The other issue with backflagging is that many guilds opt to do it in huge chunks each time on off-nights when they're either not in time or on a highly desired rotation (eg. fire, VT, etc). MB/VZ/TZ/RZ one night, AD/HOH/LMM another, etc. If they were spread out a little more, 30-60 mins per flag is a lot more feasible. And over a 2-3 month period.. it would be nice if as part of the rotations that guilds could be assigned a raid to host or something. Eg. anyone on the air or earth rotation could do grummus and carp or something. No idea if this would realistically work.. just shooting out random ideas I guess haha! As for the hope for a guild to form and re-progress, I think it's unlikely. BG formed at a time about a year prior to PoP's release in the hopes that they would be ready for PoP, and were able to get some rotations in for that year leading up. I can't imagine a guild re-forming and starting over. It would likely just be a mix of players from other guilds moving over, like what the p99 servers do where every few years, there's a shuffle of players under new guild names.
Yeah, just an impulsive joke. The main theme through your posts seems to be dissatisfaction. You left at Kunark for years, you weren't satisfied then and you aren't satisfied now. I posit that perhaps this isn't the place you're looking for.
The Wiki has a link to the rotation schedule. https://wiki.takp.info/index.php/Rotation_Schedule For the PoP flag mobs, it is really just a reservation system to claim a specific raid day so the mob will be up when you want. As you can see for 2024, nothing is reserved at all so far because no one is killing them. Pug raids on flag mobs would be great, but someone would need to step up and lead them. The unfortunate truth is that there is just not enough new players coming into the server for flag mobs to get killed with any sort of regularity. Flagging is a lot of fun if you have a large group working through it altogether at once. It absolutely sucks when it is a small handful of new people who need flags, which is where this server is at now unless some large group of players drops in like Solar mentioned. There's a reason why Sony kept making it easier to access PoP zones (alt access quests, level unlocks, 85/15, time flag drops in P3), and that was all at a time when the player base was not far off its peak.
No one is stopping PUG raids from happening. You're welcome to host them. No flag mobs are locked down.
Who says I'm not "satisfied" now? I'm having much more fun than I did in 2015/2016. Looking at my comment that you originally replied to, the only thing I can think of that you take that from is the "I wish I came back sooner", as that implies that right now offers less. But I get it, I guess. Its why I put that disclaimer at the end of my last comment. People tend to mistake what I say with a different tone than its written with. And upon reflecting on my comments here, I figured some might be taking the fact that when I post I can be a bit wordy or long winded, as me "ranting" or "complaining". From my perspective, I can admit to and point out issues without them being a huge deal to me. And thats all I am doing. I am aware of the sever population troubles, and backflagging issues. Backflagging is something that will effect me soon, so I'm chiming in with a "newer player" perspective since, as far as I can tell this thread was full of vet's. I also figure I've dealt with this stuff before on live and PEQ, so I can see the bigger picture too.
Your perspective is valid and valuable, but you seem dissatisfied to me. You had a list of custom tweaks to take this server away from it's goal and turn it into something else entirely. I understand why you or others might feel this way, and there is nothing wrong with that sentiment. This is a project to preserve Al Kabor, and folks don't seem to realise that this is it. Al Kabor was a dead-end backwater of a server, with no slated new content. The play place of a few top guilds, it was not a place for the unguilded. The experience you describe didn't exist on AK, and won't exist here. I'd love some more community cooperation in this, but it will not materialize. If you, or anyone, wishes to have their cake and eat it too, they need to guild up and contribute.
Frankly there are not enough players to maintain the guilds that exist. An attempt to cater to those that don't wish to commit to a group is the stuff of jokes. Like my joke.
Wow... That... turned kind of a little toxic out of no where at the end. So lets get this strait... I join a conversation where others are throwing out non-AK ideas, throw out my own, and I get singled out for it as if I am dis-satisfied and complaining? I do know and have always known the stated goal of the server. Again, I only threw out my ideas because... that was the topic of conversation. And yes, it's reasonable have and throw out such ideas. Nothing has to be written in stone. If the devs decided to consider changing the mission from "exactly as AK was" to "what AK was, but giving players some of what they never got on AK", that would be perfectly fine. In the end, it would should be up to the community to vote on. Because I am sure some can see the perspective of "whats the point of adhering to 'exactly as AK was'... when there is no one left to play on the server?". I'm not saying make such changes. I'm not saying not to. I am... or was just trying to be a part of what I thought was a civil conversation. ... You take the fact that I just happen to be guildless RIGHT NOW as me being opposed to guilds and planning remain guildless, and show a sort of bigotry towards people like me? This is how you treat new players and those looking for guilds? Basically "Guild up or STFW!". The only reason I am guildless at the moment is because I am looking for one, and trying to carefully weigh the options. I don't leave a guild easily or hop, even if I find myself dissatisfied in it. So I choose the selection of one carefully. This is how I have found guilds for over 20 years across multiple servers and multiple MMORPGs. Even if I planned to remain guildless, that should be perfectly fine though. Being in a guild or not... is part of EQ itself. This project is replicating the old AK sever code... Not the community and the way things were handled by the community. You are free to do that part differently. But if there is legitimately no content for guildless people, so-be-it. It's normal for being guilded to be preferable for a reason. That isnt always the case for everyone though. But the suggestions I made to include those who are guildless in backflagging though are not extreme. If you think they are... you have something wrong with you. I think its about time I be done with this thread. I thought I was joining a healthy civil conversation on a topic that would effect me and thus be reasonable for me to be a part of. When people start getting even a little toxic is when its time to say.... Bye.
