I think one of the reasons a lot of us are sick of arguing this
point - it's a "hot-button" topic similar IRL to abortion... For those
people who have made up their mind and have strong feelings on this
issue there is little anyone is going to say that will change their
beliefs one iota.

I personally don't have strong personal opinions one way or another;
except that I'm convinced that Verant's position is very hard and they
won't budge on this. JM Caprozzi (sp?), wrote about this. It's not
clear exactly how good of a source he was on this; but I expect pretty
good; talked about the internal debate at Verant . According to this
info; this was one of the most contentious issues on the design team.
Many were against expanding the binding to the point where it's at now.

One of the issues I recall he listed for bards (and some of the
other classes that don't have bind) not getting it - was the idea that
since we don't have to regenerate mana for our primary fighting ability
- we don't have the potential down-time between combat and
hypothetically can fight continuously. The caster types with bind could
never do this; hence the need for a balancing factor. [DON'T ARGUE THIS
POINT WITH ME - THIS IS NOT MY BELIEF]

So bottom-line; what value are petitions here? I think they are
useful on issues where Verant doesn't have a strong opinion, or is
wavering; but I doubt that Verant will change their philosophy of how
they think the game should work based on a petition. The only thing
that I could see that would cause them to change their core design
philosophy if the number of subscribers and hence cash-flow dropped a
significant amount - with letters, etc saying that the binding issue was
what led the player to quit.

This IMHO is why Ultima Online is adding non-PVP zones. I
personally know of at least a half-zone (or more) people including
myself who left UOL because of PVP issues. Money speaks. But I doubt
that this is a deciding issue for whether people will continue to pay
$10/hour for EQ.

What would be really nice for Verant; despite their desire to
keep the game mechanics hidden - would be to have a chat session; or
simply posted a document discussing their high-level philosophy of the
game. The Designer Dragon guy at Origin was great about this when the
PVP debate raged on. I believe EQ proved him wrong (i.e. he said NO ONE
would play on PVP servers if non-PVP was available).

As far as future discussions of Bardic Binding; Personally I would
love it if all classes could be bound anywhere. I don't think bards
should have the ability to bind themselves. But more importantly; I
don't think Verant will ever change their position on it. I don't think
enough people will quit the game over it to FORCE them to change. I
think any further discussion is a waste of breath (not that people's
opinions are worthwhile or valid, it's simply a waste of time because we
aren't going to convince Verant). I'm certainly not going to quit the
game over it; and no one will be able to convince me to do so (at least
not over this issue...)

To be true to my word - this is the last time I will post on this
issue.

Slyde, 23 (almost 24!) of Xegony
Order of Norrath