This post may be a sort of flow of consciousness kind of rambling, as I do not have a real thought behind it. Instead, I have several. For one part because of the recent guild runs in daily heroics, partly because the podcasts I have been listening to (and the connections made in there).
The first thing I have to say is that I decided long ago that I won't go into the guild life in this blog, except if completely necessary. Today I have come to the point that I have to say something about the guild, it's members and the attitude and spirit the whole "team" shows ingame. It's no secret that I -along with my brothers- quit our own guild and joined a casual, social, hardcore raiding guild. What I've kept out of the blog itself has been the name of the guild and people in it.
We joined The Highland Warriors on Thunderhorn, EU. And it's an understatement that I have been very pleased and happy with the decision and acceptance. The guild is great, the people are fantastic and it all comes down to the mentality of the guild master (I know you are reading this, Windavell) that raiding is serious progressive effort and everything else is for fun. I wouldn't like to take it in any other way.
Highland Warriors have also shown me that my tenet "you get what you give" really holds true: being the strong silent type I've bugged and bothered the people in the guild chat somewhat constantly while online, especially emphasizing my lack of experience and inability to cope with my gear. I suppose there are no guildies who wouldn't have noticed my whining. (I like my cheese with whine, btw.)
I have been hushed silent about that lately. In the last daily hc Gundrak, where I tanked pretty messily (but effectively to a point), I complained about my performance and apologized my lack of knowledge about the instance (my second time in there, first time in hc), and the healer, Pirux (hi!), told me to stop it. I was doing fine and in the end of the day 1) we ran it through without problems, 2) my solutions to certain encounters were ... interesting and 3) the healer (asparagus-drood) said that it was more fun to have a tank like me instead of an Ulduar geared one because there was something to do. Well, the last was quite understandable, as Laiskajaakko stands currently at 25k hp, 22k armor and 542 def, pretty much on the edge if things start to get sour.
I did well. That's the point. And I felt great after the run: quite steady pulls, one after another, up till the end: only one boss was a mess due to my lack of knowledge of it, but still it went pretty good.
It was fun. It felt great. I will do it again.
The overall comments and discussion in the guild chat and forum is very helpful towards the newcomers and no question is shunned or hushed down. All capable are invited to guild daily hc runs in groups they can be accomodated: needless to say that the Ulduar geared people can carry the new 80's through the instances pretty easily, but still we have to contribute something. And the guidance we get -or at least I have gotten- has been very positive and -at least for me- a very strong motivator to be good enough to fit the raid groups later on.
Then again, too much of anything is bad for you. Like I stated earlier I started to test DDO now that it is 'free to play'. Well, that is a sort of illusion, as there are only a small amount of free dungeons to roam up to the level cap (lv20), with the majority of them being purchasable from the DDO Store. Never the less, I listened to the excellent Van Hemlock Podcast (Episode 69) only to learn that there is a blogger/blogcaster guild on Khyber server in which I have my both free characters, namely Broanagh Perpignan and Hansom Sweid. First is a cleric and second acrobat thief. Looking for that guild, so if anyone knows the name, please leave a message: the game sucks in grouping due to the fact that with people who have played it for sometime now it's a kind of fast forward to the end, and most of the GM cues just fly past.
The grouping is easy, but even as WoW is very much min-maxing micromanagement, DDO is even more so. In old AD&D you couldn't gimp your character, but in the new version rules it seems possible: at least it feels so when I look at the traits available on every quarter level. That may well take the joy of dungeon romping off for me, because the rest of the game is easy grouping, running through a dungeon and returning the quests: the min-maxing just doesn't fit in for me anymore, I'm having my dose of that in WoW, thank you.
So that's what I've been thinking over this morning and part of yesterday. It's great to be part of an excellent guild which pulls you forward, it's great to have interesting podcasts and blogs to follow and it's nice to notice that your game of choice is what you want it to be.
And that you get what you give. In this case, one mess of a post.
