DL, as always, I'm glad when you speak up, because you speak what's on your mind, and it's based on trying to take care of the clan and chain.
My replies to your point (given below) are in no way slamming you, and I am being serious when I said I'm glad to see your posts.
It's time that I clarify the relationship of the group of characters at the bottom of the chain. Your post reminded me that I was going to do that a while back, and forgot about it. You make one point in your post that I do agree with and hadn't thought about before: It looks bad to anyone viewing the chain page and thinking about joining. I'll think about that and see if there is a way to make things look prettier.
How do we justify all the failing people at the bottom...it's not a pretty sight nor does it encourage anyone new to want to join...and if they do join...how can we enforce the quota on them when we overlook that many chars failing on a regular basis?
"They," in a collective sense, aren't failing. This is one of those examples when appearances are deceiving. I'll explain more in a minute.
Can't these chars fellow with Pod or somehting to get osme xp's so they can meet quota?
They do fellow, either with Podunker or his roomate as they actively hunt, or in the horizontal fellow while they are offline.
Podunkmer typically keeps one or two of those people in the horizontal fellowship that stays up nearly all of the time in the NW room of the marketplace. He is doing this for two reasons: one is to help try to get rid of the red text on the chain page, the other is to help maxmize the benefit from the horizontal fellowship. Another BM usually holds the fellowship, his loyalty buffs to 300. Balin al'Shindhi is nearly always in the fellow, he is one of Phade's characters. Both BM and Balin are sworn to Borg, who is the lowest character in the chain. Borg's automatic passthrough is maxed, but he needs to raise loyalty higher than the 250 it currently goes to. As mentioned before, Podunkmer usually leaves one or two of the characters in the fellow when he isn't actively playing. Nearly all of those characters have stupid-high loyalty for their levels. They aren't sworn at the very bottom of the chain, but they are all very low in the chain structure.
So... we usually have 2 - 4 people logged in at all times in the horizontal fellowship, ready for LD'ers to join the fellow and go burn a buff cycle in a tusker dungeon. One HUGE problem we've been having is getting people to essentially donate a buff cycle to the bottom of the chain. If we could get enough people to hunt in the horizontal fellowship, we would easily put 100 million XP a week directly into the bottom of the chain. That would make the chain more attractive to new recruits, plus it would get rid of the red on those bottom characters.
How can we enforce our quotas if we are making exceptions like this?
We aren't making exceptions, it only looks like it. When Podunkmer approached the chain managers about possibly joining the chain, we talked to him and it ended up with Podunkmer and me working out most of the details. I would check with the other managers, and so on, blah, blah.
The arrangement of those 10 characters is unusual, to say the least. The lowest "ranked" character is Podunkmer, level 100. The highest "ranked" character is Robin Fume Hood, level 87, who is sworn at the very top of that section of the chain. All 10 of those characters have been sworn to each other in that order since creation, and all have high loyalty specifically to maximize the passthrough from hunting.
The basic deal we cut with him was that he would have to effectively pass quota with all ten characters, and there would be no guarantee we could leave them sworn together forever. That being said, we will leave them together as long as it is possible because they have their loyalty bonus maxed and that takes a very long time to build up again.
There are a few different ways of calculating pass rates for a group of characters like that.
One is obviously to have all characters show Success on the chain listing; we are working to try to make that happen, but it has been taking some time to get things rolling in that direction.
A second way is to calculate an aggregate percentage of passup. That only works if all of the characters are sworn together, which they currently are. According to that method, the passup rate is multiplied together for all of the characters. As weird as that looks, it does mathematically give an accurate passup percentage. Right now, that would be, for the ten characters: 141.53% * 108.77% *113.59% * 101.83% * 97.78% * 96.2% * 98.06% * 94.08% * 105.65% * 97.08% for an effective passup rate of 158%.
A third way calculating success is to try doing a raw number of XP kind of thing. The quota for the Food Chain is 100% passup of all quota received, with a 6 million added XP per week cap. What the cap does is keep people from truly having to meet a 100% quota chain, which can quickly get brutal. Now, the 6 million cap doesn't come into play until you receive roughly 100 million XP per week from the chain. At the bottom of the chain, we don't receive anywhere nearly that much. 10 - 20 million a week is closer to the average. However, worst case scenario, even for the top person in the Food Chain is that you would need to contribute 6 million XP per week. Right now, the five characters that are in the green have a total credit for the quota reporting period of a little over 87 million XP. The five characters that are in the red have a total debit for the quota reporting period of a little over 27 million, which leaves an overall credit over quota of 60 million XP. The total XP added to the chain is a lot more than 60 million, however, because in order for Camonite (the next to the bottom character) to show a credit of 12 million XP, it means Camonite passed up 100% of what Podunkmer gave to Camonite, and added an addtional 12 million XP to it.
Bottom line, appearances are misleading in this case (and I agree that appearances are important and we need to get a fix for this) and that section of characters is contributing more to the chain than the quota says they are required to contribute.
This arrangement might work for Pod and his friend but it won't work for anyone who has to be placed under them if they are not high enough level to be put above the top of this mini chain.
This, too, is a temporary situation. I have every intention of leaving Borg at the very bottom of the chain until he can't fit anymore. That way, as he continues to level and become more proficient at generating XP, he can put more XP back into the bottom of the chain. Currently, Borg is 83. Podunkmer's highest-positioned character is level 87, the same level as God's Wizzard. We don't want to insert characters into the middle of that group of ten characters, so what will happen is after God's Wizzard is high enough to swear above Robin Fume Hood, we will move him ahead of that entire group of ten characters. As time passes, Borg will close the gap between him and Podunkmer so people will enter the chain below Borg. As they move past Robin Fume Hood in level, they will skip around that entire section. I doubt there is any other chain on the server where a level 80-something can swear above a level 100-something.
Pod is here to help him and his other characters level, yes. That's why we're all in the chain. However, he brings a unique arrangement with his characters to the chain that IF we can get enough people to start hunting with the horizontal fellowships, it will make a very big difference at the lower end of the chain. That push in XP will continue up the chain, and will end up benefiting everyone. The unusually high loyalty in relatively low-level characters, plus the loyalty bonus being maxed means the characters he has in the horizontal fellowship will pass about 50% of the earned XP back into the chain. If we have four horizontal characters (BM, Balin, and 2 of Podunkmer's) the horizontal fellowship will be putting 200% of what the people hunting in the fellowship make directly back into the chain (plus a percentage of the hunters XP will go back into the chain at whatever position they are in). Even by cutting down the XP by dividing into the fellowship, it is still very easy to make 3 - 5 million XP per hour in the tusker dungeons. That means 6 - 10 million XP per hour into the bottom of the chain. That will fix the red on some of Podunkmer's characters, give a big shot of XP into the bottom of the chain, and should generally get things to rolling really well at the bottom of the chain and continuing all the way up.
So, that's my long overdue explanation of why the bottom of the chain looks the way it does, and hopefully why it's going to look the way it will develop into, after we get more people to use the horizontal fellowship. If I didn't address a concern somewhere, post back and I'll give a shorter answer.
that is a lot to read hehe. I fell like him back in school after all that hehe. 
