Guilds Part 1

Guilds

With the massive expansion of the online genre happening I thought I would write a little introduction to one of the newer aspects of the phenomenon, the online "Guild" or "Clan".

Guilds are funny beasts, they exist entirely in virtual worlds and tend to focus on a single virtual world or game, they inspire passion and the sort of closeness amongst their members that a few years ago would only been found on the sports field.

Also known in some circles as "Clans" or "Teams". Anyone who has ever played a game online knows what these are, for those who don't I have created this little guide. If you accept that "You don't get to choose your family but you can choose your friends" as a truism then the clan is the online circle of friends of the 21st century.

A Clan or Guild is essentially a group of like minded gamers who gather together to achieve a given set of goals within a game framework. Team goals can range from the more casual, but no less hotly contested goal of domination in a First Person Shooter such as Quake or crushing the opposition in a Real Time Strategy Game such as Command and Conquer.

The penultimate level of this type of competition is the more complex and on occasion heavily
personal race to raid targets in games such As Everquest. There are also "Clans" and "Gangs" in non combat online games such as the Sims where people gather their virtual avatars to hang out in virtual malls together. It seems the human social drive is a lot more powerful than was ever realized.

There are also a variety of Guilds known as "Gaming Guilds". These are groups of friends who are not dedicated to a single world or game, but instead play a variety of games while continuing their association across the genres. Possibly the biggest and most famous of these would be "Organisation:Drow" AKA Venom AKA Blood of the Spider. I have encountered a few of these types of Guilds including the Underground Warlords and The Syndicate. These guilds are huge and very very hard to manage, requiring hours of unpaid work from Guild and Website admins and leaders.

The interests of such groups can range from a focus purely on the gameplay experience of their members through to being virtual gaming portals with links, reviews and subsite hosting for their members.

These virtual relationships have begun to be studied by serious academics, the two leaders of which would be Nick Yee and Damion Schubert. Nick Yee studies online and virtual relationships from the point of view of an academic doing research for his PhD whereas Damion Schubert looks at them from the point of view of both a player and a professional, successful game designer. Damions site also has some great links to other sites looking at such things as Online Economies and the science of game design and management.

From the point of view of a common player a Guild offers several things. It offers other people in the game from whom you can learn the mechanics of the game, it offers people to chat with, to game with, to raid with, to achieve the sorts of things that require more than a single group to complete. Beyond even that, it can offer friendship, "mateship" and even the opportunity to meet people in real life.

"In Real Life" is also commonly known as 'IRL' and the acronym will be used here from now on.

In short a guild can fully flesh out an experience that even within the framework of a massively multiplayer game can be a lonely one. A good guild can help advance your Avatar and gain you respect within the game world, a bad Guild can create you a reputation that may even follow you from game to game or world to world.

There are many different types of guilds and then there are sub classes within the Types. For example within a Massively Multiplayer game that includes an element of Player vs Player (PvP) you will have Player Killer (PK) and Anti PK guilds. Good guys and Bad guys. I can only really speak for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORG) genre of Guilds as that has been my primary playground for the last few years but many of the guild types can be applied across game genres.

First I need to explain the difference between Hard Core and Casual gamers in relation to MMPORG's.

A Casual Gamer is someone who can log on to play anywhere from 1-10 hours a week. They often have families or commitments outside the game. They want to be able to login, achieve something within their limited playtime and log out without major penalties to themselves. The 'High End Game' is not where they are headed, they are there to hang out with friends and maybe peek timidly round the corner while the Uber Guild (See Below) is cleaning out the Dragons and/or Gods.

A Hardcore gamer is someone who plays as much as they possibly can. This can range from 15+ hours a week out to 60+ hours a week. The Hardcore tend to haunt message boards and information sites. They go into an encounter knowing as much as they possibly can about that encounter. They will max level within weeks or months of a game going live and will stay up at MaxLevel for years. They are often rich within the game world as they are the first to get their hands on rare sellable items and/or spend a lot of time earning cash through tradeskills.

