Absolutely completely agree!!
The Old style LG was awesome too watch and I mean awesome.
For someone who was pretty new to the game back then it was just about the coolest thing I had seen.
Yes it was! It was like a booster shot for me to want to skill and gear up to participate. The first one was just about me seeing what was possible. By the second one, I had a pretty nice kit. I had a full set of Shadow+6A plates, a RJ+Dante and an ML35ME+Dante and an EnBlade-12 that could one shot people with who didn't have melee protection
The only thing I was missing at that time was an uber fap, and I was working on getting that. Plus I joined Shaolin, that was a great soc that was able to compete and hold off the hordes and keep the three LAs we had at that time (iirc). We had a lot of people who really enjoyed PVP and some like Akoz had a great kit with mod fap, etc. It was soooooo much fun just being able to be a part of it all! The point being, that there was a lot more reason for me to gear up and skill up for then to be able to participate in LG, than just trying to maximize my eco to break even off grinding some fucking mob until my eyes bled.
There was one marker with a small safe zone nearby over looking the 'valley of death' that people could watch from and it was packed with people.
It was a real spectator sport.(though you could always die and just not revive but that also made a mess on the field and I don't know that the participants found that very helpful).
Your right, it was a big spectators sport for everyone interested, I know there were people who would say, oh I can't compete so I am not even going to go look at it and they stayed at their grinding, but there were other feeder socs that would participate to show off what they could do to help the main soc, that gave even lesser geared and skilled players a part to play. Also, even if you didn't have any of that, the fact that there would be random roving bands of players or individuals just out there sniping and skirmishing and revival killing added to the wonderful chaos of it all
But due to server load/lag etc it didnt last long and I always felt that was a great loss (understandable at the time though).
Agreed, the game would just lag out completely! you would CTD, you would get stuck rubber banding, the likes of which we don't see now, it was horrendus lag, the worst case scenario was when the marker tank would CTD
There was none of the structures etc to use for cover/tactics etc and yet it was still great to watch.
Different Socs making a run at it,regrouping and even making pacts with other socs to clear the claim.
There was a lot of politics and side wrangling involved as well.
I wonder if the servers could put up with an audience these days.
Now that we have all the vehicles/pets/new toys etc it could be a memorable thing to see and I think people would talk about it for a while.One of those 'I was there when...' moments.
Seeing the abilities of some of the best players with the best equipment in action with the tension of the claim marker timer ticking away is something I wont forget.
MA could really kick a goal if they managed to make it an in game stadium type thing for the rest of us plebs to watch and amaze at.
EDIT:The trick was knowing which Marker to watch or should I say which one Warants were going for.
EDIT 2:On thinking about it MA can look through the eyes of any player/mob etc so they could just as easily set a few 'cameras' around the fort/marker/whatever and play them on in-game screens at a stadium type place or just a major population centre,that could still be fun.
I don't think newbies who weren't there can even get a sense of how epic it was by us sharing this little bit about it. Time has pretty much erased all my rage about the things that totally pissed me off about participating and for the most part just the good memories of participating remain. I just wish they had done more to improve it so it was a better and bigger part of the game so everyone could know what it was like.
We have now some events like the never ending migration where people in game participate as a group that gives a sense of community, but a proper land grab was really amazing at doing that.
As some had mentioned, there was downsides that prevented people from participating, the same story of hey, why should I bother, the same people are going to get it that have it now, nothing I can do will change that. I guess that is true to an extent. But I could say, over time I have seen socs come and go, and players come and go, and gear change hands. Things change. You could have a chance if you committed and participated , but it needs MA's support and resources to make it work and design it in such a way that people could be spectators and cheer for "their team". Something I have not seen them even interested in doing.