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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Do you have a favorite personal mmo story you'd like to share?
Inixia
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progression stories, pvp matches, guild drama, etc...
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Anyways long story short two of the more successful 5 man teams on my server eventually started to form proto-guilds around them and were some of the first raid groups to attempt the content, albeit in a really unorganized way (voice comms weren't even a mainstay yet, let alone parsers). So both guilds were able to get past the first mob in the dungeon (which was an easier fight that revolved around managing summoned adds) but they were also both running into trouble on the second fight, Infiltrator Johlen, who had a lot of these aoe bomb mechanics (especially in the final phase) and dps burns-or-wipes. (He wouldn't be a ton of trouble later in the game's life, but keep in mind players were still figuring the game out at this point with minimal equipment.) (edit: here's a fight guide if anyone's really curious about it)
After several really messy attempts, the guild I was in finally beat him for the server first..... but with literally one person left standing. proof
But the rival guild wasn't that far behind. And soon afterwards both were stuck again on the next phase.
So the two groups ended up having a significant growing rivalry between them, especially the leadership, and actually there was quite a bit of conflict around things like poaching new players, pvp ganks and certain player attitudes/remarks etc... there started to be this really uneasy tension around things.
But one day, in a really weird twist of fate, the guild leaders of both just sort of.... vanished. All four of them just happened to disappear from the game on the same day for unrelated reasons. So everyone in these two guilds who had been fiercely competiting against each other ended up in this weird place where they were both trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces.
And in the end neither guild was really saved (in their current form at least), but from their ashes a lot of players from both ended up migrating to this third guild (which actually ended up being a weird subbranch of an otherwise large and super casual/mostly roleplaying themed event guild - basically the only established option left for us outside of those two). Its from this they started to communicate and work together for the first time. And its because of this uneasy truce/cooperation that people were finally able to attempt the raid zone again.
Eventually we were even able to snag that sweet sweet server first for Greenscale.
The private server removed the level limit, so you could level to infinity - and so an economy developed around the buying and selling of exp multiplier coupons. The normal way to get an exp coupon was to log in daily and claim points that you would exchange for a 30min 2x exp coupon - this would sell for about 1mil.
So I'm playing normally with my bro, and we're just bumming around when this really sketchy noob (level 20) walks up to us and demands that we help him do a guild quest - he'll pay us 500k each per run. He obviously is smurfing, and 500k for 30 mins of our time sounds amazing, so we agree. We get added to a guild that seems really normal and gather outside the guild quest ruins (minimum 6 members) to begin the quest.
So the noob, Mondue (I still remember his name HAHAHA), is really greedy and butts heads with the guild leader, Jess. After they bicker for a while in another language, they tell us: "Mondue and Jess are going to split the bonus stage, NOBODY TOUCH ANYTHING or else you get kicked and we don't pay you." No questions.
So we run the guild quest, and we're there mostly as extra bodies to meet the minimum requirement of 6 members to begin the quest - but we end up helping out on the platforming jump puzzles to speed things up, and also defeating the quest boss. We all get tele'd to the bonus stage and it's full of boxes that explode with random rewards - a few skillbooks, consumables, etc. and occasionally an exp coupon! So that's what made the run profitable - but it seemed like so much work for a mediocre profit margin. Anyway, true to their word they paid us our money and wanted to do another run - pay was good so everyone agreed and so we did a few more runs.
After around 4 runs, Mondue says he has to go and logs out before anyone can blink. Jess yells a few expletives and then asks if we can help cover Mondue's responsibilities. We agree and so Jess ends up teaching the guild how to do the run (and all the shortcuts on this private server). After a few more runs Jess gets tired of paying everyone, and she's feeling nice so instead she tells us to "break 1 box each and that's your pay". A few people don't like this idea, but my bro and I are curious - so we agree, but the others want pay. So Jess is like, only the two of us get ONE box each, and everyone else gets paid as per usual. First run, my bro gets an exp coupon from his box and he's like, "Wait. This isn't a normal exp coupon." and then Jess starts whispering him "SHHH don't tell anyone." I'm like "what is going on?" and go to my bro's room to see. It's a 3x exp coupon that sells for 10m. These guys are scamming the dummy members. Not wanting to rock the boat, we keep it to ourselves and do 3 more runs before the party falls apart and we call it a day.