These players also often Multi Box ( own two or more computers and two or more game accounts and play two or more characters simultaneously. If you are playing with more than 4 PC's and Characters you are playing a "Hydra") The hardcore tend to drift into Raiding or Uber guilds and tend to be more focused on advancing their characters and in seeing new zones and killing new monsters.

Casual and raiding players tend to be attracted to specific guild types, however there are no hard and fast rules for the type of Guild a player may join. A Hardcore player may join a Family guild simply to be the big fish in the small pond and be happy there.

Family Guilds
These are made up of people who are playing for the "experience" and the friendship of other players. The family guild is really there more as a chat channel for its members and to allow members to come together to help each other. These types of guilds are usually strongly represented on the so called "Role Playing" servers that are supported by many MMPORG's.

These guilds don't usually raid or aim for the "high end" of the game. They are really there for the fun. They can be made up of hardcore and casual members although the hardcore tend to move on to Raiding guilds if their needs are not met within the structure of the guild. Family Guilds will have a heavy emphasis on friendship and the mores of family life when recruiting. Such Guilds can often contain several hundred members.

Casual Guilds
The casual guild sounds a lot like the family guild but with less emphasis on 'family'. The casual guild is often made up of a small group of real life friends and is created largely for the members to be able to 'hang out' together, they are often made up of people with limited play times. You will rarely find the Hardcore player in such a Guild unless the entire Guild is made up of a small number of Hardcore IRL friends..

Raiding Guilds
Raiding Guilds are designed around the concept of the raid. Within the MMPORG genre there are several method's of joining together with other players to achieve something. Soloing - Obviously doing something yourself, Grouping - joining with 4-6 others players and raiding - joining up with 40-60 other players. A Raid is often a complex scripted even where all of the members of the guild have to do their jobs simultaneously and in a proscribed manner in order to achieve a given goal. Often this goal is to do with the death of a big target such as a Dragon or Giant.

Raiding Guilds often have strict rules which players must adhere to or be forced out of the guild. For example the Guild may raid 6 Days a week and attendance at least 5 raids a week is mandatory. Players in this type of guild tend to be the hardcore type.

Uber Guild
These are the Superstars of the guild system. This type of guild will have mandatory online time and raid rules. They tend to be run with a strict multi tier structure and penalties for broken rules are severe. This type of guild is pushing the boundaries of the game system all the time, they are the first to kill the Dragon and be the first into the Evil Castle. They will maintain websites where they can tell others of their accomplishments and non Uber Guilds can go to
drool. The membership of the Uberguild is heavily influenced towards the Hardcore player.

To make life interesting the boundaries of Family, Casual and Raiding Guilds can often blur. For example you can have a Family\Raiding Guild that is capable of killing the big monsters without the heavy strictures placed on members in a normal Raiding guild.

Guilds are living breathing entities. They change and flux constantly with changes in membership and the needs of the guild members. You may initially join a Casual Guild that grows into a Family Guild over the years. Then the Guild may have an influx of hardcore players who want to raid. These players may attempt to steer the guild towards being a Raiding Guild. Sometimes this will work and the Guild will evolve towards its new form, more often than not the guild will split into two smaller guilds.

Sometimes the Guild will disintegrate completely and two new Guilds will form, or the original Guild may continue on its way and the split Guild will take on a new name. Guild names can be passionately fought over when a guild splits with both sides claiming the 'right' to the original Guild name and all the history attached to it.

Guild names or 'Tags' are proudly carried and insults to the guild name can be treated with all the seriousness of an insult to a set of Gang colors.

These are all my personal observations from many years of involvement in the MMPORG genre. I have had my share of flame wars over perceived insults to my guild. I have had Guilds disintegrate under me and helped build guilds up. It is all part of the fascinating fabric of the web.

And at the end of it all I am a Proud member of The Southern Armada. Don't like what I have to say or feel like insulting my Guild?. Come join me on the Proudmoore server in the World of Warcraft MMPORG and you can tell me to my "face".

