Just Potatoes

A few weeks ago, one of my guildmates from WoW sent a Facebook message to our group, saying, “I’m thinking about getting back into gaming. Where are you all playing now?”

Many people weren’t playing any MMOs. A couple of folks were still playing WoW. I was off playing LOTRO. But with that one Facebook post, most of the core of our guild suddenly decided to return… including myself. Originally, I said I wouldn’t go back to WoW, but as more people posted, “Hmm… maybe I’ll try it again,” I decided that I wanted to play with these guys again. Now we average about a dozen people on in the evening.

I picked up my resto druid, got her to 80 and very quickly geared her up. In January, my guild will have been together for three years so it’s pretty neat to have everyone back.

Our first raid boss down after taking a several months break. We'd killed him many times before, but this time we celebrated playing together again.

I found Frostmourne!

I’m still playing LOTRO as well! Once I got my hunter to 30, I was able to start using the new skirmish system, which is a blast! In the past, I only played one MMO at a time, but I find that having two to bounce back and forth between keeps me from getting bored or burnt out on either one. Now that the level requirements for a mount were lowered, my hunter was able to get a Bree Starter Horse. While slow, it certainly seems to help in getting around. Running from Ost Goruth to the Forsaken Inn isn’t quite so long anymore.

My Bree starter horse, Barley

Between the skirmish system in LOTRO and the new dungeon finder tool in WoW, I’ve got plenty to do when I get a chance to play for a bit.

I’ve gotten a number of messages in recent weeks asking where I’ve been! Thank you all so much for your concern, but everything is just fine. I moved to Minneapolis in August when my husband’s job was relocated, so between unpacking and getting adjusted to our new home, I haven’t had much time to write.

In September, I logged back into Warhammer for the first time since my move and found it felt sadly decayed. My server was like an old building with lots of character, where good memories were once formed, but now past its prime. Most of my guildmates were off playing Age of Conan or Chinese Aion or just biding their time waiting for the western release of Aion. The RvR map showed all tiers solidly locked by Order most of the time, with very few Destruction warbands roaming the RvR lakes. I noticed that morale would deteriorate quickly in the warbands that did venture out. I’d join a warband, they’d decide to take a battle objective or a keep, get rolled or wipe at the keep door, and the warband would dissolve as people found excuses to do other things. Sometimes someone would say, “Let’s go to . Since Order is here, we can take some objectives there.” I suspect Order was probably equally demoralized, because although they owned much of the map most of the time, they rarely seemed to put together an organized fort push. ( I also suspect that a tremendous amount of cross-realming was going on in the later months of my time at War.)

Uhm, sorry, but I play the game to fight. If I wanted to PvE, I’d play a different game. On the other hand, I agree that the lack of server and class balance in Warhammer is disheartening.

According to the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, I’m a Killer/Socializer, with something like 73% Killer and 67% Socializer, which means I enjoy both PvP and hanging out with my friends. When I found out that most of my Warhammer guild, War Seekers, was moving over to Aion, I opted to go with them.

I rolled a chanter, which is a buffer/debuffer class, and as of last night, I’m level 26. I provide some melee dps, but my dps is less than the true melee classes. Instead, my role in a group is to buff my party primarily using aoe buffs called mantras. I can only have 3 mantras up at a time, so part of the challenge is choosing which mantras are best for a given situation, and being aware of when mantras need to be changed on the fly. My other role is to keep my debuffs on the enemy, and to then to offheal as necessary. I have two heals: a HoT and a bigger heal with a long cast time. Clerics, which are the true healing class in Aion, have a wider variety of faster and more mana efficient heals, as well as group heals.

I have lots of criticisms of Aion, but I’ll save those for another post. I *really* didn’t like having to PvE my way through the first 25 levels to get to the PvP portion of the game. It’s absolutely silly to have a PvP focused game make you spend hours grinding. Over and over, I wished there were scenarios, or battlegrounds, or something like Lord of the Rings monster play. If not for vent and legion chat, I probably would have gone nuts grinding. As an RPer, I don’t find the lore as immersive as games like War, WoW, LotRO or AoC. But there are some really good things about Aion too, and I’ll probably get into those at some point as well.

