What makes the game enjoyable?

This post has been sat in my head for a couple of days but I think I have finally gotten the right thoughts on the matter to be able to make them into some form of coherent post.
What makes the MMO you play fun? What changes within the game cause it to not be fun?
There are a few factors which can enhance or reduce the “fun” ill list some of which are springing to mind now:

1. Are you playing a character that you enjoy playing? You may think this is a funny point but many people play in a guild where a certain class is required and although not the first choice, you play it anyway to help the guild. Would you be having more fun on the class you want to play? Some would argue yes you would, I used to be in this boat until I changed to play the class I wanted.

2. Are you playing with people you enjoy playing with? This is another fairly big point, are the people you play with fun and enjoyable to game with? This kind of ties in with point number 1 and ill explain below:

I raided for years with The Harpers of Norrath on a class I didn’t really want to be playing. I tried and tried to main change but got turned away every time. But the people in the guild were fun and ive played with them for years, in fact we were in previous guilds together so it was still a laugh.

I got the opportunity to raid on the character I wanted to be playing. So I upped sticks, away from my friends and into a new guild. Do you know what id prefer?
Being with those friends. The class I play now is everything I want it to be and I love it, but the loss of the camaraderie and fun has hit me hard.
The case of the grass is greener? It might be because im now having to integrate myself into a new social group rather than be in my old one or it may have something more.

Ive seen more content now with the new guild than with my old but still unsure as to what id prefer…. Part of me wants to go and be a social in Harpers but I really want to see the raid content come next expansion, I love the lore of Velious and want to see everything I can.
The other part of me knows that in the long run I wont be happy with non raider status in Harpers.

Just one of those situations where you need to figure out whats going on!

Id be interested in points of view of what makes the game enjoyable for others?

I suppose this makes me hardcore?

Its been a long time since I considered myself even CLOSE to a Hardcore raider.  Maybe back in my WoW heyday I would have tarred myself with that brush, but not for a good couple of years.

Ive been raiding with Harpers for the past year or maybe more for only 3 nights a week.  Hardly hardcore but not uber casual.  Well this last week I decided I didn’t like my class that much that I quit the raid team and joined a raid alliance on my Assassin…

However I saw the light and decided that if I really wanted to help the team I should gut it out, even if the new dps recruit we got doesn’t deserve to shovel my shit…..  So now im actually raiding with Harpers AND the raid alliance.

This means im now raiding 5 nights a week…….

Sunday saw Harpers having a hard time of it on Hard Mode twins, with the kill eventually coming after a pull which lasted 50 minutes…

Monday saw Harpers smashing a go at Hard mode Malus.. and do you know what, we got this, he didn’t die but we got him to 27% fairly easily and we reckon we know what to do now.

Last night was my second raid with the raid alliance which was scheduled for an AA run, now I don’t need AA on my Assassin but went along to help anyway, it got off to a rough start when the zone in wouldn’t work but we soon flew through it and were headed for the second zone of the night when my participation was cut short.

The raid alliance is nice and will probably help keep my interest in the game but I really wish they didn’t do AA raids on one of the nights I can make it.  My only hope is still that Harpers will eventually need me on DPS.  I play DPS so well, when I brought my Assassin to a Harpers raid I topped DPS.  Granted our Ranger was away, but I still beat out all of the mains there with my ALT.

I suppose in the mean time I will just need to keep raiding with Harpers and maybe keep my eyes open for opportunities elsewhere.  If say, Ascend, or Mythic Legion, or dare I say it Fusion need an Assassin, I may need to rethink my game playing.

Its not that I want to leave Harpers, I love the guild and the people ive “grown” up with, but I cant ignore the pull of being able to do what I love.

EQ2 Bonus Exp Weekend!

Ive been waiting for another bonus exp weekend on EQ2 for a while now, ever since the last one in fact.

I was a bit of a dunce last round, I didn’t even play EQ2 that much which gutted me since people were saying how good the AA grind was so I made a decision, the next exp weekend I was going to hit it… hardcore.

And god did I ever!

I made a little plan of action to grind AAs out since I think they are the hardest thing to get (Levelling is EZ!) and made a little routemap of what I was going to do.

I started with my Assassin on the Friday night, but woe is me, I screwed myself over for 18 hours.  Ill explain here how I did what I did.

There is a little zone inside Splitpaw called the “Crawler Nest”  this zone is full of spiders and one, or very rarely two, named mobs.  The idea with this place is to mentor down to level 45 and blitz every trash mob in there whilst leaving the nameds alone.  Once you finish with the trash evac and go again.

However the first time we had the rare named pop we killed it….. BOOM 18 hour lockout.  Therefore on the first night my Assassin went from 186 – 191 AA however Mrs B did go from 248 – 250

I woke up on the Saturday and thought I would work on the Berserker, Mrs B brought her Wizard along for some AA too.  Id love to say how much AA the Wizard got but I didn’t pay any attention.  But late ish on Saturday (about 4pm) Borgeo the Berserker hit 250AAs!

