Fifteen Years

This morning I am struggling a wee bit to figure out what exactly to write about… so as a result I am just starting typing hoping something good comes out in the process.  Yesterday was a fairly rough day as we were dealing with the fallout of rolling out a major system at work.  As a result I spent most of the day grinding away trying to fix a few issues that had sprung up in the process.  I rolled out one of the fixes, with another one for today that needs a lot of involvement from the customers.  I decided it was far too big a can of worms to delve into late in the day.

Raincheck

rift 2013-05-03 22-16-26-04

I will admit yesterday during the day I had some seriously grand designs on what Wednesday night would look like.  I had intended to pull together hunt rifts or even break up into 5 man teams and do some dungeoneering, but none of that really happened.  For whatever reason my dinner last night just was not really sitting with me all that well, and I as a result didn’t really feel up to rallying the troops in some grand adventure.  So as a result no real overarching mission for the night really occurred and I feel like I failed the guild a little bit.

What did happen however is that we knocked out two “kill 1000 planar creature” guild quests.  So while we were not all in the same place, guild members were all over the world assisting in that purpose.  I know Rae and I were camped out in Cape Jule at one of the source wells and we decimated what felt like thousands of fire elementals over the course of a few hours.  Additionally there were little pockets of guild members in other places working away on invasion mobs all of them contributing to the total kill count.

So while we may not have been doing what I had intended, the guild as a whole did end up working towards a specific mission it seems like.  After we knocked out the second of the planar creature quests, I joined up with Thalen and helped ferry out the lower level Rae and Tibuant to Steppes of Infinity to do an advanced crafting rift.  I am hoping that someday we can do an entire night of these.  They really provide a massive amount of materials for the crafters, and I can remember going out to Ember Isle before the expansion and doing entire nights of various people summoning thing.

The Best Loot

treasureroom

Since I was insanely busy yesterday… I really had zero time to catch up on my RSS feed.  This morning when trying to figure out what to write about I ended up flipping through a few posts.  One of them that caught my attention was from Keen and Graev posing the question… where should the best loot come from?  I have some very specific thoughts about this honestly, so I figured it would be a good thing to rattle on about for a few.  Ultimately I don’t think there should be one single place to get the best loot.  I feel as though that has been part of the problem all along in these games is that there is generally one specific place to get all the best gear.

I feel as though there should be multiple paths to obtain really good gear for your character.  Even if you are not raiding, you want to feel like you are constantly progressing your character to being able to doing bigger and better things.  So I feel as though there should be viable gearing options from raiding, pvp, questing and crafting.  Each path should provide similar quality rewards but involve vastly different activities.  I see Raiding and PVP as the brute force approach to gearing.. you get in… kill some stuff and get loot quickly.  Whereas the crafting and questing routes take far more time and commitment but you get to the end goal of nice gear eventually.

I remember how mystical the original Epic quests were in Everquest 1, and how they involved pulling together your entire guild to try and help one player get an item.  Similarly in Everquest 2 they rolled out the heritage quests and eventually epic weapon quests that involved going on these amazingly drawn out adventures to obtain a mythical item.  Why did this design stop?  Why are there not entire sets of gear that you can quest for that involve multiple steps, figuring out riddles, solving puzzles, and eventually collecting another piece of a fabled gear set.  This is really the gearing route that has been missing in games.

Additionally I see that crafting would be very similar but take a slightly different spin.  To get the “end game” gear you would go through a series of quests to gather and refine the best materials, learn recipes from ancient trainers, and maybe factioning up with some kind of crafting guild.  The end result would be the guild helping you craft the pieces that you could not yourself.  Again however the final result is a long process that lets a player build up to end game gear.  My biggest concern with crafting as the key to end game gear is that generally it means that a few crafters have access to the best patterns and the server as  a whole suffers in the pocket book from that.  I feel a more personal crafting path would benefit players more, like this NPC crafting guild approach.

