Old Raiders don’t die…

…they just wipe at 1% (with thanks to Spinks for the ending, I was too lazy to think of one).

Or, can you just drop raiding and not worry about it? I know at least one person who’s happily made the transition that way. I’m vacillating about it.

There’s things I don’t like about the current raiding I do, solely in LotRO, in the Dol Guldur cluster. I’m not overly keen on the radiance gating, I’d rather it was trait-based, or .. hrrm many other proposed systems. I prefer a closed-ish raiding group, but our kin has opted to go for rotations, and a much more broad brush approach.

There’s things I do like about raids in general, and the current one is included in that. I like the social side, the larger group size and chance to group with people I may not group with every night of the week. I like the more interesting fights a raid can bring in (though to be fair, lots of the 3-man instances have some fairly interesting fights in them which probably allow me to display my ‘leet skillz’ more obviously than in the current raid.

But, I have to admit I’m finding myself a little ambivalent about raiding in general. Some of it is being in the doldrums about LotRO, but it’s a far more complex reaction than that and I’m not even sure I would be able to explain all its facets. I’m still signing up, but perhaps being a bit more honest about nights I’d rather sit on the sofa watching crappy TV.

And yet, when I think of myself as a player, I think of me raiding. So I guess I’m not quite done with it yet.

Why Raid?

Was having an interesting Twitter chat with a kinmate this morning (@sauronsbeagle to give him his due) when we touched on amusing reasons to raid. He’s a Minstrel, I’m a Captain – we both heal in raids. And there’s your context:

I felt my #3 key wasn’t being pressed often enough. The 1st boss and gauntlet make up for that!

Yes, I like to use Gauntlet to bask in the smugness of my 8.3s on-defeat heal. Will go when I break DN* set up.

*DN = Dar Narbugud (previous raid in Moria – the Captain set bonus reduces the cooldown on all on-defeat skills).

Now, we were just joking about the relentless nature of ‘The Gauntlet’ in Barad Guldur. It’s ~30 mins of constant fighting of wargs, uruks and goblins while climbing a number of staircases and rushing across landings. And slightly on the nature of being a healer in a raid, but it did make me think – why do I enjoy raiding?

For me, personally, it’s mostly the social aspect. I get to group with 12 people instead of 6 (and an even wider circle with the rotation system we run in-kin). They have to listen to my bad jokes, my innuendos and my insistence that Captains really aren’t needed in raids, when we all know they are! I play MMOs to group, and while I do enjoy soloing during the day and spending some time with myself, I love being able to chat in kin-chat, fellowship chat and also raid chat – and teamspeak these days, though I used to avoid it like the plague. I don’t NEED to group to have that social side to my gaming, but the shared goals of a raid do add something.

The challenge? Hrrm, this is a reason I’d have said I wanted to raid, but if I examine my motives a bit more truthfully I pretty much approach every raid knowing we CAN do the fights. It might mean we have to wipe a bunch learning placement, tricks of the fight, etc. But I have faith in my kinmates. There’s solo instances that I found more challenging that certain boss fights, there’s certainly 3-man and 6-man content I’ve had to wipe at almost as many times before getting the hang of. This is just larger scale. But I’m not all THAT motivated by the ‘saying we’ve done it’ aspect, even if I know I should be. Maybe that’s been the biggest change in my attitude towards MMOs recently. Either my attitude has shifted, or I’ve been thinking about it a bit more intently of late.

The loot? Um.. actually I almost dread it at the moment. I don’t really like radiance gear, I hate the lottery of checking each new class-specific raid set to see what the devs have decided Captains will get. For Barad Guldur, the set is not only ugly, it has stats that I personally wouldn’t choose – and yet I know I’ll have to get it so I can pass through the next radiance ‘gate’ for future content. The set bonus is pretty rubbish for me also, especially going from a very good one from Dar Narbugud. Jewellery, trinkets, other drops – probably all more appealing for me as actual loot drops, but I know I will need this ugly, un-appealing statwise armour. So what was a reason to raid for me for previous raids, in WoW and in DAoC, has become more of a stressor! Sad. But the next raid might have a great set of armour, let’s try and stay positive!

