A Note on the EQ Raiding Series

I orginally wrote this series of raid blogs as a member of the Everquest Guild Southern Armada 2004/5. I had been playing EQ on the Karana server for about 3 years when the Guild that I had been a member of for the better part of that three year period, imploded, and I was left without a connection to most of the people I had spent all day, every day with.

At this point I decided I really wanted to see the high end raid game. In essence I was either going to quit or commit. I had spent so long in EQ I felt like I wanted to get into the "end game" and see what the deal was, see for myself what everyone was taliking about. So I looked about on the web to find an aussie/kiwi raid guild that wasnt going to require massive online time.

In my search I stumbled on the Southern Armada web site, had a good look around and after several days of thinking about it I applied to join. I transferred to Prexus about a week later and the following Blogs are my experience as a member of a high end raid guild in Everquest.

I started the blog for me, as a way for me to record my experiences and to have something to look back on. I let a few people from the guild know about it and within a couple of weeks I was getting "why havent you posted?" tells the day after a blog was due. Over the peiord of the 2 years that I wrote this, I recieved quite a lot of emails, ingame /tells and several people actually took the time to post on the SA website saying how much they were enjoying the series and my writing.

The original site where this was hosted recieved traffic from all over the world and quite a lot of it, usually straight into the next blog episode. One backpacker actually sat down in a cyber cafe in Spain and read the whole thing start to finish. I dont think I have ever been as proud of anything in my life as when I found out that that backpacker spent AUS80$ in order to read the entire continuing adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer and Southern Armada.

I think a lot of people were interested in the original blog because SA is a casual guild. It isnt one of those arrogant uber guilds who treat gaming like a job. We raided because we loved it and I was describing encounters that due to the mechanics of the game, many people, even those who had played for years, would just never be able to see or experience. It was a window into a world that was closed to many people.

I also very much enjoyed bringing to life the people and personalities of Southern Armada. SA is full of some amazing and incredibly dedicated people. My experience in EQ went from being Ok to being an absolute blast, I couldnt wait to logon and play the game every day. I would Raid till 2am and be at my desk at work at 7am twice a week for 2 years.

SA triumphed in EQ and moved on to the World of Warcraft. For various reasons I stopped playing that game, some personal, some preferential and some hardware related. I am however forever a member of SA in my head. I am currently involved with a game called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and I am a site admin with the aussie fan site Ausguard.com I am very much hoping that as soon as VG is released SA will move to the new game and I can become an active member again.

I have now migrated these blog entries twice. I am hoping that by putting this up on one of the largest blog sites in the world this will be the last time I ever have to do this. I know they aren't all that relevant anymore as people have well and truly passed through these areas, but what the hell I still like to look at them and maybe one day they will inspire someone else to log onto a game and go on a raid.

Why I hate Clerics'

I have to post this. This is one of the reasons why I love Southern Armada.
This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.

Why I hate Clerics
A little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax. I log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob. Group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics. anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)

watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.
did i mention i hate clerics?
ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.

stunned silence.

oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.

first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.

fuck i hate clerics

Fuck I hate Clerics...

I have to post this. This is why I love Southern Armada. This is a little post from the Oggie Tank AKA Mewkus. I did not write this but I believe it is worth keeping alive as it illustrates beautifully the Love/Hate relationship between a Tank and their Healer.
NOTE: Having now played a tank in 2 games I now fully appreciate this and understand it - SH 26.08.08

a little story about my first encounter with a guilded greydax.

i log on late because work sux. keepr sends me an abusive tell to hurry my ass east in BoT because oreen is up. i get there and nerasa is doing his usual finesse pulls and trikkie is copping his usual beatdown from a CoD mob.
group cleric is greydax. i join and say hello. i warn greydax to keep me alive or i will hate him forever. "purple club" was the reply. great. fuck i hate clerics.

anyways i grab my buffs and we rez trikkie because i let the CoD mob kill him (i love "forgetting" to taunt sometimes) and get ready for the pull. nerasa gets him solo with 4 pops standing around him (damn that boy is good). oggie charges the bastard and BANG, first hit he gets a stun proc. fuck i love my weapon setup. aggro is locked in, too easy. even trikkie landing tash in the first half second of engagement doesn't drag him away (why do chanters and shammys always cast their highest aggro spell on the fucking pull???)

watching the damage roll by. damn i kick ass. more stun procs, rage proc, this bitch is mine for aggro now. health gets low, berzerker frenzy! no need to panic, i still have a few k hp up my sleeve. down to 1 bub, ok no CH message yet. 10 bucks the fucking cleric (fuck i hate clerics) is messing with my head and doing a silent CH. they do that sometimes just to piss me off. dirith is the worst. caniella does it too. even phaith does it to me.

did i mention i hate clerics?

ok sliver of life. the bitch forgot to heal. keepr is probably too busy cybering half the server to think about using her oggiehealage5 AA skillz to pull off a last minute save. OMG! OGGIE DOWN! he's in the purple. the screen changes to view to a top down view of a crumpled oggie. the words YOU HAVE DIED flash on my screen. the formation of a string of extremely foul curses surges to the forefront of my mind and BAM! oggie is on his feet again wailing away as if nothing had happened.

stunned silence. oggie sits back and stares in disbelief. the ranger begins to crack up. the group begins to chant "purple club, purple club" and greydax is chilling up the back with a smug look on his face as if the smartass little punk planned it all along.

first ever group with greydax. first pull. first heal cast. not just a purple club, but utterly plucked from the gaping jaws of death. i could see the grim reaper getting annoyed as i escape his dreadful embrace.

fuck i hate clerics

Ever Quest Raids Southern Armada The End

19/11/04 The end.
Wow.
Both literally and figuratively.
Southern Armada is moving to the World of Warcraft.


