The Teachers Pet

So here has been something that has been on my nerves for quite a while.

WHOLE GUILDS BETA TESTING

Who honestly thinks that this is a fair or even a good approach to "beta testing" new content? Just for starters, lets take a look at KoS and the raids presented there and what happened since they went live:

· Hurricanus - Script changed multile times to accomodate the idol aspect of the encounter
· 3 princes - Didnt even work correcly. Switch changed as well as hp increased. Script changed to function correctly as well
· Mutagenic Outcast - Number of fixes and changes
· Labratory of Lord Vyemm - I dont even think there is a number large enough to describe the number of times Vyemm/Alzid have been tweaked
· Talendor/Gorenaire - Both changed and even moved to a different zone in a sense
· Harla Dar - Made significantly easier and changed to a different zone again
· Deathtoll - Tarinax and Cruor have been modified many times

I am leaving Halls of Seeing and Lyceum out because neither of those zones went live until much later and were not around for the beta test. However; is anyone having a problem noticing the trend here? Every single one of these encounters had to be changed and/or fixed upon going live. Obviously pulling whole guilds into your beta system is not simply testing the encounter to ensure it works. What other possible reason could there be?

Oh thats right, the age old concept of l33t Beta Inf0z. I find it amusing how the SAME guilds get to beta test content for weeks on end, night after night, before anyone else even has a chance of seeing the encounter, let alone attempting it. This happens over and over and over, every time new content is added. Yes, there are 1 or 2 new guilds here and there, but that is just to save face and not appear to be showing blatant favoritism. Its pathetic.

I am not trying to take away from the guilds that test these encounters. They do put in their work to beat them. But I find it complete bull shit that they even get credit for world wide firsts on live servers when the content goes live. Grats, you got to try this night after night with no risk to you since you were in a sheltered testing enviroment while the rest of the world didnt even get the opportunity to watch. Congrats further for having the designer/developers of the encounter helping you and telling you the in's and out's along the way to try and "ensure the encounter is working". Its a load of bull shit.

The bottom line is that there are probably 15 guilds world wide that would easily kill these encounters giving all the beta info and all the extra time and help with the encounter. It is just downright sad that a guild would even try and claim to be the best after getting this special attention, and even sadder that they claim it doesnt help because some little things changed (wich of course they were still told about). The only thing amazing here is that often times other guilds who were not SOE's personal little bitches get the world firsts on things. Those are the guilds that I think are actually worth a damn. There are several of them scattered around SOE's servers, and everything they do is at a disadvantage because they didnt get WEEKS OF TESTING like some guilds.

You might think I am bitter about not getting my guild to beta test stuff. No, not bitter. If I was offered the chance would I take it? Of course! I would be a fool to not give my guild a leg up. That doesnt mean I support the idea. I am firmly against whole guilds, or even good percentages of guilds getting to beta test content. It is nothing but a way for the devs to show unbridled favoritism.

You may also be asking yourself, how do I know all this? Well let me tell you. When the KoS beta rolled around, I was lucky enough to receive a random invite. Caring about the game, I set off to try and explore the land and do the things beta testers are there to do. One of these guilds that are repeatedly copied to beta to test things was trying dilligently to recruit me to their guild at the time. For kicks, on beta I joined up with them. I saw first hand the exclusve testing, information, and treatment they received. I saw how night after night they were targeted and summoned into zones and throw against encounters. I did not go with them, but I witnessed it. This was not my guild and Ill be damned if I was going to ruin our credibility by "stealing" that info. Its really pathetic it takes these beta guilds more than 2 or 3 tries to ever beat this shit or that they ever do not beat it before anyone else because it is almost like the developers/designers give them blueprints to the inner workings of the encounter. Furthermore, these guilds are in constant dev communication and often exchange emails about things like exact timers and how encounters should be worked once they have been pushed live. Its a fucking joke.

Heres the deal: This content can be tested easily enough by the developers to see that it, for the most part is working and running its script correctly. That should be enough. When it hits live, we, the real players, will report the bugs as we find them, and you can then fix them in correspondance. Venekor in halls of seeing was a perfect example. It was too easy, so a script was added. The script worked improperly and was reported on. The script was changed, but still bugged. Again the players offered feedback and now it has been working for a long time. This is how all major encounters should be handled.

