Where a Guild Can Be a Guild!

6 months ago, I attended the most recent SOE Fan Faire in Las Vegas. One of the most exciting things to come out of that event was news of Guild Halls - REAL guild housing.

At the time of the announcement, we were told that Guild Halls were 9-12 months out from being released, because work on them had JUST begun.

That means we're 3-6 months out from actually seeing them in all their splendor. With fingers crossed on the nearer end of that range, I think it's time to really ponder what Guild Halls should be and do, as well as what they shouldn't.

I think one of the most important questions to decide is: WHO gets to build a Guild Hall? It seems to me that the answer certainly shouldn't be "everybody." In this day and age, after the nerf on Status Item turn-ins and the subsequent de-valuing of the lower-tier trinkets, the early levels of a fledgling guild are easier than ever. I expect if I started a new guild today, I could reach level 10 in under 1 platinum, while saving all my precious Heritage Quests for later levels.

The SOE Dev Team needs to not only come up with a huge, enticing list of features to be offered with Guild Halls, but they also need to space the perks out from minimum-purchase level through GL80. Because of this, I think a fair minimum level for Guild Halls would be GL30. Prior and up to GL30, other housing options become available, so it would seem natural for GL30 to be the jumping-off point for the most basic of Guild Halls.

Furthermore, let's talk about guild SIZE in relation to housing. I'm hardly one to take any sort of elitist stance regarding the breadth of guild rosters; if a guild of 6 is tight-knit enough to maximize their members' enjoyment of Norrath, I say kudos to them! What has always bothered me about the guild system in EQ2, however, is the lack of cleanup. Guilds of less than 6 members not only exist, but are actually quite common. All-too-often have I seen someone in Qeynos Harbor or East Freeport shouting out requests (sometimes even with promises of payment) to have people help him form his own, personal guild, with no intention of keeping the other 5 founders on the roster.

I can understand SOE being hesitant to delete undersized guilds due to possible customer service issues regarding loss of status contributions and guild banks. I don't totally agree (deletion after X days/months under size?), but I do understand.

Guild Halls are to be extra-special, though, and I've already seen some on the official forums chatting about how they need to solo their me-only guild up some more levels to make sure they have access to good perks. That's just really really really annoying. Really. If your roster can't keep the intended minimum of 6 accounts (maybe even active accounts?), then you shouldn't have access to Guild Halls. If your roster falls below that minimum at a later point, you should temporarily lose access to your Hall. I really can't fathom the idea of Qeynos or Freeport allowing single citizens to build personal fortresses. Really.

Ok I've said my peace about guild sizes. Let's move on to what key features the Guild Halls should offer.

Here's the thing...

SOE doesn't want the major cities to become "ghost towns." SOE wants the cities to be vibrant centers of commerce and socialization.

The problem is that they aren't this NOW, haven't been for ...ever, and probably never will be.

Does anyone consider "clusters of people standing at broker NPCs" to be either a center of commerce OR social? I don't. The only common sources of player interaction in any of the city zones are either special holiday events or asking for teleports. As it stands, if someone is moving around a city being non-AFK, they're probably A) On their way to their house, B) Tradeskilling, C) Turning in collections, D) Grabbing writs, E) Shopping at the broker or F) On their way out of the city.

None of those are social activities. None.

The social aspect of tradeskilling that came in with the epics has been best served in non-aligned zones like Teren's Grasp. Since Kunark, even writs become a non-City activity for the large, high-level player base, because they can be grabbed at Kylong Plains docks.

The only thing lost by giving the Guild Halls city-like amenities is the APPEARANCE that the cities of Norrath aren't ghost-towns. That may be important for new players, but there'll always be SOME people in the cities. If you want to make the cities seem more social from a newbie perspective, start by remaking them into Kunarkian super-zones. That way newbies can easily chat with each other via ooc and shout, as well as have a chance(!) to interact with non-newbies that happen to be in the cities for various business purposes.

Hm. Little tangent there. Back to the point, what should Guild Houses offer?

