Sunny side

Today marks a momentous occasion.

Finally, finally, finally got to run an in character six man in Bastion Stair with my wonderful guild. It was admittedly short, we did the first PQ once and then ran into a rash of DCs and weird server lag that combined with my guild leader's short amount of playtime just lead to an all out bust. But it was the first time in the Stair for everyone there other than Calintz and I and the general sentiment seemed to be "I have so been missing a good dungeon crawl, we are so doing this again." That of course put Calintz into a state of pure glee as he's been going a little bit insane over the past two months trying to get pick up or alliance groups for dungeons runs on his 40 DoK.

On a high from getting to do something we've been looking forward to for three months we made a leveling push on Menkara (DoK) and Calintz (BG) in an effort to provide better main tanking and healing to our small all DE group tomorrow when we're suppose to try again. So we went to Praag, which is I admit, not my favorite zone. We had no in character reason to be there so we elected for a purely OOC grind fest and managed to go from 32 - 34 in about four hours. That's right folks, a level every two hours. Bow before our PvE might *pantpantpantfalloverdie*

We were joined toward the end of the night by Drakis, a magus guildmate, who seemed really exciting by the xp you can pound off in an AoE party. It was a lot of fun to level with him even OOCly because it's almost always just the two of us either because we're RPing as we go along in storyline that wouldn't invole others or because we're not RPing at all and so don't tend to invite the members of our 100% IC guild. It was a fest of spinning halberds, belching demons, floating humans and frantic party heals but we got a hefty chunk of xp together and a friend seemed to have fun.

So that brings me to one level 40 and a level 34. I feel like a certified hardcore gamer, which is laughable if you knew that it only took me five years to get a character to max level in FFXI and that was my first and last prior to WAR. Calintz and I have set the goal to grind to 35 because there's several nice pieces of gear for us there and from then on to just let xp come as it does. Getting to 40 twice while all but two members of the guild haven't gotten forty yet would be a bit ... boring as freaking crap frankly. Calintz does need to work on grinding off a ton of renown to get warded for city dungeons though which means that so do I ; ; My first forty isn't even warded yet. Getting me to grind scenarios in T4 is like pulling teeth, it hurts so damn much.

In the world of Ainilome, where roleplay fun beats the pants off of Fortress battles and zone flips, there's been a marked increase in WAR fun factor over the past week or so. Both Menkara and Calintz have managed to become involved in at least one storyline, have gotten some serious RP with someone other than each other and just generally became a lot more fun to play. I think my play time will continue to be reduced from what it was when I started, there is just not enough to do at 40 that doesn't involve being disabled, disarmed, rooted, knocked back/down/up/around until you're ready to pull out your hair. But there is enough to keep me going with hands down the best roleplay guild I've had the pleasure of being a member of in my six years of MMO gaming and probably the best group of roleplayers in twelve years of RPing. Mythic should give Arha Khaladh some cookies, because they're the reason that we're still giving them $30 a month.

Oh, which reminds me, Arha Khaladh gained Guild Rank 20 yesterday/today and we finally get to display our full heraldry. Woo for us!

It's suppose to be dragon eye, if I remember right. Our guild name roughly translates as Night of Dragons in Druhir.  But I'm pretty sure with the blood drops that it's actually Khaine's eye?I'm a bit off on my Druchii symbology.  Awesome either way. Great to no longer have that generic destro symbol on my back. 
(Again with the jagged edged in my screenshots when I have no AA issues in game :/)

A plea

We interupt this regularly schedule blog for a public service announcement.

If you happen to play Destruction on Phoenix Throne, or have just been toying with the idea of rolling destro there. Please... for the love of Khaine, roll a healer. If you have a healer from T1 to T3 that you haven't played in a while... dust it off. You will be loved and adored.

This message brought you by a bakers dozen of scenerios with 3 Runepriests, 2 Arcmages vs. 1 DoK. Thank you.

I offer visual proof. This is the norm for T3 scenerios the past week or so on both my DoK and my sorceress, it has also for me been the norm in T1. As Menkara today after about three hours of scenerio runs I had two... TWO scenerios where I wasn't the only healer on destro.

I should have named the blog "Pointless Rambles".

First things first, a big welcome to the slew of new bloggers our WAR: Age of Blogging initiative have brought in. Cabal of War , Asuryan's Flames, Alt Much, Grumble and Mutter, From the Forging of Fire and Ice, The Rant, WAR! For Casual, The Tome of Gonna, In the XOne, Schlotzky's Game Blog, The Grumblings of Gorebash, WAR Addons Reviewed, Cry Moar Noob, One Side of the Fence and Rainbow's MMOs. Whew. 

And now for another pointless ramble. 