I guess I don't understand. You can join a guild, get all your flagged done and then just never raid again and just do the group game. If a guild disbands you so be it, you have your flags already. Although I doubt any would do that here. We actually like having more people in the group game in the guild. With respect, to have a guild put effort into the guildless might be asking a lot of raid leaders that have already done these raids 20+ times. If they don't want to do it, you can't say "the established guilds are mean because I don't want to join them". I'm sorry if that sounds harsh. I think requiring those on the rotation to do these backflag raids is a bit much and feels rather selfish honestly when you could just tag a long to get flagged when those raids happen by guilds. Again, nothing stopping anyone, even you, from leading such raids either.
Look, you're reading an awful lot into some basic and general comments. I'm sorry that you feel singled out, it really wasn't my intent... but here goes. The position from which you are approaching all of this is one of narcissistic self interest and it really looks a lot more like your hysterical fit at the mistmoore event. [Thu Dec 21 21:56:07 2023] Uberest says out of character, 'lame' [Thu Dec 21 21:59:15 2023] Uberest says out of character, 'i give up.' [Thu Dec 21 21:59:23 2023] Uberest says out of character, 'f this' [Thu Dec 21 22:00:19 2023] Uberest says out of character, 'i wanted to bring my main. cant, and there is zero flexability despite a fair compramize proposed' [Thu Dec 21 22:01:22 2023] Uberest says out of character, 'thank you for helping me decide on what guild to join, by what not to join' You. You are what makes open raiding difficult. This isn't a server for you, nor for me. It's a place to play EQ that emulates a moment in time. Comparing your experience on Live or PEQ to this server which is literally designed to plateau and "end" is silly. Democratic voting on server rules? Get real. Take a deep breath and play some EQ, or don't, but maybe loosen up a little eh?
And I'd like to follow all that up by reiterating that Destiny will be delving into some back flagging this Tuesday evening, we hope to work all the way through the list over time. All are welcome, regardless of tag or lack thereof, including YOU, DarkAkuma.
Flash back to 2005. In February of that year, Blizzard releases WoW and my beloved D2 community vanishes for the new shiny pixels. I tried out every other RPG available on the Mac platform at the time (which was paltry) and discover a demo for EQmac. I had never played EQ at all and figured I'd give it a try. I attacked it like a D2 noob and quickly discovered that I couldn't just kill everything in sight wholesale like I could in D2. The depth of the game intrigued me and the 3D world it dumped me into was so much fun, I was hooked quickly. The population of AK had been pillaged by WoW and it was mostly a ghost town. Lots of other games have come and gone since 2005, but none of them have sucked me in like EQmac. Beyond the game, I got involved in a guild and then the community of EQmac players took me in. EQmac was very different from any other game community. Back then any idiot could use a PC, but using a Mac was a choice. The EQmac players were far more mature than the players on other RPGs and far more welcoming. One of the reasons Destiny has endured so many splits and breaks is that the core people who played together on AK in the guild have experienced lots of fun and love in this game that you can't experience anywhere else. We have fun and love to spare even with smaller numbers. Populations come and go, but fun and love is a great selling point to any player new or old. I used to joke with our ex GL Pouky that Destiny would survive even if he and I were the last players wearing the tag. Nothing at all has changed except we finally broke into PoTime.
Do you have to petition to form a guild, or can you start one alone, and recruit as you go? I vaguely recall making one on live (not on AK server), without having to petition, but only ever got a total of three players, including myself, so it kind of died on the vine. It was late in the game to start a newbie guild as Sony/Verant was starting to really push high level raiding as the sole aspect of the game that they would support going forward, so low level and mid level content was restricted to whatever was already in game until Crescent Reach was added. Because of this shift in focus, new players didn't want to play with other new players, they wanted to be power leveled, keyed and geared, by a high level guild, so they could start raiding right away. I preferred the approach that Brad's team took, where they would add content for solo, groups, and raids, so you could play however you wanted to. Going to a rading only style of play, left a lot of people stranded in old content, that nobody visited anymore.
Then they fractured the EQMac community, by going Intel only. A lot of people were still using PPC Macs that they bought new,some within the last few years, and others, like myself, were taking advantage of the drop in used PPC Mac prices, to finally be able to afford one. The fact that you can play with PPC Macs, Intel Macs, and PC on this server, means it can be done, they were just too lazy to do it. We got the tired old excuse that they could no longer get tech support from Apple for the PPC client, which is why they dropped it, which was the same excuse that every other software company was giving during the transition.