Downsides of raiding? There’s always a touch of friction when the group size increases and a touch of mob mentality pops in to show its face. It’s easy for people to take things the wrong way, myself included. It’s quite focused, moreso than most other content, and you have more people relying on you (I say this as a healer, but it’s true for every single person in a smallish raid). People get tired, because raids tend to go on longer than other grouped content. Wipes are inevitable and everyone takes those differently. I’m on the richer side in LotRO, so even when I gripe about repair bills, it’s really no big deal to me. But some people really don’t have as much time to get cash to cover what can be repair bills of up to 1g! And if you go twice in a week, that can soon add up!

On the whole, raiding is for me… for the moment, anyway. I’m just changing my attitudes towards it a little. Which is probably a healthy thing!

Any reasons to raid that I missed? Any compelling arguments against raiding (other than time?).

Barad Guldur – Second Peek

A week or so ago, 8 brave (or foolish) adventurers of assorted classes popped into Barad Guldur, the 12-man raid in Mirkwood, to have a look. We killed a very few things and got over-run. But then, there were only 8 of us.

Now the kin is ready to send in reinforcements, and last night we had our first 12-man foray. We made progress, we got up some stairs! This is harder than it sounds, but makes me laugh cos it ties in with my general reticence about stairs vs escalators. The repair bills were high, but it was new, and fun.

I won’t write too much about it, again, I don’t want to spoiler people. It’s just nice to have had a look, and I’m sure I’ll occasionally reference our progress through it.

I am going to try and return to blogging though. I have thoughts on SW:TOR, Bioware, Mirkwood, Book 3 and all sorts of other gaming and TV related stuff. Just needed the time off.

Phew, Moria defeated

Last night, a little against my expectations we took down The Blind One (for the second time, and on our first attempt, yay) and then went on to kill The Mistress of Pestilence on our third try. Against expectations because I wasn’t sure how many attempts we’d do in an evening, not because I don’t think we’re capable (of course, kinmates read this blog, y’know!).

So, with that, aside from what seems to be a bugged quest in Dar Narbugud, I have now finished all the content in Moria, a week before we get Mirkwood. This I like. It’s not that it hasn’t involved a lot of grinding and time-killing to fill the time between raids (for me), but it feels satisfying nonetheless.

I wish, sometimes, I was a bit slower with content. But I love the game, I love to hang with my friends there, and I only work one day a week. This is a combination that means I rush into things headfirst when they’re new, even if I read every bit of quest text I’ll still finish before the majority, purely on the time I can chuck at it.

I’m also fairly resilient to grinding. More than many. As an example, I have accumulated 350 silver branches and 100 gold leaves (mostly through crafting instances), and spent a good many more back in the day! I’ve done most of the hardmode instances a lot more than 6 times, and I’m happy that way. I switch on a podcast and spend my time in Middle Earth, doing whatever I need to do to stay there. Have taken a few weeks to be on there less in preparation for Mirkwood, but once it launches I know the skirmishes will keep me pretty busy, as well as quests, instances and raids.

But, it does feel kind of nice to be able to finish DN. Now we have to go back to help people get the 4-pieces for the resistances, and for them to have the same feeling of satisfaction in completing one raid before we look to the next!

Inappropriate Boss Names

[Inspired by the sign-up thread on my kin forums]

Please game companies, do not give bosses silly names. When we sign up to kill them we want them to sound fierce. Also assume your players will abbreviate to the first name or a description of the boss.

Examples from LotRO:

• Nornuan – too much like Norman, we all just say ‘The Turtle’.
• The Mistress of Pestilance – sounds ominous until you get sign-up threads asking ‘who wants to come to the Mistress on friday night’ (seriously, one day I AM going to write Carry on Raiding)
• Zurm – an old Rift favourite, also known as Zurm the Worm, even though he isn’t ;p
• Narnûlubat – can’t pronounce it, so he just gets called Narn-thingy
• Thaurlach – a decent name, but will always just be called The Balrog. Until we have to fight another!

In general I’m very bad at learning names in LotRO, but that’s actually because Turbine have made the names Tolkeinesque so I approve. The Mistress just makes me laugh, and I hope we soon start to call her Miss Pestilence, MoP or something else. But let’s face it, the ‘giant slug’ will always be known as The Mistress.

I’d think of some from other games, but I didn’t raid in them much, any contributions gratefully received.