The Glory of SA will now shine in Multiple games. We have membership in Everquest2, Everquest1 and World of Warcraft. SA will survive multiple games I think, simply because we are all older players and into it for the fun as opposed to the PhatLewtz or the being L33t.
There are still some staying to continue on in EQ. There are some going to EQ2 but the bulk
of us are moving to WoW.


It all came down to a post on the guild Message Board by the Great Bear Our leader Kezlar. He essentially said what everyone was thinking. He had had enough, it wasn't fun anymore and the on going lack of people showing up to raids was telling him that was true for a lot of other people.


That basically opened the floodgates and we all simply poured out.
GOD broke EQ for a lot of us. POP was superb, a lot of fun, GOD was awful and sucked all of the fun out of the game. Its nice that SOE apologized and flew lots of people to see them so they could say sorry. But after that nothing changed, there was a big burst of publicity and then SOE went back to its usual dead silence.


I would have been angry once, but not anymore. They have just lied, broken promises, nerfed, failed to communicate, insulted the player base and generally acted like they don't have a clue once too many times. Even those in a coma can awake from their sleep and say enough.


Thanks for 5+ years of EQ. Its been a blast and I will leave this web-log up for some time to come yet.


There are many very good people still staying in EQ1 and I believe they will rebuild and continue on very successfully.


Ulaa has gone to sleep.


She sits dreaming on the shores of the Plane of Tranquility looking out over the entrance to the Elemental Plane of Fire. She is in Lich form, gently bobbing up and down, with her faithful pet standing at her shoulder.


There she will sit until one day, maybe, I may venture back into EQ.
I want to continue doing these gaming blogs however.
Its been a hell of a run. Its been nearly 6 years.

A new beginning

This was intended as the blog of Ulaa the Necromancer, Prexus Server, Everquest. In the last few days there have been massive changes in that arena however which I will report here. After 6 years Southern Armada is moving from Everquest to the World of Warcraft.

Personally I have been getting tired of EQ. Its been getting harder and harder to log in either for raids, for XP or just for stuffing about. It has come out in the last few days it has come out that I haven't been the only one feeling like that. On Monday the guilds leader, Kezlar the Prophet (the Bear) announced he was leaving for WoW and asked if any of the remaining membership wanted to join him.

I didn't need to think about it for even a second. When I first started in EQ I joined a guild with little thought of the time zones involved and the problems they would bring. So I started on a server called Karana which turned out to be largely dominated by GMT Guilds and players (-12 hours from my time) I spent three and a half years on Karana, for most of it I was in a guild called The Silent Watch.

TSW was a great guild and was on its way up into the end game when it imploded for the third and last time. At that point I decided I needed to examine why I played this game and did I want to continue?. In the end I decided I did want to continue but I didn't want to stay where I was doing what I was doing. I wanted to go raiding and see the high end game. To do that I needed to find an Aussie/Kiwi raiding guild in my time zone that was still a bit 'casual'. I couldnt afford the time to join a 7 day a week 5 hour a night raiding guild.

After a little bit of searching I found The Southern Armada, transferred to Prexus and began my career as a raider into the high end game. I loved SA. I had people in my own time zone to talk with and group with, I had people who understood my cultural references (I got very sick of explaining to Americans that 'pissed' doesn't mean angry) and I got to raid twice a week.

SA traveled up into the end game via the content of Velious and Luclin. On the way up I got to kill all of the old 'name' targets of the Game. I was there for the death of Aten Ha Ra, The Emperor Ssraezha, the Avatar of War, Rallos Zek and Coirnav. I was part of the team that triumphed over The Rathe Council and Xegony. We dropped Quarm and progressed through Gates Of Discord to Qvic.

It was enough. After 6 years, the last 2 years of which have involved getting to sleep at 2am (when raids finish) twice a week, it was enough. The Gates of Discord expansion is essentially what broke EQ for me. I feel like the Developers and management of EQ at that point broke faith with the players and put out a product purely for the money with no regard for the players.

Now the argument can be made that they are a company and they are there to make money and that is perfectly legitimate. However, we the players are the driving force behind the game. Without us there is no game and no money. SOE essentially ignored us and produced a steaming pile of unfinished, cheaply produced, poorly put together crap and asked us to pay 69.95 for it.

So after 6 years of unfinished, buggy content, lack of communication with the players, indeed outright abuse of the player base, broken promises and appalling customer service I decided to hang up my Scythe with the rest of the Guild and go to WoW.

