Raid History

This page is an attempt to document the history of raiding on Project 1999.

IMPORTANT: This is not a place for "rants or flames"; it is meant to contain objective information only.

TODO: This page is just a very rough start, and needs lots of detail. Also because the history of guilds is a sensitive subject, this page needs lots of references (forum links, reddit links, etc.) to back up what it says as much as possible.

See also: Raid Suspensions.

P99 Blue Eras

Raiding on Project 1999 Blue has gone through different eras, based on two main factors: the fortunes of certain "uber guilds", and rules changes made by the staff.

Early Days (Pre-Kunark)

First Raid Guilds (and First Rotation)

When the server first launched, the first people to raid level formed Inglourious Basterds, making it the first dominant guild on the server. The guild included a Project 1999 developer, which resulted in drama.

A second guild, Transcendence, then arose, and the staff enforced a rotation between them and Inglourious Basterds. After them a third raid guild, Divinity entered the scene, by poopsocking Nagafen to get their first raid boss kill.

At this point the staff broke the rotation, and as a result Inglourious Basterds dominated. Fish Bait was formed, led by Salty (a VZ/TZ player). This guild was infamous for training other guilds over Plane of Hate gear. A mutiny occurred, and the guild merged with Eminence to reform as Dark Ascension. That guild came to rival (and arguably surpass) Inglourious Basterds.

Initial Raid Ruleset

In the very early days, if a guild was doing a non raid-mob planar clear, usually no other guild would zone in to compete . However, IB and DA broke this informal convention, which led to the staff instituting a new (and ultimately unpopular) ruleset.

The first raid force with fifteen active players present and "camping" the target was guaranteed it ... as long as they kept 15 non-AFK campers present.

This resulted in three days straight of 15+ players sitting semi-afk at raid targets. For example, both guilds would have players sitting in Fear waiting for Draco to spawn, calling out AFK checks to ensure the other side was present.

Attempting Cazic Thule was particularly interesting. Both guilds would be forced to simultaneously clear the zone while monitoring the rate at which the other guild cleared. Eventually, a raid leader would make the judgement call that enough had been cleared and an attempt on Cazic Thule was made.

After ? months this raid rule was removed and replaced with ___________? [Author's note: I remember guilds camped along north wall calling out AFK checks to ensure other guild's players weren't AFK in Fear]

Early on none could easily take CT without training bards or most being eliminated- which became the meta later on.

New Guilds and Alliances

Dark Ascension joined with Vesica Dei to compete with Inglourious Basterds, who then in turn soon formed a new alliance of their own.

Transatlantic Rampage

Shortly before the release of Kunark, Inglourious Basterds merged with Darkwind (a European raiding guild featuring many former members of Europa) to form Transatlantic Rampage. Also Dark Ascension fell apart (due to drama?) around this time.

The Mystical Order

Meanwhile, a new guild called The Mystical Order grew quickly, through mass invitations. They quickly ruffled feathers by breaking conventions, and this way of operating soon became what the guild was (in)famous for.

Again, while the top two guilds didn't respect this, all other "casual" guilds left the planes to the guild which broke them. However, when another casual guild (ED: who?) had already broken into Fear, TMO showed up and took the armor mobs (Harpies) from them. This lead to one of the first server "memes" about TMO being unable to break into Fear themselves.

Despite these ignoble beginnings, TMO would soon become a massive monopolizing force on the server, in Kunark ...

Kunark (Year One)

Raiding stopped briefly with Kunark's launch, as everyone went to explore and level up. The alliance between Dark Ascension and Vesica Dei ended with the launch of Kunark, and soon Dark Ascension broke up after their leader Durison was banned

Dark Ascension reformed with Dozekar to create Fusion, although many members instead joined The Mystical Order. Vesica Dei allied with Transatlantic Rampage.

At the start of Kunark, the Transatlantic Rampage/Vesica Dei alliance largely dominated. They used this dominance to farm Trakanon for his teeth, to get into Veeshan's Peak.

Veeshan's Peak Delay

Unfortunately for TR/VD though, Veeshan's Peak's release wound up being repeatedly delayed, and ultimately was stalled for about a year. During this time Transatlantic Rampage began to lose a significant number of members, resulting in the guild losing it's dominant position.

