Friday, August 3, 2007

It's Settled, I'm a Necromancer.

Yay for finally picking a main to forge onward with!

It's odd. I almost always gravitate towards melee classes in MMOs. But for some reason none of them really interested me. My second favorite class in most games is any with a pet. I tried a pure caster in the Warlock, but I just wasn't liking it. They're truly "glass-cannons". I like to be able to take a hit or two, or at least divert some attention somehow from me... hence the Necromancer.

My spider-buddy does an ample job of keeping the enemies' eyes off of me, while I stand back and pound away with DOTs and whatnot. I like it. Hit level 14 with the little Ratonga last night and got Seething Rot - Master II, so things drop even faster for me now. The damage output isn't on par with the Warlock, but it's close enough for me not to care. I still feel like I'm killing swiftly enough.

My friend, the one who tried to get me started in EQ2 a month or so ago, came back into the game as well, and mentored down from 22 to help me along. It's a blast. He's getting 90% less experience, but he's able to do some quests he never did, and I'm catching up to him at an alarming rate. I'm nearly 15 and I went from 13 to there in just about an hour of questing with him.

It's my first experience with any form of mentoring system, and I have to say... why the hell doesn't every game do it? I've seen it in CoH/V and EQ2, but nowhere else so far. I know for a fact that if they'd have allowed it in WoW I'd still be playing with some of my real life friends who picked up on the game late there. At the point they started playing in Azeroth, I'd leveled so many characters up, I wasn't about to do it againg. But to take my level 60 or whatever and scale him down to go help my friends, I would have killed for that. It would have been far more fun than just powering them through the Deadmines or Stockades again. I'd actually be able to quest with them, but still feel a bit more powerful than I was when I was at that level.

So why don't more games have a mentoring system? What is so bad about it?

Anyway, I'm having a riot in EQ2 for now. But I'm hoping still that we get a release date for PotBS this weekend out of SOE's FanFaire. I'm really itching to let my inner Captain loose.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am "Bildo's friend" that he has been teaming up with and like him I am very impressed with the mentoring system in EQ2. I also ask the same question as he does...Why can't other games have a mentoring system. When I was teaming with Bildo I didn't care about the xp but I was having fun teaming with my bud. I have a feeling many other people feel the same way that I do.

Bildo said...

Exactly, Wolfe. But detractors of such a system would say, you can just team up as a level 55 with your level 20 buddy, and you'll own everything! What's the big deal!

To me that sounds too boring, like power-leveling, not like partying with your friends. Mentoring enables friends who are worlds (or levels) apart group together and not make it feel so vastly overpowered.

It's awesome.

What's cooler, like you said to me earlier, is that you kept toned-down versions of your higher level skills. So you'll still more powerful, but not tremendously so.

I think even your gear was scaled down. It's ingenious, and yet no one seems to care outside of EQ2 or CoH.