So the internet Blog of the Adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer will stay where it is as a testimonial. This newly created Blog will continue as the adventures of Ushnak the Ork and The Southern Armada in the World of Warcraft. This blog will be updated weekly, or as close to weekly as I can manage in between play, work and maintaining real world relationships. I know I had a decent readership for the EQ blog. Hopefully I can manage to entertain a few people in this blog as well.

Well first entry. The World of Warcraft is released 23/11/04. I cant wait.

The reason I went to this format is that you the reader can post comments. Its always nice to get some feedback, in fact its hugely encouraging.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Eighty Six

12/11/04 Week Eighty Six
This week is close to identical to last week with one small exception.


Monday: Time
We romped through killed everything, received vast amounts of Phat Phat Lewtz. It was good (I wasn't there)


Thursday: Uqua
We formed up in Yxtta and it wasn't looking good initially. We were damn low on Warriors and on Clerics. I was honestly wondering if they would call the raid due to low attendence. We kicked off the instance with 2 Warriors and 5 Clerics (2 of those were bots), fortunately our Druids have been breeding and we have millions and millions of them, so we weren't hurting too bad on the heal-age.


We headed into Uqua after the usual clear of Mindrider. I actually survived Mindrider for once, mainly by spending 50% of the fight FD. I must admit I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to the initial pulls. But they were tight!, the SA machine was in action and we were clearing rapidly through the zone trash.


Before we even realized it we were at the first trap room, through it, and clearing to the Constructs. We began to have a few LD's and we pulled both the Construct of Fury and the Construct of Rage at the same time.


I saw the two of them thundering down the corridor at me at the same time and thought " Fuck this is it, this is a wipe". But we handled it!. We were under strength (raid wasn't full) and short key classes, but everyone pas concentrating and playing to the top of their game. Offtanking worked perfectly and we burned down the Constructs one by one.


We cleared down and split the raid to take on Tqiv Araxt the Enraged and Tqiv Qukret the Furious. The first time we did these kills they stayed with 1-2% of each other from start to finish. But for some reason this time they got very lopsided and at one point Tqiv Araxt the Enraged was nearly 20% ahead of his mate. We slowed down one side and kept the DPS up on the other side and they died fairly cleanly.


Right at the end of the kill we lost a tank and a cleric to Tqiv Qukret the Furious and suddenly we had death adds in the middle of what was a seriously weakened raid force.
For those unaware: You have to kill the Furious and the Enraged within about 20 seconds of each other so you have to split your raid to do it. They both have nasty mana drain /hp drain /spell cast delay AOEs and they both have a bad habit of porting random members of the groups attacking them to the other side of the zone. I started this fight on the Furious and was ported and finished the fight on the Enraged.


We managed to get the death adds under control, barely, but we did it. I FD'd and waited to see what was going to happen and whether I was going to be needed for raid Rezzing. thankfully I wasn't and we reformed. We began to clear down to the second trap room. We started to get a bit slack at this point and a few comments were made by officers along the lines of "come on guys keep concentrating". It only takes one seconds in attention in a place like Uqua and you are fucked.


What I don't understand is why, when you have all week to fuck around and be a dick head you feel the need to do it on a raid as well?. Cant people reign in their bullshit for the 3-5 hours required twice a week?.


The raid was definitely slowing down. DPS dropped slightly at this point but we were still making progress. We crushed the Devastating Construct and finally that irritating zone wide AOE was off.


We took a wee break at this point to refocus, take a pee and generally get our heads around the job to come, the death of Vrex Barxt Qurat.
We prepped, strat was called, we buffed and engaged. This time, instead of looking around for adds to mezz or dealing with any other crap I concentrated on doing the one thing that a Necro does better than anyone else given a long enough fight and a mob with low resists. I pumped out damage.


I had running on him:
Dark Nightmares
Pyre of Mori
Night Fire
Funeral Pyre of Kelador
Blood of Thule
Nights Beckon
Pyrocruor
and I was chain tapping.


That's about 2500/tick not including Crits and tapping every tick for 1100. I also had normal pet on him and the clickie pet from the epic. He also got a fully raid buffed life burn (8523). I smacked his ass!.


Vrex Barxt Qurat died slowly and smoothly. I don't think there was ever a moment that I doubted he was going to die once we were past the initial engage.


We burned him down to 90% and handled the 12 adds beautifully. We kept one add alive and formed up for the second run. We rezzed people and rebuffed when needed. The call was made and we started to take down the last standing add.


The last add dies and Nymeria is doing a hell of a job of keeping Barxt's attention. We all start to burn. Fuck any adds, Chanters will deal with them or Rangers and Pallies will lock them down. Everyone is doing this beautifully, the Southern Armada slaughter engine is in motion and performing at peak.

Barxt died about 2:00am New Zealand time and Southern Armada beat the guild killer. Uqua has been known to break guilds completely, but we did it, we made it past the little bastard and zoned into Qvic - Prayer Grounds of Calling.

