With my EQ2 raiding career at an end — I just don’t have the time for a six day a week raiding commitment any more — and the EQ1 guild up and running now, it’s time to start adding back in the other games I want to play. I love EQ1 and always will, but EQ2 is my home.
I know I’ll miss raiding. But every night we would meet at 8pm, run to 11 or 12, and then I’d have to do my writing for the night if I hadn’t completed it before. Since just keeping up with my raid commitment meant more than 20 hours a week raiding, I stopped logging in at any other times because that was already too much time spent playing MMOs. So the group instances I loved — gone. Playing the alts I cherish — gone. All gaming but raiding wiped out. That’s the raiding trap. You raid casually, learn to enjoy being part of a larger group and trying to be as effective as you can be. That’s a lot of fun, but you want more, and so you join a raiding guild. Now you are owned. You have just voluntarily given away all your free time. Saturday was our only day off, and you can bet I played no EQ2 that day. Raiding sucked away all that I loved about the game, except raiding itself.
I was falling asleep in a Shard of Hate raid a couple of weeks ago. I was also falling asleep on my day job, my writing was increasingly sloppy, my boss at work told me people were noticing I was dozing off at odd times in meetings and such, and it looked like my desire to raid could endanger not only my health, but my real income. And so, though I meant to log in and explain all this, I could not bring myself to click on the EQ2 launcher for weeks.
Once again, like EQ1 and WoW before it, I had let a game come to dominate my life. If I clicked that icon, I would by that small movement of the fingers, put my life and livelihood at risk.
There’s a reason raiding guilds are dominated by teenagers, college students and the unemployed. Who else can really afford the time? Not that anyone can, really. And even if YOU feel you can balance a full time day job and a 20+ hour a week raiding commitment — I’ve proven to myself time and again over several different games that I cannot, as much as I would like to.
When Davic informed me that Delusions of Grandeur had deguilded me, I felt relief. A burden had been lifted. I wanted more than anything to be running around with the Big DoGs of Befallen killing big stuff, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t even log in to tell them why.
One of the unfortunate casualties of my love of raiding has been my alts. Their levels lurch upward whenever I am between guilds. The last interregnum got my inquisitor to 80 and my necro to 68. Now it’s time to give them a little love.
Perhaps to mirror the EQ1 nostalgia group, Stargrace has invited people to join her over on the EQ2.Najena server for some old-fashioned EQ2 nostalgia. Both EverQuests were meant to be enjoyed with a group of friends, to my mind the best way to enjoy ANY MMO. I was chatting with her this morning as I respeced to DPS and looked over the guild recruitment tool to see if there were any casual guilds I recognized. And I was thinking… hmmm… IRS incentive check… 7 main characters… wholesale swap to Najena server… Nah. Even I can’t justify $350 for that sort of change. Especially not after bringing a couple characters over to Luclin on EQ1.
But Winterwing, my Arasai bruiser. Maybe I could bring *one* over for a good cause. She’s hovering (as Arasai do) somewhere south of 30, fresh from soloing most of the Butcherblock quests. Soloing is pretty boring. If I had a regular group, though, that would be something.
Or maybe I could just save $50 and restart Winterwing over there, but this time as an assassin. A pure dps melee class — my favorite non-healer type of class. (Why choose a bruiser, then? I liked how she looked in a gi. Really.) I dunno. While it’s likely to be the continued adventures of Dina and Dera in EQ2 on these pages, it might just be a small winged faerie who gets to tell her story for a time.
YES, please come over to najena. That would be great. My paladins name is Mayadhros :>
I am only 14 atm, so of course I think you should save your money and start over!
Great blog tipa!1
If you intend to do any soloing, you might be better off with a Brigand or Swashbuckler. Assassin and Rangers can be very powerful at solo but only if you are well geared. Otherwise it can be a chore.
As for staffing raiding guilds maybe we are different but CoS has always had a good number of older folks in guild. It is very rare that someone under 20 last very long in our guild and College student are often seasonal players too. Currently, we’ve gone in the opposite direction and recruited a bunch of retired folk. They have a lot of time on their hands but also relatively stable lives. Whether things work out remains to be seen but it will certainly be an adventure.
Where ever you end up at, let us know. Maybe I’ll start a character on the server you end up on, unless its crushbone (I play there). I think you’ll like an Assassin, I played a ranger to 70 and loved every bit of it. There were times when I thought about bringing my ranger over to an assassin.
Brigs are good. I have a 30-ish brigand, my halfling Donna. I played her necessarily as a swash until about 20 when I betrayed her (hate Qeynos), and even tanked some in Fallen Gate. They’re pretty good solo and are handy in groups… but something in me just wants to do the mega hits. I don’t often solo in EQ2, unless I’m playing my inq. She solos fine since I discovered the wonders of the battle cleric spec. I would probably move my 41 defiler, Etha, or my 40 Fury, Verd, over as the two box healer.
Then it comes down to the support details. I have an 80 jeweler, Dorah, who won’t be able to help with the crafting on another server. And Dina is not only my main, she’s my harvester and secondary crafter. I have such a support system among my alts that I would feel lost without the ability to make anything I need without having to pay people’s stupidly inflated prices.