Meanwhile the nascent guild The Mystical Order was growing, and together with several of the Dark Ascension splinter guilds they formed a "zerg" force of their own, which they used to successfully defeat Trakanon. In addition, GMs gave the guild additional teeth to the guild in a GM event in Sol B.

Vesica Dei Hack and GM Scandal

Meanwhile, two dramatic and unexpected events reshaped the raid scene. First, a The Mystical Order player (Myuharin) gained access to Vesica Dei guild website, and posted real life pictures of the Vesica Dei guild leader. TMO proceeded to cyber bully her on Rants and Flames. This prompted her to quit Project 1999 (and led to the current server policy, which bans the posting of such info). This was arguably the most despicable moment in server history, and left a black mark against TMO until they folded.

At the same time a server scandal arose, because GM Amelinda was dating a member of The Mystical Order (although at the time the full details of this weren't known, the scandal revolved around the GM purchasing baked cookies from the player). This let to perceptions of favoritism for the guild (which were later confirmed by TMO members).

Bregan D'aerth Grows

Because of these events, and impatient over Veeshan's Peak, Inglourious Basterds left the server for EQMac, and Vesica Dei dissolved, with most remaining members joining Bregan D'aerth. This made BDA the #2 raid guild on the server (eg. the only other one able to do upper sky islands)

BDA vs. TMO

The competition between the two top guilds heated up, both on the forums and in petitions to the staff.

On one Trakanon attempt, TMO wiped on their first engage. BDA cleared the juggs and went in. TMO managed to be first to engage Trakanon despite this, so when BDA killed Trakanon anyway they petitioned ... even though they only had a handful of just-rezzed half-naked people and not an actual raid force when they engaged.

The staff awarded TMO the loot (again, encouraging perceptions of favoritism), TMO bragged in RnF, and a new precedent was established. BDA then began to focus entirely on being the First to Engage. For instance, on one occaision they ported a teams of monks to Hate, and those monks then engaged Inny just before TMO was about to. When TMO killed Inny anyways, BDA petitioned, and got loot.

The two continued to compete for awhile.

Veeshan's Peak (Kunark Year 2+)

When Veeshan's Peak was released, the staff instituted a "rotation", by forcing Transatlantic Rampage and The Mystical Order to roll to decide who got which dragons.

Inglourious Basterds Return and the Rotation Ends

After a long hiatus, Transatlantic Rampage reformed on Project 1999 with their original guild name: Inglourious Basterds. This leads to a break in the rotation.

Train Wars

The staff decides to completely step away from Veeshan's Peak at this point, which means that guilds are allowed to "train" each other with mobs. This leads to the biggest zerg force triumphing ... which meant The Mystical Order began to dominate. For a while their their main rival, Inglourious Basterds, provided some competition, but eventually that guild left the server to play on the EQ Mac server instead.

This quickly resulted in The Mystical Order monopolizing almost all raid content, and preventing other guilds (Bregan D'aerth, Taken, Divinity, etc.) from getting any significant raid targets.

Temple of Droga Lock-Down

During this time The Mystical Order also locked down the Bind Affinity locket camp in Temple of Droga, but a wipe lead to that camp being broken.

Forceful Entry

Bregan D'aerth was having far less success with The Mystical Order, so their leadership tried using "dirty tactics". Those tactics didn't help, so many left the guild and formed Forceful Entry.

This new guild allied with Inglourious Basterds to compete against The Mystical Order as best they could, but didn't have much more success than Bregan D'aerth. While they were able to get some significant targets, TMO dominated in Veeshan's Peak.

Forceful Entry then tried to compete seriously in Veeshan's Peak, but found that TMO, with numerous rez-stick wielding pre-parked support characters, was better at "train wars".

Rampage

Forceful Entry took a "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality and opted to partner with The Mystical Order to form a "mega zerg" (eg. 120 player Xygoz raid).

Meanwhile Inglourious Basterds was left with 20ish people, and then their Guildleader Getsome disappears on a fishing trip. This lead to the guild joining The A-Team and Idiots and Savages to form Rampage.

The Mystical Order Plat Duping Scandal (Froovygate) and Ban Wave

The Mystical Order was hit with a mass ban wave as some of their members were found to be duplicating plat. The guild's leader (Zeelot) and many other high ranking members (eg. froovygate) quit as a result.

The guild then split: part was then taken over by Rampage, while part formed a "new The Mystical Order". Rampage and the new The Mystical Order would remain relatively even in terms of strength for the next two or so years, during which time the class system was implemented.

