07-25-2005, 06:48 AM
So yeah, I knew Arethor was thinking about leaving and I understand why, doesn't mean I don't want him to stay. Rylea didn't surprise me, though again, I wasn't happy about it. Galreth surprised me a bit, but I knew mjdoom wanted to play Galreth more than Flyndar most of the time anyway.
I'm also more dismayed by these moves than some of the others in the past because we are raiding high end content frequently now. This is not the same situation that NSD with Sommli and Sword of Doom with Tutelin walked away from.
I don't like that this has got me thinking to myself, "Gee I wonder who is leaving next?"
As one of the people who isn't a huge raider and actually turned some chances down I would also like to comment on that aspect. It isn't that I don't like raids. It's that I would much rather 5 man something before I raid it. I would much rather get to explore and learn the area without hand holding or having everything pointed out to me. I have the time to fail at start over though.
I think this is how some of the other people who would rather not raid feel too. I do like raids. I jumped into the middle of scholo raid with Taranna tonight because I realized that since Gnolack had raided it several times before to help out with stuff that I wasn't going to get any real discovery experience out of it at this stage anyway. I had sacrificed my fun with those instances to help other players. So yeah I get a bit bitter when I can't get help or when someone I helped leaves the guild. Same goes for Baron runs I've done way too many of those now, the rest of Stratholme is still pretty much a mystery to me, though I did do a 5 man to completion on the scarlet side. So it's easy to get me to go on a Baron raid now. I've learned it well enough that I can just sit back and have fun with it.
I also realize that there are others willing to run the instances this way. There has been a lot of 5 manning in scholo lately actually that I have missed. Mirajj is trying to get LBRS runs going, I tried to get an LBRS 5 man at one time and failed on it. But it is something to keep in mind. Your pool of raiders will get larger and more agreeable after some of us get a chance to do our exploration of the high end content. I've sacrificed about all the high end content that I can for the sake of the guild though, there are some things that I have to do first now before I can do runs there.
But some of the people who haven't been 60 for awhile avoid doing things because it feels too much like rushing to Hell difficulty to grind cows. It feels like too much of it is all about the loot. Part of that is game design. Since the game is designed to progress your character through loot that is a big driving factor. But there is still a lot of discovery that can be done still. I didn't like getting the impression, and it wasn't always intended to feel this way, that just because I play a lot of alts and took a long time getting to 60 that I couldn't figure out a damn instance and that I needed to be told what all the pulls were.
Actually most of the time I figure that was being done so that goal of getting loot could be reached with less chance of a wipe. That's fine, but really, unless the player wants that, I don't think a first run in a place should be that way. There are still some lurkers that I avoid partying with when I'm dealing with new content simply because they want to be helpful and I don't want to tell them to shut up. It of course gets worse in that I'm one of those people who doesn't keep his mouth shut sometimes when there are new people around wanting to learn stuff.
And of course some of the raids were less fun because there was lots of stuff skipped. I realized that I've been in UBRS about 10 times now, all the way to general Drakk and there are still some passages that I have never gone down in there. So while leading by the nose is happening there are often things that are left unexplained or ignored. I remember asking twice about where to get the ogre tanin so I could make my suit for DM North tribute runs on an all lurker run and being told that, oh this person has a suit already. Great, that's fine, I've done a tribute before, I know what the suit is used for, I wanted to know where to get the damn orge tanin so that I could make my own at some point. There are other examples of questions like that being asked by others then myself and people saying things like "don't worry about it, we can get to our phat lewt with what we have."
So yeah, that is something to consider about high end raiding and even some of the helping lower levels with 5 man stuff for quests. I know that if an instance is new to me I don't want some high level trivializing it for me. Personally, unless it's for specific reasons, I generally don't want a 60 around my alts until I'm L54 or higher. It isn't that a 60 will bork exp for someone L50 or so, but a 60 fighting anything that is sub L56 really makes it a pretty trivial encounter.
Of course I understand feeling that a char isn't progressing. Our guild has power gamers and casual players in it. They still don't mix all that well. I'm a casual power gamer. :) I also understand not wanting to play alts. I don't have an answer for you as to what to do. Leaving the guild to have fun with those chars makes sense. I still don't like it though. Part of that is because I feel that I'm progressing when the guild progresses. If we get Hykim a piece of gear while on a run that has no chance to get Gnolack something I feel I accomplished something with Gnolack. Of course not everyone gets enjoyment from the game that way. I think Quark is somewhat the sameway. I think he was happier about the shoulders that I got with Taranna tonight than I was. :) That is cool. But there is nothing wrong if you don't get a sense of progression or satisfaction out of that.
