Examples:

I don’t think my guild even has a tabard. Did anyone go set one up at the guild registrar’s office? Probably not. And no wonder we’re not getting quality applicants!

Guild tabards were a great thing, once upon a time in Warcraft. Seems most players choose an exalted faction tabard nowadays though. (The object of my desire: The Sporeggar tabard, cuz it’s so damn ridiculous.)

We didn’t have tabards in EverQuest, but we did have armor dyes when the Legacy of Ykesha expansion was released. In fact, that was the ONLY REASON to buy LOY, the armor dyes. At one point, soon after the LOY expansion, we were struggling with Rallos Zek in the Plane of Tactics. (What. A. Bastard.) Anyways, until Rallos Zek went down, all guildmembers had to dye their armor an obnoxious neon color, as anti-suck motivation, donchaknow.

Finally, thankfully, RZ went down and everyone spent the first five minutes redying their armor to the bad-ass color of their choice before we even checked the loot. For a short while, we used the threat of required neon armor to encourage everyone to focus on new boss encounters. Surprisingly effective.

Which gives me an idea.

The original poster, Fappa, level 13 posting alt of the Argent Dawn realm, wrote:

WoW is the first MMO that I’ve ever really played extensively and gotten into, and it’s clear to me after playing the game since 2005 that raiding is and will always be the endgame to WoW. Yes, there’s arena (which occupies like one hour a week), and there’s daily quests, heroics, professions, etc. to do at 70, but really, if you want the best gear and the hardest challenges this game has to offer you have to raid.

Since I haven’t played any other MMOs extensively, I don’t know what their endgames are like. Is the endgame to MMO always raiding (10+ highly coordinated players)?

Reply #8 described DAoC’s endgame:

The endgame of DAOC was entirely PvP based, and still is if you want to play it… Game goes like this:

-3 factions
-Level to 50
-Do some raids and get some gear crafted
-Enter the frontier, an area as big as the leveling areas for the 3 factions, had like 24 captureable keeps, siege weapons, like ballista, catapults, and boiling oil you could dump on people trying to break into a keep you were defending… each faction had a relic that if captured, gave your entire faction a boost to damage, as much as a 20% bonus if you held both relics. Also, there was a whole system of PvP experience points that opened up a whole new progression of abilities that you could get only by PvPing.

I really wish WoW would steal this concept.

Reply #17 recounted old skool Star Wars Galaxies (pre-that mess where they turned everything upside down):

Sadly with the success of world of warcraft, many companies will keep thinking this is the way to go. Before SWG got forked up “endgame” was what you made of it, some of us were content with running our businesses, trying to create items that were better than our competition. Or organizing player cities and keeping them running, things that didn’t always involve scurrying in the same dungeons week after week. However I can’t speak for what everyone else considers fun, just more or less it would be nice if a game offered more options for gameplay than simply tossing instances at us that not everyone wants to do.

Reply #20 Lord of the Rings Online:

you obviously didnt play lotro. The max raid size is 24 people for one and the best gear and crafting items absoltely come from the high end raids. People were hitting max level crafting in open beta and it was nowhere near the epics from the 50 dungeons.. Very very few people have done the raids in LOTRO so im gonna assume you’re talking completely out your butt. Also, from the monster side you can start raiding fellowship leaders as early as level 10, as well as fighting raids of fellowship players.

I think maybe what you’re calling a raid are the “elite” quests you do at low levels. This is like killing Hogger than claiming you know what its like to raid Gruuls.

Reply #27, Beware, level 67 cow of the Sargeras realm, summarized his experiences in MMO endgames:

There are 3-types of “endgame” I have encountered in MMOs so far. Raiding, PvP and Leveling.

By design, the lure of MMOs is that they take a lot of time to play, and to do this they need to give players a reason to keep playing. The best way to do this is to have players create their own experiences, usually with other players. A developer can only create so much content before players go through it all and get bored, so they create repeatable content.

Raiding is somewhat repeatable content, simply because you need to grab a large collection of other players, and you need to repeat it to obtain loots to progress to the next encounter. The large amount of time it takes for groups to learn, beat and gear up encounters is why developers like raids.