We cash in our 2 coupons and get 20mil, which would normally take 20 dailies to collect. We check the market and notice that Mondue and Jess are only selling 3-4 at a time, but they definitely have way more in storage. They're upholding artificial scarcity of the coupons.
About a week later, Jess and Mondue are doing runs again, by this time most of the guild has found out, so everyone gets 1 box (much to Mondue's protests), Jess and Mondue split the rest and the guild is sworn to secrecy. Halfway through a run, someone announces that they're auctioning a godly-rolled endgame chest piece - starting bid 400m. Jess comments that the item is pretty good, she wants it. Mondue bids on the item. Jess gets pissed and they basically bid against each other until the item hits 850m (crazy), Mondue lost and starts sulking so he logs off. Jess basically rolls her eyes and we go back to the "when Mondue's not here" strategy. Fast-forward about a week and Jess and Mondue have had a fallout, Mondue's been kicked from the guild "he was just too greedy". So everyone in the guild is doing pretty well and we're lining our pockets. A few super-high level characters contact us privately and purchase from us in bulk, but the price remains stable - even the price of 2x exp coupons is rising to 1.2 mil.
Thats when my brother and I get a whisper from Mondue - he's started his own guild and wants us to join him. We feel really awkward about it, but we agree to join on smurfs. However, our true allegiance is to the original guild so we can't always switch characters to help Mondue do runs. Because of this, Mondue teaches people in his guild how to do runs. But Mondue is a stubborn person, and most people don't know how to get along with him, so the guild breaks up - but now multiple guilds are forming to do guild quest runs. In the first week after his guild broke up, 3x exp coupons started flooding the market and the price dropped to 8mil. Sensing the collapse, Mondue put a stack of 99 coupons on the market for 7mil ea and a few days later, prices had plummeted to 2mil. This forced the price of 2x coupons down to a 100k, and completely destroyed the daily-income of new players
By this time, my brother and I were so sick of doing guild quest runs - we'd managed to get them down to ~15minutes, so we were somewhat relieved to finally stop doing them. Shortly after, I think the damage to the economy was too great and the devs shut down the server. *sigh* good times.
There was no announcement.
Just couldn't log in, and all their socials (including the forums) were deleted. That's why I'm not sure of the full reasons why it shut down.
After a certain failed raid in (vanilla) Naxxramas, a guild officer ranted and announced that "we will be running Naxx EVERY NIGHT until we beat <a certain boss>, no more Ahn Qiraj runs until then!"
And I quit WoW the next day.
Story 2, after I went back to WoW when WotLK came out:
Multiple ppl rage /gquits over a loot drama during a (Lich King) Naxxramas raid that wasn't even officially a "guild run" (it wasn't on calendar, wasn't scheduled nor started by guild leader, wasn't led by guild officers. Around half of the guild's members started that raid themselves)
And the guild soon disintegrated due to a lack of members. I was too lazy to find another guild and quit WoW for the 2nd time.
TL;DR: I hate Naxxramas.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
As a Dark Knight player (besides DRG), more than once I've had to let a DPS -- who was pulling on his own -- die once or twice. My catchphrase "If you pull. You tank."
Healers were more than happy to watch them fail with me.
Another bad experience as a tank: I'm doing a dungeon run. I've run this dungeon about a trillion times having leveled all the tanks to max level. Never had a problem. Then this one time, I'm doing my best and popping all my CDs just to survive a random trash pull, because the healer is just busy doing AOE damage.
After I almost die once or twice but manage to stay alive (not because of the healer mind you), a DPS says: "Damn, sucks for the healer. Tank is trash"
Excuse me??
And the healer confirmed: "Yeah dude you suck." I retort that I'm having to pop all my CDs just to survive as I'm getting no heals. His reply? "Yeah that's the problem".
Then they vote kicked me.... I swear some people have no clue what they're talking about.
I played Bard which many saw as the worst class. And it was. 😁
"Hey, are you hitting on my wife?"
https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Marilith_Chain
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Much love ❤️
1- First character I mained (not the first created) was a Jedi Guardian. I wasn't the best, but clearly I was good enough. Even playing from SA with 200 ping, I managed. I also got into a PvP server (for whatever reason). I was on the icy parts of Alderaan on my speeder, just traveling alone for a quest objective. Suddenly, two FILTHY CRIMINALS (Sith) ganged up and jumped on me from their speeders. It makes sense. In this land, lonely territory, a lonely jedi against 2 Sith? Of course!. But they were either too weak (and bad?) or I was too strong. They did not expect such a beefy boi could withstand the attack of TWO players at the same time, while also killing them. They got what they deserved, and I kept going on my way to the quest. That was a true BIG DICK moment.