I also hope that this situation works out better than some in the past. You guys all know about the established Lurker/CA/GoE raid nights. You guys have other high end chars that could still help out on those without locking out the ones that leave for IA from raiding with them. I'm hoping that I will still see Flyn, Katrin, and Galgamesh (when he gets to 60) on Monday and Thursday nights. I don't ever expect that I will party with Galreth, Arethor, or Rylea again though. Not because I refuse but because I doubt you'll have the time or desire to use those chars for the stuff that I would be doing. Well actually I might refuse to join them on a run where they were after specific loot for themselves because I am a bit bitter about it and with them not in the guild it doesn't really do anything for me. Yes, I have no delusions about how selfish I am even while I spout off about trying to be helpful to others.
Anyway, yeah I'm bitter and unhappy and selfish about the whole thing. Yeah I understand the moves. Of course some of the reason for the moves is also some of what will end up making me stop playing WoW altogehter at some point so I'm more bitter. :) I don't like character progression through items only. I don't like character effectiveness being so equipment dependent. I don't like that pretty much pointless crafting system. I love the world, I love the people, I love building characters. I love that playing in Maraudon as a warrior, druid tank, druid healer, and paladin healer were all completely different experiences. I love that while you can pretty much script every encounter in the game that you don't have to and that sometimes if you have an "oddball" party that using the script will get you killed. Heck I love that an "oddball" party is sometime better at certain encounters than an "ideal" party.
Anyway that's been a lot to read and much of it has been heard before. So basically. #$%& you for leaving us but I hope you have a lot of fun with what you do in the game and I'll still be glad to play with you because you are good people. That make sense?
So my rambling aren't done but I'm not editing the order around. The longer I'm at 60 with some chars and working to help the guild get more people there (I lost count of the jailbreak runs I helped on at 15, how do you think Gnolack got all that damn dark iron residue and I was helping on those runs before they put that crap in the game) the more I understand how angry it makes poeple when someone takes a character out of the guild. I also got angry at some of my co-workers for taking other jobs too. I still honeslty wish them well and hope things get better for them though because they are good people. With the game I try to get over as well it since this is just a game, but I'm selfish and people leaving hurts my fun too. And I've already sacrificed my fun for some of the people who are leaving so that makes it worse. But I still hope they have fun because they are good people. Of course I'm way too emotionally invested in the game because I can interact with people in this damn game on these stupid forums but I still can't do much of that face to face right now and I still can't put in a fulls day work. Of course I may have to stop playing the game because of that too, but that is something for me and my councilor to work out.
Alright I'm done for real now.
I'm also more dismayed by these moves than some of the others in the past because we are raiding high end content frequently now. This is not the same situation that NSD with Sommli and Sword of Doom with Tutelin walked away from.
I don't like that this has got me thinking to myself, "Gee I wonder who is leaving next?"
As one of the people who isn't a huge raider and actually turned some chances down I would also like to comment on that aspect. It isn't that I don't like raids. It's that I would much rather 5 man something before I raid it. I would much rather get to explore and learn the area without hand holding or having everything pointed out to me. I have the time to fail at start over though.
I think this is how some of the other people who would rather not raid feel too. I do like raids. I jumped into the middle of scholo raid with Taranna tonight because I realized that since Gnolack had raided it several times before to help out with stuff that I wasn't going to get any real discovery experience out of it at this stage anyway. I had sacrificed my fun with those instances to help other players. So yeah I get a bit bitter when I can't get help or when someone I helped leaves the guild. Same goes for Baron runs I've done way too many of those now, the rest of Stratholme is still pretty much a mystery to me, though I did do a 5 man to completion on the scarlet side. So it's easy to get me to go on a Baron raid now. I've learned it well enough that I can just sit back and have fun with it.
I also realize that there are others willing to run the instances this way. There has been a lot of 5 manning in scholo lately actually that I have missed. Mirajj is trying to get LBRS runs going, I tried to get an LBRS 5 man at one time and failed on it. But it is something to keep in mind. Your pool of raiders will get larger and more agreeable after some of us get a chance to do our exploration of the high end content. I've sacrificed about all the high end content that I can for the sake of the guild though, there are some things that I have to do first now before I can do runs there.
But some of the people who haven't been 60 for awhile avoid doing things because it feels too much like rushing to Hell difficulty to grind cows. It feels like too much of it is all about the loot. Part of that is game design. Since the game is designed to progress your character through loot that is a big driving factor. But there is still a lot of discovery that can be done still. I didn't like getting the impression, and it wasn't always intended to feel this way, that just because I play a lot of alts and took a long time getting to 60 that I couldn't figure out a damn instance and that I needed to be told what all the pulls were.
