It was in the Estate of Unrest, At first it was a deathfest, but we found our feet we wound up playing there every night for a week. I am still friends and sometimes visit or speak on the phone with a couple of those guys. We played together with some others for years after that week of camping. I was just trying to help a guy get some boots of some type in there and I made some great friends.
Edit: I looked it up; Dwarven Work Boots
This is a difficult question to answer... I rarely ever pugged in Everquest II since I always spent my time with good friends who picked synergetic classes that could plow through group content with just 2-3 people.
My most memerable pugs, however, were the times I spent as a Blackmage in Final Fantasy XI. As a mage class, I had plenty of down time as I waited several minutes to efficently regain all my mana. Thus, I spent most of that time talking with the White Mage who usually sat near me in the backline, who also waited for their mana to return. Needless to say, my friend's list was pretty much filled with nothing but healers with whom I communicated with daily. :3 It was a happy time in my life. I really miss those days where every day in game was a new experience and every conversation felt inclusive and inspiring.
My best experiences were actually pick up raids. When EQ2 first started the public quests, I had three weeks off work. Almost every hour, I would start the server's pick up raid. It was nice to be depended on to get it set up on time.
For me it was in Lake of Ill Omen at the Sarnak Fort Back Door. It was a great pick up group. We had a wee bit of trouble at 1st when we were learning how to work together. Lets see... I was the Cleric, we also had 2 rangers, an Enchanter, a Necro and a Rogue. We wiped a few times early on, though once we got how our classes worked and our individual limitations, we managed to mesh our classes so things went smooth as silk. We played for the entire day together. It was a blast!
level 10-12 or so and I was a scardy cat. couldn't find groups and when I did I usually died first; so confidence was low- everytime I went to Qeynos everyone wanted to go go blackburrow and every time it was night- I couldn't see! I would get lost but try to keep up and run into a room full of gnolls when everyone else turned left- that kind of thing. So I went back to Erudin and waited and hoped some people would come and I would show them around Erudin and Toxx. I had heard of ranger jokes, and who then shows up- but a ranger- level 11. We knew we were supposed to group, so we did and then wondered what we could do.
Wisps were out, too hard.Kobolds were out- too many together, could not handle adds. He needed poachers but they were too hard (he had been here before) I showed him how I could invis him and he could snatch the pearls from under the sand sharks for a quest in the prexus temple. I mean it was something. Then he got attacked by a real shark. I was bound inside so I told him to swim to shore and I would die because he was not bound here- he stayed fighting in the water- and we killed the shark!
We wondered if we could do it again- and we did!- he bound himself, first....
Spent the next few HOURS hunting all the sharks in Erudin harbor, even the hammer-heads, getting out occasionally to dry off (med up/bind wounds) before jumping back in. I got so confident I was also melee-ing with my new snake fang summoned dagger. We didnt die!
(edited for spelling)
In the right game, with the right environment, they can be highly rewarding - always fun to make new friends.
Earliest pickup group I can recall was in phase three beta testing in EQ. I was working on a gnome wizard at the time and ventured all the way from Ak'Anon to Halas at a silly low level to see if I could make it. Once there I was adopted by some crazy barbarians as their mascot / good luck charm. Spent a weekend roaming Everfrost with these sons of the snows entertaining them with tales of the Steamfonts around the campfire while meditating. It was a blast.
Best PUG grp? I was Guildless in EQ about 6 years ago on my ranger, ran into a grp of people and these guys were hiliarious, I mean we ran through some content but get me wrong killing things left in right but I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard I mean I think I was about to fall unconscious through laughing so hard, and of course I chimed in a few comments of my own thats got them rolling as well, and than a few momments later i joined there guild and to learn it was one of the bigger guilds of the server, (I was just returning to the game so i had no clue) and basically had a blast and to find out the guild had a lot more people like the ones I grped with but i normally stuck to the ones that got my interested into the guild becuase it was always about getting things done but at the same times just cracking jokes and doing whatever to make the time pass by, wow just mentioning this experience got me laughing again, btw I am still in contact with almost everyone in this grp to this day.