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!.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Five

10/08/04 Week Seventy Five

It has been put to me that I have in fact gotten the timeline of our GOD raids wrong for the last couple of weeks. This is in fact correct. This week (Not the week I'm writing about now, but next week hehehe) we dropped Ikkinz4. So essentially in 4 GOD raids we have done Ikkinz 1,2,3,4 in a row. Quite an achievement considering we have had absolutely no idea about any of the encounters.

Mostly we go in, try it, see how bad we get hammered and how (that's only if we don't succeed first shot) adjust our tactics and then go again. Its a formula that has yet to fail us.

This week we actually started with GOD and Trial 3. I initially though we would be able to do Trials 3 and 4 in the one night, but they aren't as easy as all of that. Once again we got the cookie cutter zone layout, its exactly the same layout as Trials 1 and 2 with the mobs in exactly the same places and doing exactly the same things, only more so.

As a rough example of what I am talking about 

Trial1 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1000/triples 10K HP
Trial2 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1200/triples 15K HP
Trial3 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 1800/Quads 25K HP
Trial4 : Nasty_Named_MOB_01 Hits 4500/Quads/proc's 1500DD, AOE's -300 Chromatic 2500DD 55K HP

They seem to ramp up considerably in nastiness with Trial 4 being a real bruiser (more on that next update.) Anyway we romped through Trial 3 pretty much. The last named caused us a few issues and there were two unplanned Raid rezzes but we still dropped him in the end. One thing that is annoying is to go from the volume of Lewtz that Time gives us, back to 2-3 Lewtz per raid. Admittedly the quality of the Lewtz is the best in the Game but its still a bit of a shock to the system. Time has spoiled us a bit.

I left this raid about 2:00am I think and headed straight to bed.

The following Thursday was a full Time clear.

Tier One
Tier Two
Tier Three
Saryrn
Terris Thule
Tallon Zek
Vallon Zek
Bertoxxulous
Cazic Thule
Rallos Zek
Innoruuk
Quarm

We had to delay it to the 2nd raid of the week due to splitting the Time kills across last week. We want to be doing this as one single raid to get it out of the way. I think it also makes people happier when we do raids where simply massive amounts of Phat Lewts are dropping and everyone seems to get a piece.

My weakest points, and the things I am really looking for an upgrade for are my Face, Earrings and Secondary. They are the only pieces left on me that are sub 100 hp. Everything else, be it raid dropped or picked up in XP groups are all at this point over 100hp and I'm happy with that.

A lot of stuff is now starting to Rot. The officers had nobody interested in Tier1, Tier2, Tier3 loot. There are a few pieces in there that would be minor upgrades for me (Arms from T3 have more regen and slightly more hp for example than mine) for example but I am waiting for absolutely everyone else who wants them to get them first. When they start to go to Bots I will put in for some of this stuff.

I really really wish I had managed to get Garakk Time Flagged. I can see stuff that would be a massive upgrade for him passing into the "grats Rot" category very, very soon. Even the main Bots don't want a lot of it.He is slooooooooooowly approaching 59. I'm not entirely sure why but from about 55+ groups for Warriors simply stopped. Up till 55 getting a group was reasonably OK, now I spend hours LFG on him and get nada. the best XP I have managed for him in the last couple of months has all been in 65 groups where I tag along.

I didn't even think of getting him Time flagged at the time. I was concentrating on the Guild Flagging, this weekly tome and getting Ulaa flagged. To be utterly honest I'm still flabbergasted every day that we made it. I think in some small part of me I never, ever thought I would be in a Time Level and beyond Guild. So I just didn't get Garakk Flagged, I really should have.

I've been trying to get him a lot of the older flags but successful pickup raids are few and far between. He has a few flags and 3 associated AA's but he is still missing a hell of a lot.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Four

01/08/04 Week Seventy Four

Tier One
Tier Two
Tier Three
Saryrn
Terris Thule
Tallon Zek
Vallon Zek
Bertoxxulous
Innoruuk
Cazic Thule
Rallos Zek

This weeks raid did not go smoothly. It wasn't just me, I think everyone was having a very "average" day. Basically this raid was just lumpy. It started off badly with a near wipe in Tier 1 Fire. That immediately put us behind the 8 ball in terms of time. It didn't really get better from there. We struggled through Tier 2 and 3 and finally began to get out act together around Tier 4.

