This is the first time I have ever rabidly disagreed with you Michael. Brad
has stated on numerous occassions that it is their concept of the game that
"No single ability should play a major decision in a person's decision to
play a particular class or group thereof. If it does it is unbalancing and
needs to be changed." This has been stated by Brad and Smed in several
places in several ways and yet they don't seem to understand that many
people are choosing not to play non-binding classes under just that
circumstance. Our group has lost 3 tanks in the last month and a half. All
have quit playing their tank, 22nd ranger, 23 warrior, and 20th Paladin, in
order to start from scratch and be able to bind/gate. I am now the #2 tank
in the group behind our monk. None of these people has any desire to go
back to their old character because binding is too much of an advantage to
give up. Verant is stubbornly sticking to a policy that violates their own
stated rule regarding class balance. If they hadn't started to waver and
has kept binding the same for all classes, we might not even be having this
discussion now.

Kitasi

The last straw by the way was when our Paladin died 5 times trying to get
back to Guk. Twice by sand Giants, 1 by Spectres, 2 by Troll Guards trained
to the zone area. He lost more exp than he would have under the old system
had he appeared outside Guk where the cleric was bound. Not to mention the
2.5 hours he spent running across zones and looting all his backup equipment
3 times off his corpses. He has played his Paladin since.

-----Original Message-----
From: Garramone, Michael (CCI-Las Vegas)
[mailto:Michael.Garramone@...]
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 1999 3:51 PM
To: 'eqbards@onelist.com'
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Hey this sounded interesting..

From: "Garramone, Michael (CCI-Las Vegas)" <Michael.Garramone@...>

> It would be a bitch to get bound, but it would be possible.
>

exactly, way too much of a pain and way too complex. there are and must be
penalties to dying: loss of experience and returning to bind point. a
couple months into final release, there was a decision made to reduce
drastically the amount of experience loss when dying, but keeping the
binding policy in place. i would vote for this any day of the week, and i
assume it was this or change the binding policy and keep the experience loss
the same. above level 30 every death was approximately TWO BUBBLES of
experience. i lose about 25% of that now, and trust me that has saved me a
hell of a lot more time just running back to my group instead of having to
rebuild that experience. anyway, i can not foresee changing my view on
binding. and my two highest level characters can not bind. the only
trouble i ever had getting bound was in the first week when no one could
(hehe my friend was the first person on our server to reach level 12 who
could bind which was cool). it is a pain to die, as it should be. no one
likes it. the ability to bind is reserved by a few classes, and it is part
of the choice on what class you want to play.

Shada D'ukal, Level 50 Wood Elf Bard
Erisi Dlarit, Level 24 High Elf Paladin
Tyria Sarkin, Level 22 High Elf Wizard
Mithaniel Marr Server