Hands down (kudos to Brad and the team back then) was Rallos Zek pick up raids for PoP time flagging. I was a kid finishing middle school back then and didn't socialize/spend the inordinate amount of time playing and apping to guilds until high school. If anyone remembers what this PUG was like, it was the most sought after/continuously run PUG (we would use the same ogre tank, Tad or Tadd cant remember) for like 4 straight months (this is when I started joining them so they may have been attempting it longer). It was the only raid PUGs couldn't eventually finish (Bert was the only real hiccup I can recall apart from RZ). I was on Saryrn at the time and we were the first PUG to clear it (someone ruin my childhood and correct me if I'm wrong here :D). I have to say, this was a forgotten experience and was, without question, my most rewarding/memorable moment in GAMING history along with Ruby/Emerald weapon in FF7. To make analogous/metaphorical; it was like college football vs NFL. With PUGs (college football) you just have a group of guys wanting something so badly, doing their best (while still working together at a highly organized raid level), so the feeling of victory is so much more special because of the serendipidous/random collection of players coming together at a random PUG time. Once you get into 5 nights a week 5+ hours a night raiding, with healing parses after trash mobs even, we all know how the fun becomes a job almost, with expectations mounting/persisting, increased raid times and attendence %s required, a 20 person application waiting list for the guild, preventing you to even want to take RL vacations etc; it's just a different animal (I like this competitive atmosphere but you get your good and bad from it). There is truly something to be said about the magic and reward of PUGs, and despite what people say and what we read, I am a 110% positive (espeically with the free trial avaialable) we will net a large "casual player" audience. Eeryone likes to talk about "people not having time these days," you know, as if we all didn't have jobs, school, and families back then? Times may change, but what people/consumers truly want out of entertainment experiences (specifically gaming) does not change. People want a challenge, a thrill, and an escape from their life, and whether you want it once a week for an hour or every night for a few, we all want that feeling of triumph and reward, which grows logistically, with risk and challenge.
I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but this thread catalyzed some nascent ideas; I can say it would be 100% unique and 110% rewarding to create a raid/progression flagging dungeon that negated people from using pre-made groups. This would obviously have to be a key/flagging at the tier 1 level, but I think forcing the community to work together to advance (at one stage or another), would not only bring the community together, but potentially play into the story and world of Terminus. Perhaps one of the many gods mentioned by various races (oddly as an elf ranger the ogres lore has me most curious, simply because of the mystery) creates some void or perhaps we discover some shard, and basically what happens is when we interact with it, we are put into a queue of sorts, matching us with players (I think a 5-10 man at the tier 1 level to see how it sticks would be ideal for this) we would see once zoning in for the run. Little things like this are so underlooked; actions/events forcing us to come together, which innately forces us to pay more attention to "why" we are made to do this, which in turn makes us focus on the story and become more intimate/engrossed in the world and ultimately enjoy the story, lore, and game on a deeper level. Details such as class allocation and group balance could be worked out, but just some interesting food for thought. What an amazing experience RZ in tactics was; thank you Brad and the like!
Hands down (kudos to Brad and the team back then) was Rallos Zek pick up raids for PoP time flagging. I was a kid finishing middle school back then and didn't socialize/spend the inordinate amount of time playing and apping to guilds until high school. If anyone remembers what this PUG was like, it was the most sought after/continuously run PUG (we would use the same ogre tank, Tad or Tadd cant remember) for like 4 straight months (this is when I started joining them so they may have been attempting it longer). It was the only raid PUGs couldn't eventually finish (Bert was the only real hiccup I can recall apart from RZ). I was on Saryrn at the time and we were the first PUG to clear it (someone ruin my childhood and correct me if I'm wrong here :D). I have to say, this was a forgotten experience and was, without question, my most rewarding/memorable moment in GAMING history along with Ruby/Emerald weapon in FF7. To make analogous/metaphorical; it was like college football vs NFL. With PUGs (college football) you just have a group of guys wanting something so badly, doing their best (while still working together at a highly organized raid level), so the feeling of victory is so much more special because of the serendipidous/random collection of players coming together at a random PUG time. Once you get into 5 nights a week 5+ hours a night raiding, with healing parses after trash mobs even, we all know how the fun becomes a job almost, with expectations mounting/persisting, increased raid times and attendence %s required, a 20 person application waiting list for the guild, preventing you to even want to take RL vacations etc; it's just a different animal (I like this competitive atmosphere but you get your good and bad from it). There is truly something to be said about the magic and reward of PUGs, and despite what people say and what we read, I am a 110% positive (espeically with the free trial avaialable) we will net a large "casual player" audience. Eeryone likes to talk about "people not having time these days," you know, as if we all didn't have jobs, school, and families back then? Times may change, but what people/consumers truly want out of entertainment experiences (specifically gaming) does not change. People want a challenge, a thrill, and an escape from their life, and whether you want it once a week for an hour or every night for a few, we all want that feeling of triumph and reward, which grows logistically, with risk and challenge.