There was nothing immediately I could point a finger at and say "this sucked", just that nothing seemed to work all that well. We cleared out tier 4 and then managed to near wipe in Tier 5. The pull of the armies for the AOE clear could be termed a little "enthusiastic" on the part of the Monks. We effectively managed to wipe about a half of the raid in one pull which took us time to recover from.

Vallon didn't drop my earring (Bastard) so by the time 2:00AM rolled around I figured it was time to head to bed. As I was logging Southern Armada was just forming up for the engage on Rallos Zek. They dropped him and decided it was time to finish for the night leaving us with Innoruuk and Quarm to kill for the following Thursday.

Thursday:

An extremely quick form up and clear of Tier One. It was almost like people were embarrassed at their performance on the previous raid and were on the ball. Either that or the beer drought in Sydney had ended and people were now properly pissed.

Either way it spelt doom for Inny.

We dropped Quarm with no worries at all.

As we had plenty of time on Thursday we headed over to GOD and an attempt on Ikkinz 2 and 3.

We cleared through 2 and were about half way through 3 when I had to get to bed. I have to admit its starting to be fun. When an encounter can start to seriously challenge your power as a guild is when the game gets interesting. Its not at the level of the elemental Gods yet, but its definitely shaping up that way.

Now here is where I think SOE fell down on the Gates of Discord expansion: 

Aliens, its a fucking fantasy game, stop it with the damn Aliens. If I wanted aliens I would play StarWars:Galaxies. 

Spell Availability: Give us our sodding spells. The next expansion is nearly out and I still don't have a full spell book. I at least have the advantage of a raiding guild and a bunch of guildies regularly fighting in KT and higher zones. For the non-raiders and the casuals it must be insanely frustrating. I know I certainly wouldn't be purchasing the next expansion as a casual, what for?.

Assassins: I'm a Hero, I play this game to be "The Hero" not to be a hired assassin for the Wayfarers guild. They want stuff killed, let them go do it. Bring back high fantasy.

Graphics: The 5 or so models there actually are in the expansion look really good, but cookie-cuttering your way through a zone does not a good expansion make. Give us Boss Mobs that look different, give us models that really stand out. I actually really like the look of the little elf guys, but I never get to see them as they are always surrounded by a raid.

A lot of people hate it (mainly non-raiders) but for me the best expansion so far for MOB models has been POP. Each zone has something different and each boss from Xanamech up has a Unique look and feel. For Zone design and for the way zones integrate and work within each other and the way the Lore works, for the "look and feel" of zones, easily the best expansion was Kunark.

Zone Design: I really really hate the idea of using the same zone model for all the trials. Its cheap, its shitty and it looks awful. there is no excitement of zoning into somewhere new for the first time. I do ikkinz 1-4 and I know the fucking zone is going to look exactly the same every bloody time. This is just cheap, SOE claims that they are still devoting resource to EQ and then they put out stinking piles of shit like GOD.

The have announced Omens of War, the next expansion on from GOD to be coming out soon. I will end up buying this for one reason only. Levels.

I want to continue raiding with Southern Armada as raids are the best part of the game for me at the moment. To continue to contribute to SA raids I will need to level to 70. To be honest this pisses me off. Its already been let slip that the level increase was supposed to be released prior to GOD's release but they fucked up. SOE now knows that people are so fucked off with them that the ONLY way to get anyone to buy the sticking pile of shit, that I'm positive OOW is going to be, is to bundle the "free" level increase into the expansion pack

SOE has admitted that GOD was a complete screw up from the design stage up, they admitted that the level increase was to be free, they admitted that GOD and OOW were originally one expansion and they got split up by the bean counters. They have managed to completely alienate an already angry player base.

OOW should be a free release.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy Two

07/07/04 Week Seventy Two

Clean up day. The remaining three Time Gods were rounded up and and disposed of.

Mr Thule

Mr Inny

Quarm. This fight is definitely getting faster. We felt a little shaky in part but I never thought we ever really looked like failing.

