I'm surprised how little tov is camped in OW given no picks.. I was expecting every damn mob there to be camped 25/7. Instead weve done HoT everyday since launch essentially, only a few times were we pushed out, usually because a couple guilds come in with 50 man raid forces for a few hours for whatever reason. Already got 7/8 on my enc and cleric. Last few days we had entire place to ourselves for 1-+ hours. Fucking BP drop rates are retarded tho. Still no robe or plate BP drop.
I guess it shows how much Krono motivates camping?
Everyone knows theres hot eq grills u just have no game -- one of my aos boys (not naming names) is on a flight THIS WEEKEND banging a wow chick lmfao - just got the news yesterday
I would be interested in playing in a casual raid guild again that has strong real leadership.
There are all these guilds on Aradune and other TLP's that claim they are casual but they arent, and this is why TEB and batphone guilds are actually the best for "casuals" ironically: heres why
1. "Casual Guild" but raid 3 times a week on strict schedule and 60% attendance ratios -- I have always done better with a less formal time structure (batphones)
2. Casual guild usually ends up meaning just casually led -- not what I would want.
3. Most of the 3 days of enforced (or not enforced) raiding is on garbage filler content with poorly executed raids and shitter people. Its not a good experience.
4. TEB and others are extremely organized with their systems and efficient in their raiding.
To build a really good casual guild I think you need to really understand TLP's, loot meta, and structure around that -- and bring the best of the real raid guilds to a downselected and parsed approach towards EQ to create a casual veteran raiding experience:
Example:
1x Prime Time Night (Enforced Attendance 60%, this would usually be content that would "gate you" by numbers) - DKP Is Awarded For This
1-2x Other content nights -- GDKP
Super strong leadership / organization and enforced performance (we dont carry shitbags)
So for classic this "casual veteran guild" wouldnt be plowing stupid shit in classic 3x a week -- we are going to skip the garbage -- 1 night of big content per week with enforced attendance. Ironically, I considered rolling a casual necro on aradune lately and looked at the guilds and saw either (no RA enforcement, or 3x a week RA enforcement) + TEB. I know myself too well -- I am not in a place in my career and life where just right now batphone guilds make sense for me -- not knocking them I loved my time in AOS and Faceless.
When I look at the concept of needing to show up, wait an hour while people "form up" and all this casual bullshit for 3x a week that sounds like a fucking nightmare too. Need to focus on organization and experience.
What would the prime time enforced RA raiding look like?
What would classic end up looking like? NAGGY + VOX + SKY?
Kunark? PD? (Lets be honest 90% of kunark is garbage)
Velious? (This is a tough one): KAEL + NTOV?
Luclin? AHR & Friends
POP: Time?
And So forth? I think casual guilds are missing the opportunity to parse down content a bit and get more serious -- providing an opp for a serious player like me to be able to stay engaged on a once / week basis and then not feel like im killing phinny weekly with a bunch of fags. Has anyone thought of this type of setup or seen it?
You would lose alot of the hardcore players. While there is a probably a core of people who would be happy with that setup, there are still a ton of hardcore players who want BIS as fast as possible. SoE broke up essentially because of failing in VP, the raid was failing in VP because they didn't make getting the key mandatory and didn't have the numbers. Bunch of the hardcore players and raid leaders quit after failing in VP and that was it.
Vets does 2 nights/week of DKP raids. 2 off nights too, with the option to spend DKP on items, if someone wants to. We decided to do free rolls on off nights for mains first, but I think people got a little pissy when a 55 won roll for CT brain.
Our guild had a 3 night schedule, but it shifted based on content down to a two a night week. We could've compressed to a once a week raid several times, but we found it was better to have 2 nights or people feel like if they miss the single raid they're fucked or there's simply just not enough EQ for them with as many raid loggers as we have. At worst, in early Velious, we were doing 3 raid nights a week and it was probably a total of 7-8 hours overall. Yelinak/Tunare took about 60 minutes total (which is misleading because we had coth boths pre raid start time to get early people for yeli), Kael took less than 60 minutes, NTOV took anywhere from 2 hours to 3.5 hours. Sleepers took like 1.5-2 hours and Vulaekk splits took another 60 minutes.
The key, again, is efficiency. Just getting in, knowing what you're doing, and doing it well. In OMM for instance we never split OMM even though we had ~52 main raiders on and we could've. Why? Because the headache it would cause splitting up the "right" people and classes and boxes. Most guilds are splitting it and their Anguish time was something like 90 minutes to 3 hours. Our raid is routinely around the 45-50 minute mark. And then afterwards we do an all-alt Anguish which we can flounder and learn and refine shit with off the DKP clock.