Dina (troub main), Dera (inq) and Dorah (jeweler) are my main crew. It’s hard to think of what EQ2 life would be like without my gals backing me up.
Ah, but you forget already Tipa you wouldn’t have to be paying people’s stupidly inflated prices ever, since I’ve crafters on Najena, and maybe we can all work up a new crafter or whatever to satisfy the needs of those of us playing. Not that I expect everyone to craft.. @.@
Not that you HAVE to move either, nor would I ever pressure you to – but I know a community is key to keeping the games entertaining, no matter how good or bad they are, and since Nostalgia’s started and a few players have gathered together on Najena – it’s an option for EQ2. I really wish SOE let us move between servers a little more freely. As time progresses and we make friends literally all over, it’s always a wish to be able to actually play with these people — aside from the fact that in EQ2 it’s just not viable at all, as you’re limited to the total amount of characters you can make rather then EQ1 where you can make a certain amount per server. I miss that.
I hope to take everyone through some of the smaller (we’re talking tiny, like wailing caverns, blackburrow, stormhold) areas this weekend for some questing and just plain old fashioned exploring. With the mentor system it’s not an issue when people out level one another at least.
I understand ALL too well about having characters stranded on other servers, and the pain it brings. I’ve moved a good portion of my characters to Najena from AB — but there are three (80 troubador, 80 sage, 80 alchemist) who are stranded still, and I miss having them around. I don’t have the heart to delete them and start over since I worked so hard getting them where they are – and I just keep hoping SOE offers us another round of free transfers, as they have twice before in the past.
Did you actually make a guild named Nostalgia on Najena?
Oh. Now I have to play 🙂 And if I play, I’ll be bringing my crew. I know you love crafting and all, but these are the characters I have poured my all into. I don’t really need to bring any healer but Dera; she can mentor to help any new lowbies.
All I have to say is that I think my post about trash mobs (linked with name) would be a great way to solve this. If there were dramatically less trash mobs to deal with, raiding would be much less time-intensive, while allowing you to play outside of raiding as well. I understand that this could simply mean running more raids since they took less time, but it could also allow for the ability to raid without having to spend hours at a time doing so.
I’ve never actually gotten into a situation where raiding affected my work (since I haven’t actually found a career yet, as opposed to just a job) but MMO’s have affected some of my relationships with people and it has taken away time that I should be using for other things. It’s a constant struggle finding the right balance, but it’s something I could never give up.
We haven’t created the guild yet – and I wasn’t sure if it would be in poor taste to name it Nostalgia or not =x Plus, managing to get 6 of us on all at once in one location to actually form it, has proved some what difficult 😉
Well, you have to look at raiding as primarily a social activity. You aren’t really raiding for loot, though loot is nice. You aren’t really raiding to measure how well you can follow the raid designer’s script, though being able to do so is nice. You are doing it to have fun with a lot of people with whom you would like to become friends. The specific activity is rather beside the point; EQ and EQ2 just make raiding that activity. So trash or no doesn’t matter so much, not to me.
Going from high point to high point only would be like cutting all the fluff from Lord of the Rings: “Bilbo gives Frodo the ring at his birthday party. Gandalf tells Frodo to flee the Shire. He meets disaster on the way to Bree.” Etc. Trash killing lets the raid settle down to business and provides a chance to relax and shoot the breeze before the excitement and pressure of the next boss kill. Raids are not just mechanisms to deliver loot to people. Or rather, the well-designed ones aren’t. They are meant to provide an evening’s entertainment to the raiders. Certainly the chance of getting loot on any specific raid would be so incredibly low for any given raider that if raids were only meant to funnel uber gear to people, then they are amazingly bad at it.
Now, I’m talking EverQuest 1 and 2 here. My time raiding in WoW was very different. I remember Molten Core raids where every drop was fought over — even the rights to skin the core hounds was meted out from above. WoW raiding was not relaxing or fun. It was a struggle with half the raid yelling and screaming like children over teamspeak while the other half apparently couldn’t pay enough attention to what CTRaid was telling them to do to avoid wiping the raid.
And then there was the idiot priest who just kept chain casting his heals whether needed or not just to get on top of the heal parse. I had learned from years of being a cleric in EQ1 to only cast the appropriate heals at the appropriate times and always have mana available for emergencies or adds. Nope. In WoW, your skill at healing was your rank on the heal parse. I only mention that because I was a priest in WoW, but raids were rife with that.
I had this thought that people shouldn’t tell non-gamers that they raid or what raiding is. They should call it partying. Like, Monday night I partied. It was AWESOME! Tuesday we didn’t have enough for a good party, so we just sat around and had some brews. Wednesday we went back to this bar we went to last week and we PARTIED SO HARD, WE KICKED BUTT! Thursday, that was a good party. Friday, we went back to that bar again and finished the beers we didn’t get to Wednesday. Saturday — no party. Sunday is PARTY DAY! We always have the best parties Sunday night!
Sure, that’s a lot of partying, but hey, parties are fun 🙂
You know I’m over at Najena too Tipa. Make sure you let me know if you move over and say hi! I’ve got quite a few mid level crafters and am very happy making you whatever I can if needed!