Forceful Entry and The Mystical Order Merge, Reform as Forsaken

Forceful Entry and some former members of The Mystical Order formed a raiding alliance, which eventually lead to the two merging. Their combined force was the main competitor to Rampage.

Eventually this force reformed as Forsaken, which notably gets suspended in their very first week.

Class System

The staff then suspended raiding, and asked the player base to come up with their own rotation ideas, to make raiding less exclusive .. but (in typical Project 1999 guild fashion) no agreement can be reached. BDA leadership is blamed.

After weeks of failure, Rogean put his foot down and established the "Class C/R" tiered rotation system. This system allowed guilds other than The Mystical Order/Inglourious Basterds and their descendants to experience raid content.

Under this system a guild could be labeled "competitive" or "restricted" (Class C and Class R respectively), and a raid mob would cycle between being available only to Class C guilds, only class R guilds, or Free-for-all (FFA).

The staff also institutes new raid rules, and bans VP training. CotH ducking is established.

Casual Guild (Voluntary) Rotation

Among the casual guilds (Class R), an initial rotation was created so that all casual guilds would have attempts at raid mobs. However, after awhile, some of the larger casual guilds thought it unfair that smaller casual guilds were teaming up when their turn came about in the rotation because they had an insufficient number of raiders for the targets.

This led to situations where, for example, three smaller guilds would consistently team-up and thus receive 3 "spots" in a raid mob's rotation, whereas one guild of equivalent player size would still be restricted to their 1 spot. The rotation was ended in January of 2015, when seven of the ten guilds involved voted to do so, after negotiations failed.

The largest casual guilds, BDA and Taken, won a majority of class R raid targets from that point on, with Divinity coming in third. Although the casual rotation had ended, the overall class system lasted until the launch of Velious.

CSG (Casual Scum Guilds)

To try and compete (somewhat with BDA and Taken, but more so with Divinity) a new alliance between Europa, Omni, and Azure Guard was formed. This alliance was known as the "casual scum guilds" CSG), to embrace a term that top guilds had used to dismiss them.

Occasionally, other Class R guilds such as A-Team, Indignation, and Asgard joined the above alliance and referred to itself as Gimpatron[1].

Velious

Velious Launch

With the class system abolished, Rampage dominated early Velious (roughly the first 7-8 months), gaining all raid server firsts, locking down Sleeper's Keys, etc. TMO did compete with them, but was not very successful.

However, because those two guilds focused so heavily on North Temple of Veeshan, Sleeper's Tomb, and similar top targets, they weren't competing with the smaller guilds for lesser targets like Derakor the Vindicator or Kunark dragons. After the "dark days" of TMO monopolizing Kunark, just about everyone was able to get loot.

CotH (and CotH Ducking)

(ED: Parts of this are from memory, and may need details fixed.)

It's worth noting that the main competition mechanism of this era was Call of the Hero ducking. This meant that Magicians from competing guilds would position themselves near raid targets, and start casting Call of the Hero to bring in allies when the raid target was in window.

However, the rules only allowed a certain number (2?) players near the raid target spawn location, until the mob spawned. Those players weren't allowed to engage the mob: only the summoned players could.

Thus guilds would have mages wait near raid spawns, and then summon other guild members when the mob spawned.

CotH Ducking

As an example of the most extreme behavior this created, in some rare cases guild mages would cast Call of the Hero when the mob hadn't spawned yet, duck to cancel it, and then repeat that cycle until the mob actually spawned. At that point they wouldn't cancel, and this would provide a slight "racing edge" to the person summoned. (Note: Although this occurred, it was never a main mechanism. Anyone caught doing this would get a tell/complaint immediately, as nobody wanted to escalate it to this level. Also, it's obviously not practical for anyone to "CotH duck" for raid windows that can last for many hours.)

FAT Alliance

Eventually though TMO started to become more competitive (with both Rampage and the rest of the guilds). At the same time Forsaken allied with Asgard and Taken, to create the FAT alliance (a large "zerg" force).

Taken was the first to leave the alliance, to team up with Rampage (double-check this)

The Sleeper is Woken

With new competition from TMO and the remainder of the alliance ("ForsakenGard") Rampage was facing the end of it's dominant period. The Forsaken/Asgard alliance managed to snipe a Vulak from them, and then got a server first Gharn's Rock of Smashing (double-check this)(From what i've heard, the server first Gharns dropped almost a year? into Velious, and it went to Reep. Who has since passed away. REST IN PEACE REEP, a true p99 legend.)