He started at around 0830 with 236 and ended with 250!  It was about this time that the Assassin was unlocked again.

Since the Assassin was much less of an AOE class than my Zerk I decided to show my Dad the spot, and he brought his SK.  Therefore for the rest of the night (Up till about 11pm) it was him and me smashing AAs out.  He soon hit 250 himself and I went from 191-222.

Sunday was THE day, I hadn’t planned on getting lots of AA on the Assassin but whilst the opportunity was there I may as well abuse it.  The plan was to stay awake all of Saturday night but tbh I was dead on my feet and full of Caffeine… I knew I would crash.

And I did….

Sunday I eventually woke up at 1130…..

I dived in game and got hold of Dad, and in we went again. Dinging 250AAs at about 3pm.

So my weekend grand total was:

Zerk 250AA

Assassin 250AA

Mrs B 250AA

Dad 250AA

Couple of Alts got some AA too.

The bonus is still on till Tuesday but tbh I think im ground out.  I wouldn’t mind getting some easy Exp on the Pally but with tonight being a raid night it wont happen.

Ill also add that I got to raid on the Assassin last night, and once I found my feet I started topping the parse.  WOOT.

EQ2: Solo Healing Raids

Well if there is one way to stop me dpsing its to shove me in a group as the solo healer.  Oh sure for some easier stuff ill still shove my spade on and go to town with massive flurry crits but last night was a little different.

It all started when I got given the mage group to heal which isn’t surprising for me as an Inquisitor.  What was surprising was I was left to solo heal it all night…. Even when the “scout group” only had 4 members (2 being healers) I was still plugging away myself.

So how did it go then?  Well we started off on the mob in the hole who levels up when he kills someone.  We have been trying him for the last couple of weeks to get a feel for it.  We got him to 39% best try yesterday before he had levelled up too much.  We came to the conclusion that our dps was too low.

My findings from the fight are:  I cant dps this and keep the mages alive at the same time, with the amount of focus I need to give to curing curses and keeping reactives up.

It didn’t help that two of the mages in my group are either new or just returned to raiding and as such their gear lacked either resists, crit mit or HP which tended to make them explode when stood at max range unless I had single target reactives AND group reactives up at the same time on them.  This led me to just do zero dps (apart from some debuffs and maybe a quick burst on the pull) and just keep singles on everyone and group up whenever the charges hit under 5 (<3 13 Charge Malevolent Diatribe!)

In the end we realised we probably didn’t have the current dps in raid to pull this off, we were averaging 300k raid dps over the course of the fight.

We then went on to try the next fight which is 3 bosses by some pillars, we got some idea of what to do now but the execution was off.

We then went into our partially cleared Labs and finished off Perah Celsis before resetting the dungeon and going through it again.  I bought some Chain boots for my assassin which is awesome and stuck in the Fatal Followup red adorn.

We didn’t manage to drop Perah for the 2^nd time as for some reason we just could not stop the deaths, again the two mages in my group were esploding (as I called it) and in the end told one of them not to revive.  After a 19 min fight we wiped, perah had healed over 100 million damage and was top healer!  I came in 3^rd, WAAAAY above the MT templar. Yay for squishy groups.

My aim for tonight is probably to grind some AA on the Assassin, I still haven’t heard if im allowed to main change yet but any progress on him is good.  I need to get to 200 AA soon so I get most of the toys I want to raid with.  That’s the thing with the Assassin, every AA feels like an upgrade to damage.

However Mrs B will for a fact want to play WoW so may dabble on that for some time too.

Reroll Attempt 3!

Harpers are looking for certain classes again, one of which I have as a level 90 alt.  Therefore im attempting to reroll again.  Assassin is my choice this time, which is nice as it was the first ever char I rolled when I first started EQ2.

Its all in the hands of our GM, if he says no, then ill do what ive been planning for a while.  Grind AA like a mofo, buy gear then see where we go from there the thing to think about is that there are a few guilds out there recruiting Assassins at the moment, and with my latest healer burnout on my Inq maybe its time to jump ship?

EQ2: Contested down! Server 3rd!

Last night I logged on a little earlier to EQ2 as I wanted to get some AA on my Assassin (prior to enquiring about a main change you see) and headed off to Stonebrunt to grind some quests (as I didn’t have time to mass exp like normal).  I hear over our private voice chan that Oxdaxius is up, which generally means we are going to have a go.

Now a little history, we had one pull on this before where we didn’t know WHAT was going on and managed to get it to 85% through brute forcing it whilst the top guild on the server watched.

After we wiped they pulled it and killed it on easy just to stop us as was said by their members “Harpers will kill that if they get another pull”

Well a full half an hour before the raid was due to start, invites went out. We were going for it!

I logged over to my Inquis (BOO!) and got formed up, for some reason I got shafted with the scrub group (as I call it lol) which at the time consisted of myself and two dirges.  In the end the group filled out and we got to pulling.
In my haste to get online I didn’t run my parse so I couldn’t investigate the pull to see what happens and pick apart my own performance, but lets just say that we got him, and its not even hard….