The question which has reared its ugly head in the last few days is a slightly different one. Southern Armada can beat anything that SOE can throw at us, we know that now.

Will we be beaten by the combined might of Worlds of Warcraft and Everquest 2?. Will SA survive?. I'm certainly willing to put my skills and efforts into the "yes" category.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Eighty Five

7/11/04 Week Eighty Five


Pain, much pain. I am suffering from the delayed effects of a motorcycle crash I had recently. I have developed a condition called Torticollis or "angry neck'. What it comes down to is that my neck, shoulder and arm are causing me severe pain. I cannot get comfortable and I am eating painkillers like lollies. So far I have seen a Doctor, an Osteopath and a Chiropractor. I am also getting massages and all of this is costing me a fucking fortune. No one yet has given me anything beyond "it takes time". Well they have all said it should get better within 5-7 days and I'm now in my 11th day with no relief.


One problem I have is that even when sick I usually at least have the option to play EQ and make me feel better. Unfortunately at the moment I cant even do that as I find it even more painful than the normal level of pain to sit at the PC. So I haven't been able to play ANY PC games in 2 weeks! *twitch*


This update will thus be brief.


Monday: Time
We romped through killed everything, received vast amounts of Phat Phat Lewtz. It was good (I wasn't there)


Thursday: Uqua
Fucked up badly. We wiped before we even made it to the first AOE room. We then managed to totter our way through to the Construct of Fury and the Construct of Rage and managed another partial wipe.


We dropped Tqiv Araxt the Enraged and Tqiv Qukret the Furious and then managed to wipe again, twice.


At this point the Raid leaders called it, mainly because the more you wipe, the harder the end zone bosses get, so at this point Vrex Barxt Qurat would be unbeatable.
I almost think some days that Time is bad for us. We can cruise through Time and we often do. This makes us lazy and its not until we run into a zone like Uqua where we need the discipline that got us to Time that we really start to mess up.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Eighty Four

19/10/04 Week Eighty Four


Time, ahh Time.


Farm Farm Farm. We are getting pretty good at this now. We have a complete Time clear down to about three and a half hours. Not bad considering our first full single raid Time clear was about 5 hours.


We have this down to a fine art, although we can still occasionally get sloppy and have trouble with a god or two. We had a couple of fails against Tallon Zek a few weeks ago for no other reason than we weren't paying attention.


Farming Time is good tho and lots of people still have plenty of slots and focus effect to replace or upgrade. Personally I'm still trying to upgrade 1 earring and 1 focus item. The earring is the last sub 100HP item I still have.


This weeks time raid was really good for me. I finally replaced my cloak which I have been trying to replace for over a year. I was awarded a cloak when we were raiding Shei Vinitras in the Akheva Ruins which was 90/100 and some stats. It was close to one of the first items I was ever awarded when I got to Prexus. It was a damn nice cloak at the time.


As we started moving through POP many many good cloaks started to drop (Fire was particularly good for this) and I always held off on them thinking I could wait till the rest of the guild all had one and they started to rot. We never quite got to the rot stage though so I kept waiting.


So we get into Time and I'm still waiting on a cloak, a few drop now and again, several of which had excellent focus effects for a Necro and I keep sending tells, but I never managed to have enough points at the time. So in the end I just said fuckit and went for any decent dropped cloak. Finally last week the Guild officers were kind enough to award me one!.


As the night progressed we also have a Circlet of Flowing Time drop. Now this is an item I have had my eyes on for some time so I figured what the hell and sent a tell and I got it!. OMG two in a night!. Woot I was just about bouncing out of my seat!.


The focus I'm trying to replace is Spell haste. I had a haste item in my range slot, but I upgraded that slot and lost the focus. I know that the hastes are only 20% or so, but the delay is definitely noticeable on most of my spells. I've been looking around for haste focii, but again they always seem to drop at just the wrong time. Ah well, it will happen one day.


Time is a funny place. You work immensely hard to get there and when you get there each encounter is fun and scales nicely. When you first get into Time the fights are quite tough until you work out the methods of beating them. Then once you have beaten it a few times and added a couple of full clears worth of drops to your guild your Guilds power ramps up exponentially.


I can understand why OOW and GOD are as hard as they are. Even ignoring the addition of an extra 5 levels we are a different guild to what we were pre-Time and we had only been in there 5 months prior to the GOD release. The amount of DPS that is added after your Tanks/Melee classes start to acquire Time weapons and your casting classes add a couple of K of mana to their mana pools is enormous.


Add to that the addition to all your tanks of a couple of hundred points of AC and several K of HP and your team is a very different one to that which dropped your final Elemental God and broke into Time.


We have also been doing buttloads of Epics lately. It seems everyone has the bug and is going for their epic weapon. One Friday I was logged on and I ended up doing 9 epic hits in a row. The bard one was the most fun so far I thought with several kills across Norrath.

Plains Dragon in West Karana

Kill A Dire Leech to spawn...

A Swamp Dragon in Swamp of No Hope

Kill A Dire Kodiak to spawn...