Rampage made the decision to leave, but before they did they wanted to do something which would leave their mark on the server forever. On Sunday, January 31st, 2016, Kerafyrm (aka The Sleeper), was woken by Rampage.

The guild's leadership left the server afterwards, and with Rampage gone, TMO was able to once again dominate the remaining competition ... briefly.

Awakened and Aftermath: The A/A Era

The remaining members of Rampage formed Bacon (double-check this), which soon merged with Taken to form a new guild: Awakened.

At roughly the same time TMO and "ForsakenGard" merged. They chose the name "Aftermath" to come before "Awakened" alphabetically. Although they struggled at first the guild quickly became competitive, and soon the two guilds were together dominating all high-end raid content for the next couple years.

Bregan D'aerth Leaves

Bregan D'aerth actually scored a handful of Rampage bigwigs and for a couple months were trying to break into ntov stuff and did have a little success but randomly the leader and 3/4ths the guild up and left the server all together.

This completely left the end game in the hands of A/A.

Divinity, the oldest guild on the server at this point, also leaves afterward, making Europa the current oldest?

Rustle

A group of Inglourious Basterds returned at this point to form a new guild, known as Rustle. Rustle partnered with Aftermath against Awakened, and became fairly successful for awhile. However, over time the guild petered out.

Tempest

Due to leadership changes Awakened dissolves and reforms as Tempest. However, many former Awakened members didn't agree with the new leadership, and so this "core" group formed a new guild called Core, which focused more on smaller content.

Tempest struggled to compete with Aftermath, and with this lead to a membership drain to both Core and Aftermath. Aftermath started to dominate content for the next year or so as Tempest slowly died, and Core remained focused on smaller content.

(Note - I feel like this feels a bit hollow just to leave as "Due to leadership changes." This skips over the entire Sirken/Dulcina affair and a literal year and thousands of days of suspensions and targetted harassment and a senior GM lead removed due to being scorned by an e-girl.) While A/A was the golden age of p99, it's a hard one to gloss over. Also, this lead to rooting dragons, aka the deathblow - Zerg era.

GM Braknar and the (Failed) New Rotation

Due to a deteriorating raid scene (the staff was routinely seeing 5+ separate raid forces in Temple of Veeshan, and there was frequent petitions), GM Sirken and GM Braknar attempted to institute a new rotation system.

Unfortunately this system was very quickly dissolved, as it turned out Rogean and Nilbog did not approve of it. Braknar left (very publically, by sharing a private chat between the four of them on Reddit).

"Rooted Dragons" Era

In response, a short while later the staff instituted a new system, changing the in-game rules of Temple of Veeshan so that the dragons would be rooted (despite this not having been done on live during the classic era).

Riot

Aftermath, having grown accustomed to quick zone line pulls, began to lose members who weren't interested in spending hours crawling through ToV. Smaller guilds like Core, Paradigm Shift, and Azure Guard start to chip away at Aftermath's dominance.

Eventually, Core and Paradigm Shift merged to form Riot, and this new guild began to overtake Aftermath. Over time Riot was able to overtake the spot has the top raiding guild of the server.

Azure Guard / Freedom (FRAG)

Azure Guard and Freedom began to raid primarily together with each other in order to compete against the Riot zerg tactics. Although Freedom (consisting of former members of Aftermath) was lower in numbers, their raid experience was able to bring them together in order to rival Riot. The two guilds frequency in teaming up in order to compete with Riot has led other guilds to consider them being one entity rather than two guilds. The alliance proved very effective, reducing Riot's dominance of the raid scene over the following months. After some months the two guilds merge to form Vanquish, and usurp Riot as the top raiding guild on the server.

Kittens Who Say Meow

After the banning of Riot, Azure Guard, and Freedom due to the toxicity of the raid scene, KWSM became the top raiding guild on the server in Oct - Nov 2020. They received the server first Prismatic Dragon Scale and Shissar Elementalist`s Cane after they were added in a patch on November 6th, 2020.