• Broker. This is one of the key things missing from houses now, which in turn have prevented me (and others) from being able to make my own guild housing. People don't come to guild houses if they can't take care of their most important business items there.
• Banker. See Broker.
• Access to House Vault. This CAN be done in makeshift guild housing now via the Friend access level, but it's a bear to manage due to the lack of a guildwide setting.
• Tradeskill Fuel Vendor. This also should provide a good place to sell junk loot. Tradeskill trainers should remain city-bound.
• Bind point. Binding to guild houses should be done via a separate skill or item than the Call Of <> skills. You do still want people going to the cities sometimes, after all, but you also want Guild Halls to provide a real social outlet. If you want to make it more interesting, make Guild Hall Recall Shards into a craftable item, where the recipe itself is a available on the Guild Hall Fuel Vendor (above), and the main ingredient for the Shard is a no-zone item pulled from a Guild Hall purchased fixture. Make the Shard poof if you deguild.
• Harbormaster/Boats. At the Fan Faire, it was stated that Guild Halls would likely reside on the shores of Antonica and Freeport, near the cities proper (in the case of Freeport, this is the only option). There should be some backyard area of the halls, for outdoorsy decorating, and with that it would also be nice to have a personal guild dock. For a price, of course, and probably a more expensive price than what's available in the cities (volume pricing), there should be a set of dock bells to locations around Norrath. Perhaps high level guilds could also purchase personal boats to Faydwer and Kunark, which would be a really nice touch (and a great money sink!)
• Artisan involvement in customizing. I admit bias a Carpenter, but frankly I don't think I'd want the job of doing all or even half or a third of building and decorating a full Guild Hall. Carpenters should certainly be involved (a project leader?), but the recent crafting epic quests and resultant Artisan Raids really have me salivating. Divide portions of Guild Hall construction amongst the 3 crafting classes (brainstorming): Outfitters can plan the aesthetics of room layouts and structure, and Craftsmen can handle the masonry. Scholars can work on anything mystical in nature such as bind points and portals, and maybe social aspects like the hiring of NPC employees.
• Purchase pooling. More for Status Points than money, but useful for both, Guild Halls need an expanded version of the escrow accounts currently available for individual housing. Members should be able to contribute their currently-underused status points to the Guild Hall for both rent and item/perk purchase, as needed.

Guild Level should influence purchase entry-points of these various features, as well as maximum Guild Hall size and the unlocking of heraldry-like visual customizations.

No Guild Hall should include trainers of any sort, in my opinion, writ-givers, collectors, or key world objects like Druid Rings. Teleports to new areas should be handled with care, lest we wind up with an EQ1 Plane of Knowledge style of transport that sucks all purpose of exploration out of the world.

Ok, that's it for now. If I think of anything else later, I'll be sure to add on!

We're only going to score 17 points?

There's a great many reasons I haven't had time to write in nearly two months. The distractions of this year's NFL awfulness was only a minor part of that, but a part nonetheless. Football isn't a game I play, but it's a game I watch as much as possible!

For my part, my team is the Philadelphia Eagles, and I actually do owe that to being a gamer. I grew up in Wisconsin but HATE HATE HATE the Green Bay Packers (hate), so I didn't watch much football. Playing Sega Genesis at my friend's house, however, I fell in (guy-)love with one Mr. Randall Cunningham while using his digial representation in the Madden Football '93 video game. I've been an avid football watcher and Eagles fan ever since.

This season kinda sucked for us Eagles fans. Last season was full of drama, but it was drama that led to a playoff berth. This season...not so much. The only drama this year was the Patriots and their trek for "perfection."

A lot has been made of the cheating controversy from early this season, even though, as many have pointed out, what was done was only barely breaking rules compared to what other (all?) teams videotape from different locales. HOWEVER - cheating is still cheating, and the murmurs around the league are that this piddly crap Bill Belichick got caught for is only a scratch on the surface. I, for one, totally believe that. When you do "whatever it takes" to get another tick in the win column, there's probably a whole helluva lot you aren't getting caught at.

