Log Horizon

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I'm sure my reaction is more than enough as a hint.

In terms of raids, the peak I experienced in World Of Warcraft was Ulduar (when it wasn't open yet) and of course Icecrown Citadel. Of course we were all in one guild. When Cataclysm came our guild wasn't able to sustain their activity...so in the 3 months or so that I've played Cataclysm (primarily with my Rogue, or my Druid and Paladin, because of the dearth of healers - my Rogue was just lucky to be the quickest to get equips and the first to get to 85 back then) it was mostly raids with random people from PU Gs.

edited 20th Oct '14 8:07:32 PM by entropy13

Yeah, I think most of us have already been spoiled soooo

That was actually my thought when I saw her. They confirm it anywhere? She could be an alt also, like the Girl!Shirou mentioned a ways back. Would be funny if it was for someone we know. like Marie

edited 20th Oct '14 8:58:01 PM by kiukiuclk

Spoilers are crappy manners. It's also why I don't tend to post any speculations, because some idiot is inevitable going to post a "subtle" hint about it.

edited 20th Oct '14 9:14:46 PM by AnotherDuck

The sub group I am using (one of the legal ones at that) had not so helpfully used a specific pronoun when referring to Tetra.

What they showed was exactly like real raiding. Hit your head on the wall until the wall breaks. Each loss is a learning experience, rather than something to regret. I'm also not sure why you would expect a boss to be scary. It's a game. Death isn't scary, so something killing you isn't scary either. That feeling of "oops, oh well" was properly portrayed by the people respawning at the entrance. A boss fight is more like a puzzle than anything else.

That said, normally a raid only lasts one night at a time, rather than locking yourself in a dungeon for a month. You can turn off the game and do something else. That's something that's different here.

...did Shirou never die in the fight? Naotsugu fell off the edge of the world at least once.

For the time spent, I'd divide that into two concepts: One is that game-time is different from real-time. The characters are far older than the players. The other is that they have less conveniences around when actually living in the world, rather than playing in it, so that would probably account for some extended time as well.

Probably not enough to justify the length of time they've stated, but it would account for some of the difference.

Usually when you say a "Month" raiding, it includes repeats, given the instanced nature of MMO dungeons these days.

In Shiroe and co.'s case though, it literally IS a month, as they're wandering around blind looking for bosses, with no helpful online guides to use now, on top of the inconvenience that is being REALLY stuck in the game now.

Does it often take that long until the first party beats it?

Some of the folk at the LH thread in Asuki recalled their own MMO experiences — like how it took 20 days to beat Ragnaros when he first popped up in World Of Warcraft, or the ridiculous trial and error that had to be done for Vaelastrasz the Corrupt. The way it works in the real world though, once SOMEONE beats a raid, the information gets disseminated (via net and wiki) enough that the next guys in line will know what to do, until the clear times are low enough to make farming efficient (and even then, we're still talking about a week's play time, one evening after another, due to instancing).

Shiroe and the Silver Swords don't have that luxury though, being the first challengers of this content AND the game being real. The logistics come into play for example — they just can't log off at the end of the session, then pick up again with the usual people the next evening, they're stuck there at Abyssal Shaft until they can clear it.

Can't speak for personal experience, as the only big MMO I played was the first Guild Wars, and we didn't have the massive raids you saw in World Of Warcraft or Everquest.

edited 21st Oct '14 3:00:14 AM by MyssaRei

Clearing Icecrown Citadel took several hours (usually 10-14 hrs at best), and that's already after other groups have already been able to venture in, and do things differently, and have info from websites like Wowhead and MMO-Champion...

edited 21st Oct '14 3:00:00 AM by entropy13

Well, this is a first attempt where they try to figure everything out, as well as being a top level raid for a new(ish) expansion, so it being significantly harder than previous ones is more logical than not.

It usually takes about a week or two for top guilds to clear the toughest content. Back in the day it used to take longer, sometimes months, but there are only so many twists in basic mechanics that the devs can throw in before players get the hang of it. People have simply gotten better at raiding, with experience.

That said, the guild in question certainly isn't at peak power anymore, given that they've been losing members to attrition.

Talking about farming and pugs and whatnot is completely besides the point. Those people are playing an entirely different game that has no bearing on first clear attempts. No offense to those people, but coattails are being ridden on. Even with those coattails though, it can take months of practice for an average-yet-devoted raiding guild to clear new content. That, I can say from experience. And, well, sometimes the guides are wrong, or you need a slightly different strategy suited for your guild and its composition. The tops guilds like to rotate members in and out to maximize stacking bonuses for whatever classes are good for that particular fight (lots of ranged for bosses with melee AOE, etc), but that's often not an option for most guilds.

Just... speaking from personal experience, what it shows in Log Horizon is 100% accurate. I remember being on the planning teams checking damage logs to see exactly how people are dying and speculating on what we can do about it. "We need to spread out more here" "Switch tanks less often because can eat higher stacks" "Have two people stand int he green beam at once to get more damage". You just mess around and try to figure out how it works. It's really fun. And... I miss it. There are a lot of people who just sit in the back and follow orders, sometimes really well, but the planning is always the fun part.

