Far Journeys gaming

[Morreion]

I thought I'd throw out a general comments thread on the topic of playing together in MMOs. Currently, there are 2 groups of players who hang out on this site playing in games:

***LOTRO 4-person group on Landroval server, Thursdays from 7-9 PM Eastern (look for the Far Journeys guild ) We are doing all of the epic Book quests, we are in our mid-30s level-wise and are on Book 4.3.

***WAR Endless Trial 4-person group on Gorfang server, Wednesdays from 7-8 PM Eastern (this group may possibly be winding down in the near future), you can be any level and play in scenarios & open RvR (we don't PvE- it's war!).

Now, having advertised these groups (drop in and say hello, or even join us!), I'm thinking about the future here.

With the trend in MMOs heading away from general community, it seems to me that it is more important than ever to play with friends in games. I know that when I visit games I've played in the past, I have fun for a while, but playing solo tends to make me lose interest after a while. MMOs were originally social games, and that's what keeps me playing- good comrades.

I'd like to make Far Journeys a rallying point for those of us who would like to group with or at least interact with players from previous games that we all enjoyed. Community is a special thing, and I don't want to see it fade.

What to do?

2011 New Releases

2011 looks like a good year for MMO releases- we have SWTOR, Tera, Rift, and Guild Wars 2 (and others!) to look forward to. I'm quite excited about most of these games and the only question in my mind will be, which will be my main game? It's feast or famine in the MMO world, isn't it! I really look forward to having a group form in a future game or games to play/RP/hang out together. With all of these big titles releasing, I have to figure that at least one will be worth sticking with.

Be thinking about this! Nothing is more exciting than sharing a new world with friends.

In the Meantime...

With yesterday's announcement that EQ2 will have a free-to-play server in beta August 17th, this brings to 2 major games that are switching to the F2P model- the other is LOTRO, which goes hybrid-F2P in September.

I personally remain a healthy skeptic of the F2P model, but one good thing about it is that it allows me to play games that I don't quite feel like subscribing to. I'd like to see if there is any interest in having a weekly Far Journeys EQ2 group this autumn. This may be able to replace our current WAR Wednesday night group, although I'm totally open as to when we would play. I'm also open as to what type of play we would have- in our LOTRO group on Thursdays, we all stay near the same level to advance together, which is fun but can be problematic if people can't always keep up. Perhaps in EQ2 we could be more flexible- for instance, we could mainly RP, or we could use EQ2's mentoring mechanism to play together.

Anyway, if you are interested, post here. I'd be happy to hear from you about building a gaming community here

[Rakul]

I liked LOTRO a lot and have never played EQ2! So...

interested!

[sinaedh]

I would love to be part of a gaming community. In fact, the reason I'm playing Midgard in DAOC right now is because of the group of players I've found (who will put up with, if not usually enter into, the roleplay that I often slip into).

Having said that, I have never played Everquest, so don't know much about it. I also am not sure of the time I'll have available once school begins again. But certainly I'd be willing to give a gathering of like-minded souls some effort and time.

[Gidgiddoni]

Allo. It is an odd thing. I found myself wandering over to the VNboards/DAOC/Nimue forum one day this week, thinking about the old days. That was the last, and only, real community I saw thriving.

I am still just plinking around in Warcraft right now, which has the expansion out and which also has the chat feature now that allows you to communicate with other players on any realm or server. That has actually been pretty nice, as I chat with some folks I know in real life who happen to be on other servers.

I never played either Everquest. I tried LOTRO ... and was pretty much ready to quit by the time I made it to the first few quests. Warhammer ... makes me so sad I don't even like the thought. So much potential so utterly wasted.

I might try the EQ2 thing, but doubt it, since what time I have is going to get dumped into Warcraft. On the bright side, I happened to notice a post where Blizzard is having a writing competition. So I have put together a tale (about 4000 words) around one of my toons there. At least it got me writing again.

[EchoVamper]

Jul 29, 2010 11:42:59 GMT -5 Gidgiddoni said:

Allo. It is an odd thing. I found myself wandering over to the VNboards/DAOC/Nimue forum one day this week, thinking about the old days. That was the last, and only, real community I saw thriving.

Having just taken a nostalgic tour through Camelot last eve, Gid's post does get me thinking about that community of yore. It seems Morreion may have tapped into something a number of us have been thinking about as we cast about for a "community".

My sense is that the rich and vital communities that were so pervasive and global in days past (DAoC was my experience, but UA and EQ also probably qualify here as do others) may be a thing of the past until the industry stumbles on a redux of some sort.

