The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

IIRC, someone said everyone in your group Peter had 10. Since we'll likely be running them again, I suggest this:

Dte, JM, and myself will smash Delera's, catching JM up. Dte and myself don't yet have 10, so that lets us catch up there. The other group can run Sentinels, with or without taking their level. We should all be caught up together by the end of the night.

Of course, this assumes that JM doesn't catch up on Delera's on her own today or tomorrow. If so, I suggest we clear out lvl 6 and 7 house quests. We might want to wait on Corwin to finish Sentinels, since that finishes out a saga. Either way, we should be at level 10 very quickly.

There is a rumor going that I'll be working next Saturday. I don't know if it's true or not, so I may be short-timing it.

My attendance is likely to be spotty for the next few months, actually. The cheerleader made varsity as a freshman so if the high school has a home fairyball game on Fridays (it's likely they'll have a game pretty much every Friday of the season, it's just a question of home/away), I'll be in the bleachers. I should get some sort of schedule from the coach before too long which will help me understand the situation better. If it becomes too much of a problem, y'all WILL leave RhoGu behind. We'll see what the future brings.

This may be the time then for some of use to pull a TR out of the hat, and make a side group. Fireflash is low enough that she can run with the level 1's without causing issues, or breaking streak. I know Peter was wanting to get out of half-elf on one of his Paladins.

I have a level 4 I TR'd recently and have only done some of the basic early stuff in the harbour.

I have no one in that range at this point, & won't have for at least a month or so, assuming we don't go back to 28 after ER'ing, & before TR'ing. I'm also not sure I want to tie Jhianna (my next likely TR) to a Friday group, as then I won't get to run her very much.

We already have 3 guild groups, the epic & level 9 Friday toons, plus the level 15s (which aren't getting run at all). Do we really need another set of Friday toons?

If you the rest of you want to run another lowbie group, please feel free to do so, though I'll probably have to pass for now. I'll just do something else when you run them.

On a side note, I'll be away the week of Christmas (Dec. 25-28) visiting family. So I will not be able play that week.

We usually take a break over the holiday period. I'd suggest Christmas and NY's weeks at the very least.

We only have 2 guild groups that we've been running together the current friday epic's and the level 9's. The 15's are an ad-hoc group a number of you started running together off and on, but were never being kept together or run as a group or if it was it was only a few of you keeping together, so it is not a guild group.

I also won't be on from the end of December to beginning of February

Not trying to be argumentative, but while it may be an ad-hoc group, I believe that all but one of us currently has a toon in the 13-15 range, and we have been keeping them together. That said, I don't have a toon that can support another lowbie group at this time, and don't expect to have one for a while. If the rest of the group wants to form another lowbie group & run them, I don't have any problems sitting it out while you do so, as long as I know what's going on so I can plan accordingly for Fridays.

However, if you're going to be gone for three months, then the rest of us need to figure out what we'll be doing while you're gone.

He'll only be out for 1 month, January (actually, post Christmas to end of Jan), but don't worry, I'm always happy to do the maths for others who are numerically challenged!!

Actually, IIRC Peter does not have anyone in the 14-15 range. He has the L9-10, and the rest are 'epic'. For that matter, I think that group has outleveled Aerii, and Iji is closing in on 20 IIRC. So I don't think I have anyone there as well.

This winter is going to get interesting to plan.

We might be in a position where the weekly split entails levels. That is, those with epics to run like Peter and Savage Dragon would be in one group while those with lowbies to run like Az would form another. Those with toons in both "regions" would be able to bounce between groups depending on their mood, which would help keep the groups from getting too stale.

To be brutally honest, I'm a bit burned out on DDO these days, so a little time away without screwing over the group in the process might be just what the doctor ordered for me. If it weren't for the fun of interacting with the people in the group, I'd probably go cold turkey for a couple months anyway. We'll figure something out where the people that can show up can run without the absentees getting shafted.

One possible approach would be to run the 9's and then replace them with a second wave. That would give Aletys and Peter a couple months to position a toon for TR. Since both Reywind and Corwin are running hocus-pocus types, we'd have a fair bit of flexibility with a new group role-wise.

For my part, my roster is bottom-heavy:
Shadohe, stripped, hearted, and ready to TR into a kensai fighter build, so lvl1
Botdu, lvl4 healbot
Wouldii, lvl9 sorc
RhoGu, lvl9 rogue, Friday alt
Phuury, lvl15 druid, part of the unofficial guild group that Aletys referred to
Klubbir, lvl26 bard, Friday main

Bot would be fairly pointless as a solo toon, so that's probably the toon I'd roll into a new wave if there was one.

After 4 years, any game gets stale. I think I've been mildly burned out for awhile now as well. It might be worthwhile to look into an alternate game as well. Not necessarily an mmo, but just something with a multiplayer aspect.

I feel like we have turned the Friday runs into a job of sorts. Hurry and log in, hurry and get the split done, hurry and cram in as many quests as we can before time is out. We have to split, but I think we lost a chunk of the social aspect of our group. So how about we try to be social and chat for a half hour before we run off in two groups. No discussion on what the big book has in store. No real game chat, we can do that in separate groups when the time comes. Not suggesting we don't talk about game changes, just keep it general interest.

