Misadventures with Casuals

LOL, you love that drum you're bangin' don't you?

It's no different then in the old days when you would get a druid in your group that would buff everybody, sit down, and not get back up for 30+ minutes because they are watching soap operas and doing chores around the house. I got to the point where I would just kick them from the group to see how long it would take for them to realize it. Some would sit there for hours before they would say something.

Except now, they literally think you're not only responsible for leveling them for merely showing up, you're also responsible for getting them to your free PL-service camp. Actually read what these snowflakes are saying in response. The mental gymnastics are real

Boy you really have a lock on the motives of other players, and in all the time you've spent on here defending your repulsive elitist attitude you could have gotten a robe.

But I was busy, fulfilling my duty as your personal levelling-bot, and Tourist Guide.

4 pages in and I've figured this was the intention of the original post.

It's not though. It's a complaint about increasing tendency for players to join groups with little intention of actually playing the game, half-assing their contribution to the group and thinking that's an acceptable way to participate.

As an aside, it provides perspective to the increasing anti-boxing sentiment by providing a glimpse at the average experience of players outside of exclusive cliques in today's EQ, thereby providing explanation for why many players still box.

In short, if you don't like players replacing you with a box, step up.

PUGs on Agnarr are absolutely insane. I never experienced anything like this on Ragefire, Lockjaw or Phinigel.

Can't clean up a train as an enchanter? Casual.

This is more about you being unable to properly guide your group.

When on Phinnie i went for the 1st time in Lguk i was very cautious the map is a mess and indeed they had someone smart enough in the group to come and pick me half way .. i had ITU potions and invis ones and still getting down to the deepest area took me some time.


The group would have been stupid to kick me out because i was not used to the map or because it took me 15mn to come from Halas .. I got compliment for my work as a slower/healer/buffer and the group worked nicely.

Knowing a zone does not make you a smart or good player.

Assuming that everyone spend hours in LGuk or any place is stupid.

In Eq1 and E2 i met countless " casual" who played better than hard core raider, of course they did not know raid scripts.

Back in 2015 1/3 of the people would assume you knew any zone map by heart (stupid people) but 2/3 perfectly understood that you could be a nice and decent player without knowing the maps at all. Groups in which the majority of people belonged to the first tier were usually " bad" groups in which the "uber" tank would pull with me at 10% mana and 40% hp from massive canni dance, usually led to something close to a wipe -- that the chanter -- most chanters are smart -- managed to turn into a win ... and right after we got a 5mn break. Would have been much better to get a 2mn break before.

Sadly the TLE is full of under average players that think they rock because they spend ridiculously high amount of time in a zone or because they have awesome gear that they bought selling kronos.

Don't speak for the OP. I replied to you and strawberry because you were insulting the OP. He was venting a comical story ( I thought anyway ) and mentioned some people box to avoid experiences like he described.

It was a good first snarky reply though. The passive aggressive Lol at the start, using a question in your first word wall. I'd recommened smaller paragraphs.

Also you are 10000% lost if you think DBG discourages boxing on ANY server. Truebox is a marketing ploy to lure in people scared of the evil box armies. 85% of Agnarr boxes, easily.

Never answered my questions btw.

Do you accept res's, ports, groups, heals/buffs from boxes? If you do you are hypocrite. Call me wrong from your point of you view, but at least i'm consistent.

Sound like an unskilled enchanter to me.

There are 70+ picks of Guk, all of which are littered with corpses.

I guess those were all casual players?

Pure elitist attitudes like this are why servers die. If you're reading this, don't think everyone on TLS' are like this. Many of us have been around since 1999/Verant days, and believe in community - teaching, mentoring, coaching, etc.

I avoid folks like this.

Too bad that there are people on the server like the OP that will apparently kill your server, no matter what you do!

Any veteran none casual worth his salt would have just soloed the train and the nameds while quaffing beer and singing rousing war songs while stood on a mountain of casuals corpses.

Didn't say anything about not playing perfectly. I said something about playing absolutely atrociously. Big difference there bud, and I'm not even remotely alone in this. Thing is, this atrocious gameplay doesn't go unnoticed. That guy that joins a group while slack players kill on at snails pace who suddenly "has to go help a guildmate", or leaves without saying anything after the first few pulls, or disconnects randomly while in a perfectly safe safespot when hes grouping is thinking the same thing. He just isnt telling you.

It's amazing how different two people's idea of fun can be. To me, the events in the OP sound like a funny, memorable story of a complete cluster**** that the people involved could laugh about, bond over and remember fondly. Particularly in the TLP context, there's almost a kind of nostalgic quality to it, like a reminder of misadventures past. On the other hand, the play session described in this subsequent post...

...just sounds to me like a boring, mechanical grind that's indistinguishable from every other boring, mechanical grind session I've ever had.

To each their own, of course, and I'm not suggesting that wiping over and over would be fun or denying that really being "in the zone" for a while can be satisfying. It's more that I just don't get the overriding preference for that machine-like, maximum-efficiency style of play or the complete lack of appreciation, even disdain, for a more relaxed approach and the occasional bouts of hilariously memorable ineptitude that sometimes go with it.

Sometimes you try to hold people's hands, you're extremely patient, but they're just not effing following you through the dungeon, even after you've IVUed them, paused at every corner, etc. The /follow command would do a better job than them. What conclusion can I make other than they're simply not paying more than tertiary attention to the game? When the /follow command is superior to your ability to read maps or just follow the leader, you don't get to complain about people replacing you with a boxed toon.

The irony here is that a lot of people are defending these atrocious playstyles, and then will go in other threads and talk about how the game is about community and meeting people and stuff. *Newsflash* - players who are too busy watching netflix or tabbing in and out to read other forums and watch youtube videos are not socializing or meeting new people. Maybe they're focused on some juicy conversation in their guild chat, but that's no excuse to ignore the group they've committed to. They're actively endangering their group while contributing very little to it. They want the xp and they want to roll on cash drops, but they don't care to put any effort into a game that requires very little effort to be minimally effective.

Reminds me of the time in original Velious when I said to my group in Siren's Grotto: "Let's jump in this well. What's the worst that can happen?"