For the last three weeks (leading up to the Green Bay game - did I mention I hate the Packers?), I've been rooting for the Giants. Sometime within the next week or two, this will wear off and I will go back to hating them in favor of my division-rival Eagles, but for now....well, for now, life is pretty sweet.

That game last night was AMAZING. Mouth-breathing man-child Eli Manning put together just enough brilliant plays (most notably THIS ONE) to outscore the Patriots, but the game MVP really should have been a shared award to the Giants' defensive line. I've never seen Tom Brady get hit so much, and it was beautiful!!!

Why would I take such delight in Brady's downfall? I really didn't care much about Brady before this game. At worst, throughout most of the season I had a sneaking suspicion that most of his success was due to his offensive line, and that he wouldn't be such a hotshot under pressure. That proved correct once the Eagles' own Jim Johnson showed the whole NFL the way with his awesome blitzing schemes. Still, my dislike of the Patriots was all about Belichick...until...

THIS HAPPENED. When asked his prediction for the game, Plaxico Burress responded, "23-17." Tom Brady hears this and is shocked and offended. "We're only going to score 17 points?" a surprised Brady said Wednesday. "OK. Is Plax playing defense? I wish he had said 45-42 and gave us a little credit for scoring more points."

That's enough for me - he needed to go down. I'm happy to find that the forces of Karma agreed with me. And wowie-wow-wow, down he went.

As for other Patriots...

Some of them I feel at least a little bad for. They played hard all season, and lost the big game. I'm sure most of them are perfectly decent people undeserving of my scorn.

Some of them already won 1 to 3 Superbowls in recent seasons, so I hardly care if a non-Eagles team wins repeated championships.

But I'd like to call out a couple special friends:

1) Randy Moss. With the Vikings my 2nd-favorite team, I used to cheer for you. A lot. Then you went to Oakland and blah blah whatever. But that's actually the problem, isn't it? No matter what else went on during your time there, commentators all over the place had you figured for a has-been. You stopped caring - you stopped trying. We all thought you had lost your spark that made you a great receiver. Suddenly you show up in New England and you have all your speed and skill back that you were missing the last couple years. Randy Moss, you give up when things aren't going your way. You quit on your old team. You deserve no titles; no rings.

2) Junior Seau. You never won the big game in your long career, and despite have received all sorts of other fame and accolades, you just couldn't let it go. You "retired" from football, only to hop right back in when a seeming sure-thing offered you a chance. Sorry if it sounds cruel, but to me that's not deserving of fame. Not that you can't still throw a good tackle, but hopping onto the bandwagon when you were otherwise ready to retire is kinda pathetic.

That's about it, really. All the rest of my hate is for Big Billy Belichick. I was actually afraid for Tom Coughlin for a few minutes there. When Belichick stormed across the field to meet him, I was sure that he had a shiv tucked away in the front pocket of his hoodie and was about to stick Coughlin like a pig. I guess he figured that was a bad idea with the cameras watching. I pity whomever was the first person or otherwise punchable object he saw when he got into the locker room.

What a night. A "perfect" season turns into meaningless overhype in the last two minutes of one of the most intense football games I've ever watched. Of course, a lot of that intensity was due to the overhype, but what I feel is important is that the overhyped team lost, and their rat-bastard coach finally got the comeuppance he deserved. I do love me some justice.

Fantasy - The Only Frontier?

Over on Moorgard's blog, he wrote a short piece in response to an initial question here. Why are most MMORPGs based in the Fantasy genre?

I don't want to sound jaded or take anything away from the creativity of world designers, but I think Fantasy is the predominant MMORPG genre for a very simple reason: It's EASY.

Let's say for a moment that we decided to make an MMORPG out of a modern-day realistic genre. What types of characters can we offer a player? We have combat, stealth, charisma, and intelligence-based skills in our real world.