I fear that at this time the best role players can hope for are smaller communities (which for some reason I want to call families) that are there for a distinctive and unique purpose of fellowship. The LOTRO group, the WAR group, and the short-lived "Sorc de Soleil" in Aion are examples close to home, and prove we've actually already been searching for a "home".

Roaming around Hibernia last night after a long absence made me think how fun it might be, even in the descendency of the game, to just leave some distinctive mark on the game before it dies. Not the magnificent, sprawling, complex guilds and alliances of the past ... they will never be duplicated. Perhaps a group of Firbolg only, all made as large as you can make them, in distinctive dress, roaming around helping people, defending keeps, shaking up the place a bit. Or perhaps Trolls ... or something else themed. Nothing dependent on min/max, but nevertheless self-sufficient through experience and teamwork.

It could be done in other games too. I just know DAoC the best.

At any rate the age of global community in MMO's seems to be on the decline. But I'd settle for a smaller unit, a family, that had a purpose and an outcome to go with a lot of good times. Come to think of it, that is kind of what Far Journeys is. I don't know what the answer is or which game will fill the bill, but I think Morreion is right. We should keep trying to find that distinctive feel, that in-game climate, that we all remember so fondly.

[Jaema]

I'm guessing I'll be ready to play around a bit in EQ2 by August as War won't hold my interest much longer in the free-to-10 mode we're playing in now especially. I'm not going to resub to War either to get past this roadblock.

You're right that the friends and community matter a lot and the loss of that group is why I stopped playing EQ2 when I did.

[Regolyth]

I've been really busy at work, and home, lately, which explains my absence from the boards for the past month or so. So, sorry about that. Moving on...

I really don't have much interest in playing LOTRO, but I wouldn't mind getting into a weekly RP group on EQ2. It would be the game best suited for such an adventure. It could almost be like a weekly D&D game, LOL. We could play, RP, that night with the same characters, and keep a nice little community going.

I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in it, but for something more than just a night a week, WoW is looking really good right now. Later this year they're going to release the Cataclysm expansion. I've been seriously thinking of resubbing to give it a try. I kind of like the idea of a cataclysm resetting a lot of things (maybe its from the days of reading Dragonlance novels). I have a few people trying to pull me back in.

Tuesday I picked up my CE version of StarCraft II. I know it goes against the MMORPG that most of you guys play, but it's a lot of fun and I will be playing a good bit of it in the coming months. SC2 is a RTS for those who may not know.


@ sinaedh
I don't know who you're playing with in DAoC, but I know a bunch of old Roisin Dubh members, as well as members from the RD alliance from back in the days of Nimue and the RP cluster alliance, are playing Midgard currently. I was thinking of joining them next month. I can give you their names if you would like to look them up.

[EchoVamper]

OK, now that I've got my little nostalgic side trip out of the way, here's my first thought about what I think Morreion was driving at in the original post:

I think it's a decent idea, and here's what I think is rather unique about it. To some degree, message boards and forums have typically grown FROM established communities in specific games and not the other way around. If I get what Gack is saying, this would be the opposite.

The community starts HERE and propagates TO games. Now there are some partial examples of this. Shadowclan comes to mind: arises in DAoC, establishes website with forums, then spreads to other games. The common thread running through this is the players, of course, accompanied by whoever they pick up along the way.

The quintessential example of this in my experience is/was the Amazon Basin. It spread from Diablo outward to all manner of games, but remained a thriving cyber-community through the evolution of the industry. I haven't been there in a long time, but it was a huge sprawling community (and often an outrageous one) in its day.

So when Morreion writes, "I'd like to make Far Journeys a rallying point for those of us who would like to group with or at least interact with players from previous games that we all enjoyed," that is what I initially think of ...being a little more intentional or even a bit more aggressive about making this a staging point for like minded adventurers.

Have I got that at all right?

[ariesel]

I know that Grig and I are looking at SWTOR as a possibility in the future. We did play EQ2 for many years before LOTRO, so that may something we'd play again with everyone.

I'll nudge him to visit here and post his own thoughts.

[Morreion]

Maybe there can be a bit of an EQ2 community again, Jaema

Good to see you again, Rego! Oatik is hitting Starcraft 2 pretty heavy too! I think emphasizing the RP aspect is a solid idea. No worries about who is what level that way.

Great to hear, Arie!

Well-said, Echo! The whole idea behind creating this board was to have a place where gamers who've played with each other before could stay in touch and perhaps continue on with a bit of the community that they remember from the past. Like Gid mentioned, the VN boards for DAoC servers were a community as well, reflecting the in-game community. If that general feeling has vanished, it can still be kept alive in places like this, so as not to have a good social setting vanish when a game loses its community.