Tag: Guild

What’s in a guild?

This morning I was posting over on the Nomadic Gamer about my latest EVE Online experiences (by the way, Nomadic is looking for volunteer writers if you happen to be interested!) and it got me thinking about guilds, and how we all use them for different things. Or we don’t use them at all, either way. For me, having a guild varies from game to game. In World of Warcraft I don’t have a guild, and I get by just fine. Even more so now that there is the LFD tool to make use of. In LotRO I belong to Casualties of War, but it’s fairly quiet. It was like-minded people who had come together in various games (and then spread over time) much like the Nostalgia guild that started in EverQuest. In Fallen Earth I’m without a guild (do they even have guilds there? I’ve honestly got no idea), in Wizard 101 there’s no guilds (always a hope of mine to see some time). It varies, from game to game.

In EQ2 I have a number of guilds that I belong to, on multiple servers. On Lucan D’Lere I’m in a small guild with close friends, and I’m in that guild specifically because of them. I like to talk while I game, and it’s enjoyable. On Antiona Bayle I run my own small guild with some friends, we group together but there’s no real organized events. We have a T2 hall and guild harvesters as well as transportation that comes from owning amenity, and having a localized place to keep items (guild bank) is fantastic.

Then there’s the guild I belong to on Oasis, which is a raid guild with a ‘friends and family’ rank. That guild is far more utility then any of the others I belong to – and on that server I also have a 2nd guild that I keep just for random alts when I need to get away from it all. That doesn’t make the raid guild any less important or fantastic then any other guild I’ve belong to, it’s just different.

So when you join a guild, is it for social interaction? Is it for utility and what you can offer to them (as well as what they can offer to you)? Is there some other hidden reason as to why you may join a particular guild? Or maybe you’re one of those people who just don’t join a guild. If you are – why is this? I find that in games like EQ2 a guild just offers too much to want to go without one. Especially when you start taking into consideration the city merchants who sell goods specifically to guild members (based on guild levels), raids that can be done via guild recruiters, and numerous other ‘specialties’ that guilds seem to get (banks, etc).

Even housing in EQ2 is tied to your guild and level. If you want to own a 5 (6 now since it’s been expanded) room house in EQ2, you need to belong to a guild of a particular level. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from joining and purchasing your home and then leaving the guild (you still get to keep your home) but there are very definite rewards for belonging to a guild.

Thoughts?

Tehatamani Harbor – The Return

To this day, I still think Vanguard:SoH is one of the most amazing looking MMO’s out there, with some of the best looking lands. None of my friends play Vanguard any more but I still keep my account active and last night I was wandering around wondering what to do I decided to peek in game. I’ve always loved Vanguard, even though it has very rarely ever been my game of choice. Mostly due to population and friends, and not so much due to bugs. The game has come an enormous way since launch, and I’ve been playing since beta.

When the decision was made to turn all of the servers (there are four)  into RMT servers, well. Some of the player base decided that it was the final straw. I noticed a significant difference in the game yesterday compared to when I would normally dip back in. This could be for any number of reasons, maybe it was just a slow Friday night and everyone was off watching the new Wolverine movie (I saw it earlier in the afternoon, loved it) or maybe the RMT change actually affected the player base. I’m not sure.

The things I noticed about the servers – my guild was exceptionally quiet. I belong to ‘Safe Haven‘ which is an enormous guild on the Seradon server. They are still quite active, but nothing like their former glory. If you happen to be looking for a guild on Seradon, I highly suggest you check them out, you won’t meet a nicer bunch of people. There were five of us on and normally as people log in there would be hellos tossed all around but such was not the case. It was a different atmosphere then I was used to. Also, the general channels in Vanguard have always been teaming with people talking, so even if you never saw another person you knew they were out there. In the 40 minutes or so I spent in game I saw one other person talking in Qalia. Maybe Thestra chat would have been better, always the more popular location for people to hang out and no doubt there’s new content out that way. I didn’t get a chance to check it out but I plan on it.

The /craft channel was still active, less so then your typical Friday night. People were still friendly, as I have found crafters to be in every game I play (more about that later as I make my EQ2 post). It had been a little while since I had done anything more then log into game, check my house, and maybe craft a bit or two, so I decided to flip through my quest journal and figure out where I was at and what quests I had to work towards next.

I found a rift stone close to my house and headed to Tehatamani Harbor, I have written about this place twice before. In my previous posts I talked about how I had to be level 44 to progress the quest chain, and what do you know that’s the exact level I am standing at now. I spent some time killing beetles and snakes, working up faction and getting small amounts of experience, and remembering why I love the game and why I probably always will.