Combat in a modern setting is fairly similar to any other genre, even if the weapons aren't always the same. Guns would probably be the weapons of choice for most "adventurers" based on a combination of range and lethality, but more archaic modes of fighting still exist and can be used and identified with.

Stealth wouldn't change too much. Technology can make stealth less viable, but so can magic "detection" spells, racial vision traits, and the like.

Charisma in a realistic world could mean anything from a supermodel using looks to influence NPCs to a diplomat or clergyman invoking a silver tongue. This can all be viable if developers put some effort into it (one of EverQuest 2's flaws, in my opinion, is the utter lack of Charisma. Diplomacy is one of the few things Vanguard got right!)

Intelligence offers a lot of possibilities for careers to roleplay, but not as many in-the-moment systemic options. If a fighter gets shot, a realistic medic can't charge into the middle of a firefight and fix up the wound on an active combatant. A chemist could whip up any number of concoctions to solve a variety of problems, but chemistry takes time and often non-portable equipment. Same goes for, say, Engineers.

The suspension of disbelief inherent in a Fantasy genre where we're told "magic exists" makes it all so much easier. Even when it's not something a PC himself can do, you can always end a plot-line in a manner such as, "With Blud'Spirt the Demon Lord out of the way, Sparklefart the Sage was freed and cast his Spell of Temporal Bridge-Shifting, thus instantly summoning the Ancient Span of Prince Fulbar out of the past, which in turn enabled the Swamp Elf army to cross the Chasm of Shadowy Rainbows."

Drawing up blueprints, hiring a team of contractors, and overseeing the erection of a large bridge just doesn't "pop" in the same way.

Now of course, I'm just talking about a modern, realistic genre here. SOE's upcoming The Agency looks to be set in a semi-realistic environment, but it's a hybrid RPG/Shooter. That's a big difference from a straight-up RPG.

I have played tabletop RPGs in my day that were "realistic" in their genre and rules. They never quite stuck with me, and based on the big-name tabletop games I can think of off of the top of my head, the less-fantastical RPGs never did too well with anyone else, either.

If I'm going to play an RPG, would I really want to play a technical trainer whose height of adventure is braving the wilds of Southern California traffic every day? That's not an RPG - that's a Sim. MMOSIM was tried once, and it didn't work too well.

What if I played an RPG where I was a soldier in Vietnam? There's plenty of grim and grisly plot to keep things interesting, but come on, I learned about that stuff in school. Gaming isn't homework!

We don't play RPGs to do "normal" stuff. We play RPGs to have experiences well beyond the bounds of what could be accomplished in normal life. As such, ANY successful MMORPG that emerges on the market is going to be "fantastic" in nature.

Look at the genres we have seen thusfar. Swords & sorcery "fantasy," science fiction, and superhero. Those are the big MMORPG players. Are any of them REALLY different?
Sci-fi like Star Wars or Star Trek hide behind technobabble to recreate the same basic things that magic objects accomplish in a Fantasy world.

Superhero powers are almost identical to magic in effect, but with different backstories.
Alien races and/or mutants in either of the above are little different than the humanoid races and horrible monsters that we have in an EverQuest.

ANY game (all MMORPGs that I know of) where you can die and re-spawn is purely fantasy. Even sci-fi cloning doesn't make sense if you have retention from after the time you dropped off your DNA.

So fine, basically all MMORPGs can be boiled down to "Fantasy" if we argue things a certain way. But that's not what the original question was. Clearly, the intent of the original question was regarding Swords & Sorcery Fantasy as opposed to other storytelling milieus.

I'm going to stick with my "it's easy" explanation:

• Origins - Earth's history contains hundreds of creation myths that already have a D&D feel to them (or, more to the point, D&D borrows from ancient creation myths). Making a new story about how a group of gods created the races as their children yadda yadda isn't really new at all. That doesn't make it uninteresting, but it does make it easier than coming up with something totally original.
  
