Charging for Epic Updates?
stargrace No doubt if you’re in the 70-79 channels you’ve seen people auctioning off raid slots to people for epic updates. These zones are from Runes of Kunark, and can run anywhere from 50-500p an update depending on what guild you’re going with and what server. While a lot of people debate the moral factor of whether or not it’s “right” to purchase your epic update, that’s not what I want to discuss.
What about the people who sell these updates to others?
My guild runs these RoK raids pretty much every weekend (minus VP which is done once a month), Thuuga, Pawbuster, Leviathan, Venril Sathir, etc. We do NOT charge pick ups for these raids, and some times we’re only adding 1 group of our own guild, and the rest are pick ups. Running a pick up raid is a stressful thing, but we do it, and we love watching people get updates who may not other wise have a chance to get them (be it because they belong to a smaller family guild, their schedule does not allow for it, etc).
Loot is handled on a NBG /random 1000 basis, and any masters that are not needed by those in the raid are taken by our raid organizer (on these weekend raids most of the time it happens to be the shadowknight running them that I talk about every so often) as a “thank you” for us hosting / organizing the raid for people (and then put into our guild bank). Not a lot of masters typically drop that go un-needed to begin with, but it happens from time to time.
This is a great way for us to get our updates for our own characters (since RoK raids are not exactly on the schedule any more) as well as help out the community on our server. It’s gotten to the point now that when the weekend rolls around we’ll get numerous tells randomly asking us if we’re running said zone and if so and so can they come along for an update.
The one weekend we do run VP we take names of people who need updates from specific kills, and we swap them in and out for those kills so that the greatest number of people can get their mythicals as possible. It’s something I would really love to see more guilds doing, instead of charging for updates.
There’s always a small debate as to whether or not non-raiders should be able to obtain these items (be it through paying or not) and honestly I don’t think owning a mythical (or not owning) makes a player good or bad. Yes, it will help their character but in the end it is really the players skill that gets taken into consideration. If you are good at your class, and you group a few times out there, you will be remembered for it. Likewise, if you are a shoddy player, you’ll also be remembered for it. Each class has a specific set of “things” they should be doing, and group mates notice this. Positioning as a tank, curing as a healer, using jesters and PoTM as well as CoC as a bard, all of these things make players good (or bad).
Are we in the wrong for allowing people this free method of obtaining their mythicals? They do have to do the work of gaining the fabled version first, and they also need to show up for the raids that are required, but aside from that it’s mostly the work of a TSO raid guild that pulls the others along. Is this wrong? We’ve even allowed pick ups to die and remain on the ground (dead) during raids for their update (this doesn’t work with conjurors who have to be alive, but a lot of classes can remain dead) if they were nervous that they were going to mess up some how (ie: Venril Sathir script pre-nerf). Are mythicals in the hands of non-raiders a bad thing?
Personally, I dislike the fact that there are pieces of gear in game that are quite common to obtain (these days) that have the ‘mythical’ flag. If you remember back at the beginning of EQ2 there wasn’t even a fabled flag. Prismatic 1.0 rewarded a legendary weapon for your hard effort (and trust me, at level 50 it was a LOT of effort). I think that the more common we make these items, the less special they are. I enjoyed mythical when they were exceptionally rare one time server rewards for unique encounters – and would have been satisfied with a fabled weapon (same stats, but minus the mythical tag). Of course that’s not the decision of the players but the designers, so the point is sort of moot. Pretty much anyone can get their mythical for the right price these days, and I don’t see a difference in giving them out for free so long as people want them.
