The Spirit Realm

Okay, well... Kyntul and I got to talking today about the concerns raised in the thread on the Weekly Questions boards. We're concerned about the lack of consensus paladins have amongst ourselves, but for different reasons. Kyntul wants a stronger voice to be heard by the devs, while I want to try and bring more life back into the boards and get something akin to what we used to have on Paladins of Norrath back again, now that we have a stable home. However, we both agree that we need to present the paladin's case to Sony as a united voice, instead of many different voices arguing amongst ourselves and with other classes, because that dilutes the message and makes our case much weaker.

I'm also concerned about getting a good, solid discussion on paladin issues back, akin to what we once had on Paladins of Norrath. To do that, we need to have regular discussions occur on these boards, without all the white noise provided by other classes that occurs on Sony's site. We need to all agree to stop going off half cocked on Sony's site once something changes or someone else posts something stupid, and keep as much paladin discussion to one board as possible.

Here is a proposal we came up with:

We create a new public forum. However, this forum is locked to posting for all but a few people, although all can see the forum. In this forum, we allow posting by only a few notable and well respected paladins, who come from various backrounds (i.e. hardcore, casual, pvp, etc), and debate issues related to the paladin class as they come up for a few weeks at a time.

This is done to allow the main argument to go on undiluted by extraneous comments or other classes (but everyone can debate the issues as well on the other boards). Once we come up with an agreeable solution to the issues being debated upon, the Class Correspondant will then post the findings to the Sony boards as the official opinion of the paladin community, and we get NO argument from anyone on Sony's boards, and encourage those that don't read Samanna's to come here to make their arguments heard.

If we decide to do this, I'll set up a way for people to nominate who they think would be good to be on this Round Table (catchy, but cliche I guess).

Think of it like one of those news programs like 20/20 or something where they bring in experts on different fields and they sit there and argue until an agreement is reached (or not reached), just for EQ paladin issues.

I kind of agree with Occam and Ugh. Five might be a little to restrictive. You never can tell when that one person that rarely ever posts might come up with an idea that everybody loves. To make this council thing work, those of us not on the council would need a way to voice our thoughts (as to be "representative" of Paladin needs/wants). Maybe the council brings up a topic for discussion. They all weigh in with their thoughts, and then the paladin community here votes on the recommendations (if there are differing ones). Or maybe there is someway that we can provide input/feedback directly to the Council for inclusion in the discussion. I'm not sure what the right/best answer is. However, I am all for presenting one unified stance to SOE from the Pally community.

that's true, most of the casual players I see coming here are new guys asking for gear checks, but beyond that hard to say

Frankly, having a board where a limited few people can post, who have already discussed amongst themselves what they want, presents an illusion of consensus where none necessarily exists. Who gets chosen? Deliberately or not, people who have similar ideas to those doing the choosing.

Kianor pretty much nailed it above - the Paladin class is in pretty good shape. The last major issue we had, really, was stun aggro, which was fixed a while back (while I was the correspondent, in fact). The important thing is for everyone to pull together when we have a serious issue.

Personally, I think it would be a bad move. But I don't post here much any more really, so I don't suppose that matters much!