Looking For a Better Tomorrow

Discussion in 'Guild Recruitment' started by Chugwater, May 2, 2019.

  1. Chugwater New Member

    Hello, readers of the forums!

    I’m wondering whether anybody is having the same problems I’m having, and if there’s anything I can do about it.

    When Mangler started, I jumped in with both feet. I joined a guild a few days ahead of time, and when the countdown ended and the server was finally open, I rolled a Bard. I never would have rolled a Bard if I’d known that it involved so much soloing, as I figured that being in a guild would put me in a situation where grouping with guildmates would be pretty much automatic. Except that it’s not, and now I’m thinking that I probably never should have expected it to be.

    I started out budgeting my playing time to ten hours a week. Unfortunately for me, that just doesn’t seem doable for anybody else. Sometimes it seems one of the prerequisites for playing Everquest is that you have to do it sixty hours per week and, as I should have known, other than one person who is more interested in tradeskilling than leveling (bless her heart), everybody else passed me by like a speeding bullet. By the time I was Level 10, I was looking up at a guild roster of people in their 40’s.

    They all seem like very nice people, and I have nothing bad to say about them personally, but I know that only on extremely rare occasions will I ever get to group with any of them. They are all grouping together and putting together raids at Level 50, and I’m at Level 27. By the time I get into my upper 40’s, they will all be 75 (especially as much as I solo – As a Bard, I’d be lucky to solo two levels a month) with thousands of AA. By the time I reach 75 with thousands of AA, they will be 85 with tens of thousands. You see my dilemma.

    A few of the guildmates see my plight and assure me that I will have chances to group more here and there. After all, many of them, once they reach 50, decide to roll alts and start the journey once again, and as each of them rockets past me, perhaps they will be kind enough to try to keep me in mind during that brief one-day window when their level intersects mine. It hasn’t happened yet, but maybe someday. In the meantime, I was stuck at Level 23 for seven straight days fighting marathon battles in the Karanas (Any plate-wearer can probably relate to what this is like) while hoping that a good pickup group would come along – and sometimes they do; I went from 23 to 27 in two days after that with two good pickup sessions in Guk – and now I’ve been stuck at 27 for five days waiting for another one. I guess that even if I find a pickup group once every six weeks or so, things will be faster than soloing every day, three hours a day, for six weeks. (And yeah, my playing has gone from ten hours a week up to fifteen and then twenty, temporarily, in an attempt to try to close the gap as much as I can between me and everyone else.) So, undoubtedly, I should quit soloing totally and only look for pickup groups.

    So, finally, the Question: Is this as good as it gets? Are there guilds out there (specifically on Mangler) that actually level each other up? Does every guild out there look at a 27 Bard and think “Sorry, man; we’re all at 50.” Is there anybody else out there who looks up at the rest of their guild on their lofty perch, knowing in your heart that there’s no way to reach up there? Is there a better way than going into the game each day hoping that maybe, if you’re lucky, there will be a pickup group with the fortunate timing that they will have a camp, and they’ll need one more, and you’ll be it? Are any of the rest of you waiting for that one-time deal where a guildie has rolled an alt, and just for this brief moment, you may have an opportunity to group with him or her? Or is this just the way it is for everybody? We should thank our lucky stars just to be in a guild and participate in the sometimes lively and humorous guild banter? If this happens to you, what do you do?

    To be fair, there are Guild Events once per week that are open to all players, Level 1+. At these events, I get to see what some of these people look like, some of these giants whose names I often see in Guild Chat. And when they’re killing things (and I’m helping; last week I’m sure I did several hitpoint of damage, lol!) I seem to be scoring some coin off the kills as my speakers go ‘cha-ching.’ They are trying in that way to keep people involved who would otherwise have no involvement. And shortly after the server opened, our designated tradeskiller (How many guilds have those?) gave everybody a set of armor. I got a full set of Banded Armor, woo-HOO! In fact, as far as I know, anybody reading this would be very lucky to be in this guild, especially if you’re 46+, as our raid numbers aren’t as great as we want them to be. From my very limited vantage point, it seems this guild treats people well.

    More questions: If any of you are in my situation, would any of you, guilded or not, consider forming some sort of static group? Or, if there are enough of you, several semi-static groups? (Because I know that finding six people who will play at predictable predetermined times is pretty…well, iffy.) Or am I pipedreaming? Are there guilds out there that are more predisposed to helping people level? If so, could I level with you without leaving my current guild? If I absolutely had to, I would leave the guild, but only if it were painfully obvious that there’s just no other way.

    OR…..Is this just the way it is, and there really is nothing I can do to improve my situation. It’s gotten to where I’m thinking of paying my guildies to group with me ($20/hour sound about right?), or at least to make appearances for autograph sessions, and I sure wish there were a better way?

    Maybe when Kunark is released, I should make an Iksar Necro, and just not group, because I don’t need to, because I’m an Iksar Necro. I can throw my two-cents into guild chats from time to time, and that will be that. But right now, I’m a Half-Elf Bard, and I’m wondering if I can continue to be one.

    Thanks for reading!
    Pirlo likes this.
  2. Silver-Crow Augur

    My advice, Come to Selos.

    Mangler is very slow xp in comparison to Selos, so getting to top level is very easy, and with double spawn rate of bosses, it's pretty easy to stay relatively well geared in group gear, without ever raiding. I've played both servers, and much prefer the atmosphere on selos. Other than a couple of guilds, most people are laid back and would welcome a bard in their groups.