I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but this thread catalyzed some nascent ideas; I can say it would be 100% unique and 110% rewarding to create a raid/progression flagging dungeon that negated people from using pre-made groups. This would obviously have to be a key/flagging at the tier 1 level, but I think forcing the community to work together to advance (at one stage or another), would not only bring the community together, but potentially play into the story and world of Terminus. Perhaps one of the many gods mentioned by various races (oddly as an elf ranger the ogres lore has me most curious, simply because of the mystery) creates some void or perhaps we discover some shard, and basically what happens is when we interact with it, we are put into a queue of sorts, matching us with players (I think a 5-10 man at the tier 1 level to see how it sticks would be ideal for this) we would see once zoning in for the run. Little things like this are so underlooked; actions/events forcing us to come together, which innately forces us to pay more attention to "why" we are made to do this, which in turn makes us focus on the story and become more intimate/engrossed in the world and ultimately enjoy the story, lore, and game on a deeper level. Details such as class allocation and group balance could be worked out, but just some interesting food for thought. What an amazing experience RZ in tactics was; thank you Brad and the like!
PUG's are what I spend most of my time doing in an MMO. My most memorable one was in EQ we were doing an LDON mission, and had the core of the group together shaman, paladin, and necro. Unfortunately it was really late at night and we couldn't find others to join, so we were like what the hell lets just give it a shot with the 3 of us. We were decently geared, but not high end and I felt if we get some luck we might be able to pull off a collection mission. Every pull was like a near death expierence, we were using every trick in the book rooting, kiting, and just running for my life till aggro was under control. A lot of the mobs could cast so FD pulling wasn't effective. We were getting close to completing the mission and the final room, we knew it would be rough, all you see was a swarm of mobs coming. I'm just spamming slow and heals as much as I can, Pally had to use LOH on me and tanking like a beast, and the necro was trying to kite and throw the damage that he could down. We managed to clear it and pick up the last piece for collection, and I looked around the room and counted 8 mobs in that encounter. It was one of the few times where I stopped and let me guild know what our random pick up group just accomplished.
PUGs were pretty much always fun for me as a pretty social person... In EQ camping Treants in Karana was a constant revolving door PUG and my memories of it are so great. Fighting there ended up just being a great time spent joking around, laughing lots and making friends. I love a good challlenge in game but (because the treant spawn was simple) this area was fun for just relaxing and having a laugh with people and having a waiting list for the next person looking to join, made lots of lasting friendships there.
Played lots of PUGs throughout EQ at all stages and cant think of any bad experiences, sometimes the going was tough but you work out how to play together, would have to come up with some clever ways of utilising unusual class combinations in groups... often just takes one person moving into a leadership role and the group gets some traction and start smashing content.
You get your very occasional ninja looters etc but you just have a chat with them privately and explain that in this group we are sharing not racing for loot.
My best experience with PUGs was definitely EARLY days of MMOs. I can say with confidence that at LEAST 75% of my most positive experiences with PUGs were BEFORE 2005: Shadows of Yserbius, Neverwinter Nights, The Realm, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, Earth and Beyond, Meridian 59, Horizons, Dark Sun Online, Anarchy Online, and maybe even Star Wars Galaxies (but only a bit).
Actually the first experience that comes to mind as being REALLY negative was in World of Warcraft...no wait, EM-EFFING SHADOWBANE. But I ended up finding a decent group of folks in ShadowBane and enjoying the hell out of my Prelate (what a class?!?!).
The actual INDIVIDUAL MEMORIES I can clearly recall are almost exclusively EverQuest Vanilla: Aviaks in SKarana, Lower Guk, Befallen, Unrest, Mistmoore, actually - Karnor's PUGs were pretty good and Sebilis - but after that my memory gets foggy. The experiences don't quite stick out in my mind...distinctly. GUFFAW! How could I forget? Solusek! Sol A, Sol B - sheesh - so many fond memories as a monk - pulling those lava tube tunnels - with the dogs barking! Lava spiders, invisible bat-crap carrying goblin, and so much more!
Ahhh...thanks for the nostalgia!
Most of my grouping in EQ was with various PUGs. Later on a rl friend of mine, his room mate, and I all did a trio for awhile but there was still plenty of times in between that I would do pick up groups.
I never really had a bad experience in EQ with them, everyone was easy going, fun, and nice to be around. We all cared and understood that we needed each other to progress and to not lose any xp / corpses. WoW really had the negative pug's , especially when they started the cross-realm lfg stuff. There was no accountability towards how you acted since there was a 99% chance you weren't on the same server with any of the ppl you were playing with, and thus would never see them again.
I'm expecting, and hoping, that Pantheon will have the same grouping (pre-made, and pick up) as EQ did. A good part of the community is made up of the same fun and understanding players from EQ, and those that come from other games have the same mindset as well. We all want to have an enjoyable experience and help build a great community and home.
There's really two PUG experiences that stand out for me. Oddly enough, neither of them actually finished what they set out to do.