A Forest Dragon in Jagged Pine Forest

****** This update bought to you by too much Coffee and Avril Lavigne *******
Uqua. Damn we got close this time. It wasn't a perfect run by any means but it was a lot smoother than some of our recent runs.


We had our usual little diversion to drop Pixxt Suir Mindrider on the way through Yxtta

Once again just as we engage I got distracted and once again I ended the fight a thin red smear on the ground. Every expansion has its bugbears. For me it was Tallon Zek in POP. He nailed me every single fight. I think I survived 1 fight of all the times we killed him. In GOD it appears to be the Mindrider. I have yet to survive a fight with her and shes not exactly a tough kill.

SA chomping at the bit to kill Barxt

We have the clearing of the corridors down now. The multi pulls and traps are well handled by the Chanty team and their new Mezz spells or the off tanks will keep them under control. We still managed to wipe in the first Fire Trap room with a key call that not only set off the trap, it also opened the door. Go figure.

Isnt he supposed to be hard? (So to speak)

We cleared past the Furies, then the Avatars to the final encounter with Barxt. We knew we were going to get 12 ghosts at 80% as we had been at this point before. We were prepared for that and we handled them easily. After that point we had no idea what was going to happen.

Vrex Barxt Qurat waiting his turn

We kept one of the ghosts alive till we were rezzed, medded and ready and then killed it. At this point it was 2:00am. I would normally log now but I was bound and determined to see this through. So I settled in, propped open my eyelids with toothpicks and Barxt was inbound at bard speed. We were expecting anything and only knew as much of the encounter as we had managed to get thru the week before, I didn't get to drop much in the way of DOTs on him as I was looking around the room checking to see if anything was popping and needed mezzing.


It started to get fast and confusing at around 40%, he started to mitigate melee damage in a big way and was resisting a lot of my spells. I switched over to pure damage mode and was throwing everything I could at him.


He spawned 2 ghost Adds with nasty AOEs one of which was a mana drain and sent me OOM in seconds. I threw my pet, my epic Pet and an 8500 HP Life Burn at him. At that point I was completely OOM with no chance in hell of regenerating mana or life tapping hp back from the LB. Next time Ill go melee on his ass as well.


I got splatted with him at 16%. By the time I had zoned it was all over. We got him to 14% at our best. He definitely dies next week. I logged at 2:30am and left my corpse at the ZI. There was no way I was going to be able to hang around till 3:00am for a rez.


I had an extremely interesting conversation with a fellow necromancer called (Name withheld to protect the innocent) from The Nameless server. It appears he is an aussie from Melbourne and plays with a Taiwanese guild. He apparently enjoys the weekly adventures of The Southern Armada and the travels of Ulaa Grimsoul. He also expressed admiration for our progress as a 2 day a week raiding guild.


/Bow thank you mate, its always nice to hear from someone who enjoys reading these missives. It spurs me along to keep at them.


Interestingly enough there is something of an ongoing debate over "raider" vs "casual" play in EQ and EQ2. Anyone who doesn't raid always denigrates raiders as "7 day a week no life zerg army losers'. Every now and again I pop into this debate and point out that as a 2 day a week raiding guild we have managed to make it into time and are working our way into GOD. We may not be a bleeding edge guild but we aren't far behind them. We don't have "you must raid" rules, we don't even enforce a "you must raid if you are online" rule. If you want to raid you do, if you don't you don't, that's fine.


Most of our members are adults, with jobs, kids, lives. we try and start at 7PM AEST but we don't always, we do our level best to integrate latecomers into the raids and we can have people turning up all through the night.


We manage to maintain a good reputation on our server as an honorable and friendly guild. It is perfectly possible to do all of this. We are just a group of people who decided we all wanted to see the high end of the game and were willing to be disciplined enough to do it. If you have ever been on a raid with a high end guild you will know its a different game to raiding with "casual" guild or pickups.


I've done several pickup raids trying to get flags for my tank twink and they drive me nuts. People who cant get where they are supposed to be without dieing, people who chat over the raid leader and then get lippy when they are asked to tone it down. People who wander off just to see what's "over there" and then panic and train the raid when they get aggro, people who don't pay attention to what the raid leaders are saying and then ask "what do I do?" 5 seconds after engage. Healers who heal pullers (BAD).


These idiots of course are the same people who accuse raiders of being "7 day a week no life zerg army losers" and claim they should be given a full set of Time gear and every flag they ever wanted just for logging in. Its called discipline, learn the meaning of the word.
I've personally I've finally become comfortable with the term 'Uber' as defined by the casuals. Most of the casual people throw the term around like an insult. I wear it now as a mark of pride. 


To them 'uber' means "7 day a week no life zerg army losers", to me it means many many days waking up feeling like spattered shit after a 2-3am finish. It means the team I am a member of achieving our goals despite the odds. It means belonging to a very tight team of players who will go out of their way to help each other and to move forward in the game. It means many things to many people. But to me its a term of pride.


It also helps that we have one of the best Guild Leaders I've ever come across, several superb Raid leaders , including 2 of the best raid leaders on the server, a great group of Officers, an awesome pull team and heal team, a heal team leader second to none and a skilled membership willing to put aside personal bullshit and work together for a common goal 2 days a week. All this in a "casual" guild.