When I was talking about being stuck in a dungeon for a month I meant literally stuck in a dungeon. Normally you go back to town every night.

edited 21st Oct '14 3:35:45 AM by Clarste

Yeah, the episode was a nostalgia trip for many veteran MMO players, and did a whole better job explaining Raid mechanics than, oh, SAO episode 2 did. XD

Speaking of logistics, some people have commented at how a bigger guild (like D.D.D) might have tried to established a supply line first before tackling this, but the Silver Swords are doing what they can with what they have.

edited 21st Oct '14 3:32:05 AM by MyssaRei

Thanks. My schooling worked out that I kinda missed the MMO thing. I would have liked the planning I think. Over all probably good, but still feel like I missed out sometimes.

I've been raidlead in the World Of Warcraft classic days (i.e. 40 man raids), and while we were not the absolute top raid group, we at least got a server first.
I have to say while the bosses were portrayed accurately (as in: Try, fail, try again, fail again, try again...) the social interaction probably wasn't. In a large enough group there are always people who can't stand each other. Handling this is as much work as finding strategies. And far more exhausting. :> Adjusting the strategy is as much determining who's too incompetent to do his job as it is finding out the boss's weaknesses. You need to assign those to something easy or unimportant. From a raid leaders perspective, players are resourced that need maintenance and have a differing quality, while from a players perspective the raid leader is the guy who organizes stuff because no one else really wants to do it. Especially the last thing made that "they trust me" statement of the silver sword leader weird. :D

About the clear times dropping in World Of Warcraft... (skip this if you are not interested in World Of Warcraft, as this is a little off topic)
The encounter design got a lot easier. If I compare Chromaggus to any of the later bosses... (just listing all of his abilities would be a huge wall of text, not even starting with the strategy)
Line of sight tanking? Disappeared. Parry hastes? Were flat out removed. Enemies no longer ignore C Ced targets (no more abilties that first disable the tank and then let the boss rampage through the group) "Control" fights like the bug-trio in AQ 40 (where you had 3 seperate bosses that were brutal when joining forces and had abilities that made it hard to prevent)? Don't remember many after classic. Enemy castbar didn't exist. Either you saw the animation and reacted, or you didn't. But even if you did see it, you still needed to estimate how long you could wait before you interrupt a spell. No handy timer for that. Crushing blows were completely removed. What also changed was that raids became less buggy, because they were tested by the big guilds on the test server. Farming resistance gear no longer existed after classic. In general the need for any raid preparation got removed (no more 20 man fishing sessions for hours). For damage casters, but especially healers the need for any real mana-management was removed. 5-second rule? Who still knows what that is? And aggro management was a crucial element in classic. That was the reason why Vaelastrasz was so hard, especially for the Horde (that fight alone was the reason why tranquil air totem was introduced for shamans). A convenient threat meter didn't exist. You had to go by gut feeling. And if you overdid it, you wiped. If you didn't dps enough, you wiped.

All in all, it's not (only) because the players became better, but (also) because the fights became a lot less complex and time consuming.

But seeing Log Horizon going all "explaining raids" was fun. :>

edited 21st Oct '14 1:45:37 PM by Uchuujinsan

Well here's the thing.

These people are now LIVING (in the database database) this game, so for someone like me, who might enjoy a raid, if I was suddenly living it and having to go through all that shit I might just go "Yeah nah, it was fun then but this is not something I really want to experience" so flaky players aren't going to stick (Hence the member loss problem.)

These people who went with him KNOW they're going to be there for a while, and went with it anyway. Thats people you can trust.

In this context, Demikas represents the uncooperative incompetent player that you're bringing along just to fill slots. I don't think it really needs more representation than that, since he's doing all of it at once!

And the people who stay in the guild and are still willing to go on raids are probably the more competent ones who probably do trust him. There's not a huge amount of people there, and the troublemakers and dissenters have probably left.

Episode 4. In which not much actually happens.

Kyouko is cute.

It is a little short. Not that anyone who's not her will complain. And I think the rest of them should join in.

Shouldn't have said anything, Aka.

And it was only for that one scene anyway.

Doesn't handle compliments too well.

Sword sold. Present for her would be the typical situation. If it's an optimistic enough story.

Some people have trouble fitting in. Or at least feel like they don't. Which is more common than people think. Especially those kinds of people.

Everyone's doing stuff because Shiro asked. Even if they don't know why.

If she wants to be stronger, why doesn't she join in on the training?

Is it possible for someone to warn someone else to not trip and not have them trip to prove the point?

That's a nice looking Santa.

That's not good.

edited 25th Oct '14 5:03:26 AM by AnotherDuck

Weak episode. 22 minutes of Akatsuki Wangst followed by 2 minutes of something actually happening.

Was it two minutes? I thought it was closer to one minute. Maybe a minute and a half.

I'll add the 30 seconds of other things happening outside of Santy Claws.

Hmm. Seems like Lanessia's going through the whole NPC thing in reverse. Like, it was mainly her and Rudy that taught the viewer to not think of the People of the Land as mere NPCs, but now that she's gotten used to the individualistic adventurers and comparing them to the rigid society she's from, and considering she's also had the rhetoric about Nobility being different from the common folk drilled into her… she's got to thinking that the adventurers are inherently individuals in a way that the People of the Land aren't.

Hell, there's a chance some adventurer accidentally reinforced that belief for her; some of the ones who don't know her as well probably see her as a generic princess NPC, and that perception could've influenced her.

As far as I understood of book 6, it was definitely a mix of Noble x Commoner, and how being exposed to how Adventurers really are now puts her in the position of the commoner, where everything she's learned seemed to mean little in their company. It's not framed as a bad thing however.