Excellent article. All my thoughts exactly in a way I could not. I hope that the "powers that be" designing Vanguard keep the "EASY" button out of our grasp. That EASY button is killing other games as we speak.
They have almost trivialized death in EQ2 right now. Man I can remember EQ1 and the fear that my guildies and I had of dying.. but it kept us on our toes and made up better player. There was nothing like getting the group togather and heading off to somewhere that we knew we had no place going at our particular level. It kept you alive. And lets not forget the corpse runs...
I had a good guild as well. We were not "uber" and we didn't know all the short-cut macros that everyone else did. We had all levels and character types. We all helped each other out. Rangers like myself would help out the crafters by going out and using our "foraging" skills to get them the supplies they needed. Our Necros were always on standby to "summon" a corpse when ever something bad went down in a zone and a corpse run was just too dangerous. We always had a shortage of clerics, so things fell to the Paladins and Necros.
It was about setting goals for your characters and the guild and then achieving them, not worrying about what the "other" guild down the street was doing, or how many "uber" level characters they had. Don't get me wrong, I like to level and get the better "toys" more than anyone else.. but I like to "earn" it.. not buy it with some "ilegal" plat I got off some website. For me, its about setting goals and achieving them. Then sharing those accomplishments and experiences with the newer players. I met this high-level ranger once I he had some of the coolest armor I had ever seen. I met him outside of Blackburrow(EQ1 guys know what I'm talking about). He was out showing a new player some of the sites. We spent about an hour just talking about what he and some of his guildies did to help him get the armor. We talked about the tactics they used and he gave me some insight on how to play my Ranger. To me, him doing that was just too cool. Anyway....
Ahh, let me stop.. I could go on and on. This just goes to show how excited I am about the possibilites of Vanguard...