SOE was supposed to have patched last week but they delayed it for a further week in order to do more testing so it was due to fall on the Wednesday. This is part of the "New and Improved" SOE who actually give a shit about things like patching working code, so I was reasonably happy that the patch was delayed. Wednesday rolled around and they duly took the servers down and patched.

I logged on on Thursday and the word on the server was the patch had probably broken more than it had fixed (Damn aren't we glad they "tested" it first) so we knew that there was going to be the usual "Patch for the patch" . So Thursdays raid was cancelled and we were all going to be good to go for the Friday.

Of course the Thursday patch didn't work, so there was a Friday patch, a "patch for the patch for the patch" so to speak. Damn the testing must have been absolutely superb!.

So the usual two Southern Armada raids a week were reduced to a paltry one. The only bright spark was that due to us not "cleaning" up Time in the usual fashion, we were going to have a full pop from Tier 1 to Quarm on Monday. So our first full Time clear attempt was going to happen next week!

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Seventy One

07/07/04 Week Seventy One

Tonight was cleanup night, we needed to clear out the three still standing from last week. So we cleared Tier One and headed straight up to Tier 5. We AOE'd the armies of the Gods and finally pulled Cazic Thule. The blind God of Fear was soon winging his way to whatever afterlife Gods go to after they have experienced the Southern Armada smack down. 

Next up, Innoruuk. The God that caused us such trouble when we couldn't wall him. Well, now we can and he is definitely in the farmable category. The toughest part of killing Inny is getting people into his room after he is dead as his adds don't despawn for ages. It would probably be easier to just kill them, but Rangers just LOVE to use weapon-shield and just don't feel comfortable when it is up.

Quarm. This is definitely getting faster. It felt a little shaky in places but I never thought we ever really looked like failing. I would say we will go to a one night clear soon, soon my pretties.

Smith Rondo. We came, we saw, we botted. I swear most of the Smith Rondo kill was made up of bot's we were trying to get flagged, hell even I was botting someone!. That was it really.

Friday rolled around and we were in for our usual Tier 1-5 pop of Time.

Terris Thule

Saryrn

Tallon Zek

Vallon Zek

Bertoxxulous

Rallos Zek

The Loot that is flowing out of Time is just incredible. Basically we are getting about 48 Loots per clearing. So everyone who turns up to raid on a fairly regular basis is going to get roughly 1.2 Loots every two raids. That is phenomenal considering we spent a year raiding to get to Time with 2-6 loots per week.

Its not just the sheer quantity of it either, its the quality of it. Every Time clearing increases the relative power of the guild exponentially. This is something we are definitely going to need when we challenge the next expansion, The Gates of Discord. We will need at least half a dozen 10K+ Warriors and the same number of 10K+ Knights. We will need at least a good dozen 6K+ mana pools in the Clerics and hopefully the same in Druids.

The whole equation changes in GOD. In fact the entire raiding schema changes. From the long convoluted 72 person fights lasting 2 hours or more that we have seen in the POP expansion, we change down to a 54 man raid with short sharp vicious fights lasting less than 5 minutes.

Changing the raid number was one of the stupidest things that SOE has down. Pre PoP most of the uber guilds were approximately 40-60 people in size. They were happy with that and the high end raiding of the time was aimed at those numbers. PoP changed everything and the number required for a successful raid was 72. Every fight was balanced against 72 people.

Most of the top guilds at this point were forced into a recruiting drive and added large numbers of extra bodies in order to bring a constant raid to 72. For Guilds whose numbers had been essentially static for the past several years this must have come as a serious shock.

Then GOD came along and the raid number has been reduced again to 54. Once again SOE proves that they have no idea how to manage their own game. Any raiding player on any server could have told them that changing the maximum raid number to 54 was a FUCKING STUPID idea.

But along with the rest of the Cluster Fuck that is the Gates Of Discord they did it anyway. This was the final straw for a lot of guilds and the whole system collapsed. Many of the Uber Guilds simply disbanded in the face of not only forced downsizing but the entire buggy, unfinished mess that was the raiding portion of the new expansion.