2- From the first story, time has passed. I'm now another character (Sith Marauder). I'm in a guild called "rainbow kitten strike force" (if I remember correctly). I'm on TeamSpeak with 2 guild members. A guy, whom I've forgotten the name of, and a badass sassy lady healer called Biankha. We weren't "best friends" or anything, but we were good with each other as we were on TS often. I was telling them a real life story, about something I had done/said (can't remember) and the other person was offended. I described this as that person being "butthurt". They both started laughing out loud, after hearing me say that. To which the guy said "that is the best butthurt I've ever heard". Biankha added: "please say that again". They weren't mocking me, just enjoying my accent. Plenty of these little stories where I had tons of fun and went jokingly back and forth with several people having a great time.
Determination
Que'ldanas have just been added to my wow server.
I arrived at the cyber coffee I played at midnight after a teenage "party".
The owner made a joke about me drinking beer with 15 yo.
I talked back as the smartass I'm and got expelled from the coffee for the night. But that wasn't going to stop me from hanging out with my friends.
Que'ldanas have just been added to my wow server.
There was a quest where you would summon a 2k hp robot and it would kill a weak npc.
We noticed that one our friends was doing this silly quest, yet someone he could summon more than 1 robot. He was having fun killing critters in the island.
We asked him to try the item outside of the island.
It worked.
I couldn't enter the place for the night, but I could pay someone to play with my character.
My friends cleaned Black Temple with 6, one of them playing with my money and double account.
My character entered green and came out full epic.
I spent 5 hours standing at the door.
We didn't kill Illidan because we wanted to be "subtle".
The owner of the cyber coffee wanted to go to sleep so we only played until 6 am.
A friend of the group that was playing from his house went to Cavern of Time by himself.
His older brother, who was at the cyber coffee at the time, told us laughing that when he arrived at his house his brother was half-playing, half sleeping while drooling on the keyboard at 9am yet still farming.
He showed up the other day with 5 pieces of T6, all the mounts and 10k gold.
No subtle, but very driven
Up until that moment I was friend with his older brother, but after that display of determination I couldn't stop but befriend him as well.
Name clones
Another time, we were raiding Kaelthas, and shaman totems started stacking.
The healer got dc and we kinda just kept going.
And then we kinda wanted to go to Zangarmarsh, and we kinda kept going.
Everyone was praising the tank.
We got reported by a dude who didn't won anything.
I got banned for 6 month. My second friend was banned for 6 month. My third friend, who won t5 chest, was not banned because his character's name was Artthemizza or some variation so they probably banned another poor soul lol.
First DK
Guy from parraph 1 was running for the title of First server DK (30-40 hours).
He started being camped by enemies to slow him down. He asked for help.
The other guys weren't around so I spent 10 hours bodyguarding him against 2-3 and even 4 dudes.
Cyber coffee had to close and I couldn't game from home so I couldn't keep helping until the last minute.
He finished the last 30% exp bar with a random and then took a screenshot and uploaded the image to the rivals forum.
I bit jealouse I wasn't in the final screenshot but we had a entertaining next afternoon spamming the tittle in All chat and in their faces.
When God shows up
I was leveling in Stranglethorn with my overgeared tank.
I saw a dwarf, it was a hunter. Easy prey. I killed him
I kept leveling and then I see a dwarf hunter, I assume it was the same and jumped over. I killed it too.
I keep leveling and then I get jumped by a cat model, and then another cat model jumps too.
"Oh" I think. And then I killed them both.
I kept leveling. I spotted one of them, I jumped and killed it again. When I'm about to kill the second, he starts flying out of my reach in the air, through emotes he laughed, said no and then flew away.
I was like "nani?!"
honestly moments like this is why I love mmo's.
Although I was never there at the shutdown (heard city of heroes was pretty epic though)
But just like in moments sitting around and chatting with people after raids and stuff, those were great. One time the devs of Rift had an event get together to have drinks with some of the players near where I live and me and my partner ended up going and having a blast just chatting and picking their minds. There weren't a lot of players that showed up though, but that ended up meaning we walked away with a lot of cool swag they raffled out, including a life size cardboard standup of one of the characters and some concept art.
