White, Black, and Blue in Gianthold Tor

A few weeks ago I was drafting up the schedule for the static group. At this level and with no real knowledge of exactly how long the various zones in the game take and with no knowledge of what instances we will fail along the way and have to try all over again, it's a bit of a difficult construction. One thing Spode had mentioned to me was that he wanted to exact revenge on the dragons in the Tor since, you know, we failed those a number of times at the "appropriate level."

I tried to stress with the other members of Team Spode that the Tor used to be end game content. We're talking Module 4 of DDO released back in 2007 when the level cap was raised to 14th. End game in any MMO is grindy. Companies need a reason to keep you playing through their content, right? The Tor is no exception. 20 dragon scales to make some armor! That sounds EXACTLY like the MMO grind of 2007. You know, kind of like grinding Ragnaros hoping for an Eye of Sulfuras . . .

Grinding Gianthold Tor is exactly the kind of thing we don't really want to get involved with when there are six more levels and tons of new content in DDO to explore still. However, Team Spode has a thing about dragons. They must all die at our hands, and so penciling in a trip back to the Tor when we're all level 15+ and after we've had a couple romps in Harbinger of Madness for gear was a no brainer.

Personally, all these years later, I wish there was a separate instance for each dragon instead of one "giant" instance just to get to the dragons. I also wish the requirements for 20 black dragon scales was lowered or done away with completely. It's old content that's now just a road bump. The whole thing should be separated out and changed . . . RETHOUGHT! Get with the times! It's 2012 y'all!

Of course, doing all that would probably require pulling people away from the real task at hand, which is developing the new Menance of the Underdark expansion. Um, yeah, on second thought, just leave Gianthold Tor the way it is . . . BRING ON THE NEW STUFF! I want to see Lolth!

Anyway, Tipa has a great write up on our experience last night with the dragons. You should read that. :) She sums it all up nicely.

Me? I just have three pretty pictures for you to indicate that we came, we saw, and we descaled the dragons.




It was really nice to finally put them all to bed with Team Spode. We were communicating well, we were tanking and off-tanking nicely, and aside from a few forgetful moments of what needed to happen while we were fighting these things . . . WE ROCKED. (Speaking of rocks, my rock boots went well with the slippery surfaces of the White dragon lair . . . I had no problem at all moving around in there *hugs rock boots*)

end of story.

So, now we shall return to Necro IV next week to continue slaying all those nasty undead and evil outsiders, but now we'll do it knowing there's three less dragons haunting us in DDO.

Well done Team Spode!

Happy dueling