Hope for the soloer?

[El Gallo]

The short answer is that if you want to play a class based game and want to play with your 7 real life friends without needing to rely on other competent people in a guild or random pick-up fucktards, you should probably not have 6 of the 7 friends play the same class.  Especially a specialist class.

Even a lower quantity requirement for a raid is still a raid and leaves me out.  That requires me to still join an uber guild because 20 active members in a guild at one time is uber to me.  Most of the time I'm in guilds that might have 6-10 people online at one time.  Call for a group?  2 people might speak up.

If I have to join an uber group, they will expect me to make raids constantly and if I don't I'll be penalized or just plain kicked out.  I can't stand that mentality and just plain can't abide by it.  I do not have the lifestyle that affords me the structured time it takes for that kind of committment.

There are an *ENORMOUS* number of guilds of almost every imaginable playstyle.  You act as if the only choices are the tiny guild with 2 people online who want to to instances and uberguilds that run your life with military precision.  The overwhelming majority of guilds are neither of these things.  There are plenty of guilds with 20 people online that just want to fuck around and do instances or pvp for a couple hours and go to bed.  I'd venture to say that the overwhelming majority of guilds are like that.  Or you could ally with another tiny guild or two and get some regular instance groups going.  There are also a shitload of "casual raid" guilds, who raid MC maybe once a week.  (Hell, the uberest of the WoW uber often only log in for 10 hours or fewer a week, because that's all the raid content the game has -- its a far cry from Everquest's "we'll need you to raid 5 hours a night 6 days a week" game.)

Now, I may be misunderstanding you.  If you are already geared up from DM/UBRS/Strat/Scholo then it will probably be  awhile before Blizzard gets off their asses and makes some more 1 group dungeons.  

[Pococurante]

CoH took a half-step towards long missions, allowing people to logout and resume later on.  Where I think they could have done more is not requiring the exact same group members.  Instead break the instance into sub-zones, carry sub-mission flags on each character, and let folks pickup where they left off.

Why devs force casuals to leave before interest is naturally used up I'll never understand.  Particularly with CoH I really liked playing with new skill tree combinations.  I like that with WoW to some degree but since all quests are always available to all players at all times... well that takes a lot of the fun out of leveling a new character.

[Calantus]

I remember my first time in DM West. It took about 3 arcane elementals and a death before I realised they had an AoE mana burn when they died and so I should run away when they are about to die. Our mage had a lot of fun discovering the tornado-looking elementals are immune to arcane explosion. We also had fun with the invis ghosts and the silence ghosts. Immol'thor nearly wiped us before I got out my /target eye macro (why is it that DM North eyes are "wandering eye..."? why make me change my macro for north? Why?) and assigned myself to eye-killing duty. The prince nearly wiped us before our tank decided to back up against a wall so the knockback wouldn't own his aggro so bad. It did not take 5 hours. I did not have to listen to anybody bitch about inane crap. Why? Because I rolled with guildies. And it wasn't because I was forced to, it was because 5 of us actually wanted to do DM West because we had never done it before and we wanted to do it with people who were both competant and fun to instance with.


Now... one more point of contention, and if you can't grasp it now I give up trying. "Knowing your shit" does not in any way refer to "knowing the instance". "Knowing your shit" is akin to saying "competent", as in knowing how to play in a group, knowing how to play your class, and overall bringing something significant to the group in terms of skill. You can go into an instance not knowing what the hell you should be doing in it and still "know your shit".

[Fabricated]

Am I the only person who thinks that it's fucked up that there are instances that are universally considered "unfun"?

Isn't that a problem? I've enjoyed pretty much all of the instances I've tried so far (admittedly I haven't done any of the ubercatass raid instances), even Gnomeregan, despite it being utterly jampacked with mobs and having a clusterfuck of a layout.

[Calantus]

To be fair LBRS isn't so bad once you know its quirks, it's mostly just my first few experiences that make me hate it. It's pretty easy to mess up pulls, get adds, or lose runners if not everyone is on the ball, and of course the buggy room of doom doesn't help things. I think the only genuinely bad instance is scholomance due to having 3 incredibly annoying mobs and some really obnoxious  encounters (how about an endboss boss who's ability can screw you out of his loot if your group isn't careful?).

[Hoax]

Despite my disdain for anyone who talks about PvE skill I have to side with Calantus on this one.  You really only have two options, you either dont raid or you do.  If you are going to do raids you have two options you join a guild or you act like a stubborn moron.

Even small guilds should be fine, you just need to adjust your playstyle as you go.  If you actually use your buddylist and fill it with people you randomly grouped with during your lvl'ing who aren't morons you can msg them and see if anyone from their guild is online and wants to do instanceX to fill the holes created by your "casual" guild.

The fact is though that level/item based games with raid encounters providing the best lewts always result in a bunch of cock-gobbling political bullshit.  If you want to get the most out of it, which does indeed include not having to deal with random morons, bad planning, bad group structure, poor execution and making raids slow and inefficient (because face it your there for the lewt not the joy of the encounter) you do indeed need to join a raiding guild.  If you dont your shooting yourself in the foot and you have nobody to blame but yourself.

I dont understand why you dont just farm contrib pts and get the pvp gear, the stats are pretty nice from what I've looked at.

[Dren]

Story of how I got to where I am:

Solo'ed to about 12
Grouped with RL friends to high 40's
Joined an Uber guild (something like 30+ 60lvl peeps.)
Continued to group with friends to 60 because the 60 group's wanted nothing to do with us.
Hit 60, did some raiding, was expected to do more raiding, hated raiding, quit guild.

I'm now getting ready to do the PvP thing and see how far that gets me.  The battlegrounds go in today so I'll have some fun learning that for awhile anyway.  I'm also training up several alts to try things from several different angles.

