Favor Zerg

Anyone who's been reading for a while probably knows I'm not a huge fan of zerging. Which is what made last night's adventures rather unusual, but rather interesting.

For the uninitiated, perhaps a brief etymology is in order: he term zerg is derived originally from Blizzard Entertainment's game called Starcraft. It was one of three playable races. Much like the Borg of Star Trek, they find themselves in constant search of improvement, though their methods aren't quite the same. Yet they rely on swarm tactics to overcome their opposition. Even though the individual members of the swarm may be tactically out-matched. It's the mass influx of the swarm that makes it a daunting opponent.

The tactics employed by the Zerg race were eventually adapted to the play styles for players of MMO games, where otherwise underpowered players would amass themselves into a much larger group and storm an enemy. In the process, the tactics devolved into a mad rush, with little consideration for consequences for members of the swarm or how they intended to achieve their goal. Instead, objectives remained tightly focused on the goal of conquest, but do so without regard for any form or plan for success.

The implementation of these rush tactics into other games were, therefore, associated with the progenitors, and became known colloquially as zerging. In MMO circles, the term zerg now serves primarily as a verb, describing the way a person or group operates, rather than the proper noun as it originated. But, it's also sometimes used as an adjective, to describe someone or their tactics.

So...

zerg (zerg)
verb, transitive: zerged, zerging, zergs
1. To rush or swarm an opponent, especially in an unplanned manner.
2. To forego all objectives beyond the ultimate goal.
adjective: zerger
1. One who rushes or swarms an opponent, especially in an unplanned manner.
2. One who ignores minor objectives.

Now, this isn't to say there's anything fundamentally wrong with zerging. Especially since the technique is the foundation for many of the raids within many MMO games, including DDO. But it does carry the associated higher risk of failure when members of the group that zergs fails to take into consideration the composition of their group, their capabilities, the size of the force they intend to engage, etc.

However, when you know your objectives well, especially when your group has superior capabilities, and when you're constrained by time to meet your objectives, zerging has its place.

Like last night.

As soon as I'd logged in, I was invited to join Factotum, Murders and Rhy for some adventures. When I'd first joined them, they were out in the desert accosting the mummies for their treasures, waiting for others, like me, to log in and join them. Once assembled, the usual queries about our evening's objectives ensued. For once, I had an idea...

Obsydiian needed, at the time, 39 points of House Phiarlan favor to earn his Pendant of Time, and 7 points of House Kundarak favor to earn his second page of bank slots.

At the same time, Factotum needed about seven thousand experience points to earn his Cleric Level 11.

And, Murders and Rhy needed something to keep themselves entertained for the evening, lest we listen to the many ways in which Rhy plots to take over the world.

So, it was decided... it was a favor grind.

Well, not so much a grind, really. I mean, we only had a couple of hours in which to accomplish something, so we decided to jump into the lower-level quests and just bust them out. In other words, we agreed to zerg through the lower-level quests, just to get them done. We were doing this primarly because the quests were so far below our character levels, even on Elite, that none of us were earning any experience points. Of course, once we graduated to some of the higher level quests, that would all change for us.

We started with Purge the Heretics, a quest Obsydiian had never done, but that Murders could open for us on Elite. This is when the zerg-fest began, and set in like a fever. I don't recall much from the adventure because we all seemed to be running on auto-pilot. We zoned into the quest, passed buffs around like they were going out of style, Syd threw down a ghetto-Haste, and we bolted.

Honestly, it couldn't have taken us more than five or ten minutes to complete the quest. Of course, it didn't hurt that we were all Level 10 and 11 characters in the quest, either. Syd's Wall of Fire and Fireball spells were distinctly effective against the low-level mobs, and when he ran out of mana, he grabbed his +3 Transmuting Great Axe and lent Murders a hand in playing lawn mower. Rhy just kept playing inspriational tunes, while Factotum spammed the heals. It was all a very fluid, almost orchestrated progression through the quest.

But, when we completed the quest, I started searching Syd's favor compendium for something that we could knock out quickly for House Phiarlan and came up only with the Splinterskull Fortress quest chain (also known as Tangleroot Gorge, in which it starts). It was the only series of lower-level quests I'd run Syd through on anything less than Elite. To make matters worse, Rhy (Stonehands) was starting to feel the pinch of the previous couple of nights we'd all stayed up a little later than normal, running through various quests, followed by his need to get up early for work the next morning. Not that I can say much to the contrary, as I'm in pretty much the same boat. So we agreed that whatever we were going to run, it had to be quick.

Well, it was decided that Tangleroot was our destination, but again, we were running quests that weren't earning us any experience, so we decided to forego any optionals, and just get it done.

Again, we started a zerg-fest.

You know, given the right circumstances, zerging can be fun.

Of course, for the four of us, the circumstances were a need for 27 points of House Phiarlan favor in about an hour.

We've all run Tangleroot so many times, I think we all know it like the backs of our respective hands. And, being so far above the level of the quest, it was easy just to nuke everything in sight and keep moving.

That is, until we hit the fourth chapter of the quest chain. At that point, we started earning a little experience for the Elite run. But, that didn't slow us down any. We simply started to pay a little more attention to where we could easily pick up optional objectives along the way, but we never strayed from the main objective.

And, it worked well.

After about only an hour-and-a-half, Obsydiian had racked up all of the House Phiarlan favor he needed for his Pendant of Time. And, it was then that we saw Rhy log out for the evening; he was starting to fall asleep at the keyboard, and it was time for him to head off to bed.

I still had about forty-five minutes left in which I could play, though, and so did Factotum and Murders. Which is what prompted Murders to ask if we wanted to go knock out the 7 points of House Kundarak favor Syd needed, too.

It was a bit of a challenge, for sure, without a Rogue to disarm the traps for us, but we blew through both The Chamber of Insanity and The Ruined Halls in very short order.

The Ruined Halls were interesting, though, as, without a Rogue, and while running on Elite, those traps can be particularly deadly.

Fortunately, the three of us managed not to kill ourselves, and successfully navigated the halls without breaking too many boxes or barrels that might have made completion more difficult.

Not only did Syd earn his second page of bank slots, but Factotum finally earned his long-awaited Level 11, too! Congratulations Factotum! Cleric Level 11 is always fun, as that's when your character finally learns Heal, Mass Cure Moderate, Blade Barrier and Cometfall! The tough part is deciding which spells to load up into the limited number of spell slots you have. Fortunately, making Level 12 isn't as difficult as making Level 11, and Level 12 gives your character the fourth spell slot, so your character can have all four loaded at the same time!

Heh! Our little zerg-fest was actually quite a bit of fun.

But, in thinking about it, there were several key elements in our favor...

First was the fact that our characters were all significantly higher in level than the quest we were opening on Elite. Second, we all *knew* the quests in every detail, which allowed us to anticipate encounters and adjust our tactics accordingly. Third, we addressed every encounter in turn; we didn't try to run through too many mobs at once, and create an unrecoverable situation. Fourth, we had a variety of character classes to complement one another. And, finally, we stuck together to maintain our advantage; we didn't get spread the way some groups do, which is normally a recipe for a party-wipe.

So, in retrospect, it seems that, despite the zerg-approach we took, we managed to follow all the rules for a successful campaign.

Now, if we could only create the same circumstances consistently for our raid groups...

:-D

Yeah.

Heh.

Keep it fun!!!