Is there any interest among those on this list in an organized protest of
our class' mistreatment by Verant? How many songs must become bugged, how
many times must we be nerfed, how much longer must we stand under the
oppressive weight of the man... Ooops, sorry got carried away there. But
seriously, we have several unimplemented songs (you all know the numbers),
several songs which suffer from bugs that render them of limited value
(Lullaby, Pixie Strike), and several other abilities which are either capped
too low (Dodge at least) or outright have no value (Find Traps at the least)
that we deserve attention.
I have conducted some tests over several servers the last few days when
server numbers lowered enough to make them feasible. Verant believes or at
least purports to believe that the classes are balanced. In a game of
entertainment there is only one barometer of balance that would really
determine if this is so. All classes should be equally fun and desirable to
play by Verant's own admission. My tests show this is not the case.
Checking on Karana, Sol Ro, E'ci, Erolissi Marr, Nameless, and Fennin Ro I
found the following. With less than 1000 people on the server all classes
except Monks, Rogues, and Bards continually showed greater than 64 people
on. Even with the vast number of Anonymous clerics of 29+ levels they were
still to great for counting. Monks averaged around 20, with a high of 25.
Rogues averaged around 20 with a high of 23. Bards averaged around 18 with
a high of 21. Less than a third of the people playing each and every other
class was playing these three. Given the number of players on the server,
less than 20% total were anonymous, so that is not the reason. What is the
real reason? Rogues, perhaps due to having several useless skills as their
primary focus and other long awaited skills poorly implemented could be
expected to be low. Monks due to the recent Feign Death nerf could likewise
be expected to be low. Bards? Given the number of bugs, our low skill caps
and sharing of useless Rogue skills, combined with the often "twitchy"
nature of the class might also be lower and expected. Should any of these
three be one third as likely to be played for these reasons? Perhaps, but
unlikely. Truth is at least some of these classes are not balanced. Monks
do not get critical hits in HTH yet Rangers, a hybrid do with bows? Rogues?
balanced? In no way. Bards? Perhaps, if any significant effort was given
to fixing our bugged songs or considering our skill situation were given.
It is not.

No one has gotten any consideration from Verant without doing one of two
things. First if you have a powerful influence within Verant as Enchanters
do you are heard/ Second, if you make a big enough stink that they consider
it a PR problem you are heard. These appear to be the only two cases in
which change occurs. Verant cannot even be bothered to test our new songs
to the point of "targeting a bat in a newbie zone" as someone on this list
so eloquently put it long ago. If they did they would not have implemented
three new songs for us, all DoT's... that only worked if the casting bard
targeted him/herself. The situation is perhaps barely tolerable, but I for
one am sick of it. Sick of it to the point where I have considered ever
more frequently retiring from the game. Combined with the customer service
guidelines handed out to GM's wherein all players are assumed to be liars,
cheaters, and hackers of the worst sort unless they can prove otherwise I
have become disillusioned. Last nite I died from a Page Fault that I
volunteered to send in so they could check the debug info in it and was told
I could have caused that myself so they were not allowed to rez me under
their rules handed down by Verant. They all but said to my face that I was
a lying player who had hacked into the eqgame.exe code to 'get over' and
dared me to prove otherwise. That alone would not force me to quit the
game, at least until some bug deprived me of my corpse and made my character
unplayable, but I sure won't go looking for Verant to stand up and be
responsible when it comes to detrimental effects of bugs in their code.
/petition may as well be /insultme but do it politely, given the current
guidelines they use.

The bottom line is do we care enough to put the effort in to force change?
It is apparent that if we do not, Verant certainly will not.

Kitasi the mournful bard of E'ci