Posting meme: New in 2022

[extrapenguin]

Now that Christmas is well and truly over, and I've slept on the matter, back to the posting meme! trobadora asked about something I did in 2022 that I never did before.

I suppose there are some trivial things I could mention (visited $place for the first time, that sort of stuff), but I'll go with something nerdier. This year was the one in which I took up progression raiding!

What is progression raiding, you might ask? Well. It is a MMORPG activity. Your average MMO has multiplayer activities which include things called raids: usually for a large(ish) group of players, featuring gameplay mechanics that require multiple people and coordination to complete, and available in multiple difficulty settings. (Difficulty affects stuff like boss health, boss damage, and mechanics.) Progression raiding involves a group of people tackling the harder content together and then moving on to another raid once they've cleared one.

I joined a group for Star Wars: The Old Republic in February – just before the 7.0 expansion hit – and after a bit of reclearing to gear up, we've done Dxun and ToS hardmode, Queen, most of R4, and now we're doing Gods. We'll probably return to R4 after we've cleared Gods, and then head off to nightmare modes. (The group cleared Ravagers just before I joined.) There was talk of starting with TfB at some point. We might squeeze in Monolith at some point.

I really enjoy it! I like everyone in my team, and tanking is super enjoyable. I like being responsible for positioning, basically, and as a jugg tank main, reflect abuse is great. The perfect intersection of these is tanks on EC, where I stack the spires and then the DPS pop their reflects, stand in the middle of the spires with me, and make appreciative noises.

(Also, reminder that December is almost over, time to pick up your DW ponts and paid accounts.)

Comments

[pauraque]

Nice! I'm retired from progression raiding in WoW, but it was a thing I did for many years, mostly as a healer, occasionally as DPS. Being part of a team with good coordination and camaraderie is so satisfying. I have great appreciation for raid tanks, because I find tanking *so* stressful and I totally cannot handle running out in front of a whole raid with everyone looking at me and noticing everything I'm doing. But then, a lot of people say they can't heal because it's too stressful, while I find it the most comfortable role. I guess this is why we need teamwork--no use having a tank without a healer, and vice versa. :)

[extrapenguin]

The camaraderie is such an important thing! I really like my guild (we started out as a mostly-non-guild-based team, but then I transferred all my characters to the guild and all the other originally non-guild people quit the group and were replaced with guildies...) as well, which is also important.

And yep, it takes all sorts – I once tried healing for the guild's instructional raid night and apparently the amount of HOW CAN YOU LIVE LIKE THIS??? coming from me was hilarious. (Other common refains were, apparently "Stop dying!" and "Do I get to do mechanics??? Please???") I appreciate my healers, dps, and co-tank. The choreography of teamwork is great.

[trobadora]

Hee! I know nothing about videogames whatsoever, but that sounds like fun!

[libitina]

Oh, neat. It's one of the things I've seen in the c-ent gaming shows I've watched, but I've never been social enough (even online) to game that way. It sounds very fun.

[extrapenguin]

The communal aspect is the most important, I think – and the lack of PvP.

[extrapenguin]

I'd have thought they were more into PvP-type things, like League of Legends, Dota, and Overwatch? Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised there would be MMO stuff like Warcraft and whatever Final Fantasy the MMO is... And yep, with the right people, it's lots of fun!

[libitina]

I mean, I have no idea. Like Glory (The King's Avatar) seems to be a League of a Legends type game, but then they're like, let's take you training into the deep lands to kill monsters and farm money and tools

[libitina]

Not saying that exchange actually happens in that one. I... Pretty much conflate all the games played by Yang Yang into one, even thought it's like three or five different shows