The day I was silently dreading arrived this Tuesday. The Tuesday Noob Club has been slowly growing over the last few weeks, with various folks getting in touch and joining us on our weekly excursions. Mostly seems to be long-time or abandoned soloing folks, looking to play with Other People who don't use F-bombs in place of adjectives, or indeed, words and sentences. A surprisingly good selling point, as it turns out, and quite by accident, I seem to have become a Guild Leader.
An entirely new kind of MMO experience for me, and typically, when I even join a guild at all, I'm one of The Quiet Ones, lurking and silently getting on with my game. I'll group with them all now and then, of course, but often find that I don't really know what to do in a guild, once I'm in it, and in some cases, am not even sure why I'm it in the first place. A moment of weakness and curiosity when hit by a spam-invite in a busy town, more often than not.
Not so the Tuesday Noob Club however, which is positively a social affair, made up of old friends and new, who are all united, I like to think, in a common goal of not taking it all too seriously, and helping each other get the most out of a game designed for teams, but which offers a gameplay style almost uniquely suited to a very short-session casual kind of approach. We'll play through from eight-til-late, but in a manner that is made up of short half-hour to an hour blocks, which any of us can take or leave, as individual personal schedules dictate.
At about 10pm this week however, I was presented with a bit of a dilemma; ten players online. Much of Guild Wars is designed for groups of eight people, you see. I'm sure its a problem that a great many guilds manage to cope with well enough, in all games, but perhaps the first real challenge in my new post. It would be silly to limit the guild to eight people only, so I went with two teams in the end, which seemed the best way. One team to carry on our rampage through Prophecies, and another to head across to Factions for a push on the Raisu Palace and...Shiro.
I hope it went down well and was an acceptable solution, but I wonder how bigger guilds resolve this kind of dilemma? A party can only be so big, in any game, and for the first time, I start to see the value of huge raiding encounters, something that has never been for me before.
Guild Wars doesn't have anything like that, and only two of the zones in the whole game can accommodate parties of twelve people, and those are very end-game indeed. Flexibility and rotation are probably the answers - keep an eye on the member count and adjust our various goals accordingly. There should always be room for one more, if I'm doing it right...
New faces this week included a Monk who I think probably only sent a whisper to say 'Hi', but who got sucked into our ongoing new Elementalist's rampage-in-progress anyway, through the D'Allessio Seaboard mission, a zone that was probably a little below the kinds of challenge he was used to! Seemed a good sport about it all though, particularly since I've had the Defend Lion's Arch mission active for months now, meaning that any time we leave the place by land, we get a sudden and unexpected steamrollering by many L24 Wind and Earth Titans. My bad! We also got a bit lost near the end and forgot where to deliver the big blue ming vase for the Bonus. Our Elementalist decided to keep it, resulting yet more unintentional cut-scene hilarity.
This week also saw a new Mesmer in the gang, something I'm having to come to terms with on a personal level. I'm the only Mesmer in the village! I had even previously managed to condition the rest of the guild into NOT bringing Gwen along on our trips, by virtue of incessant grumbling. Having a new Player Mesmer show up on the scene is taking some adjustment, and to cap it all, I think she even has a fancier ballgown than me! Still, it is nice to finally have someone to talk 'shop' with, I must admit.
Also this week saw the return of our long lost Axe-Crazy Ranger, last seen in my previous TNC vs Factions series (see TNC Category in sidebar.) He's still in serious denial about Longbows, Animal Handling and other such Ranger Staples, and still very much attached to his axe. He also only had Factions, so we welcomed him back in inimitable style, with a rampage through Raisu Palace, and another assault on Guild Wars' most irritating boss, Shiro the Betrayer, thus undoing months of probable therapy since his last go at the cheating overpowered L31 Assassin-God.
A strange trip, actually. I've duoed through the Palace a fair few times now, which means having six AI Heroes in tow, a style of gameplay that I'd grown quite used to. You just load up a few healers, a tank or two and a minion master, and then just charge on through. The AIs sort themselves out, and its all too easy to become a bit dependent on them. This was my first go through the place in a full group of players, and it took quite a bit longer to manage, and we even wiped on the first attempt. I'm not suggesting that any of our team are inferior to AIs; not in the slightest. But actual teamplay is indeed a slightly different game, and many of our company come from a quite solo-oriented past.
I also don't believe in 'Correct Group Compositions', and refuse to tell anyone what class they should or shouldn't be. Guild Wars' unique skill system defies pigeon-holes, I like to think, and with a bit of imagination, any group of eight players ought to be able to do well enough, but this does mean that those eight players do need to think a bit about overlapping skills and complementary builds, something that probably hasn't been an issue for many of us in the past; certainly not in my own.
I think its just that learning what each of us can do, and when we'll do it, and so on, will take a bit of practice to get the hang of; target calling, pulling, mob management; all things that are practically automated with AIs, but which need a bit of working at, in a team of real people.
I suspect it is precisely this that makes GW Pick-Up Groups such wretched affairs in general; no-one knows anyone else, or what they are capable of, or when they should do it. The frustrations of not immediately gaining this insight on joining the group are all too easily expressed in attitude, recrimination, abuse and sudden vanishing acts. For all our camaraderie, we currently find ourselves in this exact position now, but unlike a PUG, we're tolerant, patient and willing to give it another go, and over the next few weeks, will actually learn these things, becoming much more successful as a direct result.
As a very practical hint of this enlightenment to come, when we stepped up to face the last mission, Shiro himself, we beat the cheating scoundrel in the first pass, netting an Expert completion, and only missing the Masters by seconds! Part of it was indeed, having eight Celestial skills in constant use, but mostly it was down to some very good teamwork. His Meditation of the Reaper was knocked down before I could even finish casting my own Chaos Storm on him, and although many of us were Banished, no-one had to sit on the bench for more than a few seconds, as the remaining seven of us issued an almighty smackdown on whatever Bound creation took his or her place.
Extremely gratifying, particularly since I'd not actually beaten this mission on my Mesmer Main, being a Ritualist the last time through, and even then, winning more by luck than skill. Not so this time through, and in addition to the fireworks, NPC adulation, end credits, fancy green souvenir item, another brand new MMO experience for me; pride in one's guild...
The Obligatory Victory Dance Party!