It was a nice quiet night, which is not always a bad thing. If you happen to be on the Seradon server, let me know!

The Search Continues

Hopefully Sabaki doesn’t mind me posting this here, but anyhow as you can tell from the screen shot on the right, I got a response about looking for a raid guild. I’d love to take them up on the offer, but there’s no way I could handle raiding at 3am my time (EST). Which is one of the down sides to Najena (but not really). I could handle raiding during the day time, or early morning, but 3am is a bit much. Najena is a heavy EU and Aussie populated server, which means during the day there are LOTS of people around and I really enjoy that. 

It was nice to at least get a response. Because I’m not 100% sure what I want out of a raid guild yet, nor what character to play I have not been dedicating myself to it. Instead I just have a brief little ‘looking for raids’ type of blurb in the description of my level 80’s, so that those who are examining me (and lets face it, everyone examines everyone else in EQ2 to check out what they’re wearing and how you stack up!) will at least know that I am interested. 

I realize that I’ll never find a guild when I don’t know who I want to play or how often I want to raid and that I’m going about this backwards. I figure there is no real point in settling down and searching until after the holidays, when people are not all off at Christmas parties and doing the family thing. This also gives me a little more time to reach 80 on the defiler and templar and perhaps narrow down the search of who to play a little more. I’ve always loved the defiler, but she’s been behind in levels, and that’s a huge incentive NOT to play her. Grinding RoK AGAIN is a slow and exceptionally painful process, especially with a healer. Thankfully I have a level 80 sage and jeweler, I can honestly say that all of my ‘end game’ characters have adept3’s of all of their spells, something I really take pride in. 

This weekend is filled with lots of Christmas action going on, but of course I’ll sneak in a little play time early morning (it’s 6am as I write this) and I should be back safe and sound at home later tonight. Tomorrow Ottawa is getting blasted with yet another snow storm, so I’m determined to get everything done today that needs to be done. Wednesday I’ll be heading to my folks place (when we are due for, you guessed it, ANOTHER snow storm). We still have another 5 months of this, it’s going to be a long winter.

Ding, 43 Bloodmage!

I spent most of the evening yesterday in Vanguard once I’d completed the daily tradeskill on my tailor in EQ2 (and dinged level 60 might I add, nice accomplishment there!) it’s common for me to bounce between multiple games, and station access is letting me bounce between a few without feeling too bad about the cost. It was a pretty exciting day. 

My goal was to hit level 43, which was pretty lofty because I just hit level 42 yesterday. What I decided to do was give up the sand in the underwear zones for a bit and head back to Thestra. I noticed there were a lot of green quests in Beranid Hills, all of them solo. Looking at my meagre collection of a whole 10% experience, I figured even if most of the encounters were grey (which they were) I could use a potion and gain 50% on top of whatever the quests would rewards with me. I probably picked up at least 20 quests and one at a time spent the evening clearing them out. By the time I’d killed everything I needed, explored some druid stones, located some dead dogs for some poor old lady, found someones dead daughter (the Beranid Hills are filled with dead things or undead as the case is) I headed back to camp and turned them all in. I was at 14% experience from kills, and after using the potion and turning what I had over to the npc’s I was at 77% experience. Very worth while. 

After getting so close to my goal of 43 I couldn’t just give up, so I headed back to Razad, the land of sand in uncomfortable places. I ran around completing the last few quests I had in that area, and before too long DING 43! This is a big level for me. Number one, it means I can now group with level 50’s and gain experience and credit for quests. Huge plus. Number two, I’ve had a robe on me for the past 15 levels. It’s crafted by tailors and it’s level is red. That’s pretty much the equivalent of fabled gear back in T5 for EQ2 before raids were really popular. There’s purple gear (basically mythical) but aside from my craft bag I’ve never seen any. This robe is VERY nice for me and I’m sure I’ll be wearing it for a long time to come. 

Besides the leveling, I also found myself a home again in Vanguard. I returned to Safe Haven, which is a guild filled with amazing people. They span across multiple games (including an EQ2 branch on Antonia Bayle) and much like nostalgia in EQ1 and EQ2 I could not ask for a better bunch of people. They’re simply amazing. It was nice to be welcomed back in – and learn that they now have a proper guild hall. This thing is MASSIVE. Screen shot above is me standing in some sort of ceremonial room. We do have a small amount of dues that we pay once a month (I think for my level it’s 5g a month) but it’s well worth it, especially because our guild hall houses our guild trophies. These are statues within the hall that place buffs (three of them, one for each sphere) permanently on guild members. 