Ultimately in my perfect game I would see all four of these paths to glory.  Raiding and PVP provide the quicker and easier way to the good gear, whereas crafting and questing provide a much longer and more arduous approach but still provide the same payoff in the end.  It is not to say that a player cannot mix and match these processes as well.  One of the biggest frustrations as a raider is when that one slot that you have needed for months refuses to drop.  If you had a way to embark upon a quest or rally crafting resources to fill that slot, I am sure most raiders would do so in a heartbeat.  I think the real challenge is to treat all players as equals, instead of giving the development nod to one specific segment of them.

Fifteen Years

Today is a fairly auspicious occasion, and I figure I will close out todays posting by sharing it with you.  Fifteen years ago today my wife and I got married in a very untraditional fashion completely fitting the two of us.  It boggles the mind to think it is that long ago.  We got together in 1996 and spent the last two years of college together, eventually moving in together when I woke up one morning to find my rat fink of a room mate moving out on me… because he had not been paying his half of the rent.  Me, my wife and her roommate all moved in together and I literally spent the end of my college days living out an episode of threes company.

My family and hers were like oil and water… with the primarchs of each family constantly butting heads.  I was raised Catholic and she Baptist… and my Mother and her Father nearly came to blows each time they were put in the same room.  We wanted a simple wedding, outdoors…  which quickly became insane as my mother started wanting to invite all sorts of bizarre guests like my fourth grade teachers.  Additionally my mother wanted us to have TWO weddings…  one with a priest in the Catholic church… and then the outdoor wedding.

Then there was the issue of which father would actually walk her down the aisle.   Her step father was a quiet and loving man, and was one of the most amazing men I have ever known.  Her biological father I have come to love, but at the time was extremely showy and overbearing… and would have made a very public spectacle if he did not get the honor.    Whereas her step father would have likely been extremely hurt were he not the one to do it… but never would have let on or shown it.  Essentially we had a logistical nightmare on our hands and no matter which way we turned… we were going to hurt someone.

Fifteen years ago today we took our first act of defiance as a couple and decided to piss everyone involved off and elope.  We gathered up all the necessary bits of information needed to get married in the state of Oklahoma and found a wedding chapel in town.  I jokingly say we were married at the House of Vacuums, because the chapel was a fairly nondescript building directly around the corner from there.  I called my cousin and my wife called her best friend, and they stood as witnesses, and after a short service with a very nice female minister we were wed.

While this is a fairly untraditional beginning it fits the two of us extremely well.  Neither of us are terribly showy people, and both of us rather severe introverts.  I’m a geek and she is a nerd and together we have made a pretty amazing life together.  I love her dearly and cannot imagine having spent the last fifteen years any other way.  I hope the next fifteen years go as easily as these last ones have.  There are times when I sit back and think to myself…  man you have an awesome life, and in a huge part it is entirely because of her.  She helps me stay grounded and is the voice of reason behind all my potentially poor choices.  We make a pretty great team.

Wrapping Up

Well I have a ton of things to do today, so I need to be getting on the road.  I have no clue what we will be doing for our anniversary, quite honestly it all depends on how both of our days go.  She is already back to school and working every day since she wears a bunch of administrative type hats.  At the minimum we will probably go out to eat together but not really do much celebration until the weekend.  I hope you all have a great day… and to my wife who I know will be reading this later…  I love you and happy anniversary.

4 thoughts on “Fifteen Years”

    • Totally understandable and Thank you. Also despite all of my concerns… the Storybricks AI really sounds amazing and I look forward to seeing it in action 🙂

  1. Congratz on the anniversary! That’s quite the achievement, hehe.

    I’m all for the different sources of getting gear. Prime example: I remember the benediction/anathema quest way back in vanilla wow… it was an epic quest line that took, time, dedication and skill to complete – and also happened to give you the BiS weapon for a priest at the time. Ah, the memories.

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