• Magic vs. Technobabble - People expect gadgets to come with some means of explaining how they work. Magic just IS. We wiggle our fingers a certain way and fire shoots from our fingertips. Sometimes there's code words involved, or even reagents, but apart from potion recipes, magic rarely has to explain that Part A was glued to Part B and infused with Radioactive Substance Q to produce Effect XX. Magic tends to measure will or intent in ways technology can't.
  
• MUDcestors - The graphical MMORPGs of today were born from the text MUDs of yesterday. The text MUDs were designed by (heroic) nerds who wanted to bring their tabletop D&D games to life. D&D was born from the legacy of Tolkien.

What else needs to be said? RPGs have evolved to offer a wide variety of choices over the years, but High Fantasy is where it started. It's been bred into us. We gamers know and comprehend the ins-and-outs of wizards and warriors, mazes and monsters, and all-powerful rings better than anything else.

Game designers are artists. They want to take the visions in their heads and bring them to spectacular life. Most of those visions, thanks to how we grew up, are of talismans and dragons. If that's your passion, then that's the sort of game you'll be best at making.

From a business standpoint, games also need money. EverQuest was huge while Earth & Beyond sucked the pipe. Tell a publisher or venture capitalist that you're going to improve upon the EverQuest formula and out comes the blank check! Now World of Warcraft has the throne, and companies want a piece of THAT fantasy pie instead.

So far, games like City of Heroes and EVE Online haven't been able to achieve a high enough profit margin to spawn many competitors. After debacles like Auto Assault, really unique MMOs are going to be hard to secure funding for. That's what has led us to the market we have today, and I don't think it's going to change significantly in the near future.

...for the record, I'm not necessarily happy about that. I love high fantasy, but I do want to see new things as well!!

Goodbye, Sir!

So....

...about 3 weeks ago, EQ2Flames' administrator "LFG" broke a story on his website that Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman is leaving Sony Online Entertainment and EverQuest 2.

I didn't really know what to think. On one hand, the gaming world eats itself all the time. People get poached from one team to the next, and anyone that studies the MMO market further than the polyps up WoW's arse knows that EQ2 is a really well-put-together game. I expect that if we knew real numbers (i.e. not this guy), we'd find EQ2 to be the #2 MMO in America (albeit a distant, non-overhyped one).

Would it make sense that another company wanted Scott to join a project and lead it to greatness? Oh absolutely. Would it make sense if Scott wanted to strike out on his own, put together a team, and bring some new vision in his head to life? Yes and no. We can always hope, at least, that such a venture would turn out better than...Sigil. Ugh.

On the other hand, being the head honcho behind EQ2's successes over the last couple years HAD to feel good. Personally, I tend to think that you don't turn your back on a good thing if you enjoy what you're doing, and, more importantly, believe in it. Obviously, that could mean that Scott wasn't enjoying himself so much anymore. Having never worked in an artistic industry, I don't think I could relate, but I could imagine that if one has a brain full of ideas, one could start to feel some major wanderlust just working on a single game for years and years.

Well, reading the debate on EQ2Flames was interesting. Some felt LFG was full of crap, some believed him. Some thanked him for telling us when no official news was coming out, while others criticised him for violating Scott's privacy. I definitely fell into the pack that thought it was a bit rude to break this story prematurely. Much as I love gossip, I envisioned Scott's various business and personal inboxes exploding with questions that he wasn't prepared to answer yet. That sucks. I had to bite my tongue (fingers?) to keep myself from joining in the deluge with a "Say it ain't so" whine-fest.

Well, it's official now. Scott has left SOE. The news wasn't shocking...how could it be when LFG's story was so old? And really, the silence about the topic from Scott and/or SOE was very telling. If the story was bogus, there'd have been a denial. That said, I was still a bit heartbroken (the part of my heart devoted to gaming) to see the news confirmed.

From a human-to-human perspective, I can look at lots of different reasons why Scott MIGHT have left SOE and say, "Good for you, Scott! I hope you got a killer new opportunity!" Unfortunately, the gamer side of me says, "Dammit, Gallenite, come back before someone else kills the game!"