Actually most of the time I figure that was being done so that goal of getting loot could be reached with less chance of a wipe. That's fine, but really, unless the player wants that, I don't think a first run in a place should be that way. There are still some lurkers that I avoid partying with when I'm dealing with new content simply because they want to be helpful and I don't want to tell them to shut up. It of course gets worse in that I'm one of those people who doesn't keep his mouth shut sometimes when there are new people around wanting to learn stuff.
And of course some of the raids were less fun because there was lots of stuff skipped. I realized that I've been in UBRS about 10 times now, all the way to general Drakk and there are still some passages that I have never gone down in there. So while leading by the nose is happening there are often things that are left unexplained or ignored. I remember asking twice about where to get the ogre tanin so I could make my suit for DM North tribute runs on an all lurker run and being told that, oh this person has a suit already. Great, that's fine, I've done a tribute before, I know what the suit is used for, I wanted to know where to get the damn orge tanin so that I could make my own at some point. There are other examples of questions like that being asked by others then myself and people saying things like "don't worry about it, we can get to our phat lewt with what we have."
So yeah, that is something to consider about high end raiding and even some of the helping lower levels with 5 man stuff for quests. I know that if an instance is new to me I don't want some high level trivializing it for me. Personally, unless it's for specific reasons, I generally don't want a 60 around my alts until I'm L54 or higher. It isn't that a 60 will bork exp for someone L50 or so, but a 60 fighting anything that is sub L56 really makes it a pretty trivial encounter.
Of course I understand feeling that a char isn't progressing. Our guild has power gamers and casual players in it. They still don't mix all that well. I'm a casual power gamer. :) I also understand not wanting to play alts. I don't have an answer for you as to what to do. Leaving the guild to have fun with those chars makes sense. I still don't like it though. Part of that is because I feel that I'm progressing when the guild progresses. If we get Hykim a piece of gear while on a run that has no chance to get Gnolack something I feel I accomplished something with Gnolack. Of course not everyone gets enjoyment from the game that way. I think Quark is somewhat the sameway. I think he was happier about the shoulders that I got with Taranna tonight than I was. :) That is cool. But there is nothing wrong if you don't get a sense of progression or satisfaction out of that.
I also hope that this situation works out better than some in the past. You guys all know about the established Lurker/CA/GoE raid nights. You guys have other high end chars that could still help out on those without locking out the ones that leave for IA from raiding with them. I'm hoping that I will still see Flyn, Katrin, and Galgamesh (when he gets to 60) on Monday and Thursday nights. I don't ever expect that I will party with Galreth, Arethor, or Rylea again though. Not because I refuse but because I doubt you'll have the time or desire to use those chars for the stuff that I would be doing. Well actually I might refuse to join them on a run where they were after specific loot for themselves because I am a bit bitter about it and with them not in the guild it doesn't really do anything for me. Yes, I have no delusions about how selfish I am even while I spout off about trying to be helpful to others.
Anyway, yeah I'm bitter and unhappy and selfish about the whole thing. Yeah I understand the moves. Of course some of the reason for the moves is also some of what will end up making me stop playing WoW altogehter at some point so I'm more bitter. :) I don't like character progression through items only. I don't like character effectiveness being so equipment dependent. I don't like that pretty much pointless crafting system. I love the world, I love the people, I love building characters. I love that playing in Maraudon as a warrior, druid tank, druid healer, and paladin healer were all completely different experiences. I love that while you can pretty much script every encounter in the game that you don't have to and that sometimes if you have an "oddball" party that using the script will get you killed. Heck I love that an "oddball" party is sometime better at certain encounters than an "ideal" party.
Anyway that's been a lot to read and much of it has been heard before. So basically. #$%& you for leaving us but I hope you have a lot of fun with what you do in the game and I'll still be glad to play with you because you are good people. That make sense?
So my rambling aren't done but I'm not editing the order around. The longer I'm at 60 with some chars and working to help the guild get more people there (I lost count of the jailbreak runs I helped on at 15, how do you think Gnolack got all that damn dark iron residue and I was helping on those runs before they put that crap in the game) the more I understand how angry it makes poeple when someone takes a character out of the guild. I also got angry at some of my co-workers for taking other jobs too. I still honeslty wish them well and hope things get better for them though because they are good people. With the game I try to get over as well it since this is just a game, but I'm selfish and people leaving hurts my fun too. And I've already sacrificed my fun for some of the people who are leaving so that makes it worse. But I still hope they have fun because they are good people. Of course I'm way too emotionally invested in the game because I can interact with people in this damn game on these stupid forums but I still can't do much of that face to face right now and I still can't put in a fulls day work. Of course I may have to stop playing the game because of that too, but that is something for me and my councilor to work out.
Alright I'm done for real now.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.