How To: The Big Question

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Dadani
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by Dadani »

I asked my wife if I dedicated playing time to her would she give it a try.
Try to get her to try a character and dedicate some playtime with her. Keep your alts secret so you are not distracted by friends in the game.
Give her a lot of patience. Explain the characters to her and don't make her play a character you want her to play.
Let her choose one. My wife, of all toons picked a bard. I knew that was probably not the best toon to pick for a non-gamer.

We both both started Vah Shirs (luclin release when she started). We did all the little silly low level quests and she slowly started to like playing. It took a lot of patience as she was not even close to a gamer. She loved getting new songs and trying them out.

Eventually I would come home and she would be online playing with friends she recently met. Hell she had more friends then I did.

6+ years, 85 levels and 1700 AA's later she finally retired. We both do not have the time to dedicate to the game and subsequently fell way behind on spells and armor due to smurf faction smurf. So we ended up quitting.

Now, we play Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2 together. She actually likes the mass slaughter, says it relieves her stress! haha
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Remodius
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by Remodius »

My wife was interested from the start too, but unfortunately we didnt have 2 computers or a network or stuff, so we couldnt play at the same time, and generally the only times we both could play was at the same time...sooooo, one of us had to choose to play while the other did something else. Eventually she ended up just letting me play all the time, couldn't devote enough time herself and whatnot. Further, we had youngsters to take care of, nothing like a potty training emergency during a raid or something. It just wasn't feasible really for her to play as much as is necessary to really be more than a very casual player.

Now we have the XBox360 and Wii, she plays those a lot more. She finished Mass Effect 1 and 2 before I did, she has started Dragon Age Chronicles before I have, and just seems to really enjoy that. Since we have both systems on the main TV, and the girls are older and can be left alone for a bit without extravagant time expenditures, and since the games can very easily be paused, even during an encounter, gaming has become much more fun and feasible for her. She tolerates my PC gaming (what little there is) and my table top RPG and Minis, and we both share a lot of good times talking about the various games we share. Its good to have an understanding with her about it all. Further helps that most of the time I game super late at night, after shes in bed.
I had this really smurf awesome quote by RFK, but because we are only allowed 255 characters, I can't put it up here, so I am writing this in protest of a stupid smurf limitation.
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pandax
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by pandax »

MeatnPotatoes wrote:lets brainstorm and think of good agruments or ways to get your significant other to play EQ with you and NOT bitch about it =P
i REALLY want my woman to share my interest in EQ.. theres ALOT that EQ has to offer to different types of people, so it really should only be as hard as getting them to sit down and give it a shot.. why its any harder than that is beyond me.. but i digress =)

if you have previous experience getting your better half to play with you, please pipe in asap

ive tried and failed with my last girlfriend, but i think its because she was a moron, and EQ was gonna be too much work for her little brain
.. but my new woman is smarter than i am.. so i know she can handle it.. i just dont want to introduce it the wrong way and make her not wanna play.. cause im gonna play whether she likes it or not, so she might as well learn to like it, and spend that time with me so im not neglecting her during play time =)

p.s. any female players out there who can maybe give some reasons why a female would love this game?
and if im lucky maybe shell enjoy tradeskilling for me ( LOL )

thanks

-MeatnPotatoes
Don't forget, there are different types of intelligence. That isn't to say that some people just fail in general, but you most certainly need different types of intelligence to play EQ.

Firstly, there is a prerequisite hand eye coordination that many people just lack to play EQ. This hand eye coordination is related to but not entirely tied to physical hand eye coordination. You have to have a good sense of spatial relationship to play well in EQ.

Secondly, you have to have good intuition. There is a LOT of behind the scenes number crunching which takes place. To be able to play well, you have to internalize the numbers. You have to be able to understand when to burn, and when to enter the fray. If you're at 50m, do you start nuking when the mobs get into camp or do you wait. Do you need to get something dead ASAP or risk wiping, or can you hang out and relax and med up so that you can maximize your dps.

Thirdly, you have to be able to UNDERSTAND the game mechanics. You have to know what combinations will work best in what situations based upon the numbers. If you do not understand this, you will ultimately do very poorly.

Fourthly, you have to be neurotic! You have to keep reapplying those buffs, etc. Otherwise, you just don't do well. You'll pull trains, etc. You just won't do well.
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Sillaen
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by Sillaen »

I've been trying to get my wife to play for over 10 years. At this point I've all but given up. About the best interaction I get out of her with EQ is if I'm in the kitchen cooking or something and I hear a tell, I ask her to tell me who sent it and to type a quick reply if necessary.

At her job she stares at a computer screen for 8 hours a day, so she just doesn't want to do that when she gets off work. Of course I do the same thing, but still bury my face in EQ when I get home. She tolerates me playing EQ, however that's because I don't abuse it ... anymore.

I raid 3 times a week for 3-4 hrs each day. The rest of the time I only play EQ when she's not around or she's too busy doing something else that doesn't involve me.

So all that to say, if you find some magic potion to get wives/GFs to play, please pass it my way. I would love for her to join the festivities.
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Merlaina
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by Merlaina »

I got my wife playing by working on my Epic 1.0. I would complain to her fairly often about this pesky Quillmane mob (maybe you've heard of it...). Anyway, one day as I was off to work and had been running around south karana for hours with no luck she offered to take over for me. So she ran around, I told her the basic controls (click the mob, hit 5, watch the pet kill the mob, rinse, repeat until you killed a pretty flying horsey). After helping me enough with this (though she never even saw Quillmane) she was interested enough to make her own character. I let her make one on my account, mostly let her pick her own class (she was torn between an SK or a chanter, so I nudged her toward the chanter since she'd duo better with a mage), and after playing to level 5 or so we decided to get her an account of her own.

She stayed fairly active until she got her 1.0, and then started to lose interest. We were in a tiny guild that was mostly inactive and as such we couldn't really work on bigger quests. I think the key to keeping most women interested (I said most those women who disagree) is they contantly need some kind of clearly defined goal. She enjoyed questing. When I started back up at first she came back with me, and we were enjoying SoD progression until we got to a task that we just couldn't duo. Then she got frustrated and quit again. But she always enjoyed big long quests that we could work on together, such as the shawl, her epic, SoD progression, etc. She most definitely did NOT like xp grinding for the sake of grinding out AA, factioning, or repetitively doing the same tasks over an over for doubloons/orux/chronobins/brews.

For her it was all about exploration, questing, and doing things well within her ability level (and for the record she was a smurf good chanter). She wasn't however very keen on trying really difficult things (except making me bind in freakin' Plan of Fear camping that harpy for her epic. Best single pull of my mage career before green pet pulling was nerfed). She also wasn't crazy about camping mobs for drops (but honestly who is?).

Long story short: explain big quests you're working on, maybe even the lore behind them if she's nerdy enough, and if there is a point where you can let her take the helm and drive your mage without too much danger, let her (but try not to push her into it). I think women prefer their games where they can see progress being made beyond an xp bar, so work on big quests like those many task aug quests.
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pandax
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Re: How To: The Big Question

Post by pandax »

Everyone is different. Some really like the repetitive actions of the exp grind.
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