Greeters Go with Church the Clueless 

Hunting down the Guild of Greeters after the latest fall of the cavern has brought me to an on-line game called Guild Wars.    I owe my arrival there to a few people, including Lord Chaos in Amber Horizons who gave me a push with his stories about his character and through his eyes, the experiences of the game.  Also Doc Crisger- he gave me the game.

One night my little ranger- who always has a better hair day then me- found herself in yet another underground cavern blindly following the green arrows that guide you to your next goal.  I picked up a dwarf named something like Budger Blastingcap.  He supplied me with barrels of gunpowder that go boom when you put them down.  I obediently blew through a couple of walls and made my way fairly easily to the boss of the level. 

After a few tries, and many many deaths, I figured out how to beat down this baddie. Take the barrels and plant them next to the boss, three booms and you can take him out.  This is while dodging annoyingly effective magma rock blasts.  They had the frustrating effect of blowing up the barrel while you were hold it. 

I sent my toughest warrior ahead of me as a decoy.  She took a few hits of rock blast as I ran to get a barrel.  I made it half way to the bad guy when “POW!”  Everything went up in a plume of red smoke.  I ran back to get another barrel.  As soon as I stopped to pick one up, I found myself brought back to life at the resurrection shrine. 

Eventually I got good enough to deliver my three barrels.  The dwarf hollared at me to “hit him with all you got!”  I targeted and let go my post powerful spells and skills.  My eye trailed down to check on the rest of my party for reinforcements.  Only 3 out of my 7 other party members were still alive.  I was still standing only because I packed two healers.  Only one of them was still up.  I was quickly squashed by yet another magma blast.

Encouraged by the small victory, I ran back and employed the distraction technique again.  I got the same results of getting my face rubbed in the magma and getting sent back to the resurrection shrine. 

Enough of that.  Clearly I needed more firepower then I possessed.  I could deliver the three barrels to make the boss vulnerable, but they only stunned him for a brief period of time before he slunk underground to appear at full armor again.

I pulled up my backup list - The Guild of Greeters members who were currently in the game came up.  Any one of them could probably clean the floor with this boss that cleaned the floor with me. 

I put out a call to everyone. 

“Shorah Guys!” 

“I’m getting my clock cleaned.  Anyone have some time to help me out?”

A response came from Dogwood.  I’ve only recently met Dog.  He’s a very nice man who has unending patience for me and my dumb questions.  “Who are you fighting?”

I roll my mouse over the boss in the far room.  How am I suppose to know these things?  They show up as red, I attack.  Not like playing Guild Wars employs much brain power.  Have sword will slash.

“Er a big fire worm.  Synre the Mountain Heart.”

“oops- Cynder the Mountain Heart” , Cynder, cinder….  Cute.

“I can help you in 30 minutes”

“Sweet!”

I thought that Dog was probably with the rest of the guild on some major quest or hunt or fight or whatever.  Most nights they seem to hold to a schedule and all finish at the same time.  I knew that anyone else aside from myself had more than enough of the muscle that I needed.

I officially gave up on my solo quest and link back to the GW’s version of a Guild Hall.

The Guild of Greeter’s present home is a large open aired castle. 

There are a few levels to run around in.  Scattered about are different characters that offer various services for the guild members.  There are basic things like merchants that will cash in the dropped loot for you, ruin traders where you can put stickers on your armor for different bonuses.  There are some quite creative things within the game.   Like dye traders- apparently players will pay some really good gold for the ability to dye their armor different colors.  I have yet to explore them all.  There is a scary guy in red spiky armor that I haven’t even talked to yet and “henchmen” that hang around for some unknown reason.

I parked my avie on a big raised stone circle design in the main room that you link into.  The greeters here use it as an equivalent of the fountain in the bevins in URU.  I busy myself with things around my real life hotel room in RL to kill half an hour.