I'll still hold a hope in my heart that more solo and small group content for the high end game will be patched in eventually.  At some point I'm thinking there will be a high population of solo 60's wanting more from the game.  I'm one of them and I'm at that point already.

It's all good.

[AcidCat]

The knowledge of what the endgame entails has really sapped my motivation in continuing my main character, a 55 Druid. Though I like the class, I just don't see anything in his future that really interests me. So I've been playing alts, have a 32 Warrior and a 20 Priest, so I'm still getting enjoyment out of the game, but I've accepted that the endgame just isn't my style, I'll enjoy my alts while I can before I totally lose interest in the game.

[Rasix]

The new pvp is pretty damn fun so far.  Of course, it's new and therefore EXTRA SHINEY. That's a decent reason to have a 60 to toy around with.  Go in, group with people whether it's CTF or regular Alterac.  Requires no guild affiliation or desire to catass your way to victory.   

Does require interaction with other people though, unless you're just a rogue and you want to not lend anything to the effort and just gank away.

[Dren]

Yeah, from the sound of things the new battlegrounds might be the solo'ers dream.  Yes, you have to group up to get anything accomplished, but everyone pretty much goes in solo and then groups up since that is the fastest way through the queue.  That puts everything on even ground.  Being in an uber guild doesn't get you any perks on the BG.

However, I goofed around trying to get into the BG's last night for 2 hours and never got in.  2 hours is my max time online during the week and during the summer it is my max for the weekend too.  I hope they start putting in more instances, or I'll never have a chance to enjoy BG's at all.

Yes, I'm Alliance.  No, I'm not going to level up a Horde to 60 just to play BG.

I'm just camping my 60 at the BG doorstep in Ashenvale (heard people get in there quicker....was like 8 instances going last night.)  I'll just keep knocking on the door until they let me in I guess.  I just wish there was a way to go level my alts while waiting too.  :-D

[Ironwood]

I hope they start putting in more instances, or I'll never have a chance to enjoy BG's at all.

Yes, I'm Alliance.  No, I'm not going to level up a Horde to 60 just to play BG.

More instances would not help.  Your problem relates to the balance of H/A on the server.  And, you know, as long as everyone says 'I'm not going to change sides just to play' then the problem isn't going to magically go away...

[Dren]

True about more instances not being the solution.  I wasn't thinking clearly.

However, not changing sides is just a reality.  I might start playing a Horde character to see the "other side" of the game, but I didn't get my Paladin to level 60 until about 2 weeks ago and I started at launch.  I'm really not going to wait another couple months to get into the goodies.  I'll lose interest well before that.

I also realize the problem won't go away on its own.  Hopefully the devs are paying enough attention to realize this too.  There are several good ideas on how to get more PvP conflicts going by allowing Alliance to attack Alliance.

My favorite idea is to let the Argent Dawn be it's own faction with both Horde and Alliance fighting everyone else.  That would certainly help balance things out, but they'd have to put in new instance points just for them since they be constantly attacked outside the gate by either side.

Not an easy solution...

[Dren]

My comment above aside:

I did get into an instance last night after waiting only 30 seconds.  I got into Gulch and found it to be pretty fun.  We lost 3 to 0, but I didn't expect much since this was my first shot at PvP let alone a BG instance.

It was painfully obvious that the Horde side was all from one guild and were basically playing instance after instance since there were way more Alliance waiting for sessions than Horde.  That allows the Horde to constantly practice and get really really good at killing, capturing flags, etc.

It gave me something to do, however, and I got 3 honorable kills (more than my "team mates" if that tells you something about the general make up of Alliance BG groups.)  I'm camped out at the entrance so I can either try to get into BG's or work on my alts.  That will keep me satisfied for awhile.

[Ironwood]

Heh.  The horde might seem that way, since they are usually better at teamwork.  We've been hammered flat and sharp by the constant Alliance Zerging.  It's being reported all over how coordinated the horde are acting.

3 kills ?  Eh ?  These things are bringing in over 200+ kills per hour for me, simply because of the 'shared kills' thingy that's going on.

Also, Alliance v Alliance ?  Never gonna happen.

[Dren]

You get 300 for Gulch?  The instance only took like 15 minutes for the other side to get their 3 flags.

Yes, we sucked that badly.

Oh, I'm on a PvE server so the Horde on Whisperwind are not as tempered steel as you might think since all PvP is consentual.  They only get tempered if they feel like getting tempered.

[Ironwood]

You get 300 for Gulch?  The instance only took like 15 minutes for the other side to get their 3 flags.

Yes, we sucked that badly.

Oh, I'm on a PvE server so the Horde on Whisperwind are not as tempered steel as you might think since all PvP is consentual.  They only get tempered if they feel like getting tempered.

*Sigh*.  Nah, haven't played Gulch yet.

I'm on a PvE server and ours are plenty tempered - the ones who PvP'd did so because they wanted to and got damn good because they had to.  I have never understood why people would put themselves on a PvP server anyway.  You're just restricting your own choices.


Edited to Add :  I always wanted to ask;  are you guys cows insane ?  On my ER server, any of the tauren who PvP are total nutjobs that are better stone killers than 57.  Really, really organised and bad ass.  It's strange.

[Calantus]

I have never understood why people would put themselves on a PvP server anyway.  You're just restricting your own choices.

You do so because it restricts other people's choices. ;)

Also, you are more likely to have good PVP competition on a PVP server as PVPers are more likely to join them.

[Jayce]

There are some who like the danger of a PvP server.  I'm one of them.  I played Darktide in AC1 too, and while I was never a good PvPer in UO, I enjoyed the adrenaline of seeing a redname appear on the screen back when I played pre-Trammel.