PvP is great repeatable content, since people all play differently and this makes for a highly unique and different experience each time you fight another player. This is why designers love to put PvP into MMOs. Usually requires very little development time for huge returns of replayability.

Lastly, older MMOs, which usually had smaller budgets or were just older used the leveling repeatable content. They basically made leveling take literally years to keep you playing. The repeatable content was the constant leveling and seeing your xp bar go up. This is, in a sense what rep-grinding is, and as you know for some people this can get boring very quickly. Even though it is, it’ll give people playing, because people love getting levels, it gives them a sense of accomplishment.

Notice the Blizzard uses all three of these types of repeatable content in WoW; except they’ve placed the biggest emphasis on raiding, simply because it takes the most time to do (gearing up 25 people + once a week) and the fact that they just have to make one new dungeon every few months to keep people happy for the next dungeon. While if they did other types of content, people can blow through it in a few weeks.

Reply #51 City of Heroes:

I know, I keep up with City of Heroes and it’s updates. I logged in for the first time in two months today, and it’s still pretty boring.

Tasks Forces are a poor excuse for endgame as well. It’s a chain of missions that, for a level 50, is only good for a badge and a good story. After that, it’s just the same damn thing. Why do it again? Not only that, but the few true end game Task Forces are just that, rare. There is one exclusive to Villains, one exclusive for Heroes, and one for both. After that, you just have the lower level Task Forces.

The loot system they added is only useful if you are diehard enough to work to get full Invention Origin enhancements and all the costume pieces. However, the drops on the rare items are so rare, the prices get jacked up on the Auction House and it becomes a chore and a waste of money on something purely asthetic or only partially useful.

Oh yeah, and they added a new Raid. A level 54 Giant Monster in the Rikti Crash Zone. Big whoop, it doesn’t give special loot, it doesn’t give particularly good xp, and it isn’t up enough for a casual to fight it.

But yeah, you are right about one thing. The travel powers kick ass.

Reply #64, a shout out to Ultima Online:

Everquest is such a terrible example. I like SOME raid content, but it should never, ever , be the only option you have or take up 90% of your time in-game. A lot of people like to hate the recent expansion but I was ready to call it quits right before it came out. I hated molten bore and bwl, but I loved AQ20 and ZG. Unfortunately my ZG blues didn’t touch someone who spent 30+ hours a week in AQ40, BWL, and Naxx. I accept being at a disadvantage in PvP because I don’t have the time or desire to raid day in and day out, talk about boring. TBC really helped even out the gap. Do people have better gear than me? You bet. Can I kill them? Absolutely.

People like flexibility. Sure UO had plenty of problems, but there was tons of things for you to do and none of them were raiding. Go pvp, hunt some monsters for monies, decorate your house for the holidays, or setup a makeshift bar outside the bank. The world was just so much more moldable, and you could do a lot of quirky and fun things with it. It has nothing to do with “solo content” or not wanting to work with others, just that if they don’t want to raid, they would like other options available to them.

Whether those options are smaller groups (heroic was a great start but the gear is really meh), more robust crafting systems so that players can be more like merchants or trade their way up to better gear, or a housing system.

Everquest was a static world and an awful, mind-numbing grind.

Reply #88, Kastchei of the Argent Dawn realm, summarized WoW raiding (and spot on):

I (and some others) do not doubt that for you raiding has been the most fun you’ve ever had. However – and I have no sound statistics other than the ones others have posted – I think your experience is somewhat unique. Certainly, I personally know folks who have your experience. However, I know a lot of others who used to raid who no longer do.

The reason I do not think raiding is as great for a lot of people, yourself excepted, is because they do not have the guild/time/dedication/resources that you have. What guild (or who you raid with) makes a huge difference between a fun, exciting night of raiding and a long, frustrating, unpleasant one. You are very lucky to have found a guild that gets along smoothly, or at least smoothly enough to down the raid content you have. But what of those who do not have a good guild/raid? Sure they can find another, but for every good, well-oiled raid group out there, there are dozens that aren’t. You could hop once a month and not find a group before next expansion that makes raiding fun, and as we all know, you can’t hop that often for long before guilds turn you down.

