Moonshine Mansion

Blaugust 2015, Day 8

The bird itself

I spent a lot of time last night sitting around waiting for Scorchwing to spawn so I could kill it for my daily contract. There’s almost always a crowd, especially on contract days. I love the atmosphere, it gets pretty festive and silly, which inspires lots of screen shots.

Waiting for the flaming chicken to appear

After we had killed it I looked back through my screen shot folder and realized that I probably have more images of Scorchwing than anything else in the game. The earliest, like the one at the top of this post from last July, are of Scorch. The long time it took to kill it meant waiting around when it spawned so you had enough people.

Sometimes you find kindred spirits

The later images are all about the community silliness of waiting for the spawn. I like the Scorchwing fight as far as world bosses go. And I like that it brings big groups together and helps remind me how vibrant a place my server is.

So many people engaged in poultricide

Still, waiting around for a random spawn timer isn’t really engaging gameplay. I wonder if all the changes coming with F2P will standardize Scorch’s spawn to bring it more in line with the other daily contracts. If so, I’ll be glad of the time it saves me, but a little sad if we lose this weird excuse to have a party in the middle of Blighthaven.

Source: Moonshine Mansion

Blaugust 2015, Day 7

The pinnacle of raiding in FFXIV before the expansion. Please ignore my corpse…

Wednesday nights are my main FFXIV raid night. I look forward to battling various monsters, dragons, and bad guys each week. But it has been a while since I sat down and thought about what keeps me coming back for more.

I started raiding back in World of Warcraft in 2007. I was still new to MMOs, and had finally leveled a character that I was happy doing group content with: a forsaken priest. I dutifully ran dungeons and healed butts for max-level content, slowly making a name for myself and filling up my friends list. Eventually some of those friends turned out to be raiders. A couple times a week they ran off to do this mysterious raiding thing with lots of other people. Raiders had the fanciest gear. Back in the days before cosmetic options, raid tier sets reigned supreme in terms of looks. If the promise of challenging group fun didn’t entice me enough the lure of fancy new gear sealed the deal.

I’ve raided in several MMOs now, and they each have their pros and cons. There are some constants that keep me coming back no matter what universe I’m playing in. First and foremost is a great raid group. They might be great in terms of player skill, or just great people I enjoy spending time with. Ideally both! My very favorite raid experiences have been in 8-10 person raids full of excellent players who were also my friends.

Even when I’ve had great groups I’ve sometimes walked away. Raiding is most fun for me when it is challenging and when there are still more achievable goals to meet. The times I’ve taken a break are often either when there’s an encounter that just feels insurmountable with our group, or when everything is on farm and there’s no new content in sight. This doesn’t mean I run away from difficult fights, but there is a difference between a fight that feels fair and that my group is making progress on every week, versus a fight that seems to stop us cold at the same point no matter what we do.

So why do I raid? I guess the answer is equal parts friendship, challenge, and sweet sweet loot!  Do you raid too? What keeps you going?

Source: Moonshine Mansion
Why Do I Raid?