If you insist on giving people a leg up, take a collection of people from different servers. You people at SOE know damn well who the hardcore or bigtime guilds are. It would not be hard to take one or 2 from the different ones on different servers and combine them into a raid to give it a few run throughts. That way everyone has an equal footing if nothing else. Dont let the same people test it more than once or twice. You dont want them learning or defeating the encounter, just to ensure that for the most part it is working.

Most importantly though, and I cant say this enough: STOP LETTING WHOLE GUILDS BETA TEST CONTENT

Enough is enough. No, I dont want my guild beta testing, I dont want the neighbors guild, I dont want the kid down the street's guild and I dont want the guild across the country beta testing. If one or two of their members are randomely accepted into beta, no big deal, but copying over entire guilds and working exclusviely with them is fucking ridiculous and needs to end now.

The people in the hard working guilds that actualy play the game are getting tired of working 2x as hard for their rewards. They are tired of working harder than another guild, actually making more progress than they did but since they didnt get weeks of special treatment, having said guild rub it in their face like they are somehow superior. There is nothing the legitimate guilds can do because if they even say anything you will have 5000 ignorant, naive people who are completely obvlivious to the situation saying things like they are just jealous and angry they didnt get it first. Your damn right Im angry, not that I didnt get it first, there are lots of things I dont get first, but I am angry that these people get 3 weeks of hand holding and babysitting while the rest of us have to sit back and give them this headstart. Perhaps I should start refering to these beta guilds as Special Ed, since they obviously need this special help and attention.

The hardworking guilds communicate with each other. They are fed up. If EoF rolls around and this same shit of whole guilds beta testing content, getting a leg up, etc happens again, there are guilds canceling for good. In essence you are giving these guilds a cheat code to bypass content. I dont want your beta inf0z, I dont want your fucking help. I want everone on level ground. Random people taken from different servers and different guilds are enough to ensure encounters are working well enough to be pushed to live. Quit playing fucking favorites.

A Little of Column A, a Little of Column B...

Enter the Antechamber of Fate and it's champion: Chel'drak, the Ancient Lord.

Let me start by saying that so far, I am a big fan of this encounter. It has been very challenging, but there is progress being made and unless something goes crazy with the script, it definitly seems possible, just that it is going to take some hard work.

The encounter basically relies on all aspects of all classes. Your going to need some solid tanking and powerfull healing, combined with overwhelming dps. If your missing any of these three, dont bother zoning in, you dont stand a chance. I think that this makes every member of the raid important, wich is a good thing. I hate those fights where I know half the raid could have turned on auto attack and gone afk and it wouldnt even matter (like the crab instance).

For people who have not yet attempted this encounter, here's a basic run down, or at least some of what I know about the encounter thus far (minimal spoiler below, anything said can easily be figured out in under 45seconds of engagement):


- The encounter consists of Chel'drak the turtle dragon(aka the Turgon or Drattle)

- With Chel'drak are a handful of skeletons that are a seperate encounter, but are more or less linked to him (think alzid and vyemm)

- During the fight a Shadowy Priest/Fighter/Thief/Sorcerer will spawn and needs to be killed on a reoccuring timer

- Also during the fight a pair of skeleton adds will spawn that also need to be killed on a reoccuring timer

- Chel'drak himself his like a truck. He also has a poison AE that is going to be unavoidable. For this AE, think Cruor only more badass

- With all this going on, Chel'drak also has an AE stomp ability with knockback


I know it seems like a lot, but thats what a good encounter of this magnitude needs. A well tuned and organized raid force should be able to deal with most of these obstacles and with enough percevirence, be able to overcome the ones they are not able to initially deal with. I am having fun working through the encounter so far and pray everyday that it is not nerfed to accomodate less "hardcore" players. I was deprived my chance of beating the hard version of the Elemental Warder in Halls of Seeing because of a nerf, I do not want to have this taken from me as well, nor do I think it will be. Hats off to whomever came up with this encounter.