About 20 mins later I returned and sold off my inventory to generate some cash.  Apparently I am quite poor.  I thought that 15 platinum (1 plat = 1000 gold) was pretty good.  That was until Roland and Bob told me that they have over 100 plat each.  (Or was is it 100,000?)  They generously forced 20 plat each on me.  Independently, at different times.  I suppose that I invoke pity.  The three of us have done a few missions together.  Usually it involves me being unable to answer their questions, them talking me through what is required to get the information they need and us embarking on a mission.

As if on cue Dogwood sent me a message. “Meet me in the GH”  (Guild Hall)

“I’m already here!  J”, before I could press enter, Dogwood’s monk avie linked in.

Dogwood’s monk avie is an attractive, scantily clad, totally bald figure.  He’s covered from the top of his dome to his tippy toes in tattoos.  The tattoos serve as a sort of armor for monks in the game, from what I understand.  There’s barely room left for his face.  The effect is not as unpleasant as initially thought.

I was surprised to see Kon’Dor link in right behind Dog.

I’m always happy to see Kon’Dor.  He’s one of the people that I got to meet in person at last year’s Mysterium.  His Elemental Wizard avie has a very full head of white swishing hair and dons an attractive light blue armor.

Around Kon’Dor link in nearly everyone else that I knew in Guild Wars.

Mari with her monk avie.  She sports Princess Lea buns on either side of her head, flowing ribbons and cute poses.

Roland and his newest ranger avie that he’s trying to level up.  He chose a female character that I find humorous when his rough dry style comes through her.

There were roughly 8 of them I guessed.  They must have all been out hunting together. 

I get a cacophony of “Hi Church!”  from the group.  I send out a few greetings and smilies in return.

Usually your avie has a full inventory when returning from doing things.  So I gave Dog a few minutes to unload his character.   I armed a “Dash” skill to run fast and took a break.

By the time I glanced at the screen again, I had several requests to kick my heroes so that others could join my party.  I hastily complied.  Dogwood sent out his request to team up with me and I accepted getting ready to go. 

Then I got a request from Mari. 

Then from Roland, and Kon’Dor, and Bob. 

I just blindly clicked “Accept” until it didn’t pop up any more.  I now found myself as part of a superstar team of kick butt legendary greeters.

My little ranger was terribly outclassed.

“I didn’t realize that all of you were going to help me out!”

“Trust me, you’ll need all of us to defeat Cynder” said Kon’Dor.

Kewl!  I grinned in my hotel room.

A tone chimed as Skype tried to butt through my Guild Wars game

It was the group of greeters trying to talk to me in Skype.

I cursed and jumped up from my seat to run to my suitcase.  After digging for a panicked second I found my head set and ran back to my laptop.  I hit Alt/Tab and answered the phone call.

Up popped a box with the greeters names listed vertically.   I heard  “HI CHURCH” x 6. 

Every time someone talked, their name and little logo was highlighted. 

“Hi guys!”

“Hi!”  “How you doing?”  “Hello!”  Everyone talked at once and over each other.  It was like I walked into a cocktail party.

“We haven’t done Cynder in a few weeks!”  said Mari.

Someone said “We’re harder to hit when we all scatter.”

“Yes.  We’ll each grab a barrel and hit him”  “Wait I have to add to my build.”  “You can’t do with just one person”  “Yeah you need a group” 

Right…  I just followed.

Roland’s avie turned to face mine.  His gravely voice explained the tactic of the night.  Grab a barrel and minimize the damage of the magma blasts by scattering.  Mari added that some of us would get blasted but she and Dog would resurrect them.  Bob’s friendly voice said that some of us would get through to do the damage.  Kon’Dor and Kimmie said they could finish the boss. 

I tried to respond and got a host of tips about my microphone.  “Get closer Church.”  “You’re really soft!” “Speak up a bit?”  “Church get a real mic!” growled Roland over them all.  I laughed out loud.  He had been suggesting that I get a better headset for about a month.  I typed out my thanks to all of them for their time.

Roland was the leader so he linked and drug the rest of the group along.

In a few minutes of linking and fiddling with my head set that broke in the suitcase, we were all in the dungeon cave again.

I started heading off to the fight. 