Vanquish, 2021

In February 2021, Azure Guard and Freedom merge, to form a new guild, Vanquish. With the FRAG alliance having already weakened Riot, Vanquish quickly emerges as the new top raiding guild on the server. Riot fractures, with some members leaving to join Vanquish, and others leaving the server altogether. Vanquish and Riot see renewed competition from Kittens Who Say Meow. After early dominance from Vanquish, KWSM begins a semi permanent alliance with Riot, known as Kriot

Draft/Bag Limits Era

Jutebox of Kittens Who Say Meow worked with server staff and server players in order to create a quarterly draft. The draft entailed a serpentine /random for guilds to choose picks of raid targets that they were allowed to defeat without competition for 7 days (with additional rules). The requirement to participate in the draft is to be able to solo kill Derakor the Vindicator. This also led to more GM enforced rules on Blue and Green, but for Blue led to bag limits on all TOV raid mobs. This was designed to stop one guild from dominating all the ToV dragons and give other guilds a chance to contest. The bag limits restrict to two consecutive successful kills of TOV raid targets until another guild killed the mob (within certain time windows after a repop). Bag limits updated 10/21/2021 to four consecutive kills of TOV raid targets until another guild killed the mob (within certain time windows after a repop). Bag limits removed 9/27/2022 as their original intention was to give smaller guilds a chance to have access to some mobs, but it did not work as intended.

2021 Active Raiding Guilds

Vanquish (formerly Azure Guard and Freedom) and Riot continued to lead the end-game 24/7 raiding scene, but Kittens Who Say Meow begins consistent competition during prime times. Vanquish encounter the first bag limit since its inception with consecutive kills of Cekenar and Lendiniara the Keeper (and three or four other ToV dragons). Dawn Believers merges into The Second Sons with some of their members joining Riot, Vanquish, or Kittens Who Say Meow. The Second Sons, Aegis, and Lighthouse, all continue to exist as casual raiding entities. Kittens Who Say Meow and Riot begin teaming up regularly in 2021 as Kriot to try and compete with Vanquish more effectively (TOV, CT, etc). NTOV meta has become trainout and/or kite method for most encounters as initially pioneered by Vanquish.

2022 Active Raiding Guilds

Vanquish continues to lead in the raiding scene for the first half of 2022. The partnership between Kittens Who Say Meow and Riot ends, but still occasionally team up on raid targets. Other guilds are less active in competitive raiding, but still continue to participate in roll events and rotated/scheduled content (such as Golem Racing, Sky, etc).

On 2/16/2022, after allegations of cheating in the Kael FTE foot races (namely scripting of the race starts), the GM's change the rules regarding King Tormax and Statue of Rallos Zek in Kael, and Dain Frostreaver IV in Icewell Keep. Instead of foot races guilds now /random roll for the rights to FTE. All guilds must roll within 60 seconds of spawn. These rules only apply to natural spawns. On 3/31/2022, the rules for Kael and Icewell Keep were changed again. Now entities must pull and kill the Statue / AoW, and King Tormax, closer to their spawn points (in defined areas as laid out by GM's). Train out's are not permitted, and mobs pulled must be killed, unless they are a part of a "normal" split. The rules for Icewell were reverted to the former set, before the rolls, racing from the Great Divide zoneline to Thurgadin. Again, these rules only apply to natural spawns.

On 11/1/2022 the Aegis alliance merged with the "Lighthouse & Friends" alliance to form Sanctum, which made its debut by killing Ikatiar the Venom(x2), Telkorenar(x2), Velketor(x2), Vindi(x2), Talendor, Innoruuk, Kelorek'Dar, Gozzrem, Lendiniara the Keeper, Venril Sathir, and various Plane of Hate minis all within their first active week (which included two quakes).

Starting early July 2022, the top end raid scene began to shift from Vanquish dominated, to contested with Riot. Between July and December, Vanquish and Riot shared equal success, killing 9 and 10 vulaks respectively, until November 26th when Vanquish killed their last [non-draft] vulak. Starting in December, Riot began to win the majority of the mobs for the rest of the year.

2023 Active Raiding Guilds

The raid scene is mostly led by Riot in 2023.

By late January, Vanquish stopped contesting Riot competitively and two guilds formed (mainly consisting of ex-Vanquish members), <Gravity> and <Get Off My Lawn>.

P99 Green Eras

There is currently Green server raid history (here; the serve certainly has had raid dram over it's lifetime!) Someone should add it.