Interesting, didn't realise Lillu played with <Tide> on AB.
I used to be in <Ancient Dominion> as a noisy Paladin called Davias McBadgerton/Finchmarr. We had good links with Tide most of the time. Sometimes our most uber players would go on to Tide and sometimes Tide players who were slowing down would come to AD.
Regarding myself, I was a proud AD4Lifer and had no qualms in letting the EQ world we were one of the best casual raiding guilds serverwide. Just after I left they made it to end game content raiding 3.5 nights a week which was pretty cool, if somewhat aided by the one year release cycle change.
EQ started to go downhill for me from TSS onwards. Mudflation became really bad at that point. Also they really started to up the work you needed to do outside raiding in SoF/SoD. Also I hated SoF zones like Crystallis since we'd farmed heavy AC for a long time and then they basically designed mobs for HP whores since you could get 2 rounded with anything less than 28khp at the time. We got to that sooner or later but it was frustrating.
I'd got into the top 10 AC serverwide for Paladins from a casual raiding guild, and my friend Elladon and I were the first people we knew to 2 x 3 box Rikkukin while some guilds were still wiping to him (lol etc). SoF also started giving out AC en masse to lame players free-riding it in successful guilds so they took out the ability for a refined player to overcome and out-tank weaker players in bigger guilds.
When they took out that ability to win by thinking outside the box and playing the numbers it got boring. Also my M.E was getting progressively worse (effects my concentration big time), so in the end, EQ live had to die.
Really enjoying the setup here on THF anyway, I can do an ldon in about 40 minutes now and I can get tired really quickly so it's great to be able to get something meaningful done, then log off to rest. If I seem reluctant to get involved too much, I'm basically afraid to take help since I can't make plans to be there to help others always, I have to play my 'energy levels'. But if you need a res or some info, don't be afraid to shoot me a message.