Van Hemlock

Back to some more typical MMO fun and games, this time, in Everquest II, and my new guild. I do this every now and then - a kind of soloist's guilt descends on me, based in an awareness that "I'm not playing it properly", and that "I might as well be offline".

Much of my time online is spent avoiding random idiots - partly because I'm arrogant, and partly because they genuinely do seem to be either very young, very impulsive, very inarticulate, or a combination of all three, and more often than not, my experience of grouping tends to be extremely unsatisfactory, usually ending up with less progress for the same time spent, than if I'd gone it alone. I don't just mean XP, either - in an effort to seem helpful, I'll end up spending two or more hours helping some other muppet on their quests, (which I don't have), seeing their sights, (which I've already seen), and killing their enemies, (which don't drop anything I can use). In short, most other players in an MMO wind me up, which is wrong, and a shame, and can't possibly be entirely my fault. Plus, the pressure of five complete strangers staring at me through the monitor, in silent accusation, rarely does wonders for my own performance.

Clearly, a guild is the way you're supposed to do it. Or Corp, or Clan, or whatever they call it where you live. A pool of regular compatriots, whom you are familiar with, if not actually like, with a degree of accountability, and more in common than 'I need quest #38! plz help!' and every so often, I fling myself into one, just to see if it really is the answer, or whether I am now irredeemably consigned to the soloing outer darkness.

It's my first go at an Everquest II guild, and I can't help be impressed so far. We'll come to the guild itself in a moment, but it was the sheer level of game-support that EQ2 provides to guilds that impressed me most of all. I try the odd guild here and there, in various games, so know a little of how each title handles what is quite a complex social mechanic, and I'd have to say that EQ2 is one of the best. EVE Online beats it of course, but an EVE Corp is a very serious affair, more in the nature of real-world company, and when you get down to it, EVE is a game of corps and alliances, not gangs and individuals, so you'd expect no less. EQ2's guild support far outstrips that found in World of Warcraft however, and probably GuildWars also.

First off is the integrated Looking For Guild Window, which allows guilds to put up proper adverts, with all manner of details, contact points, summaries, and the like, and lets potential recruits like me browse through a list of currently recruiting guilds to find something that fits, before even having to talk to anyone, or scour messageboards. This takes a little of the guesswork out of it - The Red Order becomes visibly different from The Blue Knights right away - from their descriptions, I can see that one is into hardcore raiding, the other is a casual social guild. No prior knowledge and research needed.

Once in, the facilities seem quite exhaustive also - the guild window opens up to reveal a mind-boggling number of tabs, covering things like member roles and permissions, an events log, a member list that includes all manner of useful info beyond just 'Level and Location', message of the day, recruiting details and the like. The guilds seem to get five guild banks, built in to the game, which is nice, meaning you don't need to give all the shineys to one 'Guild Bank' alt, who then may or may not disappear the first time things get heated in Officer chat. In general, the guild features of EQ2 bear a striking resemblance to EVE Online's corp support, rather than any other Fantasy MMORPG. Another example of EQ2's special ability of borrowing concepts from elsewhere, and tweaking them to fit their own titles.

The Guild also has a level itself - it has it's own xp bar, and whenever any members earn Status Points - for completing the right sorts of quest, or handing in the right kind of objects, the guild gains 10% of that gain, as guild xp. Our guild is level 26 at the moment. I have no idea what this means, but every now and then, while out and about, you'll see server-wide broadcast messages - 'The Red Order is now level 30!' Guild level seems to be useful when trying to buy more advanced shineys form the City Merchants - status items, prestige furniture, cheap horses and titles; 'Lord', 'Lady', etc. That seems less relevant that the levelling itself to me, and I love the communal enterprise of grinding a whole guild.