Gallenite's replacement is Bruce "Froech" Ferguson. I know him mostly by name only - he was around during the beta and at launch, but my role in the beta was not so much about testing. I didn't read the forums too closely at that point, and as such I don't know much about Froech's past. In the few days he's publicly had the job, he's already gotten the joy of handling one massive PR debacle. You REALLY have to love your job to be willing to take that kind of abuse from customers.

But I'm not here to talk about Froech, I'm here to talk about Scott Hartsman. Sir, my hat is off to you. You headed up an effort that took a game that was great at launch (I thought, at least), and made it about 10 times greater. I wish I knew what you were doing next, but suffice to say expectations are higher than Snoop Dogg & Willie Nelson sharing a hot air balloon bong-picnic.

Please don't stay too quiet!

Dr. BadParse, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Race

When I'm not gaming or raising my kiddie (though I am trying to raise a gamer, so there's some crossover), I spend nearly 40 hours a week as a Technical Trainer. I have plenty of experience with the issues related to CHANGE. People just don't like it! Even if you give them a new piece of software that will help them work 10 times more efficiently, there's always pockets of resistance and scowling faces to go with them.

With the launch of Kunark this week comes a flurry of changes to every character - even those whose owners haven't purchased the expansion - in the form of revamped Racial Traditions. It's a real glass half-full/half-empty situation. One could say that any updates to the Tradition system are a hugely-positive change, because the vast majority of the racial perks of old were just about useless anytime after level 30. Some bonus powers are better than none...RIGHT?

According to a very vocal (like nails on a blackboard) crowd, this is as wrong as can be. You see, now that most of the Tradition choices either scale with level or provide static bonuses that are always useful (like crit %), your choice of race is a little more meaningful than it used to be. A little.

One of my favorites so far is a guy on EQ2Flames who proclaimed himself the most-screwed by these changes because he's a Barbarian Wizard. Oh was he angry! The anti-change arguments tend to carry a few key points, which I'll try to sum up sans excessive cursing:

1) Race choice has never mattered before
2) SOE promised at launch that all races could play all classes with equal effectiveness
3) People with more-unique race/class choices are being penalized

My responses:

1) That's not true at all. For most of us, stat points make a difference, because we haven't maxed out our primary stats. If I choose between Erudite Wizard or Troll Wizard, I'm sacrificing a rather large amount of intelligence that will absolutely have an effect on my damage output, and it'll still be relevant at higher levels unless I deck out in fabled gear and lots and lots of buffs/potions/etc.

The same applies to melee classes. Damage and to-hit chance modified by Strength, hitpoints modified by Stamina, Agility boosting avoidance (not much, but it adds up).

But it isn't just base stats. Not all Racial Traditions of old were very interesting, but some made a good impact. My Human Monk got +5 Defense, which is wonderful at any level. My Gnome Wizard got Intelligence bonuses and a de-agro power which always served him well. Ogres got some decent options to boost physical stats which, along with their natural stats, made them excel at melee...though over time, levels and gear make a +5 here and there matter a lot less.

2) SOE never promised that all races would be equal! They promised that all races could play all classes, and that's exactly what they delivered. If Race didn't matter at all, EQ2 would lose a lot of replayability.

I happen to love my Ogre Conjuror because when his pet dies, he can take a couple more hits than average. The new Ogre revamps will actually make that more pronounced, and I'm excited.

Come on, you didn't make a Troll Fury because you thought he'd be uber, you made him because it was fun and interesting and unique. And you know what? It still is!

3) The notion that you're being "penalized" by the new traditions is just silly. Failing to get a certain bonus (especially while receiving others) is not logically equivalent to a penalty. Even for as wordy as I am, I don't think I can expand on this simple notion.


So what's to blame for all this overreaction? I think most of you know the answer!




....*drumroll*....




PARSING!

Parsing itself is not the absolute root of all evil, but how good or evil it is all depends on how you use it. You want to parse yourself to see how you perform under various circumstances? Go right ahead! If I'm grouped with friends and we have a little competition to see who can out-DPS the other, that can even be fun...