A voice, I think Bob told me to click on the beacon of additional credit for each kill.  By the time I clicked on the beacon, the group had already cleaned out the first group of monsters.  I ran after them. 

As if by previous agreement, the greeters held up short of the next monsters.  I barged ahead and got close enough for them to attack me.  Unloading my spells and skills, I was holding my own and feeling pretty good about myself.  I would clear these guys out on my own for the group. 

“Who aggroed the sprites?”  said someone who I think was Kimmie. 

“Aggroed?” I thought.  Oh- I got too close and they attacked me.  Got it.              

The winter sprites started pounding on me now that my spells were spent.  Uh oh.  I was going to be really embarrassed if the greeters had to resurrect me. 

Just in time I saw Bob and Roland come up behind my avie and start pounding on the monsters.  A few waves of the wand from Mari in the background finished up the job in about a second.

The Kick Butt Greeter Group went through all the monsters as if they were barely there. 

I smirked and used my Dash skill to get to the front of the group.  No way was I going to let everyone else kill my monsters.  I wanted to at least try to pull my own weight. 

“Ok here we run.”  Said Bob.  “Church run past these guys”, said Mari.  “Don’t bother fighting them” Kon’Dor.

We came upon a group of evenly spaced monsters that were always a pain for me to beat. 

Running past them made total sense! 

I selected my Dash skill and zoomed past. 

About 30 seconds later we were in the final level of the cave dungeon.

“Ok stop!”  “Stop here!”  “Get a barrel!”  Orders started flying.

We stopped short of the main boss room.  The greeters cornered our barrel dwarf so that he couldn’t go into the room until we all had a barrel.  I was the last one to push my way through the resulting crowd. (of course)  “Get a barrel Church!”  x 6.  J 

When we were all equipped, we positioned ourselves in the hallway before the boss room.  Mari refrained from barrel loading to leave her avie available to heal.  I got orders repeated at least three times to scatter and hit the worm with the barrels.  We had 6 barrels loaded and some sharp swords behind those.  I felt fairly confident.

We all ran into the room.  By the time I got to the worm, I was at least the fourth person to hit him.  The defenses were already down.  “Hit him now!”  “Defenses down!”  “Get him!”  “He’s vulnerable!” 

“I still have a barrel” I said into the cocktail party.   I laid it down and blew it up.  Then I unleashed my skills, but it was too late.  The fire worm couldn’t withstand the firepower of the Kick Butt Greeter Group!

I ran over to the reason for the quest.  A hammer was released. 

“Be sure to get the hammer Church.” 

I smirked and grabbed it. 

Everyone was talking about different special weapons.  Blah blah special armor, and so and so got blah blah do hicky with poison bleeding powers blah blah. 

I was listening to a cocktail party in another language.

Turning around and returning to the group, I saw that they were grouped around a huge reward chest. 

DOH!

They were discussing what they were getting as a reward for killing a boss.  Being late, I quickly clicked on it.  I got some random orange, magical gizmo.  We waited out a timer that would send us somewhere.  I listened as the group blah blahed their way about items I didn’t know from different places that I didn’t know.  At 0:00 we were returned to a public place.  I saw an arrow over a dwarf’s head meaning that I had to talk to him.  I headed over and finished the quest.  Roland linked us back to the Guild Hall.

I thanked the chatty group for helping me out.  I got a cacophony of “Your welcomes” and tips and advice and “Good Nights!”   I smiled.  These guys are great!

I walked over to my linking spot to head out. 

It’s nice to know that the Greeters were not only still around, but that they are still together and solving puzzles.   The closing of URU was a new experience for me.  Most of these guys had been around to help develop the game and dealt with the closing not once but twice.  I have a lot I can learn from them.  I’m reminded this every time I’m lucky enough to explore with any of them.

I was treated to a vision of the greeters gathered around their new fountain. Kimmie and Mari and Roland were talking about bows.  Kon’Dor, Bob and Dogwood were comparing tactics on fighting a particular bad guy.  Just another puzzle that doesn’t stand a chance before the might of the Greeters.

I linked out of the group and the game for the night.