We did bring boxes for Vulaekk splits and early Zlandi splits, but those are much easier to do being one fight essentially. Clear to boss with boxes, kill boss. Running NToV with boxes or VT with some of the pulling shenanigans would've been a real pain in the dick.
So our guild raids 2-3 nights a week, but it's never been more than 6-7 hours outside of the first week of an expac. The nice thing about multiple raid nights is people who have RL's can still get in on raids if they miss some. I see the appeal of hopping in whenever with batphones, but I think a lot of the gear distribution in those types of guilds is pretty wonky. You've got the guy who has 98% attendance getting loot, which is definitely smart, but then his boxes get loot over the 66% attendance guys because he can use his DKP or whatever and you have mains who are competent players demotivated to continue raiding because they just can't put in the poopsock effort. You'll also have those guys who show up one in 10 raids who blow their DKP on the one item they're after fucking everyone else over. The pixel snipers. Normal guilds obviously have that with things like GG weapons, but at least to contend with DKP in normalized guilds those fuckers have to show up to every raid. Now are they a warrior in full indicolite because they want a BoC? Probably. But at least they're there. In those poopsocker guilds you can just log in for the fast and free raids to get that DKP tick and then only show up for the call for that select raid where your item drops. Then Jonny Lambent wins his Songblade in Time after just doing OW VT raids where he could get cothed across the zone and finish in 30 minutes.
The problem with this is we'll never allow boxes to win loot over mains. So we have like 3-6 6boxers who have 0 shot at gear if we do it like that. In the Alt anguish it's one need roll one greed roll per Human. Mains don't come so all loot is up for grabs. If we split it we'd have all sorts of angry boxers who will never see Anguish loot on their alts because very, very little Anguish loot rots. We don't do Txevu/Tacvi/MPG trials anymore. Loot was rotting so we do plat raids or offnight alt raids for those. Our only raids right now are Anguish and the 4 DoN dragons. Two of those we had nearly 100% rot loots last week, but the whole fucking DoN takes us 60 minutes for everything so if we didn't do that we'd be down to less than one hour raiding a week.Man, I don't know... splitting Anguish seems totally worth it if you keep it at 90 minutes or less. That's what our guild has done. For five months it's the best loot minus less than a handful of pieces. I'd rather split Anguish than do MPG trials, Tacvi, or Texvu, no questions asked. Not a single person has complained about Anguish splits but there's a lot of moaning about doing Txevu, MPG trials, and Tacvi, in that order.
I don't think you can say what a nice thing it is to have a 45-50 minute Anguish when you then go and likely spend more than that in your alt Anguish. If it's roughly around 90 minutes total or longer that seems like a strange waste of time when you could mix mains/boxes/alts and have two Anguish in that same amount of time.
Now, if it's taking three hours.... yeah, fuck that. You should not have to worry about trash respawns.
On a side note, one thing I find really unappealing about batphones is most that I've seen require you to drop what you're doing if you're in game and help out. That to me isn't fun at all.
If you did Anguish splits, I think you'd find some starts rotting. I mean, you're not going to gear a six box team, but you could gear a second box. But I guess you'd probably have to have a DKP setup that took into account raid boxes in some fashion, which it sounds like yours doesn't.The problem with this is we'll never allow boxes to win loot over mains. So we have like 3-6 6boxers who have 0 shot at gear if we do it like that. In the Alt anguish it's one need roll one greed roll per Human. Mains don't come so all loot is up for grabs. If we split it we'd have all sorts of angry boxers who will never see Anguish loot on their alts because very, very little Anguish loot rots. We don't do Txevu/Tacvi/MPG trials anymore. Loot was rotting so we do plat raids or offnight alt raids for those. Our only raids right now are Anguish and the 4 DoN dragons. Two of those we had nearly 100% rot loots last week, but the whole fucking DoN takes us 60 minutes for everything so if we didn't do that we'd be down to less than one hour raiding a week.
Yeah, but only if the alt night clears it all tooIf gear isn't falling to alts and boxes that means gear is in high demand, which means splitting would be very impactful. The boxers may get less than mains at first but would clean up later (or at least until the last 2 mobs) once the splits start doing their job. Doing an alt only night is just the same thing as splitting but with alts getting their foot in the door sooner is all.
Not sure how many of you were pals with Kontra but he passed. Link to thread on EQ forums. Have known him since the start of Phinigel and he was a genuine dude and a real character. This really sucks.