DDO Online

I was playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons at the time.

Monday night I was playing in a game.

Thursday I was running a game.

Friday was pickup night, and Sunday afternoons I was running my Forgotten Realms campaign.

That was just counting the play time and not the prep-time.

Did I have any regrets or wish my time was spent somewhere else?

No in the slightest.

But what about the time I wasn’t playing Dungeons & Dragons?

JB was a star player in my games and a veteran player, it was his suggestion to play D&D outside of D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons Online.

I had never played an MMO before so I was unaware of the allure of them…

JB had been playing for some time, so he helped power-level my warforged sorcerer Xonx so I could at least get out of the intro adventures.

Now I was playing D&D when I wasn’t playing D&D.

Epic loot runs, special seasonal events, I could feel the world within the world, a parallel to the tabletop world.

Eventually to hit the higher raids and increase our chances of certain item drops JB and I realized we need as many buffs as we could beyond the party dynamics.

We needed to be part of a high level guild that had access to a high-level airship with high-level shrines, and those high level guilds were not accepting toons like us.

You had to be at least level 20 and a paragon, but it was near impossible to even get to level twenty without running the high level quests we couldn’t even survive.

So we were stuck grinding out a our guild and airship from level 1.

How long could it really take?

Apparently a long time…

We opened the guild up for membership, the plan was to get other to help us grind out the XP on the airship so we could level up the buffs and shrines, but nobody wanted to join a low level guild.

Except one guy.

I say a guy but I don’t really know.

Our first and only member for months was a druid named Winterhaven.

Happy to have him in the guild he started joining us on raids and other farming events.

Was it strange that that he never joined the voice chat?

I didn’t think so, he would join the channel, listen to JB and I talk, but would only type his responses.

People enjoy games in different ways.

We made some progress and got a few more guild members, but the curve was just to steep.

I had an idea, I’ll take care of it.

One of the guys at the wargaming club just happened to work at Game Stop, and Game Stop just happened to sell DDO cards.

He was able to get me a stack of cards as part of a store promo.

It only cost me a few hours of helping him build a dozen Space Marine Land Speeders so he could get them painted up for an upcoming tournament.

A years worth of grinding done in about ten minutes of entering codes to buy some shards to power the airship.

We were in business.

The guild grew.

But there was one guy who was always there, always playing.

Anytime JB and I would log on, Winterhaven would be in the guild airship.

Anytime we needed to run a specific adventure or event, he would be there.

Always online no matter the time.

I understood the power behind an all-night session, when there you had to get up in the AM for work or or school and what difference would a few hours of sleep make as one was already up s late as it was.

It was a good run, but eventually JB had to leave the game to take care of some stuff, and I realized I had to soon follow.

It was becoming, excessive.

I had to delete Xonx, as I had proven to myself that I couldn’t trust myself to just leave the game, it had to be permanent.

Final.

But the guild?

JB and I both agreed>

Turn it all over to Winterhaven.

Guildmaster Winterhaven.

The guild, all of our shards, and our top tier guildship.

He was captain now.