Goblin Squad Member
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Greetings! I am Hobs, a proud member of The Empyrean Order (http://www.theempyrean.org/teboards/index.php). I am also a member of our Seraphic Commission - a subguild charged with community outreach, the creation and promotion of community events, the assistance of new players, and networking with our allies.
Especially for those players who may never have experienced games with a well developed player community, I thought it would be fun for us to provide examples of what I consider the greatest reason for playing an MMORPG - the opportunity for meaningful player interaction.
To this ends, here is what I would invite you to post. It may seem a bit "carebearish" in nature for some, but hey, a little Kumbaya never hurt.
1. Post a brief example of how your experience in an MMO was improved by the act of another player.
2. A similar brief description of how you have done the same for someone else.
My hope is that this might remind old MMORPG-ers like myself of what we've done in the past and hope to do again, while showing people who have only known more single-player themed games what they can look forward to in PFO. Enjoy!
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Goblin Squad Member
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In Dragonrealms a Ranger reaches a certain ring (level) of advancement and becomes eligible to find and befreind a pet. The first of those possible is a baby raccoon, which over time will mature and age and eventually 'retire'. But to gain one of these baby raccoons the Ranger must seek out a specific remote location in the wild and focus on his task. It was normal for us to pair up to do so, with one of us encouraging the little raccoon to emerge from the brush with a foraged ear of corn. However it was a dangerous land, so the other would stand watch until the baby raccoon wasbonded with the other ranger, when it would be her turn and the first ranger and raccoon would stand watch.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Everquest was my first foray into the wild world of MMOs. The game had been out for only two months when I jumped in, and, being a young teenager who had never played an MMO before, I was immediately lost and confused.
Upon exiting the great walls of Kaladim, my little level one paladin found himself without direction. I stared out into the dark night sky (the best time to launch into a new game, right?) until a friendly dwarf named Roland padded over to me.
He spent the next 30 minutes walking me through the basics of chat, movement, combat, where to go. Everything that was critical to a young adventurer.
I will never forget his charity; because of his actions, as I became a veteran to EQ, I would do the same whenever a new expansion pack launched; head to the Kaladim doors, wait for a new, confused player, and walk them through the very basics that Roland had done with me.
PfO will be a new experience for us all, but veterans will have an easier time than our Pathfinder PnP friends who will be playing an MMO for the first time; I look forward to conducting the same outreach when the game goes from Closed Access to Open.
Great thread Hobs; I look forward to interacting with you as PfO moves forward.
Ambassador Krows
Pax Aeternum
"No Peace is Won Where the Will Falters"
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Goblin Squad Member
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...or all the times on a naked corpse run in the sewers under Freeport(wasn't it?)trying to recover my armor weapons and food, and a group of strangers would voluntarily surround and protect me on my way to recover my only weapon and few coppers.
Ever after I would try and take the time to watch out for the young as those seasoned veterens did for me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think there is something to be said for people finding and knowing a role they are happy with eg loot-ninjas and kill-stealing in WAR PvE compared to an organisational party leader in RvR (PvP) and holding off or ambushing the Zerg that panics and breaks! One leads to lack of role definition causing arguments and the other relies on it to beat insurmountable odds.
Those leaders were the high-point of WAR for me (I'm more sergeant material tbh). But with more roles possible in PfO, diplomacy could be very rewarding.
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Goblin Squad Member
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it was in the MUD i play. When i first started i was completely lost. Someone sat down and in game and out of game taught me all the basics. They then bought me all the starter gear i would need. it was good enough that i wouldnt have to replace it if i didnt want to.
they just ask that if i ever stopped smelling like the turnip farm to help someone out if they needed it.
Iv done that a couple of times. The game has some very confusing mechanics and spreadsheets to do well, it takes some time to learn and if you dont have someone to show you it can be nearly impossible. i try to make time for people who have questions and help them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My best moments in gaming were from EQ.
1) Ironically enough, I was also a brand new dwarf named Dugan who had no idea how a cleric learned spells. Along came a dwarf named Gottvader who explained it to me and then we went fishing and talked all the while spilling our beer.
2) Eventually I settled on my main being an Ogre warrior named Loyal. I was farming Evil Eyes for stalks that I needed for my epic. I got a tell asking if I could help with a corpse retrieval at the bottom of Runnyeye. This eventually became a two hour ordeal in which I died multiple times however we were finally successful. I even went back a level but I didn't mind, the triumph of success was all the much sweeter.
These are just two examples of many many many such in Everquest. What a frustrating, hard, dangerous, rewarding, fun, and amazing game that was only made possible by the community.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ultima Online, The Second Age
Back in the day, I spent a great deal of time just wandering and exploring endlessly, on my own mostly, it was all very new and exciting.