That was the "rave", now for the "rant". (bigger, although not huge spoiler to follow):

- a Shadowy Fighter: Can only be attacked by fighters. All priests/scouts/mages will be reflected should they attack it.
- a Shadowy Sorcerer: Can only be attacked by mages. All priests/scouts/fighters will be reflected should they attack it.
- a Shadowy Thief: Can only be attacked by scouts. All priests/mages/fighters will be reflected should they attack it.
- a Shadowy Acolyte: Can only be attacked by priests. All scouts/fighters/mages will be reflected should they attack it.

Can anyone tell me what could pose as a problem here? Ill give you a hint: While you have to be killing wichever random one of these 4 spawns every 30 seconds, you also need to be killing the turtle dragon and the skeleton adds that keep spawning. What kind of crazy ass raid has healers to spare should the acolyte spawn? Fighters do a measure of dps and can take/avoid hits better than anyone else, requiring them to randomly have to kill a single mob is not a big deal, even though my guild in particular, uses far less fighters than anyone else. Mages and scouts are born to do dps, so requiring them to kill a random mob is again, not a big deal. Preists are in a raid for healing!

I am fully aware that there are preists capable of doing fairly decent dps. That isnt the point. Chel'drak is going to require 3 or 4 healers keeping the tank and the tank group alive. There are going to need to be 1-2 other healers keeping up with the damage from the skeleton adds. I am just going to assume these 4-6 healers (4-6 depending on how severe that round of attacks were, for the harder hits, your going to NEED more than 4 healers) are also capable of keeping up with cures and heals on the rest of the raid from getting hit by the multiple ae's. Now you want healers, and healers ONLY to be killing a seperate add that shows up? WTF.

There is no way (that I know of) to predict wich shadowy mob will spawn, it seems purely random. This is what I can tell you about this raid. Your going to need probably 7-8 healers to reliably be able to take down a shadowy acolyte when/if they spawn at any point during the fight. Lets not forget that priests also do less dps than the other classes so the mob will die slower, resulting in an even longer duration where they cannot be healing (wich is their role). I dont know what kind of raid you role with, but 7-8 of a base archetype seems ridiculous to me.

My suggestions is remove the shadowy acolyte from the spawn table or for the love of god remove the randomness of the spawn. You can plan for the acolyte if you know it will spawn every 4th spawn. That is more manageable. The idea of forcing healers into a dps role on a fight that requires large amounts of healing to begin with seems stupid to me, thus the suggestion of removing the acolyte. Let the dps be required to dps, or do you plan on giving the dps some form of healing to make up for it? (NOTE - this would be a poor idea)

Last night we went after this mob with a mere 4 priests. We knew we were short staffed for the evening and didnt really plan on winning. The goal was to do as well as we could and try and figure out exactly what we would need to have a more reasonable chance. Here's what we found out: If the acolyte spawns, you need lots of healers to kill it and that is dumb. No matter how skilled your healers are, you need an excess of healers to cover this base and with some shitty luck (something we have been known to have) you could end up with the acolyte spawn 3 or 4 times in a row. Healers, in argueably the most challenging raid in game, do NOT have power to burn doing dps every 30seconds and forcing that is just a piss poor way of telling guilds they need to have others sit out in favor of more and more priests. For a guild like mine that only has 4 fighters, the shadowy fighter should be by FAR the most challenging of the 4 random mobs to deal with. We already have to be tanking Chel'drak and the skeleton adds that spawn, and then fighters need to be killing this mob too. That should be a problem for us, not that we need to get more healers than any other archetype because they need to heal a raid and be killing a mob on their own. I dont care if this is a heroic mob, the idea that a raid should have enough healers to heal a x4 orange con raid mob, some epic level 74 adds, AND be the only dps on level 74 heroic adds is stupid.

In summary, this is a fun, somewhat unique, and challenging encounter. I do like it, but I find the priest requirement foolish. Scouts and mages are meant to dps. Fighters are meant to tank and if not tanking dps. Healers are meant to buff and heal. Dont force healers to dps on top of their role. Its dumb.

If You Can's Stand the Heat, Get out of the Kitchen

Ok time for the first rant. You know what has really been getting on my nerves, and increasingly so over the last month or two? People bailing on guilds and the game in general.

