Stargrace standing on the rock to the left, amidst the Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance
I don’t typically do pick up raids, for numerous reasons. They usually end up being huge disasters that leave me with large repair bills and a sour taste in my mouth. So last night when I was randomly sent a tell on my illusionist asking if I wanted to join a Deathtoll raid, I surprised even myself by saying sure I’d tag along. The Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance is a mixture of mostly Legends of the Tundra (with wonderful coercer Rorion leading that night’s raid) with some unguilded, and Salarionn acting as tank for the night from Forsaken (which is a fairly acomplished T7 raid guild). There was a member or two from HoE, as well as myself from Torrent Knights (which died once Vanguard came out, but there are 4-6 of us who still frequent the guild and don’t want to see the level 60 home dashed so easily). It was a fun night, even if we didn’t accomplish killing the corpuscle (also known as the splitting drake, and a pain in many people’s arse) and we also called it a night on the diseased based snake who has a nasty AoE and port / root deal. Tarinax did fall on the third pull, having some issues with him clambering his way into the wall in behind the raid force and then AoE’ing us all with his frontal when ever he could. Meanie.
It was a change, from the raids I’m used to. A bad thing? Not really. I did enjoy myself. Will I make it a nightly ritual? Probably not. As fun as it was, I missed the polished feel from my previous raids. In my opinion it went very well for people who perhaps don’t raid together all of the time, and who are still working their way through the lower end of T7. One small pet peeve I had this time was the amount of noise on the vent channel. I actually liked the method my previous raiding guild used, on teamspeak (the alliance used Ventrilo) during the raid, only the raid leader / officers / tanks had access to voice. Which meant people were paying attention to the raid, and not breaking out into the latest sports scores or discussions on breasts as we’re going over the strats for a particular fight — that is purely situational though, I realize that interaction with people is what makes these mmo’s thrive and succeed, it’s the community and bonds you form. I’d just rather only hear one voice at a time instead of 10, and have it be on the situation at hand so I can do my job as a raider (I know, I know, raiding is not supposed to be a job) rather then have to listen to a whole lot of other stuff that I don’t have any input in. Maybe that’s weird of me to say, but I like to raid and know I do a good job, and pay attention and get that job done. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel good. Just my weird twisted views.
As another first for the evening, I betrayed my 52 necromancer over to a conj! Oh, and I also run a second account now. I moved my 70 fury and the 52 necromancer conj over to the new account, so that I could box them (and anything else I decided to make) along with the characters from my original account. Worth it? Well, here’s how me and my boyfriend rationalized it.
- Already paying for station access (price hike had not occurred yet) for EQII and Vanguard, but have no interest in playing Vanguard. This basically meant I was paying for 4 character slots, and adventure packs, and that was it. I don’t play anything else on their play list.
- Play frequently enough and can box smoothly enough (I play the 2nd account we had along with my account to level up alts and what not) that the account would not go to waste.
- Having a Call of the Hero character, as well as a character who can port, on a 3rd account, would benefit both his characters and mine (Can always park the Fury in Sinking Sands and port to all the EoF zones just fine, as well as dragging the conj to the basement of SoS or even Nagafen if needed and port people down).
- Gives us an extra 2 character slots compared to station access, for a total of 12 characters vs. 10.
- Veteran rewards to a larger amount of characters (the new account came with 6 months of veteran rewards, as well as the boxed rewards for each expansion since release, including the DoF statue, the KoS house plant, the EoF whirly clockwork pet thing.
So in the long run it was worth it. It also resolves my issue about the lack of population. I can box myself when I don’t feel like grouping (which is frequently) and I have extra character slots to create more characters (for example if beastlords come out with Kunark, or that Fae that I haven’t made yet). I’m pleased with it so far and don’t regret giving up Vanguard in the least. I figure perhaps when the first expansion for it comes out, I’ll give it another shot, but until then the bugs and glitches and over all beta feel, was just not what I was looking for.