Raiding is very difficult, but largely for a lot of extra-game reasons. I said a lot, but certainly not all: certainly strategy and execution play a role. Difficulties in raiding, which match and in some cases supercede the actual strategy/skill needed include (but is not limited to):

organizing a time when the appropriate classes can raid
organizing a system for keeping those players happy (DKP, fairness, rules, etc.)
maintaining people who can concentrate on a game for hours at a time
maintaining people who will not be distracted (pets, children, food, bathroom, etc)
finding individuals willing to give up free time to run the group (designing a website, monitoring the website, keeping track of DKP, farm for materials)
maintaining people who are willing to make raiding a priority in their life
maintaining people who get along with each other or at the least do not cause strife, etc…

As you can see, there are a lot of people problems to overcome with raiding, much more than simply showing up to play the game. My guess is that your guild has managed to solve all of these, but more importantly, your guild members do not mind putting in the time/effort to solve these. There are many people who do, and to be sure, there are many who used to put up with it solely to get better loot. If all raiding took was showing up, devising strategy, and implementing it, I think raiding would be a ton more fun for more people.

I’ve been in good raiding guilds and bad ones (note, I haven’t raided since BC) and the difference is night and day. One case I wanted to tear my hair out and kill my guildmates [sarcasm], the other I thoroughly enjoyed and often times wanted the night to go on longer. For me, doing or putting up with all the extra stuff I mentioned above is generally not worth the reward (either in loot or fun form). You and your guild do find it worthwhile from a fun-only perspective. However, judging from my experiences, trends on my server, stories from friends, and the statistics that people bat around here from time to time (including a few in this thread), I would say you are in a very small (and perhaps lucky) minority. Moreover, I think there is a sizable number of folks who used to raid and now no longer do, because they can stay competitive and advance without needing to raid.

And there’s lots of other thoughtful, heartfelt posts about raiding and guilds in that thread.

Contrary to what I’ve read around the intarwebs, there are a lot of players with good ideas who’ve spent considerable time thinking about the games they play and why they love or hate raiding, PVE, PVP, guilds and the endgame. Imagine that.

Thinking of Guk reminded me of when voice chat was in its infancy and the first time my EQ guild was together in voice. Soooo many guildmates were pronouncing EQ names improperly, even our own guild name they had wrong, and it was my pleasure to correct them: G-uh-k, NOT GOOOOK, fercrissakes.

Enough time has passed since the EQ days that I almost forget how truly awful it was at times.

Anyways, I spent my newfound free time snooping around rival guild sites and rediscovered an internet phenomenon that is both amusing and disturbing: oversharing.

Contemporary example from gaming: “It figures that the day some girl is in my bed wanting me I can’t even perform. Thinking about it today I thought it was kinda funny, so I just figured I’d share. On a serious note though I believe I am going to have to take a break from WoW.”

I blame social networking for the steep rise in oversharing. Honestly, I have deep thoughts maybe a couple of times a day, the rest of the thinking is just noise and doesn’t even hold my own interest. Social network sites encourage people to share absolutely everything and I think people should self-censor the more graphic details, PARTICULARLY when one is speaking to one’s guildmates or servermates or the internet at large.

And yet, people share it all. Anonymity grants courage, I suppose.

What I want from you are your own examples of gaming friends or acquaintances oversharing — or, if you’re feeling clever, invent an example of gross oversharing in a game environment.

I’ll go first. Back in EverQuest, raiding Vex Thal, one of our female priests left the raid after a few hours because she was pregnant and her hemorrhoids were bothering her. My opinion, then and now, “I’m not feeling well” would have been sufficient. The bright side: she didn’t detail HOW they were bothersome.

Another example, also EQ, one of our druids announced that she had asked her husband for a divorce earlier that day. The story could have ended there. She explained, however, that he had gotten home late from work and when she went to kiss him, she could smell another woman’s **censored** on his face. I had no response to that.

