So like, I’m in the Crypt of Betrayal, having a go at ‘AQ4’... one of the core armour quests for the dapper level 20-30 adventurer about town. There are six of these, resulting in one piece of uber armour for each body location, ensuring that I never need to go and try buying player-made armour from any money-grabbing player-crafter.
This is handy, as not being able to go afk-merchant myself for long periods of time, and not having any phat lewts of my own to pimp out, I generally can’t afford to buy anything useful made by other players, and so rely exclusively on quest rewards. I expect it’s this attitude that means there are so few crafters and such high prices. These high prices generally mean people level up alternate characters as crafters themselves, purely to supply their 'real' character with essentials. If I could actually face the mind numbing work of crafting, this is what I'd do as well, but I've decided that I don't need stuff that badly.
These quests pretty much impossible to solo, at least at the levels were the armour is still useful, so, like much in Everquest II, grouping is optional only in the sense of ‘going without entirely’.
The Crypt of Betrayal is a sewer-type zone, about three zones below the main city, and people only go there mob-handed, as every monster in the place is designated ‘a even match for groups of three or more’…i.e. ‘Damn you soloers! Make friends, or f*ck off to WoW!’ They’re basically normal creatures, but with three times the hit points, meaning a single player just can’t survive long enough to beat it down…attrition.
I’m not deliberately anti-social in these games, but it does generally seem easier to solo, and tonight was going to be another shining example of why.
- I wait twenty minutes for a group.
- Paladin A shows up, we group.
- Paladin A charges after a bat. Bat wipes Paladin A out, I run to zone and escape.
- We try again. We kill bat, barely. We need 10 of these.
- Paladin A pulls Scarab.
- Scarab kills me with area effect weapon thing.
- Paladin A kills Scarab. We need 25 of these.
- ‘We probably need a healer’ Illusionist joins group.
- Paladin A pulls bat.
- High Level Numpty Group messes up and trains Really Scarey Stuff to the exit.
- Our group all hit in back by train.
- Group wiped out.
- ‘We probably need a healer’ Paladin B joins group.
- Paladin A and B each pull different bat.
- Group wiped out.
- Illusionist tries to assign ‘Main Tank’
- Paladin B complains ‘this is too slow’
- Swashbuckler (Me) thinks dying so much is probably the main ‘efficiency bottleneck’.
- ‘We probably need a healer’ Group moves further away from exit.
- Paladin A pulls bat.
- New bat appears on top of group and attacks.
- Illusionist hypnotises bat 2. ‘Don’t hit bat 2’
- Paladin B hits bat 2.
- Group wiped out.
- Paladin A pulls bat.
- Swashbuckler (me) manages to outdamage both Paladin A and B, despite both having skills to make the bat focus on them.
- Bat turns on Swashbuckler. Swashbuckler killed.
- ‘We probably need a healer’ Paladin goes to find next bat.
- Zombie appears on top of group.
- Illusionist wiped out.
- Swashbuckler wiped out.
- Paladin B wiped out.
- Paladin A returns with bat.
- Bat and Zombie kill Paladin A.
- ‘I’ve got to go cook dinner’ Illusionist leaves.
- ‘I think I need to level a bit before I try this again’ Swashbuckler leaves.
- ‘I’m going out’ Paladin B leaves.
- Paladin A pulls bat…
Damn you developers, when are you going to get it through your thick skulls? It’s a computer game, not a tabletop role-playing game. We’re not all pals, sat around a table laughing, joking, throwing dice and drinking Mountain Dew. We’re lone computer game nerds, with appalling interpersonal skills, all grimly forcing ourselves to crawl over the broken glass of ‘grouping’, to get what we need to be able to get back on with the infinitely less stressful business of soloing. Even when it ‘goes right’, it’s merely a brutally efficient machine for grinding xp, most certainly NOT a social thing.
'I like MMORPGs, but hate people...isn't it ironic?'