You say you want a Revolution?

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Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
This morning (being a coward and waiting until few people were on), I left my guild of more than a year on EQ2, Revolution. (I did post on the guild message board and tell the people who were online why I was leaving, so it wasn’t 100% ninja. Maybe 75% ninja.) This is the first time I have left an active guild since I left A Twist of Fate for Crimson Eternity back in, oh, 2002.
I just don’t leave guilds. And now I have. Why?

Two reasons. The guild to which I applied is an old guild from Faydark back before Faydark merged with Befallen. It has a heck of a rep (both good and bad!), and they have just rebuilt themselves from some sort of slump. This means most of the people there will be fairly new, and I’ll have a chance to become a part of a team instead of ‘that noob bard’.
So that was opportunity. The second is… OMG KUNARK IS COMING! I’m sorry, but… Kunark means so much to me. To have that expansion come out and not be killing Trak or Venril or Drusilla or Talendor (oh, nm, he’s in Kingdom of Sky) or Phara’Dar or all the wondrous places that made Kunark such a delight in EQ1…. well, I need to be there. Revolution is a guild of great people, and when they raid they are motivated and professional, but it’s just not at the level I would like to be, the kind of place I was in EQ1 on Stromm and Erollisi Marr.
Tonight, if all goes well, I’ll be raiding with my new guild… I’m anxious, nervous, hoping I won’t screw up, hoping I can show them what a troubador can do for a raid, hoping my real life gives me enough time to raid and that the guild gives me enough time to have a real life…
I can do this. I am a good bard. I might not be fantastic at certain other classes, but I’m fairly confident about this one. My gear is good enough, my spells are mastered or adept 3… I’m a little light on the longer quests but hopeful I’ll be able to find people in the new guild at or near the same spot so that I, too, can have my Qeynos thingie.
It does mean I’ll be playing on Befallen exclusively. I’ve given up on LotRO and EQ1, and PvP on Nagafen is just perfect to play casually (same game after all, /camp Tipara and I’m there, /camp Dina and I’m back).
It also means…. hardware upgrades. I’ve been using the same computer to play EQ2 since it launched, and I don’t like always having to ramp the graphics down to raid. It makes it tough to get those good raid screenshots 😛 LotRO at times was unplayable. It’s time to upgrade.
To any from Revolution who may be reading this… it’s nothing personal. I just want to raid.
 

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8 thoughts on “You say you want a Revolution?”

  1. Best of luck on your new endeavors, Tipa!
    I’ve never played EQ2, so I’m not entirely sure of how that rolls. I was disappointed in how WoW’s raiding turned out in BC . . . loved the 20- and 40- man instances in regular WoW, but the newer stuff just bummed me out for some reason. Think it might have been karazhan in general.
    Regular EQ raiding was a blast as you know (even the downtime was fun). If EQ2 raiding is anything similar, then you’ll be having a good time I’m sure. Plus, there’s nothing quite as fun as taking down the big bosses in a big way.
    Hope to be seeing some more blogs about it all!!
    Thanks!

  2. I enjoyed the 40 person raids in WoW; I loved MC, Onyxia, and all those big raids that reminded me of EQ1’s major armies (72 person assaults on the Plane of Time were the most fun EVER — or the huge, clockwork precision timing required to take down Coirnav. One misstep in the 14 minute(!) raid and you lock the encounter for everyone on the server for three days!)
    EQ2 raids are 2-4 groups (12-24 people). The bad thing about such small raids is that they limit guild size; nobody wants to sit out all the time, but everyone needs a break now and again, so you need about 1.4 * (max raid size) active raiders in the guild; more and people sit out and become unhappy, fewer and there’s stuff you can’t do because you don’t fill raids often.
    1.4 isn’t just pulled from thin air; that’s the multiplier I used back in Crimson Eternity to determine if we needed to recruit more people or hold off on recruitment. I noticed to just fill a 72 person raid, we would need about 100 active raiders. This scaled down well when raid sizes went to 54.
    So in EQ2, the guild limit is 34 active raiders. In WoW, with 10-20 person raids, maximum guild size is 28. Small communities tend to be less stable than large ones… This could be why the WoW guilds I was in were FAR less stable than the EQ1 ones. Raid sizes forced the guilds to stay small.
    Raids in EQ1 are still fun, but they were more fun when they weren’t instanced and you competed against other guilds.

  3. Interesting . . . you need to put that “1.4 * (max raid size)” on a T-shirt. 🙂
    It seems like a lot of guilds and raiding alliances (the new WoW social beast) in WoW are forming multiple “teams.” A-team for Karazhan runs Mon, Tues. B-team runs Wed, Thurs . . . etc. I’m sure whomever is in charge of these things is having a scheduling nightmare.
    It’s true . . . seems like most excitement would come from which guild trained the other guild on the way to the Queen Sendaii event or some such nonsense.
    So how do raiding guilds in EQ2 view the use of a VoIP? It seems like in EQ only the raid leader and a select few would be on teamspeak whereas in WoW it was a requirement to use teamspeak if you want to raid. Then you had LOTRO who granted VoIP on a group level but not a raid level (/boggle).

  5. It went okay. My computer died, though… I had to scurry to get this computer, my Linux computer, working. That’s a post in itself… but it’s so typical. When I went to work at my current job, I went to orientation the first day, then spent the next two days sick in bed. I join EC, and the next day, my computer is a brick. I think I’m cursed.

  6. Directionally impaired haffer????
    /snicker jk 🙂
    /hug
    Just my occasional drop by and say “Hi” post

  7. @Noffin: *HUGS*! Come to EQ2!!!
    @Stingite: VoIP (either Ventrilo or TeamSpeak, usually Vent) is required for raiding in every EQ2 or WoW guild I’ve been in since I came back from WoW. And usually everyone talks without restriction. Lord of the Rings has group voice chat built in, and usually about half the people in a full group would have it, sometimes more, sometimes less.
    Every EQ1 guild I’ve been in used raid chat to discuss the raid, and VoIP was just for fun and not used in raiding.
    I’d rather use less voice chat. Last night I missed a raid instruction to cast Bladedance (makes my group immune to AEs for a short time) because there was too much noise.
    EQ1 had class-specific channels, so while the raid leader was giving the general strat, the individual classes would divvy up the jobs (like, clerics would form a CH chain, some of us would be responsible for DI’ing the MA, or removing the DS of some mobs; while when I was a rogue, we talked a lot about scouting, dragging corpses, and discussing when to use various disciplines).
    VoIP will be useful when there’s a client where we can LISTEN to a raid channel but TALK on another one — I don’t know if healers would work together better in EQ2 if they coordinated instead of just spamming heals, but EQ2 doesn’t have any ten second casting times on their heals either. (in EQ1, you cast heals you think the target will need at some point in the distant future, which takes a little thought; in EQ2, you cast heals the target needs right away and who cares about that stupid future anyway? Never did nothin’ for me).

  8. *bump* old post . . . just a note that LOTRO just got patched and amonst the 10 pages of notes was this:
    “Players in raids now have voice chat amongst the raid group. The leader has the ability to gag an individual fellow.”
    Looks like they’re learning.

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