    Have a look at this thread - https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/selos-all-known-guilds-so-far.255229/

    it has most of the main guilds, and you should be able to find one that suits your hours and playstyle :)

    Try it out, if you don't like it, you can always go back to mangler, but there's much less bot/box drama on selos, which makes it a much more relaxing place to be.

    Oh and paying guildies to level you... that's just plain wrong. Any good guild should be looking out for each other.
  3. Chugwater New Member

    I like Mangler, especially having limited playing time, because it gives me a longer amount of time to get to know each expansion before the next one is unlocked. Getting to know some old zones that are unfamiliar to me was a big part of my reason for picking it.

    As for paying guildies to level me, they haven't asked me for money, and I doubt that they ever would. Nobody in the guild has ever shown any evidence of any kind of..... well, dubious morals. It would be unfair to blame any of them of anything. It's just that I'm tempted to offer it.

    It's not that anybody has done anything wrong, and it's nobody's fault but mine that I'm not in the game as much as anybody else. I'm just wondering if 1) anybody else has found themselves in a situation similar to mine, and 2) whether I can proactively do something about it, other than whining and crying and wishing things were different.
  4. BlueberryWerewolf Augur

    Are you in my guild? I feel like I had this conversation yesterday evening.

    If so, I am completely serious when I said I am pretty much always available. Free of charge! I know that's just one person, but it's a start! Others said the same thing, and in my experience they also mean it.

    It will be more difficult to keep up with people when you have limited playtime, but Vanilla is probably the hardest expansion to keep up with as you have large areas of content where people can't play together with levels being too far apart from each other. It will only get better once the expansions are all in the same level range. Just got to get through this one and there's still a good amount of time.

    I am addicted to that altahol so even if I do out-level you on one character, there's another one on the way up most likely.
  5. Lumiens Augur

    I've spent countless hours putting together exp groups for lower level members and sitting outside of the group along with others leveling them to get them to 33 and the inviting them to the hole once they hit 33 inviting them into the main group with enchanter pets raking in the exp for them. Other members of my guild have also been running AoE groups to catch members up.

    This is the way my guild was on Phinny, but I had to weed through about 5 guilds on Mangler before I found the smaller one I'm in now that has this same mindset and goes out of its way to help each other. The first guild I joined prior to server launch, all the officers took time off work, raced to 50 in their statics with each other and then proceeded to level up their alts in their statics again,with each other, instead of making any effort to help their guild they created and were running.
  6. Chugwater New Member

    Original poster here.
    To put some closure to this thread, things got worse for me before they got better. I saw what I thought was a no-win situation, posted farewells to the guild, and deleted my character (my main and only). It wasn't so much a matter of "If nobody will play with me, I'll take my ball and go home," as it was "Why am I standing on this diamond when everybody else has moved on to the Major Leagues? There doesn't seem to be any point to it."

    Since then, I've learned a couple of things that I hadn't even considered at the time. The thinking seemed alien to me, and what some people were telling me notwithstanding, it just wasn't dawning on me that these might be the case, at least in this guild.

    Two things I've learned since I gave up:

    1 - People *do* roll alts all the time, for any number of reasons. Not at first much, when the race to have a raid force is on, but a little later on, people get bored and a bit burned out with their characters, and somebody who's raced to 50 (This is on Mangler) might've been dreaming lately that they sure are sick of being a Warrior and wish they were a Wizard instead. Or they've never been a Rogue before and wonder what it's like. Some are ready to pursue side projects with alts, and because they have mains and other alts, it's not always a case of "80 hours a week or nothing; you're either in or you're out." We have a project involving leveling a PvP team that might take up two or three nights a week for those involved. A project is starting involving leveling up Iksar alts together, probably two night a week. All of my presumptions about the guild I was in were formed at a time when there was a real and immediate push to the top and they don't seem so valid now that the push has tapered off. I think they tried to tell me, but I wasn't listening. Things have changed. I even know of a couple of married couples who get together once a week in a sort of Everquest version of what would otherwise be a weekly card game or something to non-EQers.

    2 - When it happens that you're invited to a party, and you go, and you find yourself in a room full of strangers, you don't know any of them, but they all seem to know each other.... or if not, at least they are mingling and sitting together at tables and all seem to be happily busy in conversations and none of the tables has an open seat, there are two types of people. The first will sit by the wall for awhile, watch the crowd, walk around aimlessly for a bit, look at the paintings on the wall, and then leave, sad at the isolation and loneliness that happens most profoundly when people are in crowds. The second will hold some cards above his/her head and address the room as a whole. "Hey, everybody, I've got Cards Against Humanity here..... Who's in?" Being naive in the ways of guild etiquette, I chose the first way. But you know that the second person is going to end up having more fun. A guild doesn't *have* to be something that just happens to you as you hope that someone out there will, by coincidence, have the same interests as you, and that you'll bump into each other by coincidence. You *can* BE the guild.... or at least, a piece of it.

    With a little more wisdom and insight....and a little more time, I've come around to thinking that this guild is a very good one, and for anybody who is reading this and looking for a guild on Mangler, we do have (speaking metaphorically here) Cards Against Humanity decks, as well as Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit. Whether you are a hardcore player who is already ready to raid, or whether you're a part-timer with a couple of evenings a week to spare and a wish to join with others who are in the same boat, (We're putting together a Kunark project that might be perfect for you!), imho, you should want in this guild.

    <Zek Expeditionary Korp> There *will* be things for you to do.
  7. YourNameHere Lorekeeper

    *grabs Woolworth by the scruff of the neck and drags him off*

    I should spank you, you little Bard. Now get that Iksar group post going!

    ~ Paeris