Not Quite as Planned

I managed to get home from work and get through dinner earlier that normal last night, in hopes of being able to get PEBKAC through the pre-raid quest, ADQ, Against the Demon Queen, and to help Stonehands, Benjarrus and Belzur do the same before our Demon Queen raid was supposed to kick off at 7:00pm local time. Alas, not everyone else was able to get into the game early enough, so we spent some time waiting, and waiting... and waiting.

Then we discovered why there was so little interest in the raid...

Stonehands had had a problem with the event listing on the raid calendar; it showed up on the Face Stabber's raid calendar, but it didn't appear on the Lifetaker's event calendar, nor did it appear on Sun War Academy's event calendar.

That would explain a lot.

Of course, I wouldn't blame Stonehands for the issues. From my experience, you have to be very diligent when adding events to the calendar in GuildPortal. If not, you might not see an entry at all, your event as you'd planned it, multiple instances of your event, or an event that has completely different settings than you'd intended. Trust me, I've seen all varieties. I even had these problems with one of my recent Dragon raids, where the calendar had initially shown incorrect information, which I tried to edit, and ended up with multiple listings. When I went back to correct the multiple listings, it removed the entry from our allies calendars. It finally got to the point where I had to delete all of the entries, which booted all of the folks who'd signed up for the raid from the event, and I had to start all over again.

And, because I had to start over, only a couple of the folks who'd originally signed up for the raid had noticed the change and signed up the second time around. As a result, turn-out for my Dragon raid that week had been less than originally planned. In my case, though, I noticed the problem with a few day's lead time, and I was able to advertise for the raid during the remaining time leading up to my raid. We didn't have that luxury with Stonehands' Queen raid last night.

*sigh*

We'll have to give it another try.

That also would explain why so many folks weren't ready to run ADQ or the Queen last night. They simply didn't know.

We'll get it straightened out for next time. Until then, both PuddinTan and Stonehands are off for a week in Aruba. Lucky dogs. The rest of us are back here in the States doin' pretty much the same ol', same ol'.

Not that I'm complaining about my opportunities to play DDO. It's better than the grind at work, after all...

So, rather than running the Queen raid last night, we decided to help a few more folks get their characters ready, but because we'd had problems getting the word out, our initial run meant that we PUGed out the three remaining slots. (Belzur hadn't logged into the game yet.)

Wow! What a headache that particular run was...

We'd chosen to run An Offering of Blood. Probably my least favorite of the three quests leading up to ADQ, simply because you pretty much have to keep running the entire way through the quest. The monsters continue to respawn while you're in the quest, so it doesn't give you much time to get your bearings when things don't go according to plan.

The problem with the run was that two of the PUG (Pick-Up Group) players apparently knew each other, and decided to use the run as a gossip session. Except, they decided they wanted to use some rather harsh curse words without regard for the situation or the other players in the group.

Now, I'm not saying I never curse. In fact, thanks to the Army, I learned how to curse properly. So, when the situation and timing are right, I can certainly hold my own. BUT! In-game, where we're all just trying to have a little fun, when things aren't stressful, and everyone seems to be having a good time doesn't seem to me to be the time or place for that kind of behavior.

Needless to say, as soon as the run was over, Blackwand, Stonehands and I all dropped from the group courteously and reformed a new one without the PUG players from the previous run. Doing this had a two-fold benefit... We were able to bring Belzur into the group, who'd logged in while we were in the middle of the run, *and* it made things in party chat much more quiet and easy to listen to.

However, we were still two players short of a full party.

That's when we found Otaronin, another Lifetaker, wandering around without anything in particular to do.

Of course we had to send an invite!

Which was promptly accepted, but all of the pre-quests for the Queen raid almost certainly require a Rogue to run them to full completion, optionals and all.

With no unoccupied Rogues available in the allied guilds, it was time to PUG-out again, for the last slot. Fortunately, Blackwand had the same idea I'd had regarding this final player... it was time to be smart and selective about who we wanted to join us. Both Blackwand and I started looking over our options in the Social panel, and found an un-grouped Level 15 Rogue from the Old-Timer's Guild just kinda kicking around.

I had no sooner told Blackwand what I'd found when he told me he was already on it and had *just* sent the player a /tell asking if he'd be interested.

It was funny how quickly both Blackwand and I had zeroed in on this particular player; following the server merge, it took a while to get to know who everyone was from the various servers, but it quickly became apparent that the Old-Timer's Guild, OTG as they're commonly known, was a group who preferred to have fun, rather than have problems. In fact, I've never had anything but positive experiences with members of OTG. Apparently, Blackwand was of the same opinion, which is why we both decided that this was the player we wanted in our group.

And, we were very lucky that he accepted our invitation.

He was a player returning to the game from an eight-month hiatus, and was just trying to get back into the swing of things. So, it would seem that he was looking for something to do that wasn't as intense or trying as some PUGs can be. I think he quickly discovered that we weren't trying to take on the impossible, and that we were just trying to have some fun.

Insane fun, but fun nonetheless.

We all had a great time, too!

Actually, I've said it before, but things are never boring with Benjarrus/Thundermouse/Blackwand in the group. Nor is it boring with folks like Stonehands, Belzur and myself. You *never* know what's going to happen. We're all *very* spontaneous. And I like that about our group. I think that if everything was always so predictable, I wouldn't find this game to be quite so entertaining.

Of course, our group wouldn't stay together exactly as we'd assembled it. Stonehands hadn't finished packing for his trip to Aruba, so he ended up dropping after we'd completed The Chamber of Raiyum, also known as The Wizard-King. Not to be deterred, Blackwand convinced another Lifetaker who'd similarly returned from hiatus, Beorj, to join us.

Now, I'd run with Beorj before, but it had been a *long* time. I know I remembered his character's name, and he remembered mine, but it'd been so long that we didn't really remember how each other played the game very well. All I remembered was that it'd been a good time.

Heh. It still was.

We all laughed our way through the Chains of Flame and several runs on the Bloodstone and Spell Storing Ring chests out in the desert.

I think it's safe to say we all had a pretty good time.

And we made some new friends in the process.

Maybe the evening didn't run as planned, but that didn't stop us from having fun anyway.

I constantly look forward to the next time.

Keep it fun, everyone!