A Bit Batty

Had a rocky start of it this evening in game. Though we’re officially linkshell break, there’s mounting pressure for people to attend HNM camps. I have to admit that Fafnir has grown on me, especially with the need to get fishing done. But the pressure to attend HNM’s mirrors the pressure to attend events during the regular schedule, if not more contentious. It’s all political: who’s LS has the real bragging rights, the good drops and the big bank items. I’ll put up with it to a degree, but last night we decided that we were going to level BLM instead tonight.

Well, pressure to camp mount on poor Talon and Keri, Amelisa felt very abandoned over the whole change in plans, and I was left in the middle trying to stay my hand from calling an end to our short-lived little group. I asked Keri to speak with Ame while I had a talk with Talon, and after we got ourselves straight, decided to level on our off week. We’re now all in accord that this little static is an @1 priority over any event when it is planned, and that we’re to give notice to each member when we can’t make it, either on the forums, in the BC linkshell message, or both. After all, this is ultimately for the good of Soulfire, even if they don’t like us not being there now. In a short amount of time, we’ll have a lot more BLM firepower and one more BRD, of which we’ve always been in short supply.

Our second hurdle for the evening was the fact that every camp was taken by a BLM soloing. Since early in the Treasures of Aht Urgan expansion, the popular method of party creation is now something called TP burn: Get a healer, refresher and lots of damage dealers and spam TP moves as fast as you can. No one skillchains anymore. This has made the BLM obsolete in modern experience parties. As important as they are in endgame applications, they simply cannot level like normal jobs now. As a result, most turn to manaburn parties (like ours) or soloing on pets (the strategy we modified and use). All the easy to access camps were taken, and it was a few deaths before we finally were able to settle at a spot. The experience was amazing once we got there, with only one or two dicey spots. We decided that, when we get aggro, to sleepga all the mobs, quickly kill the bat, and logout for a few seconds to make the links despawn. This worked out really well.

We’re going to level again tomorrow night, and we’re all of the understanding that we’re going despite the HNM camp that will inevitably give us a hard time for not showing up. I wish the people who get bent out of shape would chill and see that it’s for their own good that we do this now…