The first was back in EQ1 during the Velious expansion. I'd started a new character on a new server so, for the first time since I started sometime in August or so of '99, I was ahead of the leveling curve. In any case, I was in a group with 2 others I'd grouped with before -- so perhaps not a true PUG -- when we came across the entrace to Crystal Caverns. It looked like everything was in our level range, so we recruited 3 other people that were in the area in at attempt to get to the bottom of the dungeon and see what was there. It was the first time in an MMO I'd been in a dungeon where not everything was camped so we pretty much had the run of the place and it was up to us, and us alone, to not get in over our heads as there was, literally, no one else there. And it was also amazing since we had no available map yet and everything was a new discovery for us, so it was quite a surprise when we came across a Dwarf town in the middle of the dungeon. Eventually, we made it down to Dracnia and, while the early parts were a bit below our level, this later stuff was yellow and red con, and we had no idea what Dracnia's level was, just that she was red con, but we decided, we've come this far, let's do this! (Imagine that, a discussion about what to do next instead of blindly charging forward!) I was playing a Cleric and started calling out my mana percent as it started to get lower; it was going to be a close call, but it looked like we might pull it off when, suddenly... zoning. The Wizard had lost his nerve and, not wanting to risk a corpse run, had evac'ed the group. We didn't make another run of it, but that's definitely the most memorable PUG group.
The second was very early in WoW, when dungeons were still difficult (assuming you attempted to 5 man them; this was still VERY early when you could bring 40 people into what was, ostensibly, a 5 man instance). Yes, there was a time before the go-to tactic, even in WoW, was "group 'em up and AoE 'em down". :-) In any case, we were struggling to 5-man something that other people were just cheesing with up to 40 people and were making a good show of it, slowly making progress. We actually discussed what we thought the best strategy would be, what to CC, kill orders, etc.; all things almost entirely foreign to today's game. However, about half way through I got a whisper from someone who was forming a raid group to clean out the entire instance and needed a tank (I was playing a Prot Warrior at the time). I discussed it was the rest of the group and we decided if they had room for us all to join, we would do it; they did, so we did. In the end, the guild that formed from that raid we joined would become the home for all of us in that group for the next couple of years and the top guild on server, the only one on it to kill Kel Thuzard 40-man as current content. But looking at that contast between what WoW was then and what it's become, I wonder what it (and MMOs generally) would be like now if everything wasn't completely nerfed into oblivion?
The general thread between these and other more memorable PUGs was a motivated group working and learning together to overcome challenging group content. The first part -- a motivated group, etc. -- that's on us as players. But the second, challenging group content, that's what I'm counting on Pantheon to provide.
In early EQ, PUGs were great because the game was pure MAGIC. Straight to the veins, magic. And we were all careening through this amazing world with our minds blown. But when things settled down and we got more serious, PUGs were not how you wanted to operate. Training, ninja looting, dying, just generally sucking at the game, were all way more likely to happen in a PUG than a permanent group.
Travelling from Halas to Freeport on foot with my level 20 barb warrior. Passing through High Pass Hold I decided to check on the Polished Granite Tomahawk Gnoll. Bumped into a couple guys there that were good friends IRL. From there we hung out all the time. Joined guilds together. So when I logged into Everquest we already had half a group to a group quickly with a couple more friends.
Not really a PUG but kind of...
Warcraft, going through cavern system on my Human Paladin and perhaps I was tad too low for it, but it presented a bit more of a challenge. Going through surviving by the skin of my teeth and came across an Orc Warrior of similar level. We stopped did a couple of emotes then I let him go ahead of me. He engaged a group of enemies and I jumped in and helped out. Then he let me go ahead and did the same. Just helping each other out with no way of actually comunicating other than through emotes. It was fun. Was tempted to jump to horde side and track him/her down but didn't get around to it.
Love the replies folks! So many cool stories and experiences :)
Beefcake said:If you don't PUG, how do you ever meet anyone new?
I'm sure you understand that there is a point where people first meet each other and that the point of this thread isn't about that context.
Krixus said:Beefcake said:If you don't PUG, how do you ever meet anyone new?
I'm sure you understand that there is a point where people first meet each other and that the point of this thread isn't about that context.
PUG = it can be as simple as meeting a random player grinding mobs in the same area as you and you group up to join forces (duo/trio), to chat and double/triple your killing speed to people who often do things in the same area and randomly group up in a full group, either way, it can be strangers or people who have met before, this thread is for any PUG group.
Having to solve things together is a great starting point ,killing is often resolved pretty quickly and players never need to get invested heavily in order to achieve it.
When watching the poor kitty of you neighbour jump against a wall and miawing in distress because they can't get home;you immediately want to help out. It might be a key note in making random encounters meaningful (lasting contacts) as you are more likely to remember people who helped out when it is needed most. Solving things together can build a bridge even between random encounters
PUGs are the best guild recruiting tool. You join a random group with some unguilded players. You do well and give your guild a good name. You notice some player doing well. Join up with her a few more times, maybe invite her to a guild group.
Soon, she will be a great new member.