Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Contributed by Cystiana

My Brotherhood and Me Part 1

Over the past couple of months, I have heard mixed feedback on brotherhoods. I have watched people join and leave brotherhoods for various reasons. I have also been in a brotherhood for an extended period of time and it has worked for me quite well. Here is a brief overview of conclusions I have come to about brotherhoods.

Brotherhoods are designed to benefit a group of people not individuals. If you have specific friendships and group-mates you group with regularly a brotherhood can help insure that regardless of RL responsibilities you and your friends can remain in grouping level range even if some members cannot play as much. They can also be tailored to help younger friends "catch up" to you level wise or for you to "catch up" to your friends. When starting a brotherhood it is probably in everyone's best interest that expectations be addressed before you or any other member invests their time.

Understanding how it works

A brotherhood works exactly like a group. Any experience brought into the brotherhood will be divided among all members. Knowing this any member who joins one must accept the fact that you may not receive what you put in. In order for every member to get exactly what they put in all members must maintain the same brotherhood experience contribution. Members that tend to fit well in "friendly" brotherhoods usually play about the same amount of time during a week whether or not that time is spent together. If you are an experience minded individual who is trying to reach specific level goals most brotherhoods will slow you down and you would want to choose one with a power-leveling base. If you are a person who enjoys being with friends more than gaining specific milestones, then a brotherhood for friendship is exactly what you want.

Brotherhood for Friendship

This type of brotherhood is great for people who enjoy following quest-lines and achieving goals with friends. No matter how much each member plays no one will be left behind and all backtracking and "redoing" of quests benefits the entire brotherhood. It is a great way to establish long lasting friendships and get to know people better than you normally would in a regular group. Be warned! Experience may not always be what you want it to be. During specific periods members may change play schedules or work on another sphere while you may be grinding out the experience for the entire group. This could prove to be most discouraging depending on what is important to you. This type of brotherhood is a selfless brotherhood one where individual gain is far less important than the group and fellowship and friendship are regarded as top priority.

Brotherhood for Experience

Power-leveling is the main goal of this type of brotherhood. You join this brotherhood with one of two goals in mind: to gain levels quickly, or to help a friend gain levels quickly. It usually consists of one or 2 players of higher level and one or 2 players about 5 levels behind. This type of brotherhood is hard to make successful because all experience is divided. One must remember that yes the higher levels will bring in more experience per kill but if the lower members play more and complete more quests their experience loss will quickly over-power the experience gain. The fasted way to test if this type of brotherhood is actually working for you all you need to do is add up everyone’s brotherhood contributions and divide it by the number of members in the brotherhood. If that number is less than the number the lower members are contributing this brotherhood is not working as intended and should be disbanded. This is a great tool if used properly. This is how guilds can strengthen numbers and help members become sufficient level to obtain goals.

My personal experience as of today

Since September I have been in a Brotherhood for Friendship. I have had one other member in the brotherhood. I have gained 21 levels. My partner has gained 16. Notice I have gained more levels than he has. This is because I was lower in level when we started I was 5 levels behind him. We are now the same level. Therefore the same "number" of experience points has always benefited me more than him even though it was the same number. Our brotherhood has gone without a glitch this entire time. I have taken time off from experience for RL reasons and he has worked other spheres during our time together, yet out contributions have evened out with time. Because our contributions fluctuate from week to week but overall remain relatively the same neither of us have taken any setbacks or losses by being in the brotherhood. On the other hand neither of us have really gained any bonus experience either.

So you may ask why? We started this brotherhood because we were curious about how it worked. We were also 2 people in separate guilds that happened to be "in-between" levels of the other members in both our guilds. We did not have many to choose from to group with. I was faced with members who were working on other spheres or just didn’t play as often as I did. And he had members mostly way out of level and playtime for him. We decided to use the brotherhood as a way of "keeping in touch". Since we all know what happens to those we meet along the way a week or so later. They become that guy i met once and he was nice. We didn’t want that to happen since we duo'd well together even though my greatest skill at the time was saying "oh wow I didn’t know i could that" and his was "oops I healed myself instead of you". Over the past couple of months we have created a bond that stretches past your everyday experience. We share almost everything including cash, possessions and knowledge. We work on all quest-lines together and our individual skills are strengthening everyday.

As of yesterday we expanded our little brotherhood to include 2 members of Hesde's guild that are getting "antsy" waiting for him to hit 50 for guild purposes. They are going to try to PL us. Once I see how this works out I will add my feedback on it. But I must admit if they are trying to PL us they have their work cut out for them because we do play a lot.

Conclusion

I suggest anyone wanting to join a brotherhood please weigh all the options. If you are looking for a brotherhood for friendship make sure the other members are heading in the same direction as you are and share common goals. There is no point in helping to stay in the same levels if you are going to be grouping in different continents. And it would be a shame if you spend all your efforts staying in level range with someone who retires or quits the game a month later. If you are looking to PL or be PL'd be sure the one doing the PLing plays ALOT. Remember the lower members benefit from experience more than the higher so if they are contributing more than what they gain they are experiencing incredible loss and the higher level will not get any noticeable gain.