But if I'm in a pickup group and some assclown spams some numbers and accuses me of not working hard enough, well, he can just bite me. Not that this happens very often, and hasn't happened in a long time, but I also avoid the most parse-happy environment: raiding.

So what we have now are a bunch of whiners who are pissed off because their Mages are going to have 2% less chance to score critical blasts than their equally-equipped (but race-appropriate) counterparts. Apply similar logic to other race/class combos to get the melee or priest versions.

Well, you know what? EQ2 isn't an exercise in math. EQ2 isn't a real-time strategy game. EQ2 is - believe it or not - A ROLEPLAYING GAME. Some of you might have seen the letters "RPG" thrown around before. That doesn't mean "Rocket Propelled Grenade!"

Any good RPG is as deep in lore and character development as it is the numerical mechanics. As such, even if the old Racial Traditions weren't very awe-inspiring, they still at LEAST showed us that the various races of Norrath were intended to be better at some things than others, be it stats, tradeskills, or resistances.

And now that those intentions have coalesced into something more meaningful, you're going to throw a hissy fit because you aren't as maxed-out as the guy next to you? You're going to demand something as goof-ass as a "racial respec?" If you really gave a damn about RPG-system min/maxing, you'd have taken one of the plainly-obvious choices for your class in the first place, even if the impact was minimal.

So to sum up: Stop parsing and just do your best on every fight, pick some new Traditions and find their most opportune uses, and ...uh... GET OVER IT.

The rest of us thank you.

Busy busy busy!

Sure, I hoped to get a little traffic boost following my last post, but it's really been quite incredible. Thank you all! :)

As an aside, "Lightballoon's" real (character) name was leaked (NOT by me) on a large, unofficial EQ2 message forum. I guess this led to a few people around the community sending him tells to inform him that he's a complete dipshit. He has since accused me of writing his name on my blog and asked me to remove it. I even did a text search just to make sure I didn't slip up, and sure enough, I have not. So yeah...that happened.

I hate to slack off after all this, just in case I get some return visitors, but it's going to be a short while before I make another normal post here. I have two major* writings in the works - one to be posted eventually here when allowed, and one to be displayed in a place TBA once it's all set in stone. I haven't finished either item yet, so I doubt I'll have time to write much here until I clean up this to-do list.

I'll be in touch!





*full of loquaciosity (tm)

BUT SOE PUT IT THERE - A Tale of Supreme Jackassery

Wow, what a week! Being a guild leader can be an extremely rewarding and enjoyable position. Just about every night I chime in on guild chat, offering up my services and/or nigh-encyclopedic knowledge of (most of) Norrath to any members willing to take me up on it. I love it when folks take me up on my offers and I can lead a quest or crawl group to greater glory and riches. Good times.

BUT, the burden of leadership means handling the problems that come up. I think, for the most part, that the casual environment we've fostered has kept us below-average on drama, but welcoming in players of all types also raises the risk that you'll get the occasional bad egg.

It was that time again! A recent influx of new recruits wound up revealing one of the worst eggs I've yet had the displeasure of dealing with! Naturally, in this place, I shall change his name. Let's call him...Lightballoon. (bonus points if you know where I'm stealing that name from!)

Lightballoon had only been in my guild for a scant couple weeks, and was on the verge of moving up from trial member to full member. Then I login one night and find one of my officers needs to talk to me about him.

Turns out we got a complaint about Lightballoon from someone who was in a pickup group with him. Apparently, this group had gotten together (with my member in charge) to kill a named mob or low-level epic. Upon succeeding and obtaining a nice chest full of items, the group noticed that Lightballoon had the loot set to Leader Only, as he promptly assigned all the loot to himself.

Lightballoon's explanation to the group was that he never promised them any loot, and since SOE made the Leader Only loot function, they surely intended it to be used in the way he used it. Therefore, the rest of the group had neither right nor reason to complain.