It’s nice to be back, if for no other reason then to have others to talk to. We had 10-15 people on tonight, which is about what I remember. The guild also organizes events, and I’m looking forward to partaking in a few of those over time. We’ll see how it goes. 

Now, onwards to 50!

Another Friday Come and Gone

Another Friday has come and gone, and another meeting of Nostalgia the Guild, perhaps the best gathering ever aside from our very first meeting. We had TWO full groups of people with a few who were known to be gone for the night. Our goal was to own Dulak’s Harbor, and own it we did. A quick /who of the zone showed 26 people there at one point in time – and not all of them were Nostalgians. It was fantastic. Boy, did the experience fly. I think the level leader of the night was Malfi, gaining an amazing 7 levels in the hours we spent there. I managed to hit not only 51 on Ishbel (I was 47 to start) but gained her first 3aa, and spent them in run speed. My choices right now are very limited, especially with my stats already being at the cap of 255. I’ve decided to turn my focus to other things instead of so much wisdom, like mana, and flowing thought.

As if that was not enough, I got to partake in starting a war, and swaying the forces to benefit me. Not without some help of course. Kuron was right there, beard flapping in the breeze.

See, in Hollowshade Moor, on Luclin, there’s three types of creatures constantly battling for power. The owlbears, the sonic wolves, and the grimlings. The first bit of the war was easy. Weaken the grimlings so that when the owlbears prepared their attacks, they won. The next part wasn’t so easy, we had to find the right caves to start it off. Then the sonic wolves began their attacks on the owlbears, and a few slipped past us while we ran off trying to figure out where we should be. The owlbears lost their hold on one of the camps. No worries, they still had claim to one camp. So when the sonic wolves sent out their force en mass again, we killed them before they could get to the owlbear camp.

Then we killed another wave. Waited a bit. Killed another. Waited. Killed another – did this five times, those wolves were persistent. After the fifth wave of sonic wolves had been dispatched, the owlbears made their move to the caves, and since nothing stood in their way, over took them.

Once the owlbears occupied all three territories, their queen Skriat`Chakku spawned in a provisioner area, and even though the drop I wanted was supposedly rare – she dropped it. Ishbel is now the proud owner of “Eye of the Owlbear Mother” – which may not have the best stats, but it does have a meditate mod, and it does have FT1 (remember, I’m capped on wis) add a +mana augment to that thing, and she’s set. Plus, it was LOADS of fun to get.

The fun of course did NOT end there. Oh no. Kragnn and myself (as Ellithia, the 68 cleric) have been slowly working on a charm slot item that came out with Serpents Spine – and one of these relics we needed to collect came from Blackfeathers Roost. The zone is made up of nests and islands and you need to unlock access to each one. We managed the first two with no problem, the experience was fantastic and it was quite easy. We had to round up food to feed hungry griffons. Once we’d done that (twice, they’re hungry!) we noticed the zone was (of course) getting progressively difficult. Of course we called upon mighty Kuron to come save the day. We quickly got him caught up to both of us, and headed off to the third quest in the series.

By that time, we noticed that the relic we had to collect was actually on the first island, and we didn’t need to get access to any of the other ones at all. Oh well, the experience really WAS quite rewarding, not to mention just plain fun. The final access lets you into the Queen’s Palace, which is a raid mob for 55+ (but apparently it’s a lot harder then any 55 level raid would be able to handle) so I doubt I’ll be taking her down any time soon (I see Tipa is there tonight though with a friend, I’m sure if anyone can do it, she can, and maybe we’ll all get the pleasure of reading about it!).

Tonight I did some simple crafting for Malfi, contemplated new upgrades for Ishbel, and almost maybe started my crafting trophy. I’m not sure yet. There’s a quest I want to do in Natimbi for Ishbel to get her a new secondary item with mana preservation III on it, we’ll just have to see how that goes!

So congratulations to everyone from Nostalgia last night on a whole lot of levels, and fun. I hope everyone had a blast! We had a record setting number of folks on, and it was just an amazing time. I’m very lucky to be part of something so wonderful, with people who are just fantastic. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt this involved in an mmo, and after all my ‘restless’ time bouncing around from game to game, who would have thought all I needed to do was dive back into EQ1.