I've been concidering dusting off my sorceress. Lyst was my original character, thus the name of the blog being a Sorceress ability. I had even planned originally to focus a good portion of my content on the Sorceress class, from it's abilties to it's very awesome lore. But then along came the pokeypokey portable blender joy of Witch Elf and the launch of Blackgaurd and poor Lyst has been sitting at 24 for months. Teir 4 has instilled a deep hatered in me for MDPS (ok, annoyance. But I'm a Dark Elf, I can be emo if I like.) and while healing with my DoK is fun it doesn't satisify the blood lust so well. There's also the fact that she's been sitting at 140ish cultivating and apothocary for all those months with a vault and mail box bursting with supplies from my 200 scavanger and my boyfriends 200 butcher. I spent about an hour crafting a few days ago and she's now just below 175 in both. I do like the potions I can pump out, +70 to a stat for 10 mins is really awesome. I am wary of switching to another alt when my main isn't getting much play time and I have completely failed at getting my current alt into the rampant RP of my guild. Which brings me to my original point of posting.

I have no idea what my problem is. Perhaps it comes from years (yes, yeeeeeears) of really only roleplaying with my boyfriend's characters but I'm like an RP hermit. I created Menkara's character specifically so that I had the drive and means to get involved in multiple storylines. She's a seer, of the strict Druchii variety and based very heavily on the various seers and prophets of the Malus Darkblade novels. I've gone really in depth learning about how exactly the Druchii seers peer into the future, the tools they use, what they see, how concrete it is etc. I worked out a storyline for her entrence to the guild with my guild leader and she ended up being named High Priestess of the House. 

But she's hardly interacted with anyone. If I may be blunt and open, being that this is my personal blog, I and she was/is a bit off put by the fact that even though I had her character sheet up on the forums for months before she actually started being played within a week of her entrance to the guild there were two other seer or psycic characters created or joined. It sort of took the wind out of my sails. I had all these grandeous ideas of her established standing as a semi well known seer of Har Ganeth, infamous for the powerful people she has backed giving her a lot of "buisness". Of people coming to her to employ her talents. She's very cheap after all, she's made it clear she works for anyone and the only compensation she requires is that of flesh sent to her temple for sacrific. The average price is a dozen Asur or two dozen human. Affordable rates! But that fact is that no one seems to even remember that she's the High Priestess, much less that she's a seer. Is it my fault? Probably. As I said, I seem to be a hermit. I just can't manage to get myself involved, or in the right place at the right time, or not busy when events are going on or finding conversations that Menkara doesn't find insepid to take part in in guild chat.  I think my failure at this character that I had so many hopes for is contributing a lot to my lack luster drive to play WAR anymore.

She has an awesome, awesome storyline going with her leveling partner, Calintz. Their RP continues to be dynamic, unique, varied and highly emotional. But her relationship with the House is about nill. I log on, she greets the house, everyone says "Greetings, Menkara" and then I fall quiet.  A lot of time it's because I get swooped up into personal RP. It's very hard to chat idly in guild when Menkara and Calintz are busy argueing or some other drama. It goes back to what I said in a post months ago, RP is what you put into it. And I think that's where I fail :/ 

I promise to keep the ratio of emo to non-emo posts at a steady 1:2 ration by finishing my comments on the several totally usless abilities that DoK get or a run down of my biggest pet peeve in the Sorceress vs. Bright Wizard debate ... wait, would Sorc vs. BW count as an emo post? 

I'm starting to feel the itch.

What itch?

The "I need a new MMO" itch. I'm not sure what it is about me, it could very well be a mental defect, but it is exceedingly rare for me to be able to stick with an MMO for longer than a handful of months. All in all, WAR is doing pretty well. I've been playing since about two weeks after launch, so it's been a few months. But I'm starting to get restless. I'm unsure if this has to do specifically with the game I'm playing or that I just really love trying new games. In this case since the itch I'm getting is to return to games I've played previously (namely, EQ2 and/or Vangaurd) I'm thinking it must be something to do with WAR itself.

Simply put, I don't like T4. I'm not really much of an RvRer, I was in fact pretty much anti-PvP before coming to WAR. I've had a lot of fun with it though, so it's not just a general "I don't like RvR" thing. It's several things. At the moment, I hate my server. A month or two ago Avelorn was merged with Phoenix Throne and what had in my opinion been a pretty darn balanced server is now Order heavy. T4 is and has been swarming with Order constantly, I hate to use the term "zerg" but that's what it feels like. Destruction is for the most part getting steamed rolled everywhere I turn. I honestly feel that my sever is now TOO full. Maybe I just don't find the fun in 200 vs 200 battles ... I don't know. I had a lot more fun when it was 20 or 40 on either side.

This has lead to a serious downward spiral in my sides moral over the past few weeks. We are terribly, terribly defeatist. And even when I try not to be defeatist when everyone around you is being so it's very hard to keep your spirits up. It doesn't help that, honest to god, I have not won one.single.scenerio is nearly two weeks. That's in T4 with my witch elf and T3 with my DoK. Not a single win, flattened to a pancake every damn time. It gets old... very old.

