I logged onto Everquest 2 the other night to help a guild mate out with his last Epic stage, along with other members of my guild.
We went through Maidens without too much trouble, even though our enchanter was a few levels below 80. Nikky did well though and despite some resists managed to keep 80+ mobs mezzed (in a trance and unable to attack), a lot of the time.
As it turned out another of our members had an epic update off the last named which he didn’t even know he needed, this was despite falling down the same hole 5 times in a row. We think that must be some kind of record. 
After this we headed to the Shard of Fear to pickup another epic update for one of the group, followed by another in the common lands. The final mob of the day was one for the Swashbuckler epic in Enchanted Lands. This mob had a nasty AOE, but with my Inquisitor’s AOE protection, plus Tortoiseshell from our Warden the mob was easily taken care of.
Nothing special you might think for 2 hours game time, however it shows that our guild is progressing nicely. Our aim when we formed was to reach the heady heights of level 5 for the guild tag, which when we had mostly low level characters seemed tough. 
We have just reached level 65 and have almost 2 full groups of level 80 characters many with epics. For a casual guild who are not raiders, I think this is a pretty good achievement.
We can now comfortably take on all RoK and below instances, as well as a fair few TSO ones. We are currently collecting shards as we do TSO instances so that everyone can get kitted out with shard armour, to make taking on the harder TSO instances possible.
The image to the right is the founding of my guild over 4 years ago, many members of which I’ve now met in person and I’ll be meeting more in a few months time.
I read a good post over at Clockwork Gamer about grouping and guilds. I have to say I agree completely with the post, our guild is casual and we never force members to group up. However we do plan groups via our website calendar where sign ups are entirely voluntary. Also we often form groups when someone online wants to work on a quest or just wants to get together with guild mates. It’s times like this as I’ve detailed in this post that make MMO’s so enjoyable for me.
The Clockwork Gamer post was inspired by a post over at Cuppytalk which talks about whether forced grouping in MMO’s is dead. I do agree with the Cuppytalk post in a way, as most MMO’s make you group for some content and it can be hard to do so with a busy life. Personally I think in all MMO’s there should be content that requires grouping, MMO’s are social games and working together can be an enjoyable experience. I also think that there should be an equal amount of solo content for people who either don’t have long online, just want to go their own way, or for times when you might have to go AFK a lot.
I am a casual gamer and I enjoy grouping as I like the social aspect of playing with other people to achieve a common goal. I also enjoy doing solo quest lines as I can do them at my own pace, without worrying about going AFK or killing other players.
At the same time, I don’t expect to see all the raid zones any time soon. I don’t begrudge those that do, as they have more time on their hands to work towards this goal. That said, the best equipment doesn’t have to be obtained only from raiding/grouping. If equipment on a par with raid/group equipment is to be made available from solo quests, then I think the quests should be long and arduous affairs. Give the solo player a challenge if they are to obtain the same standard of gear for their character as someone who spends hours on end working towards a high end raid zone.
I enjoy my group nights however and it’s nights like the one I detailed above, as well as being in a guild like neXus that make MMO gaming much more enjoyable.
Related posts:
MMOYeti:
mmosymposium:
WodgeFTW:
MMOSres:
I often see the argument against solo-content being, that soloing is misplaced in an MMO; that it defeats the social aspects of MMOs. But in my opinion it really is up to the developers of an MMO to integrate solo-content and still keep it in sync with the social aspects of these games.
Since my age has risen considerably during the time I have been playing MMOs(+1/year in fact!), I have really enjoyed being able to convert to a casual playstyle, and this almost ONLY because of me joining a guild of like-minded individuals and the guild gameplay of my main game Everquest2. To be able to contribute to the guild as a whole while solo'ing is a really important aspect of the casual gamer, and although personal progress is the main focus during a large part of an avatars life, it really wouldnt matter much without having someone to share it with both on an experience-level but also on a social progressive level.
Everquest2 offers many ways in which guildies can collaborate on common goals without being online at the same time, and as long as the collaboration at some point needs a bout of good fun guildgrouping, the casual playstyle makes a lot of sense.
Without my guild NeXus and the mechanics of my favourite MMO, I'm almost 99% that I wouldn't be subscribing to any MMO at all….well either that or not have a wife, a kid on the way and a job
I VERY much agree with Yetian on the importance of guild progression and I set it on par with the balance between solo and group content. At the moment I am doing my fabled epic quest in Everquest2 and it's a semi-long string of quests of varying difficulty. My only wish regarding these epic quests and other storyline quest is that they should really be a VERY long set of quests doable DURING your life as a levelling avatar. This would be a great addition to all MMO's out there.
Yeah an epic quest that grows with your character would be a nice addition. They did talk about that in EQ2 once but it's not what was actually implemented.