So when The Southern Armada begins to engage the new content we will be forced to leave some of our friends out for the first few raids at least. I believe its Trial's 7-9 that require only 54 people and then you can start up to 72 man raids again.


SOE fucked up with GOD and at the Guild Summit meeting they held with the leaders of the top guilds and the leaders of the player communities, they admitted it outright. They fucked the story line, they fucked the release (Tuned for Level 70 players but OOPs they forgot to allow players to actually get level to 70), they fucked the graphics (No special Models as Bosses, once you have seen the half dozen base models you have seen the entire expansion), they fucked the testing (Unfinished buggy untuned content).

They pissed off the entire player base by releasing a broken untuned, buggy expansion, then they had the gall to announce the NEXT expansion when the first one plainly didn't work.

In fact they generally fucked up the release of 2 entire expansion's.

It seems that somehow they ended up with a corporate culture where the people responsible for fixing, maintaining and expanding the game (The Developers) were afraid to approached the people in charge of the game (The management) due to the fear of losing their jobs. Now that is a completely fucked situation to be in and the only way that that sort of corporate culture evolves is from the top down. Yes Mr Smedley I accuse you.

You either didn't know what you're sub managers were doing for some years, in which case you are incompetent, or you engendered this culture yourself in which case you are not only incompetent you are an idiot.

I actually believe that the sudden about face in the SOE corporate culture in the last 3 months has been driven by Japan. I think Japanese management looked at their little cash cow, that just sits there and earns them not only money but Game Market Kudos, and they saw it hemorrhaging player accounts and thus, money. I believe they looked down from on high and said to SOE senior management, fix it, reverse the flow or go looking for other jobs.

I wonder how many jobs you would get with a reputation in the gaming market as the Man who effectively; killed the most successful MMPORG gaming franchise in history. Very few I suspect.

Everquest Southern Armada Raids Week Sixty Nine

22/06/04 Week Sixty Nine

We had cleared all the way through from Tiers 1-4 last week so we only had two targets in 5 to clear. We headed into Tier One and encountered a wee booboo. I was doing the Fire event and we were doing OK till the named spawned. Then we encountered a small problem, you sort of need a Chanter to help debuff the named so the poor little Necro's can actually land any sort of spell. More importantly you need them to help keep the adds under control. So after wiping in Fire, (my first Tier One fail actually) replacing with a new group set and just scraping through under the time limit we headed up to Tier 5.

We had to clear out the remaining God's armies, which we did in our AOE Chanter killing style. Once we had the trash clear it was time for Mr Cazic Thule.

Hi SA! Can I play?

Mr Thule really isn't a challenge anymore, we didn't even Sacrifice a Pally to him!.

Next up was our current bugbear, we have been very hit and miss with Innoruuk. However, much like Rallos Zek, being able to corner him made all the difference. It wasn't a perfect kill, it wasn't flawless, but it also wasn't even a close fight.

The Lord God of Hate is now on the Pharm list. He will be dropping Lewtz for us for some time to come.

With Inny down, that really only left us one remaining challenge in the whole Planes of Power. Quarm.

The last time we tried him we got him to 78%, which to me was a definite proof that he is killable by us. This time we spent a lot longer forming up and getting ready. The strat was tweaked and we had a much better idea of what to expect going into the fight.

With very little further delay we launched into it. The First head went down fairly fast, shortly after I got summoned and nailed. I'm still not sure if I just missed an FD fail or what but with Quarm smacking me with hits of 3400 I didn't survive long at all. I popped in the Plane Of Tranquility and ran back in. I timed my entry to just after the AOE DD which gave me enough time to get my corpse, loot my HP gear and throw myself back into the fight.

By then Quarm was at under 50%, 2 heads were down and although DPS appeared to be slowing it was still there. 40%, 30%, 20% At this point we were dropping like flies. Tanks and Clerics were going down. I was OOM and meddling just to be able to run out and Tap Quarm.

The last tank went down, I got splatted again at 18% and that was that. We were so damn close and it was so frustrating to walk away from him but we didn't have a choice. It was just after 1:00am and we would have had to wait at least an hour for MGB's to repop. So we all quietly logged off, knowing we would be ready to go again the following day.