Quick raiding update

Last night we downed The Blind One, for the first time, and got The Mistress of Pestilence down about halfway. Found the last mushroom for the deed, by a stylish case of falling. I won’t spoil how or why, but it was kind of funny.

The first time we get a boss down there’s a definite sigh of relief and a cheer. Followed by a strange pang of fear that we now have to show we can repeat the feat. I’ve said it before, but the second kill is my favourite in any raid. The one that proves it wasn’t just good luck that got us through the fight. Of course, I love the first kill – that goes without saying, but nothing quite beats the sensation of feeling we’ve conquered the fight, and I tend to get that on kill no. 2.

So – looks like we may have a good chance of finishing Dar Narbugud before Siege of Mirkwood launches. Although I’ll miss the Mistress/Blind One fights next week as I’m taking a trip down south for a family lunch, and then to go stay with Spinks and sneak a peek at Dragon Age: Origins, so everything makes sense to me ;p

Guilty feelings

Is it bad that one of the fights I look forward to most in Siege of Mirkwood is the Dol Guldur stables?

I feel like a bad animal lover.

Maybe it’s because it reminds me of Shadowfang Keep’s stables. Or maybe it’s simply that it just sounds different from everything we’ve been fighting so far. After the ‘aliens’ in Foundations of Stone and Dar Narbugud, it’ll be nice to fight something as recognisable as a horse. Assuming they keep horses in their stables! (They come in every colour, so long as it’s black)

The Blind One

He’s a big, bad, monster deep within Dar Narbugud. It’s a tricky, Thrang-style fight. We’ve been at it a few weeks (I think would have been a bit faster with a fixed group, but our kin practices ‘rotations’ so we often have people new to the fight with us). We can now easily get through 1st and 2nd stage and yesterday got him to 38k on one attempt and then 28k on the next (from 500k). We’re making progress. And soon, it’ll be second nature to handle the transitions.

But for now, he’s my biggest frustration in LotRO. Captains, in our kin, are a rare breed at max level and radiance-d out. We get to go to most raids, which is quite a bit deal as every other class has to rotate between 3-4 players (we have more guardians but one is sitting out the rotation). I’m not a huge fan of rotation on such a wide-scale, but it’s meant to be fair to those who want to raid. Strictly, we’re very close to being able to run two raid groups, just not every week, and we’d be missing the Captains. So it’s a Catch 22 situation.

My personal views of rotations aside, what the situation does mean is that I get to see the fight every week, with both new and old people. I get to judge when I feel it’s gone better, when we’ve taken a step backwards, and I also get tired of the content faster, I imagine. For me this is attempt who-knows on the Blind One (we’re going again tonight after such close shaves), most people know how many times they’ve been. It’s blurring for me. And even if we do it tomorrow, there’s no guarantee we’ll do it next week. I worry I’m burning out a little. I still concentrate on being the best I can be when the fight starts, but I’m not enjoying it like I once was.

Would be nice to finish Dar Narbugud before Mirkwood comes out. I think and hope we will. The boss after The Blind One is supposed to be a lot easier, and is the last boss. I’d kind of like the armour set, as the Captain bonus is actually a decent one for once. Funnily, I’m not usually an ‘achiever’ in raids, I tend to go for the social aspect. Maybe skirmishes will fill that hole soon… though who doesn’t want to go to Dol Guldur and kick Nazgul butt!?

/ramble off.

Raid distractions

Ok, I admit I’m not always in a great mood on raid night, especially through the frustrations of multiple wipes I can’t do much about.

But to tell me that Abba is better than The Smiths during a raid. Bad call, people!

ps. Get well soon Morrissey!

Does everyone hate DKP?

Since when did DKP become a polarising factor? I quite like it, and I’ve seen a few different versions. Each DKP system  can be tweaked for a specific raiding group/guild, it’s up to you how you award points and how to spend them. But it seems people either love it, or despise the very concept.

Dragon Kill Points. Something we’ve all become aware of since the old Everquest days. Who knew they’d become so fixed in the MMO world?

In the days of massive raid numbers in Dark Age of Camelot we had a pretty simple system going. Turn up for a Sidi raid, get 10 points. Spend points each week bartering for items that dropped at the guildhouse of the guild running said raids. Either save up points for armour or weapons (at say 40 or 50 points per piece), or spend 10 points on the cheaper loot, such as respec stones. Perhaps from this I started with a good opinion of DKP.