Southern Armada Rocks.


We also have a Guild Leader who can be evil when he feels like it, or an extremely gullible Necromancer *cough* Kestakhan *cough*, you choose after reading the following.

During my travels throughout OOW I have run into this wee puppy on a number of occasions. Normally I dont mind, but on this particular occasion he got a little too close for comfort.

Ulaa has also had a few upgrades recently. On top of her new robe and shield she also completed her 1.5 Epic. I lot of people have bagged the new epics but I had always wanted to do the Epic Quests (both 1.0 and 1.5) so I was determined to complete the quest. So here are a few shots with the new Toy.


I love it, I think its very cool and I am deeply grateful to all of the people who helped me out along the way with kills and other things.

Oh and by the way guys. When Epic 2.0 is fixed (The Necro one is currently bugged) I want to be doing that as well !.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Eighty One, Eighty Two, Eighty Three

20/09/04 Week Eighty One


Omens of War


It has become hugely apparent that the Omens of War expansion which went live on Wednesday was released in the wrong order. OOW should have been released prior to the Gates of Discord expansion, to be honest, they should have been released as a single expansion. Rule of thumb for all budding young game developers. We, the players, aren't idiots, don't assume we are and never ever let the marketing weenies get their hands on your release schedule.


If the expansions had been released in reverse order, or as a single expansion it would have made the casuals and the raiders both a lot happier. Both sides would have had a lot of their 65+ spells, everyone would have been level 70 with increased, HP, AC, Mana pools, resists, attack values etc etc. Everyone would have picked up some of the Time tier one/VT level gear that is dropping in the OOW zones and thus would be better equipped to have handled the release of GOD.


Once GOD was released, the raiders would have moved out of OOW largely and powered into the GOD raid zones leaving OOW to the casuals and non-raiders. Voila, everyone is happy (well as happy as an EQ player ever is)


Releasing GOD first was a fuckup of monumental proportions and whoever was responsible for it should be fired.


Having said that I am so far thoroughly enjoying OOW. I logged in and formed up with an SA group to head into the new zones. As I was running about and asking for directions it was pointed out to me that there were in fact maps. So after a quick trip to eqtoolbox.com (You guys absolutely rock!) I downloaded all the maps and logged back in. We formed up in the Nobles Causeway and headed through to the Walls of Slaughter on our way to the Muramite Proving Grounds.


On the way to the Proving Grounds we were killing stuff as we encountered it. I dinged on the first kill and easily slid my way into 66 for the first time. My favorite MOB model so far is definitely the Bazu models.

Although the Discordlings do come a close second. They are like Satan's idea of a cute little puppy dog

We made it to the MPG without too much incident and started to kill our way into it. This zone really reminds me of Velious. It is absolutely enormous. It still uses the "cookie cutter" zone design of GOD but it has little touches of finesse that give it a sense of its own uniqueness. The way the maze is laid out with blind allies and leads, the little blind corners that have MOB's hiding around them and the sheer scale of the place. My first impression of it was that it was so much like the old velious armour run in Sky Shrine. It just seemed to go on forever.

If they are ever going to introduce a new player race, the MOB's who would make the coolest new race are obviously the Orc's (the only reason I am looking forward to playing WoW is that I can play orc's!) however if orc's are not available my next vote would have to be the Dragorns. They just out and out look cool!.

So we kept slaughtering our way through the PG and encountered a few more MOB types and models. I like this zone, the spread of the MOBs forces a party to crawl their way through the areas rather than just sitting in one spot and pulling everything to you. The MOB respawn is also fast without being hideously dangerous the way the early GOD trials were. So it keeps you moving but if you do decide to turn and go back the way you came you aren't just running through an empty zone.

I have to say well done to whoever laid this zone out. I am also enjoying the new MOB models. However next time SOE comes to design a new expansion I hope they remember one thing; 6 new mob models do not an expansion make.

Basically in OOW you have the 6 or so GOD models plus 6 or so new models. Its a refreshing change but its still second rate and not what we have come to expect from SOE.

I have been re-reading a lot of the literature that was being released around the time of the SOE Guild meet to which the Great Aussie Bear should have been invited!, a huge oversight I am sure will be rectified in the next one, speaking of which, when is the first Australian fan faire?, hell even if it was somewhere in Asia I would go.

**** Much Delayed Update ****

I have had a hell 2 weeks. Firstly I did 31 hours in 2 days a couple of weeks ago trying to make my backup solution work again. I failed and they brought in a guy from aussie. So I was doing 12 hour days with him onsite to make the steaming POS work.

Then I got told that I was going on training for the next 8 working days. So I have just done a 3 day course on Electronic Policy Orchestrator followed immediately by a 5 day course (which was actually 2x 4 day courses compressed into 5) on Implementing and Managing Active Directory in a 2003 Domain. So essentially I have been both brain dead and nowhere near this PC for the last couple of weeks to complete this update.

On top of all of that there is a strong possibility that I will be losing my home DSL connection in the coming months. Oh Joy.

