Holy Beegeebus, I never in my life would have expected any instance in Wizard101 to take upwards of 3 hours minimum to complete. What-were-they-smoking? Anti-social me, has made some really nice player friends in Wizard101. Like my gaming style, I might have to reclassify myself here soon. I went from calling myself casual to figuring out that I'm really free-style. I was rather social in Warhammer Online with the Casualties of WAR guild members, and now very good pals in game with Capn John and his son, Tipa and her friends (Friendly Necromancer), who I'm slowly meeting. Maybe I'm not so much anti-social as I am cranky.
I was kicking back checking email when I saw a note from Tipa. She and a friend were already in game and were trying to form a group to do Kensington or Big Ben. I knew from the forums that Kensington was a difficult instance and not very popular. I'd read that it took three people minimum, wasn't required content and didn't have any outstanding drops so players weren't bothering with it. I didn't have anything in particular planned so I jumped in the game and hoped that I wasn't too late, and I wasn't.
Playing in a larger group with longer encounters was enticing. I wanted to experience playing my character in her group role. I guess my magic school Balance, is like the WOW Druid or Paladin? I can tank a bit, do moderate damage, play support role, I will eventually have a rez and I have a moderate one-trick-pony heal. It's an excellent option for soloing and flexible for group play.
It took me a few encounters to find my place in the trio. I'm lower in level and only a moderate damage class, but I can AOE. Them being higher, their spell power generation was faster and they hit harder. It was important to me to feel like I was contributing, so I kept scrambling my deck after each boss until I found my stride - buff/debuff and AOE. Once I got the cards I wanted all sorted out, I had more fun.
The instance was fun and we were having a very chatty, light-hearted time. Tipa's healing pet often neglects healing her which causes very funny snark from her. The only guy in the group was getting all the healing pet's attention. The fact that I often got undue mob aggro before I hit them or even AOE'd was food for comical fodder. Bosses were falling with moderate effort and I was having a great time.
So when you read that a W101 instance is long, you don't get just how long it FEELS until you're in there. W101 is not a fast-paced game which is a positive attribute. You need strategy and not speed to succeed. However, slow play in a long instance is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Let me rephrase that, a slow-paced combat game having a long instance is BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! A game that doesn't allow saving your location in instances at all, having a long instance is VERY BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. When the same game won't let you swap out players along the way in case someone has to leave and the rest of the party is screwed if they can't continue without that person, is TERRIBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!!
One of our party members had to leave about 3/4 through the instance. Capn John was available and interested in coming in as a replacement but the game wouldn't allow a new player in even when one player left. There was no way for Tipa and I to complete it alone so it was see if we could wait for the other player to come back - if they could come back or throw 2+ hours of work away. We elected to wait it out and were very happy that he was able to come back in 30 minutes or so. In general though, that's not a good situation to have players in. I'm sure it greatly simplifies the code base by not having to manage instance states per player but man oh man, don't make them longer than an hour then. Four is the maximum group size. With Tipa's healing pet we were at max size and it took us almost 4 hours I think to finish the dang thing. The last hour was silent. We were all pretty tired of it by then and just wanted it OVER. And after all that, no one even got one of the unique pets out of it. *Sobs* You can imagine how tired I was after the whole thing that I didn't even take pictures. I was too numb to load up software and start capturing screens and pasting them in Photoshop. W101 really needs to add screen capture features.
I'm grateful for the invite from Tipa. Thanks. It dotted the "i" on me completing every single piece of content and quest in all the zone's I'd been in before moving into the final world, the next evening. Again instances not saving caused drama there as well. By the super friend and heroic efforts of Capn John, I completed Marleybone around 3 AM ET Sunday. My neighborhood kept losing power about 60% of the way through my final quest instance. If John hadn't stayed inside each time hoping I'd be able to make it back, I would have had to restart the whole thing another time.
Him waiting around might not seem so heroic, until you know that the 3rd time I lost power, I was gone for more than 30 minutes I think. He had no way of contacting except via email and my blog. At 2 AM my time, I'm standing in the dark hoping that my power returns for lots of reasons other than W101 but still I didn't want to start over on Sunday afternoon. When the power returned I quickly booted up my PC just knowing he'd be gone or had ported out but he hadn't!!!!!
He was still inside. Capn had decided to keep going until he died, at which point the game ports you out and resets the instance, or I returned. I returned. He was still inside. I ported to him and we finished it off. WOOT for MMO Super Friends!