I remember once though, early on, finding a dungeon and another player, and we teamed up to take on whatever was inside, I don't even remember what, but I do remember the fun of teaming up with someone and having a little adventure together, we met up a few more times (there was no friend system or anything at the time), chatted on ICQ and pretty much lost contact when he quit because he went on a dungeon run with someone, and at the end the other person killed him and took everything they had fought for together.
Later, when the australian server opened up, I remember adventuring, again often solo, but having two large guilds vying to recruit me... a bit of friendly rivalry. There was an unpleasant element to the game with the PKers and the like, but all in all people were helpful and generous. I remember times where I would die and have trouble getting my body back, and people would just help you. Or if they found your corpse, they'd take your stuff, and if they found you, give it to you. Sometimes (I started on a japanese server before the australian one) you couldn't even communicate (early on, Japanese seemed to only come up as "It is EI EI it is").
In modern MMOs, I think I've gone weeks without even looking at the chat window, talking to absolutely noone, not even people I'm partying with. It's a big difference!
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Goblin Squad Member
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These are just two examples of many many many such in Everquest. What a frustrating, hard, dangerous, rewarding, fun, and amazing game that was only made possible by the community.
QFT.
So penalizing yet so fun. Such a great community despite the plethora of opportunities for douche-baggery.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It occurred to me that I started the thread, but never entered my own experiences.
Back in the early days of Ultima Online (Catskills server), I decided to start a meager business of selling cooked fish steaks to the other players who would crowd around the Britain bank. Most were adventuring types, far more skilled and experienced than I at surviving outside the city (this was before the Trammel/Felucca split and the whole server was free-for-all PvP except in cities). As I started to build a group of regular customers, they began to gift me with items - weapons and armor and other magic goodies from their dungeon runs. Having no real use for the stuff, since I hardly risked leaving town, I sold some, but also began handing these items out to new players or people who had been PKed and stripped of all their gear.
As my charity services became known to my customers, they began donating money so that I could purchase a house for extra storage. Eventually I had enough to purchase a large forge house in Yew and opened the Yew Community Center where, for the next 5+ years, I ran a larger version of the same charity fund, hosted community events, housed player vendors that sold at reasonable rates, tied people and places together with an extensive public rune library, and matched new players with veteran mentors. It was great fun, and possible in no small part to the persistence of the house, since UO houses were not instanced buildings, but were located on the public map, as PFO buildings will be. Nothing helps community like being able to discover each other's structures, just as you discover other features of the game by exploration. Having actual neighbors is a marvelous catalyst for building community.
The most gratifying times were when people I had aided when they were new players, would stumble upon the center and tell me how they had repaid my small charity by helping other players in turn. that was my version of end-game success.
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Goblin Squad Member
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City Of Heroes. Taxibots.
In the early days of CoH there was a supergroup (guild) of players who all took the power "Recall Friend" which let you teleport a teammate from anywhere in the zone to your location. They'd set up all over the place to help people, but I'd wager the best known was in the Hollows, a zone that was an absolute nightmare to navigate when you got sent there initially. Difficult terrain, high level enemies, you name it. The taxibots would run shifts at the main entrance to the zone, sometimes hours long, and do nothing but recall people back there so they could turn in missions or just get out. And they did it for free.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The very first online game I ever played was a MUD. Most of the good items only dropped a limited number of times, typically 1-5, before it was no longer possible for anymore to drop. The only way to get a new one was for someone else to give up theirs. In every game I've played since that would have meant a mad scramble to horde as much as possible and then lord it over everyone else for the life of the game but in that game upon upgrading anything the vast majority of people would just leave their old hand me downs in common areas for anyone to pick up. Low level gear and training was also very expensive. It was common for people to put together a set of great (and expensive) set of gear ideal for the class left at the class trainer. That was the only game I ever played where common courtesy and mutual respect was the norm rather than the exception.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This might be a asinine questions, but have we coordinated as a community to promote this kickstarter across all available social media? I know Pax is attempting to promote it within our community, but we have some pretty impressive organizations represented here.
During this last week or so, should we collectively make a push for facebook representation at least? Across and beyond the guild level representation, using this thread as its outlet?
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Goblin Squad Member
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How do you mean, "...using this thread as an outlet?"
As for Facebook, I only have an account to look at a few select pages now and again, so I don't think my promotion on that medium would be very effective. However, if others wish to, have at. The few people I know outside my current company (The Empyrean Order) who game, already know about PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How do you mean, "...using this thread as an outlet?"
As for Facebook, I only have an account to look at a few select pages now and again, so I don't think my promotion on that medium would be very effective. However, if others wish to, have at. The few people I know outside my current company (The Empyrean Order) who game, already know about PFO.
But the friends of TEO members might not. Every like is listed on FB still, unless I am mistaken. Its a small step, but it at least gets the awareness out there.