I can assume that most everyone here enjoys exploring new areas of a world and hunting in places they have never been before. With that said, many people find areas that they fall in love with and basically stay there for weeks or as long as they can. Other people are always wanting to mix it up and hunt in different areas every day. Some people are a balance of the two.
Where do you fall in ?
I tend to enjoy hunting in the same area, as I am a creature of habit. The better my skills become in an area, and the more familiar I become with it, the more efficient I can be at leveling, and the better I can lead my groups through said area. It is a social benefit to me to be experienced in an area my fellow adventurers may not be, and to use that to teach them.
I fall in between since i do both, so i will just call myself a grinder. While i like exploring new content, like Rallyd i also find spots that become favorites and tend to stick with them unless i have an agenda i am following: i will find out where the particular items i want drop and will stick to those camps until my friends and i have what we want and then move on to the next one.
I prefer exploring, if I am in an area and we are working through it, it makes sense to see what is around the corner. If someone indicates that there is a chance of something happening in a certain spot, I am all for going to that spot and staying there for a little while, but not too long- depends on the situation, if it is good to camp out in that spot to come back in the next Real time day, then fine. But to go to one place and stay there until the odds are in your favor is a bit boring to me, and frankly, I think takes away from my imagined GM involvement always behind the scenes for I imagined they would be watching and making certain things happen. To me that is what would make being a GM fun to play, because you could play/mess with (lol)...with the players. I mean I always assumed that is why creators or owners were GMs to play that level of meta game. We are playing "the game", THEY are playing......us.
i like to explore. its neat to see what is around the next bend.... as long as its not just more hallway. some games have dungeons designed like office buildings not very imagination invoking. i want the dungeons of myth and legend with trap doors, secret floors, hidden bosses, and even treasure chests.
(a good substitute for treasure chests would be the corpse of a previous adventurer. i bet the guy that died had found something good.)
I loved camping rare items, forming groups of like minded people along the way. (think fbss camp in lower guk, eq1) or just a good long grind camp for exp rotating new players in as people tire and log for the night. I don't mind exploration but really rather pull mobs to camp rather than have a constant moving group. It's too hard to socialize!
I am an explorer through and through. Guess thats why I love VG so much, EQ was designed (intentionally or not) around the camp style for its world and dungeons. Fight down to "runs" or "cycles" to pull for named and loot. Not so with Vanguard, though you could certainly do that, you did not have very many named. The dungeons in VG were many times bigger for the most part as well, lending themselves to exploring every nook and cranny, sometimes this was rewarded with a creepy little area with named. Even the quest lines made you explore, trengal keep as just one example made sure you saw every area, even its dungeon level if you did the entire quest line (you would be amazed how many peopel did this dungeon more than once and did not know it had an underground section). Vanguard was just an awesome world, you never knew what you would find over the next hill, or around the next mountain. I bet less than half the players ever saw even a quarter of its dungeons, because it was an explorers paradise.
EveryQuest was different though, systems were weaker, memory was a huge limiting factor on both the system side and video side. MMOs were still an unknown. Vanguard came at a time when MMOs were exploding into the mainstream popularity and every company wanted them in their stable. So I am not knocking EQ, but it was not as much of a rewarding experience for the explorer as VG was, but EQ holds a very special place for me, it was my first serious MMO.
Dullahan said:
I'm both. I don't feel like I've truly explored an area until I've camped it, learned pathing and routines, understand how it fits into the world, and know where the rare spawns are. Once I know those things I can continue exploring.
Yes, I agree with this too because if you "know" a place you can bring new friends or strangers and practice leading, because from there, you can then go on, yes.
I like to explore an area until I am familiar and comfortable with it, enough to run a group through... and then move on. Asherons Call (showing my age lol) was my first real MMO.. and exploring was they way to find so many things that you needed, for example the flowers to dye items.. which were always in the same area but never in the same spawn spot.. .. and hunting the "blue box" down for fun in mass groups. EQ never struck my fancy, but VG was to me a hugely upgraded version of AC.. exploring every inch of Vanguard was just plain fun with such a huge world to explore.