So all in all not a great month for me.

On the EQ front however I have been having an absolute blast. I managed to work my way to 69/35%, I have 3 spells and I completed my Epic!. Woot!.\\The original Necromancer epic weapon was not only a POS it was insanely hard to get. Most of the drops were fairly simple to get and as a 65 Necro with a full spell book I could have solo'd most of it. However even once I moved to Prexus and was with a guild capable of one grouping Cazic Thule, the drop that was needed from him was so insanely rare as to be a waste of time to even attempt it .


So when they announced Epic 1.5 and 2.0 I was thrilled and determined to do the quest. So about 1 month from the start of it and with immense amounts of help from my guild mates, I completed not only the epic bypass (needed because I didn't have the Epic 1.0) but I completed the Epic itself. I will have pics soon, its my first day back at work so I'm a bit inundated with catch up.


So far I am still thoroughly enjoying OOW as well. The camp spots are nicely balanced, the mobs are killable without being easy, some pulls are singles some require either good CC in the form of a chanter/bard or fast root/snaring. I've done a couple of epic kills with people that have been a lot of fun as well.


On the whole I have to say SOE did a good job with this expansion. I am going to forgive them GOD at this point and say I am tentatively looking forward to their next offering.

Raiding in the last week hasn't been good. Mondays Time raid I couldn't connect to at all. I was on earlier in the evening but when I tried to logon for the raid I couldn't connect. It was odd, I couldn't seem to get past Sydney. I could connect to (and ping) NZ and OZ based web sites but no international or US based web sites. After an hour or so of trying I gave up and went to bed.


The following Thursdays Uqua raid I realized that Aussie still hasn't switched to daylight savings, so raids are starting at 10PM my time. As I was on an expensive training course and really needed to be vaguely awake the next day I decided to pass on that nights raid and head to bed early.


With the addition of 5 levels and extra spells SA moved quite a way past the point we had gotten stuck at before apparently and penetrated a lot further into Uqua. The first raid night for this week is tonight and I will be back to the regularly scheduled updates. !

OOW has also restored a lot of my faith in the Necro class. With GOD I was beginning to feel very unhappy with the path the Dev's seemed to have sent us down. With OOW they have redeemed themselves. They have done several things which have made Necros wanted in groups.


Firstly a lot of MOBs run, so snarers are again really useful. Secondly Mind Wrack affects everything. So by the simple expedient of casting MW on every mob I can add to the groups mana regen capabilities. Its not a huge amount of mana but every little bit helps. Thirdly I can do damage again. Horror seems to be a lot less resisted on OOW mobs and the new spell upgrades (The ones that I have aquired) have added immensely to my ability to do burst and long term damage.


On Raid bosses having the FD AA (Castable as a hotkey and while spell gems are refreshing) and the additional DOT damage means I am doing a third again as much damage (EG: 65K against Tallon Zek) as I was prior to OOW. So I have some group Utility back and I have maintained my ability to contribute large amounts of damage to raid mobs.


***** A Further Update *****

This weeks raids have turned out to be rather uneventful. I'm still three hours ahead so raids are starting at 10PM for me. Apparently Australia moves forward to Daylight Savings Time at the end of this month, I cant wait, it will put raid times back to the normal 5 hours rather than 4.


So we cleared Time and at a record pace for us. I left about 2:00am just as we had reached and started clearing Tier 4. We had just dropped Cazic and Innoruuk and were heading off to start on Rallos Zek when I gated to POK and logged.

Uqua on Thursday started late, really late. The raid formed up at 10:00PM but didn't get off the ground till 10:45PM. We splatted Pixxt Suir Mindrider first and then zoned into Uqua. Last week I took about 30K and bought 100% weight reduction backpacks. So the -100 STR AOE on Zone in didn't bother me at all this time.


We handled the traps and multiple pulls with no issues this week. We now have a number of 11K+ Warriors as well as several 11K+ Knights and a lot more healing power with the new 65+ spells, so off tanking has become a lot easier for these events. The tanks also figured out a good way of peeling the multiple pulls off and keeping them occupied without dieing themselves.


We easily made it up to the first trap room and here was were it all went wrong. Basically when you enter the room, each person starts to receive emotes, in that emote is the name of a key. On a nearby table are a number of different keys, once you receive an emote you tell the Guild asap and the key master (Kezlar) picks up the key and clicks the door.

Simple right?. Well it is until people are fucking about, emoting stupid shit and generally breaking raid rule number one : PAY FUCKING ATTENTION, they wait too long to say the key name and Kez clicks the door after the next emote has started. You only have about 10 seconds to find the right key and click the door, before the emote sounds again and the key changes.


Oh didn't I mention this bit?. If you click on the door with the wrong key you kick off an AOE. Its only small enough to affect everyone in the room and its only 3 waves of 5K damage each. So that was that. After the rez and rebuff, we clicked through the door in seconds.


We made our way deeper and deeper into the zone. More traps were spawned, more multi pulls. Most of them were handled beautifully with only a few deaths and the Death adds (a 65 MOB spawns when a player dies) quickly locked down by the on the ball Chanty team.                 

