to fill 1 raid in your guild.

Imagine liking to be a human cattle, showing up for your "participation," and not actually doing anything besides having a pulse.

You think that's some flex admitting you prefer to under perform?

You probably believe referees invented football. Guys who possess one skill, that of correctly judging the throwing skills of others, thought up baseball. Then you got that one lunatic with an obsession with tall men invented basketball.

And GMs or such invented the encounters.

The encounters created the gm's.

[cue Gary Wright, "Dream Weaver" opening]

This is what I want to know too, I can't imagine a more depressing sight.

Well other than that guy who is going to get PL'd on day 1 so he can make back the money he paid PLing and draw a horrible salary from making this game into a poorly paying job.

Some of us require more than a pulse and the ability to breath to play with us, while others seem to enjoy jamming as many idiots onto the same discord as humanly possible.

Not my idea of fun, but you do you

You're playing classic EQ. Showing up to the raid is 99% of the difficulty. Don't try to fool yourself.