Every week, and at times, every day someone else that has been playing the game for months or even over a year, calls it quits. You see this same sort of bull shit with every expansion, every adventure pack. It is a never ending cycle and I for one, am getting tired of it.

It started with Darathar. You would have your raid force of 24 people and get them all started on the Dragon Language quest. Before you got to Darathar's Island though, you could bank on having 2-4 of those original 24 quit on you as they just werent up to the challenge. You recruit a couple more, you continue working forward and then you get to Darathar. It takes a few wipes, and invariably some one who was present for hours of dieing, testing, and learning misses out on the initial kill. Adios that person. Do they really think we arent going to be coming back to kill the mob again? This kind of selfish behaivor really irks me. You missed out, that sucks but its the way things go. We WILL be back and its partialy your own damn fault for not being online!

Once that issue is resolved, hurray we have our shiny prismatic weapons! Time for another 4-6 people to quit the game claiming that they have conquered and beat eq2. Bull shit. Thanks for leaving everyone hanging assholes. Guess what? The game isnt over. Lady Vox is still up, Lord Nagalik is still up, and Borxx (he was bad ass back then) is still up. We have killed maybe half the content. Nothing is over.

This of course, starts the whole cycle over yet again. Some people arent up to the challenge of these new encounters and bail. Fuck them. Those are your people who will show up again in 4 months claiming how they were so hardcore and stuck out all those attempts on darathar. Fuck em'. Your not welcome here. Then of course, once all the mobs are put on farm status (wich I always thought was a good thing, who wants to spend their nights dieing over and over?) more people quit claiming victory over the game.

Fortunately for those of us who care, this is a dynamic enviroment and it is never too long before some major or earthshattering changes and/or inclusions arrive. In the case of t5, it was Spirits of the Lost and the arrival of Wrath of Fury.

(NOTE - I am leaving out Bloodlines because really only one guild on every server did that, and that was simply to cure the plague and get the mythical item, calling it a day. There wasnt even time for "burnout" to take place.)

Spirits of the Lost was a great inclussion to the game. I heard very little, if any, real complaints about the zone. People were able to tough this one out as the zone was neither too difficult, nor poorly itemized. Even if you could only clear half the zone, you were rewarded nicely. Wrath of Fury was another story. All the farm status contested mobs that were being killed with 3 person bot crews consisting of the late night players were now semi challenging, and in the case of a few, down right hard. It didnt take more than a wipe or two agains Nagalik or The Krathuk to see people again running for the door. These people get absolutely NO respect from me. Congrats, you joined the best guild on your server after they had already mastered the content, told you exactly what to do, where to stand, and gave you a ton of gear they no longer had a use for. You were a real fucking asset to the team, especially when you bailed at the first sight of a challenge.

During this time period, the Splitpaw Saga was also introduced, bringing us Acts of War and Brutal Acts of War. It didnt take many guilds more than a try or two to figure out the inner workings of the Acts of War, allowing them access to BAOW. However; Brutal tended to wear down many guilds, and again, I watched as people quit logging in and ceased to play because the content was "too hard" (cry me a river).

In september, Desert of Flames is released. A mad leveling frenzy ensues to get to the raid content ASAP. But guess what? Due to some recent changes, a majority of the raid content is damn near impossible until a later change corrected many issues. Before this correction could take place though, of course a handful of people need to bail on the guild yet again. Some couldnt handle the pressure of leveling up quickly, and some refused to give the game even a week to balance out their content and would rather just say fuck you to the people in the guild.


DoF did a good job of keeping people logging in. At times it got tired, repetative, and boring, but, and as much as it pains me to say this, the Djinn Master's Prism and Pedastal of Sky did a good job of keeping people logging in. Of course over the hours it took to figure out and execute DMP, a handful of people need to quit because again, it's too hard, boo hoo hoo.