We cleared the names and started to clear the Avatars (Fury and Rage). Somehow we ended up with 3 Avatars in camp. I think a puller went LD as we had been having a lot of Link Deaths over the course of the night. At this point I had to log. It was 1:45AM and I couldn't see us getting back underway in any significant manner prior to 2:00am. So I gated out to POK, said my good byes and headed to bed.


Uqua will definitely fall to us next week as after I left the Guild got very very close to beating the final encounters.

Everquest Raids Southern Armada Week Seventy Nine and Eighty

17/09/04 Week 79 & 80
I've combined these weeks together for several reasons. The primary reason is that not a whole lot actually happened beyond "The Usual". We cleared Time a couple of Times. We did Ikkinz 4 again (and utterly Ganked it this time) and managed to get a lot further through Uqua.
The secondary reason is that the Omens of War launched finally and its turned out to be quite a lot of fun. I must admit I was beginning to get decidedly bored with EQ. The incessant hunt for the next group (tough as a Necro) and the endless mindless farming of crap AAs was beginning to drive me to distraction. It got to the point that I was in fact finding it hard to log on, even for raiding.


However with the release of OOW I now have a number of things to aim for. Firstly is Level 70. I had forgotten what a great motivator the level Grind can be. Secondly is Epic 2.0. I really really wanted to do my epic back on Karana but was never in a guild capable of killing the requisite mobs often enough to attain the stupidly rare items. I was actually awarded the Slime Blood of Cazic Thule (which was the major item blockage) about a week before I left Karana to come to Prexus.


As I was leaving anyway I held on to it for about a day, just to say I actually once had it, and then handed it back to the guild and transferred servers.
First up we will take a wander through Ikkinz4. We absolutely flew through this on our third run. First up we hit the Altar Wardens and then the Altar Sentries

Once they are out of the way its time for "the pit guy" otherwise known as the Altar Overseer. You will note Pooby as ever taking the pounding. Pooby likes to take the pounding. Its what the Pooby is for!

Then comes the Phantasmal Priest Guardians. These guys gave us a bit of trouble last time as they are rather hard to split. When they come you have to be prepared for 2 of them. So off tanking has to be ready and secondary heal chains ready to keep the off tanks up.

Then its time for the Oracle of the Altar. This guy hits like a train but doesn't seem to have a huge amount of HP. He dies inside of two minutes. Its the adds that will cause you the pain. We nailed him on only the second try tho so we were very happy about that. He spawns a random number of adds. If that number is too big for the Chanters to control the only thing you can do is take the wipe and try again.

The final MOB for the trial is the boss. The Keeper of the Altar is a fairly simple fight compared to what you have to do to get to him. Its a fairly straight tank fight here, nothing too special.

We also hit Uqua twice over the course of these two weeks. We formed up to head into Uqua and decided to give Pixxt Suir Mindrider a go as she is on the way. She is actually in Yxtta the Pulpit of Exiles but she is close to the zone in for Uqua. The first time we tried her we prepped and prepped and prepped. We were so ready for her as we had been told she was really difficult. So once we were engaged we found it quite surprising how easily she died.

On our second attempt I got a phone call just after I layered 3 DOTs on her. I FD'd popped up and then ran off to answer the phone. I came back after about 30 seconds to find myself standing nekkid in Time. According to SOE there is no such thing as Crit aggro, Strangely my logs show a successful FD, and then a summon immediately after a Horror crit. Odd that.

Uqua. I don't know what the Omens of War expansion is going to bring us in the way of raiding. But after three weeks in this zone if the raid leaders decided to never go back to GOD ever again I would be first in line leading the cheers.

On the first run into Uqua in these weeks we did really well. We got past the traps, past the Gas Chambers and into the room with the two behemoths, Construct of Rage and Construct of Fury.

We engaged them and managed to push one through a door (doh) where he promptly started summoning. The raid wiped and I managed to FD just inside the door. One thing we didn't know about these guys is they may physically reset but they don't seem to actually forget you. Unless you have been deaded, if you enter the room or even zone back in from a camp out they will come and kick your ass.

So along with the magnificent Zarthaz and Genosin, I pulled all the viewable corpses into a corner so they could be dragged off and rezzed. I just stayed FD'd until after about an hour of CR the raid leaders called it all off and we all quit out of the instance. Not our best moment.

I also managed to fall asleep during our second weeks run at Uqua. We had started the raid with only 3 warriors and after some very bad luck and a number of raid wipes the raid was called off. It was decided to head off and do Ikkinz 2. I thought yay! maybe an Aegis of Black scale will drop! and happily headed out of Uqua and back to KT. We were clearing towards Ikk2 when I fell asleep. I remember waking up and finding myself alone in KT and promptly logged off.

I also had a bit of a motorcycle accident that i was very very lucky to walk away from this week so I haven't actually been logging on a whole lot as i have been in too much pain to sit at a desk. Next weeks update (well actually its this weeks but forgive me) includes the launch of OOW and my first DING! in nearly 18 months!.