I know some of us like epic more then lower level stuff. Maybe we can toss the book, run who you want with whatever level toon you want and group up that way for the few weeks people are missing. And if someone needs a break, they can just skip a week. In other words, fake it. lol I am just rambling with no real plan formed so will shut up and let others post a feeling on it.

Yeah, you are right. Even down to what character classes we pick on our standard Friday groups. TBH, I'm not certain splitting the calls helps matters much. While it does get hectic with two groups, at this point we're not running much of anything new. Very rarely do we actually need any significant degree of coordination. Most often those situations are in raids anyway, and we're all in the same call anyway.

For an alternate game, we might want to consider Divinity: Original Sin. It's not true multi-player, but you can play it with two players out of the box. I believe I've seen mods that let you play with a group of 4, which would be sufficient for our purposes. I know Corwin & Reywind have played it together.

The isometric perspective drives me nuts, but the game is good enough I could put up with it.

One caveat though: If we went with D:OS, we'd probably be stuck in the same groupings till the game was done.

You can run with 4 members in a party, and it's not hard to set that aspect up, but Aletys is right, you would need to run in the same configuration as you can't shift characters into different saves, and this would limit the social aspect to the same people each week.

There is also the free Neverwinter (MMO) that is out there as another option where you can create your characters, do the in-game quests all over the place or run quests that other players have made, but I'm sure there's a lot of other games out there too.

Since it would be mostly to break the monotony of killing yet even more kobolds, hobgoblins, and undead, we probably wouldn't be playing every Friday.

For a lighter game, one that lacks the detail of a real RPG, we might try Hammerwatch. It's closer to Gauntlet than any real RPG, though there is some progression. It's on GOG.

The classic Infinity Engine games have a MP mode as well. Not sure how well they work nowadays, as I never played mp with them, except in BG to make my own characters.

There's also apparently an opensource client for Ultima Online, and free shards (servers) we can hit. I don't know if we'd have to buy the regular game client though to get it working.

I'm also a bit worn out on DDO. However, I don't mind playing DDO on Friday's. I could rather quickly get my level 26 fighter to level 28 so I can TR him. I need maybe like a week to accomplish that. If we don't want to start a new TR group yet then I will just play him occasionally when we have a full group.

Dragon Age Inquisition will have a MMO mode. I will probably create a toon there a little after I have begun the DA:I single player campaign.

I have completed the Divinity game, but could make a new one if we go multi player on that game. It's not a game I would like to run every week. Playing it as a variation is fine.

With some people off every week we could end up with 6 people or less. So staying in one group would be nice.

If everything else fails we can always do what we usually do, i. e. improvise. I agree with Cm that the main reason for playing is the social aspect. If playing feels more like a chore than fun then we have definitely done something wrong.

If this feeling is mainly because we're tired of DDO (lag issues, repeating the same quests over and over etc.) then we should definitely look into something else for awhile. We can always get back to DDO once we get the inspiration back.

1 don't know that I'm looking for a different game. I just think we need a few weeks off from the structure. To borrow a phrase, perhaps we need to put The Big Book on the shelf for a few weeks and just putz around. Maybe we need to piss away the first hour of the session trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do--content wise AND toon wise. Since Reywind's absence (as well as others) will force us to call an audible anyway, this might be the right time for a little chaos, if only to remind us of why we wanted structure in the first place.

Part of the problem for me is that I got pretty sucked in by XCom recently. It's been a while since I've had the desire to play an involved single-player game. I've had a huge backlog of games forever and the fun I had with XCom has me interested in knocking out a few other games. It doesn't have to be an exclusive choice for me, but it's been a good while since DDO has taken a back seat to anything.

I will probably be busy playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for awhile after it's released in less than 2 weeks. From February next year I guess Witcher 3 will take quite a bit of time. I even play some Destiny (MMO shooter). Right now I'm completing the different Sherlock Holmes games.

I have to admit it feels more rewarding playing these games that DDO. It's so nice not having to worry about lag etc. So the main thing that attracts me to the Friday night sessions is the social part. What we do is less important.

Talking for awhile and then improvising what to do works well for me. Then it would be nice if we e. g. agree that we could detach from the structure we have now, i. e. staying together and taking levels at the same time. That means if we play DDO we can just play something ad hoc that we would like. E. g. one person needs help completing something or farming for something (SOS sword for Reywind, getting mats from challenges, Crystal Cove etc.) Then we just do that.

If we have more than 6 people playing we don't have to all play the same quests. I'm fine with one group playing on epics while the other play on level 15's. We just merge people together that have toons in the approximate level ranges.

Going after quests we think is fun instead of having to follow a program could maybe be a better way. It doesn't matter we toons playing together aren't exactly at the same level, especially on epic. You just pick quests that all toons in the group could get something from (XP, loot etc.). If the level spread in the group is 16-19 then you pick level 17-18 quests to run. It shouldn't matter that the level 16 toon still misses some level 15 or 16 quests. He can always get those later if he wants to.

Quests are possibilities for us, not something we have to run. After the TR XP changes there is enough XP for everybody to get to level 20 without having to grind the same quests over and over. So we can afford to be picky and select fun quests and skip the ones we don't like much.