Bad? Yes....but it gets worse! The group demanded the name of an officer of my guild. Lightballoon's response? He told them that HE was the GUILD LEADER.

So my officer takes all this in and was, needless to say, a bit appalled. Still, as bad as the complaints were, you always have to hear the other side, put on your B.S. Detector (tinkering skill 321), and try to figure out what really happened. It's important to trust your guildmates, but you also have to make sure someone isn't giving your guild a bad reputation.

Often, this can be a lengthy ordeal. Much to my surprise, despite the really loathsome behavior being reported, this was not one of those times. Regarding the item hoarding, his response was that he shouldn't be punished for using a perfectly legal grouping option, and chided the other guy for being a crybaby that was just mad because he didn't win the loot. How do you win loot when the group leader assigns it all to himself, you may ask? Our friend didn't seem to have a real answer for that.

As for pretending to by my guild's leader? He not only clearly admitted to doing it, but justified it with....hell, here's a direct quote from my officer's log of the conversation. I don't usually post such things, but Lightballoon said it better than I could ever do justice to: "does nortah [sic] not have a 1st amendment[?]"

As a matter of fact, Norrath does NOT have a First Amendment. As a big fan of the First Amendment and a former student of its applications, I may become compelled to write more about this some other day ;)

In my brief talk with Lightballoon, he was similarly unrepentant about his behavior. I know MY guild doesn't need a person like on our roster, and through I wouldn't dare to speak for all guilds, I'm willing to bet very few would disagree with me.

Lightballoon logged off while we were debating his future. Before long, the officer who originally confronted him sent him a polite mail wishing him luck in his future endeavors, and booted him from the guild. "Good riddance," we all said, but alas, the story isn't over yet!

Later that night, Lightballoon logged back on, got his mail, and sent me a tell. His message to me was essentially that I'd be sorry I booted him out, and that he'd be back. Not exactly the scariest threat ever...

Sometime within 48 hours, Lightballoon had not, in fact, re-joined my guild, but rather made his own instead! My guild's name is "Circle of Shadows." His guild's name was "Circles of Shadows." Amazingly-creative, no?

It's bad enough when a current member goes out of his way to make my guild look bad; you can bet that I'm sure as hell not going to let another guild pull shenanigans and wind up with the complaints coming to me! As I think would be expected, I wrote a petition as soon as I found out about this.

My petition took a couple days to get a response, and in the middle of my waiting, the situation got stupider yet! I'm waiting for a group to assemble to go try out the new Shard of Fear for the first time, and suddenly I start getting tells from Lightballoon!

This time he's decided to inform me that he's going to harass me personally and members of my guild. He's going to convince my members to leave us and join him, and he won't stop until we cease to exist...

...unless...

...I take 50 platinum out of the guild bank and give it to him. If I concede to him and pay him off, he'll leave us alone and we'll never hear from him again. He had moles already planted in our guild, waiting for the opportunity to sow the seeds of our demise, and he promised that I "would be shocked at how high up [his] friends go."

Well, what else can you do when confronted with such overwhelming adversity? I did what any good guild leader would do: I immediately ported home, gouged-out the contributions of my wonderful, hard-working guild members, met Lightballoon outside the gates of Qeynos, knelt before him, and gave him his well-deserved bounty.

Wait, was THAT what I did? My memory is fuzzy now...I either gave him his money... or /reported large blocks of his text, added to my previous petition, and smiled widely as the GMs nuked his crappy guild and suspended his account for a few days. Lightballoon is back in the game now, and even started another new guild, but I haven't heard a peep from him.

I have little doubt that people who work with Lightballoon in the future will continue to have issues with his "BUT SOE PUT IT THERE" looting habits, but I can't save the whole world, can I? The best thing anyone can do when joining a pick-up group is to check the loot rules before you help out too much, and ESPECIALLY before engaging named and epic mobs. In time, he'll no doubt have one of the worst personal reputations on the server, and all I can say is: I'm glad he ain't mine to deal with anymore!