Weekly Newsletter 02_04_08: Tales of the Pug

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Updated Fri, Jan 02, 2009 by Dalmarus

Tales of the PUG

February 4th, 2008 - By Dalmarus

Most of the classes within Vanguard: Saga of Heroes are able to solo with a fair amount of efficiency. Some classes are obviously better at it than others, but with some patience and knowledge of your class, soloing isn't that big of an issue at this point.

I'm glad soloing is a viable progression option for most players, but the areas of Vanguard that provide the most fun for me are the various dungeons scattered throughout the realms. Soloing dungeons much lower than your level is possible to a point, but even so, who really wants to do that? There's no challenge or real sense of excitement when taking this path.

That leaves grouping up as the primary method of deep dungeon exploration. Some of the dungeons within Vanguard are pretty massive which makes their exploration all the more rewarding. If you play with a set group of people each day, you've got the best set up available to you in the game, and I'll admit that makes me a bit envious, hehe.

For those of us that play at widely varying times throughout the week though, it sometimes puts us into a bit of a bind. One reasonable action we can take is to join a guild with a strong player base. This is certainly possible and even encouraged. A good guild can really make any game come much more alive for a player.

While I do belong to a guild, most of the players are currently out of my level range and enjoying hitting the Ancient Port Warehouse almost nightly. Aside from the fact that I'm not a raider, I'm also not the type of player that wants to hop on and grind away just to get to level 50 either.

So where does that leave myself and other players like me? Yep, you guessed it... the dreaded Pick-Up Group.

Over the course of various games, PUG's have gotten a truly bad reputation. It's a little hard not to dread them at least a little no matter how you look at it though. It's pretty safe to assume that if you've been playing Massively Multiplayer Online Games for any respectable length of time, you have you're own horror stories from the dreaded PUG.

Just today, I had such an experience while trying to make a Trickster's Haven run. For those that are familiar with the dungeon, they know you should be able to get to the first pool with the Ivory Hooded Snakes within a matter of minutes. It shouldn't take longer than 5 minutes tops to get there. This afternoon, I was with a group that took almost 15-20 minutes to get there. Go ahead and pick your jaw back up off the keyboard. I'll wait.

While I desperately wish I was exaggerating this fact, I'm sad to report that it is indeed the truth. If you don't believe me, just ask my wife, as I'm sure she was more than able to hear me cursing about it, haha.

I didn't give you that brief look into the possibilities of a PUG group to scare you off, but just to give you an idea of the possible levels of frustration you may run into. This is a bit of an extreme though, and should not be looked at as the norm.

More often than not, I get into a pretty good group. Nothing great, but nothing too bad either. I get a respectable amount of experience for the amount of time I play, and possibly a little bit of loot as well. I'm perfectly content with this outcome and it should retain that level of expectation when getting a PUG together, or joining one on the fly.

There is one other possibility though, and when you find yourself within such an event, be prepared to brush at least part of your life off. My friends and I call the last PUG type, the "Old School" PUG. Despite the name we've given it, this doesn't really have anything to do with how long a player has been playing MMOG's. It's just a general term we use for players that obviously know how to play their chosen class very well.

The last time I got into this type of PUG, I stayed up almost 4 hours longer than I had planned. I got in the group about 45 minutes before I usually go to sleep and figured that was a reasonable amount of time to play and still accomplish something. By the time we hit the fourth room, I knew I was screwed. Not with that impending sense of a group wipe, but with that "serious lack of sleep" type of feeling.

When you can find that magical group the just gels together it's a great thing. So rather than avoiding PUG's you might want to take a bit of time out of your normal play schedule to do some PUG hunting. You might just be surprised at what you find out there.

Have you got a tale to share about a great/horrible PUG you've been in? Tell us all about it here.