Re: New Duel Rules.
I feel that the removal of the dueling safe zones has a negative impact on the shard. I will enumerate my reasons:
1) Del Pond, when it was a safe zone, was a great place to find fights. Once a player was engaged in combat they could not enter the noncombat area and that was fine. When I wanted to find faction fights I would gather my crew and we would recall around Brittania looking for fights. We would check all towns, and all bases, and often we would come up empty handed. As a last resort we would recall to Delucia Pond, walk past the front steps, and immediately have 6 guys chasing us across T2A. This was a good thing
A centralized area to find fights is great. There's no problem with "people hiding in trammel pulling bars." Pulling bars is so inconsequential it's hard to articulate. I don't know why this is even an issue. All good callers switch targets to the lead mark or someone who seems like they're oblivious to the dump and won't offscreen, and thus most good players are "ninjaclicking" people anyways. The last time I was concerned about pulling bars was 2001, on OSI. Razor can set last target, and hue the aforementioned target; bars are not an issue.
Many of the people who would run out of Del Pond to attack my squad wouldn't be in factions without safe zones. Many UOG:Hybrid players have no real experience in a world without them, and don't know how to find fights otherwise. Those of us who were active PvPers on either OSI or other Freeshards know what do to: Check towns. Dispurse and recall around, when a fight is found call the cutoff and everyone recalls in. This is not a big deal; but many UOG PvP guilds don't know how to do this, or aren't experienced enough to be proficient. The duel pit allowed these players a way to find a field fight; without they simple wouldn't PvP. I'll take lackluster PvPers over NO PvPers any day of the week.
2) Del Pond / Safezones were good places to hang out. No shit! I actually talked to people. Sitting around watching duels and shooting the shit with other duelers or spectators really enhanced my UOG experience. These zones really contributed to the community on UOG. I have actually made e-friends thanks to the safe zones; and that's a really big deal.
3) Without spectators dueling is tons less fun. It's a great feeling when you rock somebody with Flamestrike with 20 people watching. "yea, that's right, I had 40 mana to blow on a redlined guy, I basically own."
4) People didn't get ganked coming out of duels in the first place. This reason for removing the safezones altogether wasn't researched at all. Thanks to the [changearenapreferences or whatnot command Duelers changed their list of available arenas to the safezoned ones. A few weeks after the initial change, no one, and I mean no one, was getting ganked upon duel completion.
In summation, Delucia Pond was really amazing. Dueling in the pits back in the day was so fun. Tons of people would spec your duels, there were all sorts of duels happening all the time, and when your duel was in Delucia Pond it was like "oh shit, im on center stage." Dueling at Del Pond was like being in the finals of a tourney, you're there with 50 people watching you, talking shit about you, and complimenting you all at the same time. It was a truly magical phenomenon that really contributed to making this server great.
I know this server is anti trammel, and hell, I'm anti trammel. On a previous server I GM'd a massive PK guild and slaughtered people relentlessly; but I gotta say, the duel pits were great, and their removal is a real detriment to the shard.
