@Yunk — Yes, I multibox. I don’t move one, then the other, then the first, etc. I run one of them to where I want to be, then teleport the other to her. Way easier that way. You can turn off letting friends port to you :)

@Sierra — I’m not surprised they put humans in a ghetto in Marleybone. They want to be able to control us.

@rob — okay, here’s what I meant. There was this gate encounter in EverQuest, Rallos Zek the Warlord. You couldn’t go to the Elemental Planes until you beat him. He was an open world mob, technically, though the quest to even enter his fortress took many raids, and to encounter him meant beating his sons, Tallon and Vallon, earlier, and they were ALSO open world, heavily camped mobs.

Each encounter was scripted. Vallon would surround himself with duplicates which would quickly overwhelm if you tried to kill him before his copies (if you could even tell them apart). Tallon would port around his room, sending AE arrows at people and confounding melee who just tried to keep up. And Rallos… well, first you had to kill Vallon and Tallon within minutes of each other, and then immediately pull RZtW to the Arena. He had deadly AEs and really high dps, and beyond that, summoned soldiers and monstrous boars who ALSO did monster dps just to keep people busy.

When we first did RZtW, we had people aggro and kite the adds while the main raid struggled to do enough dps before RZtW’s increasing power (and increasing adds) did everyone in. Another guild I was in did the PROPER thing and had enchanters and druids charm the adds and send them against RZtW, which worked well enough. Toward the end of our time in that zone, both guilds I was in would just mez the first wave of adds, kill RZtW with our then-uber gear, then kill the adds. A forty minute raid went down to about ten minutes.

See, getting to the point where you can just ignore the script if you can handle it is the eventual goal of any good EQ raid guild.

@Toldain — I meant Gevlon the Greedy Goblin :)

@Ferrel — I was being serious. The best, most uber guilds have members who struggle to do their best gladly because otherwise they will be booted. You can do some incredible things once you only have people who want to work together. People who whine and cause drama and have a MEMEME attitude toward loot should be let go. There was a guild back on Erollisi Marr called Cries of Insurrection. They were jerks — and proud of it — but they Got Things Done with very few people because they liked their underdog status, had a chip on their shoulders and had something to prove. They never were a top guild on EM but everyone knew their name.

I’ve been thinking about it, but then I think about it in every game and never do it. Though with “f2p” it might be something to consider. (otoh, if it’s true I spend more then maybe not … :) )

I saw one guy who I think was doing it. One guy would run up, then the other guy, then the first, etc, staggered, and it seemed like an awfully annoying way to do it. It would at least let me try out the different schools and some mutli-wizard strategies without repeating content over and over, and also without having to only play when friends are on.

Plus he must have had a third because he always had the extra swirly space with no one in it. (hmm if you can do that with free accounts not even leaving Wizard City that would be a way to stop people from porting in and aggroing then fleeing).

However, in response to “I hate that this slows well-geared raid guilds down for no real reason”

Maybe I just don’t get it, but I always liked the scripted nature of boss fights in WoW. It makes the fights unique and fun events in the game. However, I always thought that it seemed like there was ONE way to win and you had to follow the script. Maybe we could see some better AI programmed in order to make fights have a random element. They key being that the fights would still need to be winnable, but challenging for guilds. The guild that wins would be the guild that can communicate and think on their feet the best. So I guess what I am saying is: Making boss fights special and different from other big fights = good. Making them a predictable dance that everyone studies on youtube before doing the actual fight = bad.

Well, that all depends on whether I can have red hair or not.