Star Wars Galaxies and other alternatives to life

[perth]

And honey, "David Bowie doing Andy Warhol" just doesn't sound right.

[kerosene]

I'll have you know, perth, that the transition from "playing SWG, the game" to "Living SWG, the life" happens somewhere around 5:18 am, when Naboo is just getting dark again. So, really, by the time I do tire of the game, I am still 1 hour and 18 minutes away from complete assimilation.

[Chewbaccus]

Originally posted by case
I'll have you know, perth, that the transition from "playing SWG, the game" to "Living SWG, the life" happens somewhere around 5:18 am, when Naboo is just getting dark again. So, really, by the time I do tire of the game, I am still 1 hour and 18 minutes away from complete assimilation.

See, THIS is why I don't pick up SWG. I would be sitting in my dorm room day in, day out, abandoning any pretense of good hygeine as I took in my nourishment intravenously. Grades would crash, eventually the RAs would come and try to haul me out of the room, and I would be forced to protect my life inside the PC with any and all available force.

[FileNotFound]

EQ is much easier to get absorbed in because there are so many "clear" goals and communities that get respect for being 'uber'.

I know I was crazed about getting the gear in EQ and being in a respectable guild. In fact I sent an email to the guild leader when I was level 20 asking the guild leader to let me in if I get to 55 in 30 days. I did. I got in the guild - with a LOT of friction from the other lvl 60 'uber' members who saw me as a half naked lvl 55 newbie. The guld master took a lot of flak to get me in, he even lied about me having had an uber char on a different server...all because he saw how insane I was.

So yeah that was the end of RL for about a year and a half for my Rogue. Posts like this make me miss my guild. Eventhough it's not the same anymore, some of my best EQ friends quit when I did. As far as I know 7 people left EQ partialy because I did. I'm rambling. I'll shut up.

By the way, the best way to play MMORPGs is with Roger Wilco, it allows you to just speak and have others hear it. We ran raids like that and it was awesome. Just made it easier to give and recieve orders. (Thing about a raid is that it's split up into atleast 5 groups, healers, tanks, casters, melee dmg(monks, rogues), pullers. Each group should have a leader who issues orders and each leader should recieve orders from the raid leader. EQ has more strategy to it than any other game I ever played.)

By the way...I never neglected my hygene, just my haircut and shaving...

[kerosene]

File: It sounds like EQ was a huge part of your life for a while. What was your motivation for joining the guild? In EQ, what purposes do guilds serve?

[FileNotFound]

Originally posted by case
File: It sounds like EQ was a huge part of your life for a while. What was your motivation for joining the guild? In EQ, what purposes do guilds serve?

EQ is heavily level based. There are many different play styles in EQ but for me 1-55 is just "learning levels". As in just a time sink to teach you to play the game.

There are virtualy no benifits of a guild during low levels of the game.

Yet at 55 you will suddenly find that the gear you want/need to progress comes from powerful monsters which you cannot kill alone or even with a full group (unless it's an uber group).

In other words, in EQ you can't become strong all by yourself. You need friends, lots of them. Thats where guilds come in. Guilds are there to help you get the most out of the game.

Without a guild you cannot advance past the 'raid level' encounters. I'd say that a good 1/3 of the game is designed just for guilds.

The purpose behind 'most' guild in EQ is to advance as a guild, which means equip the members, help them with advancment quests and conquer new encounters. There are also some 'newbie' guilds and 'roleplaying' guilds, those tend to be refred to as 'teaparty' guilds as they spend more time chatting/fooling around than actualy fighting. To each his own...

Quite frankly my only goal in EQ was to get to level 65, have over 4000 hitpoints (as a rogue) and overall be uber. I knew that I needed a guild to do this...so thats why I wanted to join.

Later I managed to get 3 of my friends into the guild after I joined and after awhile found myself feeling very much a part of the 'family'. I was close to the guild leadership, I had a ton of influence in the guild despite how new I was and I was having fun.

The thing about EQ guilds is that we're always involved in some huge fight where you depend on every single member to know what they're doing and to do it well. The game is very challanging and there is a certain sense of achievment and respect for your fellow guild members when you manage to survive a raid and get some items for the guild. (A raid kill generaly drops 5-6 items which and 'bought' by the members for points. You get points for attending raids etc)

The catch with EQ is that you need at least 4 hours to get anything done. Want to just xp? Well it'll take you 1 hour to get a group and set up, and xping for anything less than 3 hours is worthless. Want to raid? 20 minutes travel. 20 minutes prebuff. 20 minutes plan 30 minute execution 20 minutes looting. Thats for an 'avg' raid. Many raids traveling to the location takes hours as there are many fights along the way and some encounters require you to fight wave after wave after wave before the boss appears. (Nothing is as tough as this, your buffs expire, your clerics run out of mana, people just get tired...)

Furthermore, in order for a guild to advance, all members must advance. It does a guild no good when half of it is equiped for teir 3 encounters while half is barley ready for teir 1. In order to keep the guild in check usualy as much as 80% of all raids is mandatory missing an advancment encounter 3 times in a row often gets people kicked out of guilds, failing to level up sufficiently or aquire single persone quest items will also get people booted.

I quit EQ because I needed more time for work, college and my gf so I knew that I'd not be able to put in the typical 6-8 hours a day and the 18 hour weekend play schedule that I used to have.

It's also true that as you reach your desired level of 'uberness' you will spend a lot less time in EQ as you will only need to raid, all need to xp will be gone. (Most 3+ month Afterlife members spend 1/3rd the time in EQ that they spent previously)

(BTW the funniest thing in EQ that I ever saw was a 64 year old man who had several 'uber' chars and played EQ about 16 hours on any given day. He said it was the best thing that happened to him as he was making enough money selling EQ gear in Player Auctions to pay for all his RL needs and save up enough to send his 3 grand kids through college)

[OnyxCougar]

I'm a Dark Age of Camelot player.

For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's like EQ, only different. I've been playing for over a year now, and I've gotten about 6 people into the game. I play in all the realms and on 5 different servers. Finally I decided to settle down and create my own guild, and we have 15 members with 25 toons as of last night. I ran the stats for us last night and we're 63rd of 220 in members, 54'th in realm point earners for the guild and 46th in realm point earners per person. (7 of us are in BG3 right now, kickin middie's and hibbie's ASSES.) Once we cap out of the BG, we're gonna farm like crazy and get our crafters up to about 900 then when we hit 40 we're all going over to ToA and get our Master Levels.

(And I know this is greek to most, but it just goes to illustrate how deep I am into it... the Cellar and DAoC. Addictions.)