The stage was set for me at 3:00 am in the morning to level one half of a player cities walls. I had a great laugh, shooting the cannon was awesome and I went to bed having one of the best memories. I woke up the next day to hear talks that I was a wanted man, I had committed a crime known as "Asset damage" a term I didn''t know the meaning of until this moment.
From then on the guild that I inflicted the asset damage to would pay mercenaries and tell the story of my wrong doings until it reached the entire server. I was relentlessly hunted to the ends of this games world. I had found a clan that would take me in and even this would not stand as the clan I attacked hired over 300 people as mercenaries to destroy the clan that took me in, they wiped their village out just to ensure I could not roam Agon again. It was amazing and a true tale of player consequence. The feelings I had of living the life of a disgraced criminal as amazing functional role play. 10/10
For some clans there was little distinction between the game play and the game`s forum`s politics and dramas.
Some wars left the battlefield and went onto the forums for a little more fueling or watering during off time and then back again.
With resident forum trolls in many clans, some of forum pvp was just as entertaining as the pvp within game!
World PvP was actually pretty common, mostly fighting over control of the portals in endgame zones. It was fighting over the portal in Zeraph's Return where I made acquaintances with some players of the other faction who would become my consistent rivals. I remember two of the three names, Dalla and Capone, a Shaman/Justicar cleric and a Warlord/Void Knight warrior (who ended up switching heavy Void Knight, possibly in an attempt to counter me after we had a few interactions). The third was a Ranger rogue whose name unfortunately escapes me.
My fond memory is of when, passing through a zone controlled by the enemy faction on my way to help a guildmate, the 3 of them intercepted me.
I played my own variation of "Chlorolock," which was generally a Chloromancer/Warlock healing focused spec, but I played as a Warlock/Chloromancer 1vX world PvP spec, focused on CC and sustain. And 1vX it was, as we fought for almost half an hour, with me killing the rogue a handful of times, the warrior a few times, and the cleric a couple times. I eventually got complained at by my guild mate for taking so long, so slowly fought my way to the zone line, where I continued about my business.
Dalla, Capone, nameless Rogue, thanks for the good memories, and sorry for playing such a cheesy and frustrating spec back in the day.
We ended up with 30 additional players the second time around and got all the bodies back.. total time spent playing that time was 29 hours strait.. the next day I realized that I was way too addicted to that game and uninstalled it.. a month later they gave necros the ability to summon peoples corpse to the zones..
2. In Endless Online (game 16 years ago) when a player was baiting their turtle suit (incredible rare skin set) by dropping it down on the ground and picking it up in a flash, I grabbed it and he said "nice..."
3. Endless Online again, i opened a random chest and found 3.5 million gold (having 50k gold was a fortune). I was exploding with excitement i didn't know what to even do with it. I learned that the gold was a special event in which after 1 hour it disappeared. I logged back on and got sad real quick lol
4. Was fishing in Runescape, rocking my santa hat as always, went to the bathroom, event troll spawned and killed me, Santa hat dropped, my body was swarmed and wasn't considered 1 of the 3 items you keep because I had "more valuable items". The player that picked it up wouldn't give it back, learned a valuable lesson about people on the internet that day.
Black Sails Discord
whoa, no way, I was a Faeblight mage as well during that same period!
took me a sec to remember that early on in the game you couldn't talk to people in the other factions, and going into enemy territory was a little extra scary. That sounds really fun though - I definitely remember chlorolock, for a long time it was one of the only consistently viable specs for mage... until sc/ele I wanna say (outside of some of the gimmicks like ground of strength pyro in pvp and zoomancer in pve). Stillmoor pvp was pretty fun although I wish I was more into it while it was around
edit: ps this is maybe a longshot but part of your name sounds really familiar to me, did you end up being very active on rift forums by chance?
wow the devs in that game were trolling you guys really hard lol
Spoken like a true tank. My motto as well.
One funny memory I have is when we played Wildstar for a small period of time. We were under our old guild tag and we were doing a lot of RBGs and we ran into a guild that we used to fight in GW2 that was somewhat of a rival when we we spent time in T1. We played decently, and after the battleground was over we heard from our old friends.
Enjoy.
I was, but I was not using this name at the time. I was Sysion back then.
Ah my bad, I saw 'viola' and I remembered a really big poster named Violacea and was wondering if that was you.
regardless, its super exciting to see another Faeblight mage around!