It's matter of debate what changing to a raid-lock number of 72 players had on how the game worked. It was a seldom mentioned new idea, and it eliminated both older strategies, which given the numbers sometimes involved, at least deserve points for managing swarm ld's, AND potential other strategies and mechanics the game could have otherwise adopted.
I feel the 72 man raid basically locked the game into a set mold. One size will fit all. And for sure, if you just wanted to kill stuff ded, get loots, it was better to have a trim roster with as little surplus members as possible. Less mouths to feed. Less farm. All true.
But it did kind of "close the book" on what a raid was. EQ2 continued the same mechanic of course.
Not even having a raid channel was a treat. Especially if your raid was a coalition, as lots of early raids were, at least on my server.
EQ only seems easy on hindsight. Lots of people had to learn to do this for the first time. It took time to find people who actually understood, "yes, this may take a few hours, minimum." Being 1st gen plowing through the expansions from original, was not "easy" except for maybe "less min-maxed to death." There was no consensus, on my server, how a "hardcore" guild should work. I always did strict dkp, very few reserves, with quarterly adjustments so no one gets to high they can't drop to zero with a single binge night.
Original eq was no way easy given the newness of such a thing, the need for a playerbase to all get somewhat on same pages, a culture to develop, a server culture to develop, little dramas, loot cyber scandals, cafe accounts run by Thai speed freaks who all play rangers. No rez la~.
And the internet itself. Dial up majority. AOL hourly time-outs. Entire swaths of the US going ld, like a million souls screaming at once.
The history of FoH has to include the ecosystem of guilds in general. That's what puts it all into context.
One guild was sober house group in RL. They just all played dwarves and constantly drank. They would do drunk open raids. I forget name. It was only up till Kunark, then they all fell of the wagon for real.
Clerics with 3 infants in the other room brb.
Drunk players. <cracks a Miller>
You just have to think a bit. Entire nights were spent hoping for someone to come back. And so you went back the next night.
And you 24/7'd key camps on the Moon. You, sir, are a true Modern American PC Master Race. For you are the second guild in Vex Thal on your server.
And, the first soul essence was for the MT, fixed dkp price -- a big chunk, cuz you got the dibs. Second was ffa, and that's right.
Whether you think that is funny or not depends on your play style. Wraith reserved stuff, but only if really it was big, and then it was open bidding in /gu.
On drunk raid nights, it was fun to goad drunk monks to drain their dkp on a splurge, or bidding war.
no min-max. just playing a good game 1st gen. And still being top 3 guild and finally top one by PoP-GoD.