Tuesday night we initially thought we were going to have to go through Tier 1,2,3 again, but we had the timing a little off and we headed straight up to Tier Five after clearing Tier One. This time we prepped a lot more thoroughly, we waited for all Discs to be available, we waited for more people, we waited for all MGB's to pop. All up we sat outside Quarm's lair for about 35 minutes.

The strat was called, rehearsed and called again. Groups were rebuilt and everyone was completely aware of their job.

It was go time. We burnt him fast. Even with 500 resists across the board I still got hit with that stupid Poison mana drain DOT. I was OOM at 50% and medding to even be able to cast taps to be able to stay alive. That DOT needs to be cured fast. He lost a head, then another, then another, he hit 15% and just hung there.

I was OOM and at 50% health. I had one thing left to throw at him. So I kicked off a Life Burn. I was only going to hit him for about 3500+1500hp or so from the DOT but with no mana it was all I had left. The LB landed, I hit FD and went down hoping that the recourse DOT would kick in before he did another AE.

After checking to make sure the FD was successful I looked at his hp just as they ticked over from 1% to 0%. Up till this point I had been relatively calm, just trying to stay focused on taking him down. Now the adrenalin kicked in and I was utterly focused on that little hp bar. We have lost against MOBs at 0% before (Ryda'dar being a good example) so even now it felt like we were balanced on a knife edge. People were throwing everything they had left at him. This was SA zerging at its finest!

Tick, tick, tick and his hp rolled from 0% to -1hp and he went DOWN!. I present to you Quarm the dead 4 headed Dragon!

Southern Armada has now officially beaten the Planes of Power expansion! I have to say its an expansion I have thoroughly enjoyed. Its probably the first expansion I have personally experienced from the beginning to the end game and I have loved every second of it. The story line was good, it was complex and difficult and gave a good sense of satisfaction for having completed it.

Hell my heart is still racing just thinking about beating Quarm on Tuesday.

I have to say the final piece of the story is pretty naff. After going through all the Gods and Quarm, you free Zebuxoruk, he walks away, Druzzil Ro shows up and resets the path of time to just before you got your Time Key. Its the "Bobby Ewing" ending to a story and is a bit weak.

In Revenge for the crap ending Nym was sent in to punch him in the Bollocks, a mission which she duly carried out.

We had very cleverly set ourselves up to have a full pop (-CT, Inny and Quarm of course) on Thursday. So once again we formed up and blasted through Tiers 1,2,3,4 and 5. We left the Elemental plane of Time completely empty at the end of Thursday night.

Warbeast of Saryrn

Saryrn

Terris Thule

Tallon Zek waiting on us

Vallon Zek

Bertoxxulous

Rallos Zek

I think we proved that Rallos is on the Pharm list good and proper last night. We dropped him with the loss of one tank, which is as close to flawless as you are likely to ever get with him. To thank us for coming to see him again he was happy to drop not ONE but TWO Elemental Plate Breastplates!

I've never heard of that happening ever! Grats Alone and Nymeria the Pink Tank on your New BPs!

We also had a drop of the Symbol of Ancient Summoning, this seems to be an extremely rare drop and it makes every Necromancer, Beastlord and Mage in the game start to drool. Grats Xardan!, see I told you!.

Next week is looking very like we will drop Quarm, Inny and CT and then start in on GOD. Rondo will die again, and then on to a Tier 1-5 clear on the next raid day.

I am still utterly amazed at the Phat Phat Lewtz that flows into the Guild with every clearance of Time. Pretty much every raid is 30-40 drops of fantastic Lewtz, IE on average people are getting Time level lewtz once every two raids. Hell even if people don't want to do GOD raids and just want to help clear Time, if they keep showing up for Time raids we will be kitting people out in fantastic gear for months yet. That is just utterly fantastic, SA has begun to take a huge leap up the ladder in power and strength. I think very shortly we are going to qualify as an Uber Guild.

Time will definitely be a one day clear within a month and I can see us taking on the early GOD raids in the same time frame.