By design, PoK is a great place for people to gather. By performance related considerations, it is also the worst place for people to gather. As has been noted above, the worst place in PoK for a pile is right outside the Guild Lobby. The second worst place is by the bank just East of the Guild Lobby. PoK is a zone where, even with nobody in it, your system is working harder than most other zones to display it to you. This is easily seen on a low performance machine just by running around and zoning. The Nexus is technically a good place to gather, performance-wise, but it's small and I find a pile in there can be more annoying than the other options sometimes. This is less important when Luclin has long been in the rear view mirror. At Luclin launch on Agnarr, The Nexus was as bad as a pile in the Guild Lobby on any other serrver. The problem is that the Guild Lobby is sub-optimal too. It's big, but it's not partitioned off enough to block the lag pile from people who want to run through to their Guild Hall. Still, it's better than PoK because there you are adding the lag from the pile on top of a large and detailed zone. So really, there is no good solution, except for putting up partitions on 3 of the 4 gaps in the center of the Guild Lobby. And even then, getting people to agree which 3 it should be would be a 90 page epic thread.
On Luclin's release, we used Nexus to gather+buff. These days, with EoK/RoS, you need to "stand on the pad" to get to Lceanium. so a pile might get in the way. Otherwise, yes, Nexus is a little zone with not many different textures that are loaded pretty quickly. A bit out of the way perhaps already, to gather for buffs (and unlikely to get a passer-by to cast one too). Yes, PoK has "by design" more textures and polygons/surfaces/NPCs so yes it's "more work" for your GPU to draw it. But it's still not enough to warrant any issues. I've been there for release, i've been there since and i am there now to compare. On AB, we basically use the lobby for people to gather and afk for buffs. We too have the occasional complaint in general about "the lag". But apparently contrary to Luclin server, our population has no issues pointing out the real problem and otherwise ignoring the complainers. a non-moving object (such as an afk charcter) causes exactly one little extra space used in a packet, not even a whole packet for itself. The rest is done on the clients (particles by their weapons, spell effects, dynamic lights and whatnot) Whether our population is generally only more tech-savy or more likely to not use the default settings or simply less intimidated by guild tags i can not comment on, i am not into Luclin's "server politics". But fact is: we generally have far more afk-people at time than the "buff pile" ever was and no problem with it.
Make toons on some other servers and zone into pok. Did it on a few servers and got the same graphic lag. It's not an extra 40 or so toons causing it for me at least. I do have my settings cranked up though so might depend on that too.
Just Ideal, but would it be possible for all guilds work together and just make a guild called RAID BUFFS. give access to all active in the MGB and helpers....then anyone giving Raid buffs on general just add person to access...and everone goes into a GH. New players still transverse Nexus so even though its a ok solution, it still has impact on new players...POK if going big bank is lag out for a lot...GL is horrible....but creating a buff guild by primary people randy and corwyhn and so forth and open for others wanting give MGB..and then have 1 universal buff room that no new player comes across..and only ones looking for buffs will go there with not a single new player or player with slow computer ever have to transverse. Its just a idea...instead of trying find a side...giving some feedback maybe you guys come together and make happen. Best Regards.
