Midgen wrote:
Edit: And the original Glade site was far away a better, more Ranger friendly site (especially for those of us who were not 'uber' in any way) than the 'EQ Outrider' site ended up being. For my money, the management of EQ Outride were/are only interested in the high end game, and most of the members there seem to actively discourage newness...
Its a completely different period of time now, but you could track those same changes from the original email distribution lists that predated The Glade (eq-rangers and eqrangers) from which the initial core of The Glade was founded. By the end of the run for the The Glade, it was very much a technically oriented site with high end or experience based discussions. The most "newbie" friendly ranger site was one who's name I can no longer recall (and rarely visited), where there was almost non-existent raiding/high end discussion, and the few times it was brought up, from what I recall, the info was incorrect as the posters were going on what they heard.
EQ Outrider (disclosure - I am an admin there and one of the founders) exists in a period in which there is are next to no new players, and any discussions about how to play a ranger are from people with experience in the game starting a twink, or abandoning another class. Their questions all get answered, if asked, though with the repository of information there, most of it has probably already been answered and they find it by searching.
That said, EQHunter, of which I was also a founder, was extremely raid oriented with a focus on the top guilds at the time, and was originally invite only, and was a direct result of SunMoon's disdain for any discussions related to high end Everquest and the constant bickering about casual vs. raider that was inevitable in any topic about raiding.
EQOutrider was started by a mix of rangers from EQHunter and another ranger site that attempted to fill the void of The Glade. We do have few people that tend to be a bit blunt, or caustic, in their posting style rubs me the wrong way, but overall, I have seen most posters attempt to be genuinely helpful.
That, and we have an automatic substitution... the words 'stupid' or 'retarded' get replaced by Mippo.