What makes it less fair?

1. Bind on Acquire loot that requires not just your presence, but the presence of the character you want to have the item in the raid on the night/day it drops.

2. Non-fixed groups in the days when raid size is mandated by the game. So if you’re not lucky enough to be picked for the raid, but you signed up for it, is that rewarded or not, and at what level?

There’s probably a thousand other little nuances of unfairness… being docked points for turning up a little late through no fault of your own, or for mucking about during the raid. As I said at the start, each DKP system can be tweaked to be that little bit different, depending on game and group.

If I was doing a LotRO Moria one, I’d probably award points for helping people get radiance gear, but that already gives benefit to those who can play more often and have the time, or those with especially useful classes. All things you don’t and shouldn’t think about when picking a character class you love and want to spend time with.

Our kin in LotRO doesn’t use DKP. It uses something called the Suicide Kings method. I hate the name. It was, of course, devised for World of Warcraft and is supposed to suit casual raiding where loot isn’t the primary concern. We have separate SK lists for barter coins and set gear loot. But anything that isn’t covered, such as jewellery ends up being rolled for because everyone knows that if you choose not to ‘suicide’ over it, it goes to a roll. It’s not the most satisfactory system, and I have a few problems with it. But it’s hard to think up a DKP system for our kin that would work.

Why? Because we’re a supposedly casual kin (and in many ways we are casual), but we also have a core of raiders, such as myself, who have both the time and the desire to hit raids hard. Currently our pool of raiding-geared characters means we have quite a rotation system set up, and we need a specific member of the kin to decide who goes and on what night. It’s not ideal, but it lets the widest pool of people participate in the raid. Of course, it also means some of the more focussed raiders have to sit out, and don’t really get to choose what nights they sit out on.

And, at some stage, we’ll have enough geared up people to run the raid twice, but who wants to go on the discovery (ie. full of wipes) raid, when you can go with the established group. It’s a problem that isn’t going away. In trying to please everyone on both sides of the casual/more hardcore divide, we’re left with a compromise raid. It’s working, but it’s definitely more of a slog.

Lootwise, I generally don’t care too much about loot. But it always makes me sit back and wonder what the truly fair way to do it is. It isn’t fair to be told you can’t go even if you have the time and commitment to. But then it also isn’t fair that I ended up with a class that gets to go every time I want, more or less, purely because Captains are seen as raid-desirable and very few people in our kin have managed to get one to 60 and geared them up. While recognising it’s not fair, I also like it, from my perspective. I don’t get time to forget the fights, I see it work with different sets of people, and of course, I keep my place on the SK list. 

I can sometimes show my hardcore colours. I’d like a loot system that rewarded punctuality, helping others, sitting out if you have to, participating, coming with a full set of potions, tokens, and having traited appropriately. Less so the first kills, because it’s no longer in anyone’s power to decide if they get to go on the night we kill something. Multiple wipes would be nice to reward, as they cost a fair bit in LotRO – I’d rather reward those than the first kills, I think. But, I’d also like the full Captain set, and that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. Shame, it has a nice bonus – which not all the sets do. 

I wish I had the time and energy to work up a DKP system I felt would work for our kin. But truthfully, many people don’t see any problem with SK. They raid when they can, and get gear in some kind of rotation made fairer by the intervention of the raid leader.  And while that’s the case, there’s no real push to change things.

It’s a bit of a ramble. But I mainly wanted to spew my thoughts out to see if anyone out there had any kind of solution to a raid looting system for a casual-ish raid with rotating members, I don’t really think there’s one out there. But it’s been a while since we went and looked, and I want to be fully prepared to suggest something better for the Mirkwood raids on Dol Guldur, if possible.

ps,. this post is made more awkward by the fact I know some of my kinmates read this blog. Don’t take any offence anyone, and don’t read into this anything other than what it is, a consideration of how much I dislike SK for our current loot distribution system. With the new, revamped NtC blog, I’m spending very little time considering other people’s opinions and this is just me, on the moment I write the ramble! Liable to change my mind in 5 minutes, but unprepared to change what I write to save any hurt feelings.