I ended up switching over to my "Defiant" side character, Chomposaur. I think it's a cooler name because I'm not really into roleplaying at all. My last character, who was on the "Guardian" side, was named Catoblepas. Technically that's supposed to be the name of some kind of yak monster from Ethiopia who can turn people into stone with his breath, so that's not really "roleplay" either, but it sounds a little more like something serious. I like Chomposaur.
My friend Salt migrated factions with me and changed his name to Smoed. The names aren't really important, so I don't know why I'm bringing them up.
One thing I'm finding is that while we're generally okay as a duo doing the quests intended for single players (Which do make up the bulk of the game), we're running into a bit more difficulty when it comes to "Heroic" and "Dungeon" quests. I put these titles in quotation marks because they are actually classifications of quests that are designed specifically for group play. Heroic quests are generally for smaller groups (of about 2-3 people) and typically are just something along the lines of killing a "Heroic" classified monster (Which is basically just a beefed-up monster that would be too strong for a single player to fight at equal level).
The dungeon quests refer to something I talked briefly about in my presentation. The monsters in these dungeons are typically heroic as well, but are amped up in number to be better suited for groups of five. The main difference with dungeons is that they are "instanced." Most of the world in a MMORPG is persistent, which means that on a given server, players and enemies all occupy the same space whether they want to or not. If one player out "in the world" kills a monster that you need for a quest, you have to wait until that monster respawns because he's removed it from the world.
Instanced dungeons, on the other hand, are run within the world as separate entities. Each instance of the dungeon is created specifically for the group that's inside it, so you only share the space with a maximum of four other people (Or more, for "raid" groups, but I haven't done any of those yet. I'm unlikely to get to a level where I'll need to before the end of the semester unless I just skip all my classes and play the game for like 40 hours this week).
One thing that's important about these groups is having a good group setup. The four basic roles a group needs are
1. DPS, (acronym for damage per second), for killing monsters quickly
2. CC (Crowd Control), for debilitating monsters or otherwise reducing the amount of monsters attacking at one time
3. Tank, which is a character whose attacks deal additional "threat" to get monsters' attention so they all attack him. Tanks have higher health and armor values than other character types to accommodate this, at the expense of lower damage
4. Healer, to heal damage done to the other players or resurrect players who've died in the instance (Saving them the walk back).
There's also the role of "support" that can help buff players or debuff enemies to make everything go smoother, but this typically overlaps with the CC and Healing roles.
So back on our old characters, my character was built as a tank and Salt was built as a healer. Arguably these are the backbone of the group, as you generally need at least one of each, while the other three slots can be filled by basically any role. On our new characters, I'm built as a DPS/Support type, while Smoed is a tank. My character can handle healing a bit, but not to the degree as a dedicated healing character. So before, we basically just had to get any 3 characters to fill the slots. Now we need to find a dedicated healer. It doesn't sound like a huge problem, but a lot of guilds snatch up healers and take them around to dungeons, making them reluctant to join pick-up groups like ours, largely because they've probably already done the instance with their guildmates.
Other than that, the new migration is going well. Sorry for no screenshot this post. The next one will be more interesting with photos, color and the continuing adventures of Smoed and Chomposaur.
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