I think he was excited to see me hit the last zone, Mooshu. If he's like me, it's nice to have other adults to play with when necessary. Or at the very least, chat with while soloing. He plays a lot with his son but when he's on by himself we chat while questing. Now I've arrived! I made it to the last zone before the expansion hits with the next zone. I might be able to catch up to Tipa, John and others so that I can enter Dragonspyre when they do. If not, it's all good. I'm having fun. I've never had a session that wasn't entertaining. I'm interested in participating in the ranked PVP that is coming. I'm giddy for the future player housing. I'd love it if we were allowed one or two respecs of our training points. How I thought I'd play isn't how it turned out after actually playing the game. That's a hard choice to make day one of a new game with no options of changing those choices. But it's all good.
Moo Shu is not a huge world, but it goes a lot faster with friends. Bug me for help any time. I love the boss instances of Moo Shu.
Posted by: Tipa | January 12, 2009 at 04:15 PM
We all would really like to see you enter Dragonspyre with us, I'm sure. The game is much more fun played with friends (though it's decently fun solo).
Posted by: Tipa | January 12, 2009 at 04:16 PM
Thanks. I'm trying. I'm messing around in EVE now too but just doing a lot of setup and preparation activities. W101 still has the lion's share of my time.
I'm not rushing or racing. The content just propels you along. I'll say, just an hour...just one quest. The next thing I know it's midnight!
Posted by: Lauren Bryant | January 12, 2009 at 06:32 PM
I took out two floors of Trash Mobs while waiting for you to get back, and was waiting at Spike the Crusher (he's the secret Boss, the one you spawned by spilling the Milk ;) for what seemed like forever before I decided to finally have a go at him, because I really wanted you to be there when I, I mean we (heh heh) beat him in case he dropped some cool loot. Phew! Take a breath after reading that sentence, a biiiiig one :D
I believe Spike had two guards with him to start, but when you finally got power and made it back in it was just Spike and me, and I was running low on both Health & Healing spells, so I was really glad to see you :D
With Spike down that just left Meowiarty and his two guards, and we made short work of them, before taking down the Cat's Meow himself.
I'm glad we were able to get Big Ben completed for you, and get you out of the eternal night that is Marleybone, and into the daylight and Feudal Japanese setting of Moo Shu :)
Posted by: Capn John | January 13, 2009 at 08:15 AM
Wow, that was very good timing then! Moo Shu is so cute. I so prefer the sunshine, grass, flowers, etc. I was able to enjoy Marleybone's perpetual darkness because the these was so unique in MMOs - steampunk.
Posted by: Lauren Bryant | January 13, 2009 at 04:28 PM
Respecs would be absolutely wonderful. Um... yeah... that's about all I can say on this one. I'm still puttering around in Wizard City. Maybe once I get a raise at work I'll buy the rest of the content via Access Passes. I'm really loving this game. It scratches an itch that I didn't know existed; somewhere between my MTG itch and my MMO itch.
Posted by: Tesh | January 14, 2009 at 02:30 AM
Respecs would be awesome, especially considering spells from secondary schools don't get the 2-pip bonus from Power Pips.
Especially considering that if you roll an Alt you're going to find yourself doing, quite literally, every single quest ALL over again. I guess that's one good thing WoW had going for it, variety at most levels, so Alts weren't a huge chore until about your fourth or fifth one :P
Posted by: Capn John | January 14, 2009 at 03:18 AM
That's one of the corners they've painted themselves into. You literally do have to repeat content. So although I want to try a different class I'm not in the mood right not to do all the content over but I'd like to tweak what I originally selected.
I think that's one of the motivations for PVP. It's something to do in between new content if you don't want to re-roll characters. And with such a low monthly price, it's easy to hang on even if you're not into PVP and have run out of content.
Posted by: Lauren Bryant | January 14, 2009 at 06:14 AM
Yeah, my Death Wizard is in his low 20s at the moment, and just completed the first part of Krokotopia. I have two more areas/zones to complete before moving on to Marleybone, and I have to complete them. It's not like I can just grind to level 30 then move on; I have to do these quests to unlock the Spiral Door to MB. Now I could teleport to a friend in MB, but w/o completing the crucial quests in Krok. the quest givers in MB won't even give me the time of day, so it's pointless grinding levels because you just cannot skip the content.
Posted by: Capn John | January 14, 2009 at 06:22 AM