I'm not saying I wish to win every time. But that fact that I lose every time means that somewhere on Order there's someone getting the luck of the draw and WINNING every time. Three or four loses in a row I can deal with, it happens. Seven... eight... a dozen. I just give up and log off, because at that point the game is actually making me sad and upset. And it's suppose to be fun. Scenerios with four rune priests and two arcmages vs our side with one zealot and a DoK are the norm. There is no way to win like that. Throw in the insanity of Engineer disables and knockdowns and it's a recipe for pulling out my hair... or logging out. (Yes Syp. I freaking hate Engineers. Twelve seconds of CC and I'm dead before I can even hurt them.)

Add in the fact that it's a game completely devoid of any sort of open roleplay, or interguild roleplay, I can't even freaking sit or walk and the crafting is terrible and I just can't figure out why I'm logging in anymore. It's terribly sad. I want to like the game, I want to feel the drive to log in. But unless you're RvRing, aside from chasing tome unlocks there isn't anything to do. Once Menkara hit tier 4 I just saw never ending Serpant's Passage runs, being camped at my spawn point, fetched my WL and destroy in seconds flat over and over and ....this after never ending Tor Anroc runs with dwarves eeeeverywhere throwing me about like a soccer ball. It just isn't fun.

I want to like the game. And I continue to log in for a few hours everyday just to putz around and RP. My boyfriend will freaking kill me if I want to jump games yet again. But I don't know what WAR can do to get my devotion back. But I keep thinking about the depth and fun of Vangaurd's crafting, the amount of crazy fun to be had with collections, book quests, heritage quests and everything else in EQ2. When I look at WAR I only see "It's got RvR and Druchii." Vast as the ocean, as deep as a backyard swimming pool.

Maybe a win would help.

Ideas to get you started

For all the new bloggers (or the old ones):

That's right folks, it's a WAR meme. Or what my writing teacher referred to as "seeds". Small questions or themes to get your creative juices going and jump start your writing.

- What's your favorite thing about WAR? Now, in what way could that favorite thing be made ever cooler?

- What's your least favorite thing about WAR? This one should be easy, everyone likes to rant.

- Write about a time when you really, truly loved your class. When you really kicked butt and thought "Hells yeah. I'm glad I rolled this."

- How's your server? Do you feel that it's balanced, or is your side on the wining/losing end of most things? Is RvR hopping? Were you recently merged to or with another server and how has that changed things?

- What made you start playing WAR? What caught your attention and made you pick this game over the eight gazillion other fantasy themed MMOs.

-Do you see yourself playing the game next month? Six months? A year? Either way, tell us why you'll stay or why you won't.

-What's your current goal in the game? Do you have any other long term goals?

-Ah, the ever present class discussions. Tell us about your class, what you like and what you don't. What works and what doesn't. Would you have picked something else back when you started if you could?

-Alright, blogger person, why are you blogging?

WAR: Age of Blogging

New Years, New Years... resolution time! How about, "This year I resolve to be more creative, express my thoughts and opinions while enjoying the things that I have the most fun with." Ooo, blogging sales pitch.

January marks a new initiative by the WAR blogging community to motivate those of you who read and think "I could do this" or "Man, Syp is as full of crap as he is of beer. How should I best tell him that?" to get off their bums, make your own blog and give it a go. Those of us who are established (I chuckle at the thought that my little blog is considered established but allow me my delusions of grandeur for a moment) are going to spend the month attempting to motivate you all to start your own blogs, providing links, how tos and the much needed emotional support to anyone who starts a blog in Jaunaury. Best of all, we'll provide the All Mighty Link Back(tm) to swing those blog hits your way.

The first step is to create your own blog somewhere such as Blogger or Wordpress, write at least three posts to get yourself going and then introduce you and your new baby to the folks at BlogWarhammer in the introductory forum.

Starting a blog can be a bit daunting, especially for a first time blogger. The best advice I can give is the most simple, just keep writing. Also, don't assume because no one comments that no one is reading. Just like forums, for every one person who takes the time to post there's a handful who never do. This month will help anyone getting started in WAR blogging with the single most difficult part of blogging, making yourself known. If you write it, we will force them all to read they will come. You've got an opinion and thoughts, even if you're Order ... I suppose, so share them. Nothing keeps a game going like a vibrant, varied and vocal community.

WAR: Age of Blogging is supported by:
Me!
Stunty Stomper
WAAAGH
Wizards & Wenches
The Greenskin
Way of the Chosen
Werit
RP That Way
Lagwar
Reroller
Tome of Knowledge
Fires of War
Blame the Healer

Mmm... linkbacks. The bloggers candy...

I'll also be starting my own personal initiative to use this as a chance kick my butt into finishing all the half written posts I have sitting around and actually you know... post them! So darn it, get to blogging.