Your turn to share … but not too much.

Ya, me too.

First, if my company tried to float this idea, I’d say, “I’m not doing that.” Then, when they’d insist (as they ALWAYS do), I’d either approach it as A. Fine, I’m never sending email, fuck that, I’ll use voicemail, or B. I’m not changing my habits at all and if I end up short on email currency for the week, then bummer. Guy walks down to my office and asks why I didn’t email that we were critical on some production-whatever, “Man, I was tapped out for the week. Great game, isn’t it?”

UNLESS … unless … I could convert my email currency into real virtual currency, like Warcraft gold or EverQuest platinum, then I’m on board. And by the time that little experiment was over, I’d be the GOD of email currency.

And no, I don’t want to buy little pencils from the office store with my email currency — I want something GOOD.

My real life self-centeredness aside, I do like thinking that’s outside the box, whether it be work strats or game strats, and while much of what we learn in gaming translates well to real and work life, there’s plenty we learn that we shouldn’t bring into real life … like gaming the system, exploiting the mechanics, duping currency, perching the office supply room, or, forming uber guilds to farm the currency. These are the things that a gamer would excel at and a non-gamer would be noob fodder under our boots.

Every multiplayer game requires policing, not an immaterial cost either, I imagine — not just for out-and-out cheating, but also: is the game encouraging the behaviors we want it to encourage? I’m sure my Corporate Overlords don’t want me to drain Accounting’s currency allowance each week just cuz I can, but if the reward involves a better LCD monitor on my desk, then look out Accounting.

Corporate Overlords shouldn’t buy an email game and think that’s the end of the cost, be prepared to rake in savings! Policing is an ongoing, neverending, costly process because the strong will always exploit the weak and players will always choose the shortest, easiest route to the reward.

Interesting real world idea, anyways, even though I could game that system hardc0re.

An incomplete timeline and history lesson (because although the blog never lies, back then, the blog didn’t exist):

October 1999 – EverQuest’s handlers, 989 Studios, Verant Interactive and, what would become SOE, Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Inc. forbids players from selling EQ’s virtual property to other players. The collective EQ population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” Also in that article: at the time of its writing, there were over 1500 eBay auctions for EQ items and characters (possibly true) and EQ was released February 1999 (not true — it was March 1999).

April 2000 – Sony decides that “forbid” is a sissy word and BANS the sale of EQ items and characters from one player to another. The noob population thinks, “wtf, people are doing that? How can I do that?” EBay auctions are still going strong, although “Smedley (of Verant, later of Sony) said that he plans to ask eBay to pull the game items off its site. eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay would likely agree to do so.”

January 2001 – EBay bans the sale of virtual items and characters on their auction site. (It’s even in fucking Wikipedia, fercrissakes.) The EQ EBay crowd moves to playerauctions.com and/or rewords their Ebay auctions to duck around the new rules (i.e. Seller is NOT offering virtual items or characters, seller is auctioning his/her time to acquire the items or to build the character).

The more casual eBayers started working with the private, professional virtual property companies (IGE, et al) — players would receive less money for their items and characters, but it was considered safer and faster than working out a private sale or sweating out an eBay or playerauctions sale. That changeover went down sometime in 2003, if memory serves. Certainly by the time Star Wars Galaxies was released (June 2003), IGE and its brethren were the preferred methods for casual sellers and buyers.

Which brings us to January 2007’s press event. Yawn.

Today’s Lessons:

#1. Apparently, the internet population completely turns over every few years and what was old is new again.

#2. Please people, if you want to dabble in virtual trade, seek the counsel of a guildmate or e-friend who has some experience. They can guide your noob ass through the maze that is the Virtual Goods Black Market.

#3. You can get “it” on eBay, unless “it” is virtual property. Still.

#4. When eBay announces they’re banning auctions of Vanguard items and characters, let’s all agree not to FREAK OUT. Thank you.

Apparently, some locations will have optional events “… such as costume contests, card game tournaments, screen-shot character judging …”, but you and I both know that no hardcore, must-have-at-midnight, WoW player is going to have time for that crap. The hardcores are going to grab their box, throw money, “keep the change!” and run home.

