The origins of “Lancer” or what I like to call, “the great escape” into an alter ego

Good morning all! I feel terrible, here I am asking for weeks and weeks that we need a guild website to coordinate things better… and then it takes me a month to even write an intro. Terrible! My apologies… Well, I’m underway at the moment so I really have no excuse not to update some info.

Real life background:
I’m an active duty Sailor in the US Navy that is married with 2 kids and onboard the flagship of the most powerful weapon/tool ever created in all of mankind. Currently I am slotted for a 6 month deployment to begin in July 09.  I also have several over seas tours in the past and also an IRAQ deployment (which directly relate to heavy duty gaming addiction which I will get into a bit later.)

Gamer PreHistory:
I’ve been a gamer all my life from Atari, Nintendo, Super NES, Genesis, PS, PS2, XBOX and so on. However, after a few stints with MMO’s that’s almost all I play exclusively now. Back in 99’ I started my first MMORPG of Asheron’s Call… I friggin loved it. As time progressed and deployments varied opportunities at MMO’s fluctuated. To date I have ranged from dabbling to mastering the following MMO’s: Asheron’s Call, Asheron’s Call 2, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot, Conan, Everquest, EVE Online, Earth and Beyond, World of Warcraft and Atlantica Online.

Alter Ego Name of “Lancer”:
It’s funny really. My best friend’s middle name is simply Lance. I always thought it was cool. So I’ve always had my alter ego toons with some form of that name in it. The real birth of him that was set in me is actually due to my total disrespect for Star Wars Galaxies. I always have a fixation with solo classes… So I also created a massive backstory for my character and named him Lance Solo, a.k.a. Han Solo’s brother. The name got banned due to the name of solo in it. I was pretty fucking pissed, who is anyone to tell me how I should enjoy a game environment? If I thought it was kewl to play a toon that I could pretend was Han Solo’s brother, what was the problem with that? I mean I am paying for the service! So to this day I really hate the role playing part of MMO’s. Also I think role playing servers are the dumbest thing ever created and I hate them to this day. (Yes, WoW has specific in character rules if you play on a RP server.) My hardcore WoW name was Lancer which was later forced to be changed to Lancerdoomed due to a server change. My true alter ego was Paladin with a grandfathered name of SirLancer due to making on game day launch, a play on SirLancealot. After a few weeks, all new creations were not allowed to start with Sir.

Gamer MMO Centric History:
My real claim to fame and shame for MMO’s is WoW. After a very difficult and challenging tour in Iraq I came back home in the fall of 2004. I really needed some decompress time, I dabbled with several games, none of which did it for me. However, a few weeks after coming back stateside… WoW launched. To say it was addicting would be an understatement.  I always enjoyed casters and solo classes… so the obvious choice was Warlock due to it being a caster/pet class. Sadly WoW has still to this day failed at this function, oddly enough the Warlock really became what the Mage was supposed to be, an insane DPS machine… and for a time I was the most powerful Warlock on a US server… but I’m getting ahead of myself. At first my WoW experience was simply highly enjoyable.

Let me geek it up here for just a minute… For those of you that don’t know let me enlighten you on how “I believe” hard core MMO coordination began. Most games incorporate only groups of 3-5 people for group activities. When WoW launched this was I’d say about 95% of the content as well. Then raiding got introduced which incorporated a small amount of 15 man content then all the end game content of 40 man. Sadly most guilds that have been playing were all structured of just friends for the 5 man content, it was almost impossible logistically to initially start a 40 man group, much less possess the coordination required to accomplish the tasks needed of such content. So initially, there were very few that could accomplish this. One such infamous group was a “collective” of smaller guilds. My guild for example, “Exiled Crusaders” was the largest of the collected guilds in this grouping. So Exiled Crusaders hosted raids of Molten Core which comprised of 7+ guilds to create a raider base of 40 people (+ reserves). We were an alliance of sorts, we were the Mash Buttons Alliance… a.k.a. The MBA. We were the most successful alliance based raid in all of WoW. After defeating MC however the problems that restrict most Alliances started tearing us apart, loot rules and disagreements. It was just fortunate that this occurred after our monstrous success. Our extreme success allowed for several things to happen, several key individuals of power ascended to other true raiding guilds and while some actually formulated a unique own raiding guild, I was one of the select few. I turned over my GM reins to a fellow guildy and was offered an opportunity at joining Forlorn Legacy. For those of you that don’t know… Forlorn Legacy was the initial and greatest raiding guild prior to expansions in the US. Soon after joining I was thrust into a whole new level of the game and I was quickly consumed by it. My skillsets as previous GM, my available time to play, my knowledge of theorycraft and power as a raider quickly allowed me to rise to officer ranks. My final job along with raiding was to recommend initial approvals on all caster classes and partake in votes for all classes for whom would be allowed into raids. FL was getting on average 150 applicants a week from all classes and all servers. The administrative workload to keep a guild that raids 6 hours a night 6 days a week and is lightyears ahead of the rest on content is TREMENDOUS. My raiding goal was to be the first player in the world to obtain Atesh, the legendary staff. Sadly since FL’s GM at the time was a mage so that fell to him. The fortunate thing was that since he got Atesh (which cost a ton of dkp) I was able to obtain a vast majority of the rest of the high end caster gear. Which for a short time allowed me to be the most powerfully geared Warlock in all of WoW. 