One thing I hadn't seen before, was the notifications. Almost everything you accomplish is reported back to the whole guild; gaining levels, gaining crafting levels, gaining achievement points, looting Legendary quality items (EQ2's 'Blue' items I guess), completing writs (status generating repeatable quests), completing Heritage Quests - all of these things result in a system message going to all guild members online. This presents a bit of a problem for me - to 'gratz!' or not to 'gratz!'? With that many players achieving so much so frequently, these green news items come through quite a lot. I mean I'm pleased for you all, really, but do I really need to congratulate everyone all the time?

Soanaso has gained Adventure Level 2!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
Soandso has gained Adventure Level 3!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
Guildie#8 has completed the writ 'Kill Ten Rats' earning status for the guild!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
Guildie#13 has gained Crafting Level 6!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
Soandso has looted the legendary 'Pointy Stick O Doom'!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
Soandso has gained Adventure Level 4!
Guildie#1 says to the guild,'woot!'
Guildie#2 says to the guild, 'gratz! :)'
Guildie#3 says to the guild 'wtg'
You maintain a stony silence throughout.

I mean it's not that I'm not pleased for them, but really, I only joined the other night, know none of them personally, and really - Adventure Level 2? You get that by successfully managing to not go link-dead during the tutorial, I expect. And anyway, some of the standard 'gratz' responses seem consistently identical from the same person, and typed in suspiciously quickly for their length. It's a feel-good society too far when you need to prepare a 'Congratulations' text macro, I think. Dumbing down abounds! Trouble is, it all makes me feel rather curmudgeonly when I don't join in the over-excited cheerleading - especially when they all go bananas over my own slightest achievement, faithfully reported back by the guild mechanics as and when they happen. I no longer know who is the broken one here - them for their relentless and indiscriminate praise, or me for my cynical and stoic refusal to join in. I'm sure they'll get used to me, or me them.

The guild itself is good though - a casual kind of thing, a fair bit of soloing and small grouping, but organised events at weekends. They're friendly without being obtrusive, and nice enough folks. There's a fair amount of sloppy contractions - 'ur' and the like, but I don't mind, and often think perhaps I'm a bit on the pedantic side with that - hell, I even capitalise and punctuate my text chat! It seems the guild at present is in a bit of a lull, having once been end-game raiders, but having lost a large number of core players over the months, to RL responsibilities (or WoW, I shouldn't wonder), so now they're looking to recruit and train up a new generation, including yours truly.

To that end, we went on our first raid on Saturday, at an unhealthy hour, before midday! It was Bloodskull Valley, one of the instances off of the Commonlands, and we were there to finish off an Epic boss - Group x2 - to complete a Heritage Quest for the Greater Lightstone - 'Return of the Light'. These 'HQ's' offer much personal and guild status, and result in an item reward based on a famous item from EQ1, so lot of nostalgia there, plus the items themselves are often quite powerful. The HQs are usually group or raid based though, and do make you work for it.

The location contained a number of extremely powerful Orcs and War Elephants, all of which require two groups - 12 players -  to kill. They were also many levels below me, but thanks to EQ2's ingenious 'Mentoring' system, I could temporarily set my level down to match the folks who were at the right level for the place, restoring the challenge and giving me a chance to try content I'd have otherwise have missed with this character. The Raid window is a feature WoW could do with, by the way, a small window showing everyone's bars, not just your own group. You'd need UI add-ins for that in WoW - with EQ2 it's built in - far more civilised.

It actually went well! The folks in charge led well, patiently taking time to explain what was going on, what we should be doing and so on. Then in we went. The first bit was hectic - multiple waves of big Orcs - 30-40 attacking at once at some points, which was all very epic and cinematic. Then the General we'd come for showed up, with suitably numerous bodyguards, and it was a close and exciting fight. I was on DPS duty - being a Ruge type of class, so spent a lot of time dashing around, trying to remain 'behind' each of the Main Tank's targets so I could backstab. After that all calmed down, we pushed further in, to the War Elephants and handlers, who strangely, were more powerful than the General - true Group x2 Epic mobs. This bit went broadly okay, although we died a few times to adds - mostly down to poor pet control/pathing bugs by our pet classes, and one or two times the main tank borked his pull, wiping us all out. Remarkably, no-one seemed to mind!