Reminds me of the one time I didn’t preorder one of the EverQuest expansions; I think it was the Legends of Ykesha. During the day at work I started having second thoughts, “how could I be so STUPID to not preorder??” so I stopped off at EBGames during my lunch. Four of us in the store looking for the same thing … me in a suit, this rather gothy-looking couple and a sweat-pants dude. Worker told us that store had no extra copies, but the store on the other side of town had two extra copies, he had just spoken to the guy over there.

While he’s saying all that, I’m backing towards the door, getting my cell phone ready. (True story — I didn’t have all afternoon to hunt down this box, I had 60 minutes.) As soon as the worker gets to the “… first come, first served” part, I’m out the door. En route, I talked to the worker-dude at Store #2 — he won’t budge on the FCFS. (bastard!) If some other heavily-pierced EQ couple walks into Store #2 while I’m stuck in traffic, I’m shit outta it.

Like a demon possessed, I’m one with the road. “How could I be so STUPID??” Sure, Ykesha was a minor expansion, but what was I thinking? I’m gonna sit in Planes of Power while everyone is pulling in un-nerfed loot hand over fist in the new areas? As it is, I wouldn’t be logging in until the evening — best-case scenario, I’d have two or three hours before they hotfixed the loot tables and I thought I could wait to get the expansion on the weekend? Stupid. Stupid.

I arrived at the mall, walked (I didn’t run, fercrissakes) to Store #2, approached the register and inquired politely, any EQ Ykesha for sale? Ya, he’s got some Ykesha. About a dozen unreserved copies. Did I want one?

That lil mo….fu….

So when I say you need to make these arrangements early, I speak from experience. You don’t want to be making calls all Tuesday morning, desperately seeking TBC. You don’t want some lil bastard at the mall EBGames yanking your chain. Learn from my mistakes, make arrangements NOW.

Class dismissed.

1. January 2006 – The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj are opened for the first time anywhere on the Medivh realm. Hundreds of well-wishers and curious observers from other realms flooded Medivh with level 1+ alts, created specifically to observe the gate-opening scripts — largest gathering of cows (tauren) anywhere, with bovine names such as Milkme, Gotmilk, and Mooyou. (Warcraft tutorial: the tauren starting area is the closest to the Ahn’Qiraj instance.) GMs eventually got involved and ported the cowlings to other areas so the natives could enjoy their gate party without being trampled.

I took some heat for running around AQ/Silithus with my own noob cow tourist, but there’s nothing like being there for mass chaos. I only wish there were more such events during the year, hopefully on my home server for once. Would save me the trouble of making a noob character and running him all the way out to the anarchy.

The series:

• A Party Atmosphere
• The Ahn’Qiraj Tailgate
• The AQ Hangover
• Bonus! Are All Cow Druids Lying Douchebags?

2. August 2006 – The “I Hate People” series. Notice how quiet my guild was for the first 8 months of the year? Ya, I notice it too. What in the hell happened Summer 2006 because it was just one shitstorm after the other.

Too many players involved in this shitstorm to name, but I enjoyed writing this series because I got a rare chance to toast someone’s ass who thought he got away with a lie. I didn’t necessarily enjoy LIVING through this drama, but all’s well that ends well.

The series:

• I Hate People — here’s a fun fact: if you search for “I hate people” on the blog, you get pages and pages of results.
• I Still Hate People
• I Am The Master

3. September 2006 – THE EMO TANK!! I know you miss him. I’d say I do too, but that would be a lie. He’s trying his darndest to get back into our happy family so you might get your wish.

I’m voting “NO!” because I want to publish his tattoo pics and gang hand signs pic that I copied from our guild site a few months ago.

The series:

• The Emo Tank
• The Emo Tank’s Myspace page
• The Emo Tank: Exit Stage Left

4. October 2006 – If This is Wednesday, This Must Be Naxxramas. I had wanted to try a live-blog chat-log type post of a guild raid for a while. Unless you are an online-gaming raider or have been one, you cannot know the craziness involved in organizing more than five people. Even thinking about it now, these are all adults, who can all follow directions (I used to think), why is meeting at a pre-arranged location at the pre-arranged time so difficult??