After I obtained that feat I really didn’t have any new goals for WoW and that paired with the administrative workload of managing a guild like that had me approach burnout quickly. I took a bit of a break and rejoined the premium guild that was born of the remnants of the MBA. With them I found a tight balance of great content with a much lower game commitment. After my son was born and he became a bit older it became apparent that even the 10-20 hours of raiding I was doing just wasn’t as time effective with a start time of 7PM. It just didn’t make sense to get home from work at 6-615 just to start being ready for a raid at 645. I got family! So I started an extensive search for a later starting end game raiding guild that was at my content level or beyond. It took a while but I finally found a successful raiding guild off server. So sadly I made the jump and said goodbye to all my digital friends forever.

I joined Auroa Aeternum of Uther. They were a bit hard nosed and straight to business raiding group, but that’s because one of our raiders was a developer for WoW, which allowed for a ton of insight. Not much for personalities as compared to my last fun loving guild. But it seemed to be a true mix of Forlorn Legacy and Apotheosis, just what I needed. My skillsets definitely did assist in pushing them through all end game content for all expansions. I even performed as the primary ranged tank as well for several key fights. (I don’t know what I loved more; tanking Illy or the Twin bitches?) I was offered an officer position but had to respectfully decline since I know how easily consumed I can become. It was an honor to defeat end game with them on a compressed schedule twice with the defeat of Malygos and Kiljaeden. Auroa Aeternum is the greatest guild in the history of gaming if you consider the ratio of achievements : time obligation ratio. Hands down, I dare anyone to challenge that.

After the latest WOTLK expansion came out I was greatly disappointed in what it had become. While the content was really great, WoW itself has become so fucking watered down to basic gamer level that it really isn’t much of a game anymore as far as challenge goes. It’s due to Blizzard trying to make more money and have all levels of the game appeal to everyone. Wiping out all importance on high skill and cunning. We defeated endgame again in less then 30 days after launch. I decided to break free of it and give it up. I really should have sold my toon when it was valued at 10k+, I probably could have gotten $8k for the account but I would have had to sell it when it was also the most fun to be a badassmotherfuckingWarlockofdestruction. Probably wasn’t going to happen, that shit was ballstothewallawesome in its hayday! 

Birth of Atlantica Online:
A few weeks after leaving WoW I started to feel the need for a new gaming passion. I looked for a while and tried a few. I landed on Atlantica, it’s free play enticed me. Somehow I was fortunate and found a great guild called “Hunters” that I picked up with as I was randomly leveling. I seem to be lucky like that!

Thoughts on AO:
AO is far from perfect. There are bullshit issues in regards to loot, rewards, solo play, challenge, caster vs. melee, etc. What AO excels at are the cost, PVP, ease of commitment, fun, etc. Right now for me, AO is a really great fit due to being at sea quite a bit. I think it’s something that I can pick up and drop easily if I’m away for X amount of time. Which is something that I need. If I had more time would I play more? To a degree yes, but I’m concerned about high end rewards. Right now the best rewards that I’ve seen yet are from individual dungeons, and you only need to run like 1 other person to run them with. So it doesn’t have as good of community aspects to it. But it shows much much potential.

Future Gaming:
It will probably be another 6 years (retirement) until I get involved with a MMO that I will let consume me again. Right now I’m looking at hopefully being done with going out to sea permanently around Jan2010 and will get more involved with MMO’s again. Now if that will be AO or a future game… who knows. KOTOR and Star Trek Online look very promising. I’m hoping that there will be some major patches for AO while I’m away. Right now I’m in love with the group formation, single master, turn based combat format! It truly is ingenious.

Well, that is Lancer in a nutshell. I look forward to playing and joking with you all! I can get a bit winded on the topic of gaming eh?