The best part of my Aion experience has been that some of my WoW guildmates joined my War Seekers. While the killer part of me is loving the PvP aspect of Aion, the socializer part of me is having a blast too now that I get to play with my friends from both WoW and War.

My little Necromancer hit level 37 in Age of Conan, but I haven’t played much over the past week. Part of that is due to preparing for a cross-country move on the 30th, and part of it is because I don’t have any social connections in AoC. I’m at a point where I feel kind of lonely. Global chat is incredibly bad, so I keep my combat tab flipped to the front which makes the game feel very quiet.

Last week, I logged out of AoC, and jumped in Warhammer, where my guild was putting together a warband to defend the Inevitable City against the inevitable push by Order. Within minutes, I was in vent, and in the warband.

As much as I like being able to solo, I’m really a social gamer at heart. If I don’t develop a strong social community within a game, I won’t stick around. As much as I’ve enjoyed playing some other games (Vanguard, DDO, AoC, LotRO), I have a hard time staying with them because I haven’t connected with the community. In smaller games with small communities, like Vanguard, that’s particularly difficult.

I’m also a fairly shy person in games (which is funny because I’m so NOT that way in real life). I don’t enjoying pugging, for the most part, and I don’t have a very thick skin. I need to feel like I’ve got a firm grasp on the mechanics of a game and my class before I jump into a group. That way, it’s no big deal if someone tells me to “l2p” because they’re just being a jerk. But if I’m actually learning to play, or feeling insecure about my abilities, then yeah… it irks.

In WoW, my first character hit 58 unguilded. I was at a point where I knew I’d quit unless I found a good group of people. There was *one* person on my friends list, a mage who asked me for directions a couple of months before, and afterward told me to pop him on my friends list.

I noticed he was a guild called “Shotgun Bunnies,” which seemed like a cool name for a guild, so I sent him a whisper. I was ridiculously nervous! I got a guild invite, and here we are almost three years later. My characters are all still in Shotgun Bunnies and I’m an elder, which is the rank just below the GM. In BC, our little social guild farmed Karazhan, downed Gruul’s a few times, and ventured into Serpentshrine. We had a tough time pulling together a 25 man, but we had a couple of great 10 man groups. We started out as a 10-man raid guild in Wrath, but after farming Naxx, OS and Vault, we fizzled out. A few key people quit the game or drifted off to other things, and a couple of people went to hardcore raid guilds where they could see more 25-man content.

But I still love those guys. For me, they ARE WoW. They’re the only reason I played as long as I did, and the only reason I still log in sometimes. Last year, I went to Blizzcon with one of them (my bud, Alicia). We met another guildie for dinner. We’re all friends on Facebook, and have a running group message thread going where we regularly trade links, chat, insult each other… and lately, talk about the mating habits of turtles. (Yeah… we’re a strange bunch.)

(I meet two of my guildies at Blizzcon 2008. I’m the short one on the left, with the Shotgun Bunnies shirt on.)

When I started playing Warhammer, after switching from Order to Destruction on Phoenix Throne, I shopped around guild adverts in the forums, and checked out lots of guild websites. I finally applied to a guild that I thought would be a good fit, but I’d never applied to a guild before, so that took me out of my comfort zone a bit. They ended up being a really great group of people, and I love playing with them. War Seekers is what largely what keeps me going back to WAR. A group of guildies is moving over to Aion in September, so I suspect I’ll be bouncing back and forth between both games.

It’s funny that in all my time playing MMOs, I’ve only ever really been in two guilds. I’m definitely not someone who enjoys guild hopping!

So now the question is do I like AoC enough to find a guild? I really don’t know.