I still don’t know the answer to that, but maybe the log makes it clearer why “guild” is just another word for “nuthouse”.

5. October 2006 – No, I Won’t Dance Naked with You in Ironforge. I love these two nutballs (aka future guild members) I met in Westfall and Redridge Mountains; they taught me the true meaning of irony. I’m hiding from my nutcase guildmates on an anonymous alt, enjoying the peace and quiet, and somehow, like I’m a vortex for crazy, they found me.

The one guy did teach me an important technique for avoiding people. Whenever I don’t feel like talking, “SCUBA!!”

Bonuses after the jump, Other Favorites and My Five Favorite Screenshots of 2006

Also Rans – Other Favorites:

February 2006 – CBS News and Teh Smed bump heads: CBS News published some anonymous-y emails about Sony Online and their games and “practices”, Smedley, (OMG, of SOE, noob) struck back: “There has never been a release by Sony Online Entertainment that has been incomplete.” Ex-EQers everywhere are still laughing.

• CBS News | Star Wars Mailbag
• SOE Strikes Back

March 2006 – The Onyxia is Serious Business sound clip. See also, Kotaku’s interview with the Onyxia guy (NSFW: language and screaming)

October 2006 – South Park raids World of Warcraft in the episode “Make Love not Warcraft”. Wildly popular when it aired, wildly popular still — one of the top sellers on iTunes videos, I see. This Christmas, when visiting the family back home, my nephews would ask to borrow my iPod whenever we had to attend a family yawnfest … Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day brunch, etc etc. “You’re gonna watch that South Park Warcraft again, aren’t you?”, I’d ask. “Ya …”, said they. “Ok, let me share an earphone”

November 2006 – Blue Forge Fire’s recruitment video. Clever, snappy — sadly, they’re full on rogues.

December 2006 – The forum thread (short-lived, boo!!) “Why is homosexuality excluded from lore?”, partially archived in Lesbiantics. That thread was bound for glory and its life was cut short in a tragic forum deletion. It will always have a place in my heart, however, for teaching me the best word I learned in 2006: phallogocentric. Once you learn a word like that, it’s amazing how many things you notice, and comment on, that are phallogocentric.

Five Favorite Screenshots of 2006

My one-screenshot review of The Burning Crusade, the Blood Elf starting area (full post):

Madonna on the loading screen (no, not The Madonna, Madonna the faux virgin). (full post)

My favorite guild name from 2006 (full post)

Gnome Porn. In the absence of interesting, productive activities, players will always turn to porn, in-game or out. (full post)

This screenshot wasn’t mine (shot by Atrox). For some reason, I still chuckle everytime I see “I’m inside your farms, stabbin yur swinez”.

In the absence of porn, players will always kill pigs. (full post)

2006 was a good year — was a little dry for new MMO releases. 2007 should be better for that.

There will always be good stories to tell whenever two or more players are gathered together. Like a vortex for crazy, I intend to be there!

In the meantime … I’ve done some work on back info you might find amusing. As you’ve probably noticed, I revamped the look around AFK Gamer. (And if you’re reading blogs via feed reader only, you’re wrong.) More importantly, I fixed some of the static pages and expanded the historical record. If you’re the type who enjoys second-guessing others’ poor decisions (e.g. mine) — and we’re talking YEARS OLD decisions here — you might enjoy this.

Within the limits of blurred memories, I documented my game characters and guilds over the past ten years. Here’s an example of why this is mildly amusing: EQ – Original Main: Druid (soloing juggernaut), Next Main: Bard (post-Luclin soloing juggernaut), Constant Alt: Cleric (equip my Mains, kthxbye).

Takes me a while to figure out the system, but once I do, immersion and community be damed, I’m working it.

While it took me weeks to remember all that and piece together the dates, I realized that most of the memories had become fond ones. That’s one of the advantages of losing your mind.