Lessons in Karma

aka how I learned to love the RNG

I blame Funcom. As usual. See, the patch which fubared my Guardian’s Plexus Strike also had a major unintended benefit – that I only found out about when blind invited by a lvl 80 guildie. In the Poitain harvesting zone, someone dumped lvl 80 demons into a field…apparently for the purposes of providing a demon blood sort of tradeskill resource.

Except, they forgot the level 80 loot table.

Which has a chance of dropping a jeweled chest containing a good blue or…wait for it…*drum rolls* a purple epic weapon.

And these lvl 80 demons have a respawn timer that numbers in the half-minutes or so.
Did I also mention that any guild that has a guild city in that area has a private instance to themselves, away from the hoi polloi’s public instances?

(It’s shared with 1-2 other guilds who set up cities in that area. In our particular case, our neighbors are awfully quiet though. Never seen them running around at all.)

And that we are on a PvE server, so there is no danger of random ganking from any sharks in the vincinity?

Yes, the harvest zone of Poitain has been converted into an epic farming zone. :)

Our guild has pretty much blind invited anyone who logs on who is a guildie and dragged them over to mass farm in a raid group the entire field of demons. Apprenticeship takes care of anyone level 60+.

XP gets steadily worse and worse the more people crowd in, so it’s not really a great PL technique except in a smaller group. But it’s been a crazy Monty Haul loot dropping session.

Naturally, the moment there is loot to be had, there is a certain human ugliness and guild drama that shows up. While the majority of people are pretty decent about the whole thing and acting like civilized folk, using need/greed appropriately, and others (like me) are somewhat lazy about filling up our inventories with the plentiful rain of green items – which necessitates a run back to guild city merchant to vendor – and pass on those, there have been some guildies needing things they shouldn’t, and other people getting mad behind their backs later on.

Me, I’ve been watching this with an amused eye. Personally, I see no reason to fight with others over this myself. Hence, I’ve been rolling greed and letting people need epics (whether for themselves or for the stated purpose to give to others in the guild, etc) and passing other things, etc.

Why?

Number one is just the personal integrity reason. It’s small stuff. Loot is small stuff. I just don’t want to get into the “loot is a great big steenking deal” trap. It brings out wicked selfish behavior in me, and I don’t want that to happen. I’m having fun bashing on easily killed mobs as a big group, it’s like a big guild community bonding session, and I’m getting a small trickle of xp in the progress on my way up to 80. That’s enough. The loot windows that keep popping up are as much of a nuisance as a blind invite every 3 seconds.

Here’s number two. I’m not the best fit for the equipment for a number of reasons. First, I’m sub-level for the lvl 80 equipment, even if I can get to 80 within the next few days. There are already other 80s who would want this and have more meaning for them. These 80s can make the weekday raids, whereas I can’t. There are already two main tanks for the guild, so I’m only a secondary offtank at best – and feat speced to stance dance rather than to primary tank with crazy resists. And owning a purple epic doesn’t make me as joyfully happy as others who treat the thing like their personal property, it’s just bytes. And I’m not even sure that I will last a long time in AoC with WAR around the corner. So lots of other people will garner more benefit out of it than me.

Number three, I’m already planning to make my own crafted and gemmed armor/weapons once I get my second alt to 40 and up, which happens to be better than these world epic drops supposedly. That’s a fun goal to work towards, and I like the feeling of really -earning- one’s equipment. I figure if I made the correct choice of guild, there will be people who will give me their cast offs anyhow (if only just to get the weekend Guardian up to raid spec) – and I don’t pose a threat to any of them since I don’t lust for what they lust for anyhow.

Number four. It’s all just bytes, remember? Lord knows what Funcom is going to do on the next patch day when they fix the drop rate. Knowing how heavy handed they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if we all get banned for a day or two – except I think the quantity of players that have taken on this farming enterprise has expanded to a number beyond their capacity to manage. Lot of bored 80’s, ya know?

Apparently the mods were trying to delete posts on the official forums regarding this, but some hours later, they just gave up, because the tidal wave of posts was too overwhelming. I can just see the scads of account cancellations ringing in Funcom’s face if they do something overly drastic. Still, I wouldn’t put it past Funcom to just either mysteriously delete all the purple epics or drop their stats to something quite worthless. Easy come, easy go. The backlash of frustration would be hilarious to see though.

Me, I’ve been enjoying the moment, rather than the end product. I’m just as human as anyone else, and to see a random lottery roll come up with a big jeweled chest, the tension and excitement of “following superstition” and calling for a lvl 80 to open it up (it’s probably just random anyhow, but what the heck, it makes the superstitious happy), and seeing something nifty colored pop up…is fun. And there’s a LOT of it, so it’s like an addictive frenzy.

Fortunately, I also enjoy the everyday combat – though I think certain combos are burned into my muscle memory now. And I like to see all the guildies get excited over it, and the good-hearted generosity of most people who are distributing to everyone up and coming who needs a specific weapon for their class, etc. It’s great for guild morale, this loot that falls from the sky and the nice people who will save it for you.

And last laugh number five. I believe in karma. And doggone persistence. Most of my guildmates are GMT+10. They collapsed to bed at 2am their time, my time midnight. This was the perfect opportunity to put on some ‘fight music’ and do the CoX grind in AoC. :) By myself, I soaked up two peaceful blissful hours of unshared finally-good xp rate, and indulged in the uncontested loot grind.

Guess what. Before the first ten mobs were out, I had dropped the purple epic that I most desired (along with 4-5 others whom I would have let ‘em grab first in a group) - a one-handed sword.

That’s karma for you.

Egged on by that, I ignored sleep and greedily went after the mobs for the next two hours, and only dropped blues. Decent, but not exciting. That’s also karma for you.
Welp, bottom line, I was 76 before this mad crazy farming incident. I’m now a few bars into 79. That’s all I really wanted. The rest is a bonus. And yeah, if Funcom thinks they can take away XP gained from this, they will have deserved it – because it’ll show that their MMO code is really that sound.

Somehow… I doubt it, though.

Muhahahahahaha.