Memories of Being a First-Time Tank (and Other Random Tangents)

(Brought on by reading this thread.)

I was pushed out of the window, figuratively speaking.  My very first character, in my very first MMO.  I had never heard the term “tank.”  I didn’t know what a “mob” was — in fact I remember being utterly confused when a single enemy approached and someone said the word — I frantically looked around for a horde of enemies – thinking the term to be literal – and completely missed the lone attacker.

My first true tanking experience, in the Heroic-mobs-are-beating-on-the-wizard sense, came in Antonica.  Some of you who may be newer to the game might be surprised to know that for the better part of the first six months of this game’s existence, Antonica, the now-solo-friendly newbie zone taking Qeynosian characters up through level 20, was, in fact, completely (and I mean that very literally) full of linked heroic encounters.  Most of them were groups of 4, some were groups of 6, and I think there were even a few bigger groups, and every one of them in the encounter would be ^^^ in the 4-target range, in the 6-target range, all would be ^^^ and two would be ^^.  So to say that I was broken in gently would be the understatement of my gaming career, such as it is.

At this time, gear was considered to be “awesome” if it had any stat boosted to +2 — if anyone playing back then had been shown a set of what we have, today, (as Mastercrafted) they would have probably jumped out of their chairs and did cartwheels if they owned a piece of it, much less a whole set.  So, in addition to being brand new, I was also, by today’s standards, wearing worse gear than even the weakest of what can be gained through the current newbie quest lines.  Back then my gear was standard, though.

Mobs hit harder back then, had more hit points, came in larger groups, were nearly always social, and seemed always to be orange-con.  (Highwaymen, anyone?)  I know what you’re thinking: there is no way it could have been as you say, there is no way anyone would play such a game.  And by today’s standards, you’d be correct!  But remember that in November 2004 even World of Warcraft had not yet been released, and the expectation people had was still one of relatively high-challenge.  MMO’s were still somewhat niche and the news media at the time (such as it was) still regarded the original EverQuest to be pretty much the end-all-be-all of the MMO world.  That’s not to say people didn’t find the uber-challenge to be too much.  IN fact they did, and they left in droves.  Far be it from maintaining 1 million or more subscribers, the number leveled around 300,000 and then dwindled far lower before things got turned around and the game began to evolve into what it is today, simultaneously picking up more users along the way (but never quite reaching what it could have).  But that’s a topic for another day.

I still regarded myself as a Fighter and therefore hadn’t quite grasped that the class I would ultimately become – a Berserker – would be one of the two classes most commonly regarded as the afore-mentioned “tank” — so bearing that in mind wore my mantle of group-savior with some trepidation.  I thought “Well when I become a treu berserker at level 20 I won’t be doing this anymore, becuase a berserker would only be wearing leather, for one thing, and would do something more like axe-wielding and martial combat as opposed to this ‘meat-shield’ business.”  Oh, how very wrong I was.

By the time I reached the Thunderring Steppes I had been recruited into a guild, one which would in time turn out to be very ambitious but ultimately doomed to die out (at least as I knew it, and with all the people I knew in it, although it would carry on for some time through the release of KoS) before the release of Desert of Flames.  I began to be one of the two main tanks for our guild runs.  These occurred every night from about 11pm until about 2am, and sometimes, if I didn’t have work the next day, they would go much longer.  I can remember seeing the 5am mark, 6am mark, and perhaps once or twice, the 7am mark and the light of day peering through the blinds in my room-that-had-become-a-cave.

One nice thing about the time leading up to February 2005 was that no one was really much above level 35, so places like the Ruins of Varsoon, and Runnyeye, were always teeming with life — I have one distinct image engrained into my head, of zoning into the Ruins of Varsoon to see more than 25 players crammed into that little entrance hall at the ladder. I fancied, after some time of doing this, usually with 3 other regulars and 2 more of whomever from our guild was on, that I had become quite a good tank.  I had somehow managed to level to one of the highest toons in our guild, at the time, and frequently got tells from people asking me to tank their zones.  Again — usually this meant hours upon hours of mind- (and finger) numbing grind sessions.  (Golem rooms, anyone?)  It should bear remarking upon that, since leveling was so slow, and questing was nowhere near as rewarding as it is now, the preferred, if not the only way to progressively level back then and stay with the vanguard, was to grind.  For hours.  And hours.  And more hours.  I became completely familiar with all the terms like “rez” and “aggro” and 100 others that I take for granted now as commonplace but surely were lost on me for the first several months.  I knew how to turn and position the mobs, I knew in what order to use my taunts and combat arts, I knew which classes pulled aggro the fastest (always the wizards, back then — scouts would not see their current status achieved until sometime a couple years later when KoS came out).

