Avatars being farmed by one guild

I don't think the people complaining here understand how much work goes into camping avatars 24/7 (without using bots). Every three days, we have to watch 3 static spawn points and fly around 3 large zones around the clock looking for mobs that can spawn over a 72 hour window. The avatars themselves are a joke to kill, with the exception of Vallon which is still fairly easy. 75% of the work of killing avatars is camping them, 20% is logging in to kill them, and a generous 5% is actually killing them.

SOE decided to try and make the new avatars harder to camp, in the hopes that more guilds would be able to try them, but in reality, we just went further out of our way to camp them and most other guilds still haven't put in any effort to camp them. If you really want all guilds to have an equal chance at them, they need to be easier to camp, not harder. Have them announce in zone when they spawn or even announce to the server. The harder they are to find, the less likely any other guild will find one.

Also, Crushbone has 3 guilds killing avatars, Oasis has had 3-4, and afaik every (english speaking) server but Antonia Bayle and Butcherblock has lost at least 1 avatar.

He campchecked at the zone line and was told that the avatar was being camped.

Servers with at least 2 guilds that have killed an Avatar, ones in bold have at least 3 guilds

Crushbone
Everfrost
Freeport
Guk
Oasis
Splitpaw
Storms
Unrest
Valor

I fail to see how Avatars are not being contested. You aren't killing them because you don't care enough to try, it's as simple as that.

Here's what you do, set up a call list, and get your raid force assembled and ready faster than the other guild. If you don't want to put that much effort in then you don't get to kill contested.

That's the way it's been for 8 years.

The only reason certain guilds have an apparent monopoly over the avatars, is because they are willing to put forth the effort to field the 2-3 groups of people needed to kill them (with the rest being corpses to make up the count). I can tell you that 3 other guilds have pulled avatars on our server when spawns have been favorable to their raid times (and we had to wait to get people together).

I can also tell you that these same guilds aren't willing to put in any extra effort aside from during their raid times. Part of me wishes that they would, because getting the kill under those conditions is far more satisfying. However, at least the devs have realised that the raiding scene needs legitimate contested, rather than everything fully instanced. I just wish the devs could also do something about the complacency of the majority of the playerbase that just wants everything handed to them. A serverwide message when they spawn could be cool, but SOE's hardware would probably melt with the strain of an entire server descending on one zone.

I have my ring already on my raid main (coercer). But the fact is I firmly believe this content (and it's loot) should be available to ALL guilds worthy of it's challenge. Bot programs do camp the avatars, that is true, but that's not my arguement and personally I could care less. It's that the same guilds on each server are keeping them down so that nobody else can progress. And it's such a small percentage of guilds. I'm sure that's not everyones motivation (to prevent others from progressing) as the loot is pretty good, but that's still the outcome. The spawn times versus the percentage of guilds that are actually getting the kills is ridiculous. Especially since there are only three new raid zones that we zipped thru in the first week (minus the HM). Contested is great and all but every raider pays the same $15 bucks a month and should have equal access to it's content. Because someones in the military, or has a full time job, or is a house parent, etc. does not mean they should be penalized for being responsible.

contested monsters wont work if they are easy to kill, the ones in eq1 were great, they were up, but everyone left them alone to start with because they were too tough, it was the talk of the server when a guild got one down for the first time.
Though when people did start killing them the usual arguments arose. I never really liked them, don't understand why guilds want to fight each other in a pve game.

I think you will find that everyone has the same access to the content - it just comes down to the effort they are / aren't willing to put in.

There are raiders that raid twice as much as anyone in your guild and still hold full time jobs. But because they work they are excluded from this content because you kill it while their working.

So not only have you not killed all the instance content and probably don't even camp the avatars even during your own raid time, you're being stopped from progression?

Right. Sure. You just keep believing that.

Avatars are clearly contested by guilds who try, it's been shown in the number of servers that whatever guild you wanted to say has them locked down has lost avatars. You get out what you put in.

This is the biggest lie there is. It's bull, and an excuse you tell yourself to make you feel better about not trying. Most of our guild has full time jobs and families. You don't need every single member on to kill an Avatar. You don't even need a full raid.

I keep loose tabs with Antithesis (Kharma's Competitor Guild) and they even admit they like seeing Kharma right there fighting for the Avatar against them. It make the experience more fun for those willing to do it. Nothing stops you in an MMO but yourself. The Developers job is not to ensure "you can do everything yourself" That is what Skyrim is for. MMO's give options... Players take options and use them.

What part of I already have my ring didn't you understand? Again, another posting from someone on that list fighting to keep their loot in guild and claim they're better than others because they have the avatars locked down. LOLOLOLOL man at least be creative if your going to put up a fight to save your camps.

I can do that too.

LOLOLOLOL I can't come up with a good argument on how Avatars aren't contested when there are so many servers with multiple guilds killing them.

'Kids today'

I hate when people say this. It's a video game, you're not going to impress your grandchildren decades later about some of your trials and hardships of some obscure video game.

Anyways, OP, it's contested content as everyone said. If people really want to waste their time/life waiting for a name to spawn so they can kill before any other guild, then that's their business. Not my cup of tea personally, but none of my business really.

Stay in instances and don't worry about contested mobs.

Really? Are you serious? You must mean the other 13 guilds with a combined total of 16 confirmed avatar kills. Just your guild alone has probably had at least 16 avatar kills since the CoE launch. So give me a break.

I'm sure we could lose one. Not a single guild has so much even tried to camp a single Avatar. No, I'm not surprised that when no single other guild have so much as even tried to camp a single avatar that they haven't killed one. It's blatantly obvious on servers with people that try they will get Avatars.

I'm sorry you don't have enough common sense to realize that.

That's because a lot of guilds give up because the select few already have the avatars dead before conventional raid times begin (for those of us with an income and responsibilites).