Saturday, January 24, 2009

I has a fan-club!

Ok, not really, but you'll see what I mean.

So, I tried to organize a FoW clear team today. Got my sister-in-law, plus 6 strangers together. It started out rough, but then went a lot smoother for 30 minutes or so. Then we enter the forest of the Wailing Lord, and everything goes to hell. Classic Saru-style, we wipe and I'm the last one alive, fighting against 2 1/2 spawns. I had a few scrolls of resurrection on me (I craft and keep a few on hand so I don't have to bring a rez skill in PvE), and I try to position myself to where I get the whole team, but I keep having Iron Mist spammed on me, and I get pinged to death.

Good times.

So, we reform, my sister-in-law leaves, and I give the reins over to a Necro named Tangram Soultheif. We get new players, and right before we're set, someone enters Underworld, not FoW. We zone in, and wipe, cause the Perma-Sin is a douche, the other warrior is a complete tard, and no one is listening to me or Tangram.

So, Tangram and I meet back up for a third time, and form a third team. We're more careful this time, Tangram emphasizes that I'm the tank, I lead on agro, etc. We go in, and we do much better than the first run. However, people keep DCing, and eventually, we're down to 5 people left, with no monks for healing or protting. I suggest we hit the beach to clear out the cave for what little loot we can score. Everyone agrees, not realizing that I'm serious, just thinking I wanna dick around on the beach before we resign.

Next thing they know, I've explained to them how the beach is laid out, and how the enemies fight, and we're clearing it, skales and all. At one point, we wipe again save for me, and this time I do get the rez scroll off, bringing all of them back to life mid-battle. Not long after, we reach the cave. Try as we might, I can't keep them alive through the hail of poisoned arrows being fired from the spiders, and they wipe. That leaves me, alone to face the cave. Easy. However, I'm not running my dedicated farm build, so killing is taking forever.

Well, I'm thinking about just resigning, since I'm out of scrolls, then I notice that the team's bitching cause a few shards have dropped for them, but they can't get them cause they're dead. So, I offer to clear the cave, snag the shards once the timer counts down, and hand them back out to the people they dropped for, while continuing to clear the cave, in hopes of more shards. Everyone stop for a moment, then thanks me, dumbfounded by my offer.

Eventually, I reached a point in the cave where I was far enough away from the group that they weren't getting drops, so I try to lure the spiders closer to my team. No dice. Feeling defeated, I break agro and head back to the beach, picking up the shards that dropped. We resign, and meet back at ToA, where I hand them out. Then, Tangram sends me a URL through teamchat.

Huzzah.

Tangram told me he had taken those pictures, explaining that most people don't get a chance to take good pictures of themself mid-battle. Everyone added me to their friends list (I was solicited to join another guild), I gave my FoW build to a couple peeps, and talked them through it's usage. All in all, a great time.

Except for the fact that I spent 2 hours in the Fissure without getting a single fucking shard. DAMN YOU RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR!!! A POX UPON YOU!!!!!!1111!!

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Things like that were common for me back in the day when I played City of Heroes. There was a much better sense of community, and I felt eager to help out other players, and foster good will. Not so much in Guild Wars, so I'm thankful for what happened today. Even though I failed to clear FoW three times in a row, I feel good about what we did as a team today. I wish I had more days like that.

3 comments:

Dex said...

That was my FAVORITE aspect of City of Heroes - the social aspect, the team playing built into the nature of the game. I lost interest in WoW due to lacking the forced social dynamic (from my experience), and also noticed that in Guild Wars a bit when I tried playing it for a week back in the day.

Dex said...

p.s. what in the heck is a "FoW clear team", by the way?

Kammorremae said...

FoW=Fissure of Woe

It's one of two maps shared by all three campaigns. Costs money for a team to enter, if everyone dies, they get kicked out, if their death penalty hits 60% they get kicked out.

Clearing FoW means to complete all eleven quests found their. Doing so causes the Fissure Chest to spawn, within which each team member is guaranteed phat lewt.

In order to craft Obsidian Armor, one must enter FoW and complete the quest "Restore the Temple of War" (usually the fifth quest you complete).

However, the drops in FoW (same with the Underworld) have the potential to be very valuable, so one can make a huge profit without completing any quests.