With the arival of Kingdom of Sky, shortly after DMP had started to be cleared, the leveling grind was once again upon us. And once again, people couldnt hack it. Wow, so shocking isnt it? Then we approach the KoS raids. At the start there were a fair (not really good, but fair) amount of contested mobs, a few epic quest lines, and a major goal to be working towards, Deathtoll. Guess what happens though? Farming eye's is boring, the itemization isnt good enough, time for some more people to bail on the guild. As more and more guilds got into deathtoll, more and more people began quitting claiming poor itemization and not enough content.

Seriously, fuck off. Dont you think I realize how shitty some itemization was? Do you think I overlooked the fact that half the week I sit on my thumb looking for something to do? You dont see me bailing on the other 23 people though do you? Get some fucking backbone and tough it out. Im so sorry that i didnt have everything ready for you on a silverplate for you to grab at your leisure.

Thankfully SOE heard our plea's and got to pushing out Lyceum and Halls of Seeing, earlier than expected. Neither of these zones are tremendous, but they do provide some content, enough to keep people relatively busy. Itemization is again a problem, but that whole issue is slowly getting better (and I mean very slowly). But you know what? That doesnt stop anyone from quitting over self inflicted issues. The content is boring, there isnt enough, whaa whaa whaa. I am so fucking tired of it now.

The Fallen Dynasty adventure pack was released recetly. It contains two poorly itemized x2 raid zones (either too good or too shitty), a x4 instance, and a contested mob. The contested mob is supposed to be the meanest SoB in the game (I wouldnt know, they need to fix a despawn on server reset bug so I can tell) and the x4 instance guy is probably a close second. And of course, once again I am dealing with people leaving the guild and screwing over the rest of the people because they arent up to the challenge. They wont commit the time, effort, and repair costs to beating these encounters.

I am fucking tired of this shit. If you cant do a level grind, no matter how boring it is, you do NOT belong in a hardcore raid guild. Do not bother applying to one after you have taken your sweet time getting to the level cap because your nothing but a waste of resources as you bail come the next level increase. If you cant face a challenge and give 110% you do NOT belong in a hardcore raid guild. We arent always going to have all the strats for you. When you leave a lesser guild it shouldnt be because you want to defeat higher end content, it should be because you are capable of defeating higher end content and your efforts to improve the other players and help them learn it with you in your old guild were exhausted. Hardcore raid guilds are not fucking charities, we dont like you, we dont care about you, we only care about the guild. And finally, for those of you who make yourselves bored of the game (yes, boredom is a state of mind) and try and bring other's down to your level beore quitting, FUCK OFF. Get the hell out of my guild. I have no time to deal with your crap and how you want everyone to be as miserable as you make yourself. Roll an alt and do some quests. Go tradeskill. Play a different game during down time. There are tons of things to do other than bitch about how your bored.

This isn't just affecting me and my guild. It happens everywhere. I am a regular viewer of the homepages of different "big time" guilds on various servers. Their rosters are full of people I had never heard of a month prior. They are constantly recruiting new people and in a state of change. It is ridiculous. I am aware that there will always be some turnover, but these are supposed to be hardcore and dedicated guilds comprised of hardcore and dedicated people, not these little bitches that cower at every bump in the road.

Finally, a message to everyone: Guilds rely on all their members. If your just going to get cold feet and run the first time that the world isnt looking like Shangri-La, stay the fuck away and dont bother in the first place.

A New Begining...

If you are here and reading this, you probably already know who I am. I am a conjuror in Everquest 2 by the name of Ishbu, guild leader of Dissolution on the Nektulos server.

I am both very opinionated and outspoken, and at times have turned both my guild's website and the official SOE boards into my own private blog. Neither of these places were entirely appropriate for all the material I have put forth, so I have decided it is time that I created my own little niche` of the world, where I can be free to post exactly what I am thinking/feeling without reprocussions from moderators and without tieing my guild into it and at times, dragging them down with me.

I make no promises as to how often this will be updated. I dont plan things out, they just come to me. When I have a rant, it will be here. When I have ideas and suggestions it will be here. When I have praise to offer, it too, will be here. I may at times forward or re-post these idea's in other outlets, but they will always appear here as well. You may not like me, you may not always agree with me, but in the end, it doesnt matter if the game is improved, and that is my ultimate goal here.

With that, the formal introduction is complete.