I spent countless days in Runnyeye.  A run that can take 20 minutes in the present day, back in January of 2005, took something more like3-5 hours and that was with a GOOD group.  A really good, very experienced group in the high 30’s could make it to the evil eyes and the lower named in maybe an hour, if everything went well.  And when I say “really good” I guess I would have to equate today’s modern top-end raiders — in terms of the skill, dedication, and time it could take to get to the bottom of Runnyeye, back then – you had to be REALLY good.  So after I tanked it night after night, I started to think I was really, really good.

It was an interesting progression for me, to go from the total noob (in every sense) brand-new-to-the-game-doesn’t-know-a-thing … to this feeling like I was at the top OF the game, and had something to show for it, too.  I often wonder, had I kept going, if instead of blogging about warlocks, today, I’d be blogging about tanking.

But unfrotunately, my guild was going the raid route, and I was going the “I-have-to-work-a-real-job” route … so I managed to make it as far as level 42.  It sounds like nothing now, but back then, when the cap was 50 and leveling took SO long, and players dropped like flies, it actually was pretty big to make it to the 40 mark.  So after hitting up Everfrost and Permafrost once or twice, and yes, even running through Solusek’s Eye (not just a little bit … the whole way down; crossing over all of LS first, no teleporters … talk about spending 9 hours and wanting to pull your HAIR out … but there’s an example of the way things have changed in the past 5 years.  Back then, it was just the standard in an MMO, and particularly in EQ2 where anyone left playing by April of 05 could only have been a die-hard EQLive player, used to crazy tedium.) …okay sorry total run on sentence, there … so anyway after that, I laid down the pipe, so to say.

But all in all that time as a tank, in the game’s infancy, served to teach me a whole lot.  Not just about tanking, but about the mechanics of this game, and of MMO’s, in general.  Sure, it was a crash course.  Sure, I had my fair share of “Wow, I suck” moments (but surprisingly not so much from other players, more of my own worst critic) … but in the end, I can step into a tank role today, after playing a squishy for 4.5 years, and feel completely confident that I can tank as good as anyone.  Those old lessons don’t die easily, once learned.

Now today … it’s true, players DO get rushed through the content, unforutnately.  It isn’t just tanks, but an inexperienced tank will receive the most criticism at the high end.  It’s really an unreasonable demand to make of someone: “Here, we’re going to rush you through all of this, in fact, you might not even have to tank a group at all for your first 77 levels!” and then, “Hey, you’re a level 80 tank!  You should know what you’re doing!  You should know exactly the right way to time your pulls, judge the pace of the group, know when to turn mobs and when not to, know how much your healers can handle, and when to slow up for power, and most of all you should know not to DIE!”  … I mean really, who could do all that when they’ve not had to spend 800 hours of their life trapped in the bowels of Stormhold, first?  (And another 5000 hours in various other dungeons.)

To blame for this?  Well, yes, we the veterans who run amok with our alts, knowing every nuance, nook, and cranny … we join PUG’s hoping for quick Achievement and XP gain … only to become immediately irritated or frustrated when the new tank can’t run Fallen Gate in under 20 minutes, or constantly loses aggro, or spends more than 5 seconds between each pull.

But think back, … remember when YOU were that new player.  Think about when this was totally, completely new.  You’d never stepped foot in Norrath (or any other virtual MMO world for that matter — your first one.)  You didn’t KNOW what “aggro” and “mobs” were … you didn’t know which direction to go, which turn to take, what tunnels lead to which named, and which rooms needed to be cleared and in what order … think about how daunting it was — now multiple that by 100 for every new tank who not only has to cope with learning the ropes while learning the dungeons, as well, but then has to listen to experienced players whine and call him an idiot for not going “fast” enough, and so forth.

For that reason, and maybe it’s because I did “do my time” as a tank, back when it actually did require serious effort and team work to level or progress through the content of the game, but I tend to be a little bit sympathetic with new tanks, and I try to help them out when I can, with tips and advice.