So there we go then, serverwide 3^rd on a contested which is normally perma camped by Xanadu, go us!

The rest of the raid night was a mess of wipes inside the Hole.  I hope we gave a good impression to our new members…. Serverwide 1^st as a guild for deaths, hell yeah!

My First Mistake…….. hahahahahahaha

Ive been looking at upgrades for my warriors tank gear lately (as its easier to queue as tank and get insta pops than as DPS) and spotted the quest chain for the Occulus which gives a good ring as the first step, then some defence plate for the last step.

So I got the quest and queued myself.  Insta pops are great.  I was soon inside the instance with a group of all 80s, which I thought was good as the Occulus isn’t all that hard but with all 80s it should go fine.

Well the whelps at the start caused some issues as the healer died once when I could AE tank them all at once but I soon got into the groove.  I really don’t like that people don’t assist the tank in WoW, they need a targeting system like EQ2 where you fight THROUGH the tank, ah well.

We progressed through the instance and got to the final boss.  This is where it got weird.  First off, the boss went into his little portal plane thing and summoned the orbs…. Which was off, I didn’t remember him doing that before,  but remember reading about it.

Then he died…. And I got the achievement for Occulus and Heroic Occulus….. yes that’s right I did a Heroic!  I wasn’t even defence capped and nowhere near ready for it (in my eyes) but I did it! I apologised profusely to the group after I realised, they just laughed.  In my excitement I forgot to stay in the instance for the end of the loot roll and left after rolling need on some Defence Plate and didn’t get it as I had left.. doh!

Still im coming along nicely now, im about ready to hit heroics properly, there is still a piece of loot I want from regular Champions Colliseum, (Plate belt which I lost to a DPS DK last night fucksake) and then ill start with the easier heroics.

Tonight is a raid night on EQ2, we are starting to struggle with numbers at the moment, now requiring extra healers, chanters and even now dps.  Im considering asking to main change to my Assassin, for added punch.  Ive made it abundantly clear that im unhappy on the inquisitor so all I can do is ask and be told no.

I tanked something!!!

Been a while since I posted but I simply HAD to get this down.  Last night was a little poor turnout on our raid with both of our plate tanks being off which meant our Brawler was MT.  Not a problem at all for us however we were clearing palance….

Which means sisters…

Anyhoo we downed Maluus and I get a whisper from one of the officers to swap onto my Berserker.  THANK FUCKING CHRIST, AT LAST!  This was my crowning moment, the time for me to enjoy myself, and that I did.

I was tasked with my sister (Honestly I cant remember the name) which was the warrior one, which meant mine was not only going to be the last killed, but I had to interrupt the hardmode too!

Well someone obviously wanted me to tank for a little longer as we had a couple of wipes due to slow flashpotting, but in the end everything was dead and I was victorious,  sure I was a little spiky at times, but my gear IS good enough to tank raids, apart from my legs.

I then swapped back to the Inq and we killed Roehn Theer 2 runes again.  We then heard the shout that Oxdaxius was up and we legged it over there.  As usual Xanadu were already there and attempting the hard mode… AND WIPED!

We buffed up and pulled it not knowing anything at all.  Well adds spawned which couldn’t be hit, we could hit Ox though.

We eventually wiped, after offtanking a shit load of adds and dropping Ox to 88%.

Xanadu then pulled the easy mode and killed it, which is a big bonus for us since that meant they thought we would kill it if they wiped again.  Which may be true since we figured out how to damage the adds and would get it next time.

Maybe next time

Hard mode Toxx…… Again!

With pretty much everything normal mode dead this expansion to the Harpers we are turning our attentions more and more towards hard modes.

Our night last night started off in the Hole where we are still figuring out the first boss, well last night was not the night as we seemed to have a bugged encounter (how unusual for us) and couldn’t get any good tries in so we went to Toxx.

I will actually say that this time I think we had some good tries and found a tactic that WILL work for us, all we need to tweak is a little with the MT group and healing and it will be golden.

We didn’t get her down at all, not even close, but the last pull of the night lasted longer than all of the rest so progress IS there.

We had some guys mentioning that healers should be at max range with everyone else, and I couldn’t help but get annoyed by this comment.  So I made a picture to illustrate something to the uninformed DPS classes about positioning.

Ill have to post it when I get in as the computer at work is being silly! But its a masterpiece I swear!

Yes I got THAT annoyed.  Get it in your brains DPS classes, max range for you is not max range for healing.  Get it out of your skulls!

Anyhoo no raid now till Sunday so I can play what I want.  My Slayer is nearing 32 and the start of T4 but then again I have a few things im trying to accomplish on EQ2 so we shall see.

Curse you ISP!

Yay internet! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! Why the mirth you may ask? Well since Thursday last week out internet has been down.

The reason?  No issue according to BT, however there was no doubt a fault somewhere along the line.

So thats a weekend of gaming gone, and a raid missed in EQ2, fingers crossed it will be on today!

((Typing this from work before you ask))