The Daily Grind: Who was your MMO mentor -- and whom did you mentor?

Puzzle Pirates. The Mad Mutineers, back on the beta (Azure) server. Also Spinn and the Yo-Ho Yo-Hos. I miss ye, mates.

A grizzled old dwarf named Scrumbucket picked me up outside of the Lake of Ill Omen in EverQuest. He taught me the ways of a healer -- how to purple-club the tank and how to use fear and abuse to keep the group under my thumb, and how to keep up the rotation count while simultaneously typing out flaming profanity in all caps at my fellows.

Those were fun times back then, when healers were tinpot dictators with far too much influence. Thank you, Scrum, for your wisdom.

My younger brother is the closest thing I had to a mentor. He showed me how to gear up my pally to heal and a few pointers on Healing. But after that, it was all me, I learned how to get the most DPS out of my Ret pally back in BC. When we were ridiculed for playing that spec. I farmed dark runes to get more mana so I could drop more consecrates, which were the only way to get a good DPS boost. I became one of the few people to remain standing during shade of Aarron(?). When we rolled into ZA, it was always me and this one Warrior dueling for top spot

I have to give a shout out to the best wow theorycrafter forum i was ever a part of tkasomething.com. Fritti, and the forum crew were awesome, helped me polish my theorycraft to a sparkling shine.


i just discovered it's been gone for almost a year, apparently fritti quit wow too.

It would have been nice to get some mentoring, but I started EQ in '99 on my lonesome when I was 13 and always had to rely on forums to figure things out. Got some friends into that game and others since then, but never had someone to show me the ropes except for the occasional boss fight. My favorite was in EVE when a few guys including myself learned the ins and outs of WH space together. Trial and error might not be the most effective way, but it's certainly not boring. I have always looked for bits and pieces of wisdom from veteran players though, while no one has ever taking me under their wing I study all I can through observation to try and make myself a better player.

Even with the firsthand knowledge you can accumulate in games, I've recently learned that not everyone wants your advice. If you ever end up playing with a bunch of elite forum warriors who think they know better because they've read something in a blog and thumb their nose at advice about something none of them have ever done but you used to do half awake at 4am for months, do yourself a favor and bite your tongue let them learn the hard way like you did (though tried to spare them from) and then find better people to play the game with; I know I will be from now on.

Sorry Justin, I pre-date most and actually end up being the mentor or have at times over the past twenty years. Basically when you've played a long as I have most of the time you were struggling with others who also were new at that time, so everyone just ended up mentoring back and forth at best.

Since those days of yore, I tend to just go out and do research on a game and find out anything I need before hand or as I go. It isn't like the old days where games had little info or how do, or find things was rather hard to figure out. Most of these mmo-rpgs now a days lead you by the nose and supply all the info you need.

A friend of mine introduced me to WoW shortly after he bought it. He got me hooked, and we played together all the time. I wouldn't call him the best mentor(he was just as lost as I was most of the time), but he got me into one of my favorite games. He also explained basic stuff such as stats and talents. I had no talents until I was level 20, and I had been using whatever gear and weapons had more armor.damage. I got another friend to play a few years later, and he got the benefit of having myself and my friend who introduced me to WoW as mentors. We weren't as incompetent after 2 years.

Now that I think of it, I didn't have much of a mentor. When I first started online gaming (with RuneScape) a couple of real life friends played with me for a bit and one person advised me to grind on cows until I was higher level, but other than that nobody really taught me anything. I was mostly self-taught.

First MMo was EQOA. Learned the ropes during beta phase 2 and 3, and played at release with several of the guys I beta'ed with.

Fun crew, learned quite a lot, not that EQOA was exactly a complex game. I remember doing coach runs to open up my travel options, finding all the best camps for each level range, and being pretty activ on the forums.

Switched to wow once it came out, after quitting EQOA post frontiers, just got tired of the grind and the broken raid system.

Wow I played with a guy I knew in real life, as part of the guild 'arf'. Was the first time playing wow that I shifted from primarily a pug instance player to being a serious high end raider. did a lot of firsts with that guild, and rose to be one of the more powerful locks at one point, before I quit. Lots of respect for those guys.

I didn't have a mentor. When I started at the launch of EQ1, pretty much everyone was on even footing. We were all learning as we went. It was fantastic.

I mentored a great many people back in those days. I was eager to meet new players then, eager to help them learn. Many of them even eventually applied to my guild (which was a high end raiding guild) once they reached max level, I guess because I'd left a good impression. I remember them all fondly.

I'm not so eager to seek out new players anymore. It's not that I'm not happy to help, I still am, it's that I've had many very bad experiences with players since those early days, bad experiences that have soured me to being open and welcoming. I still try, now and then, and I'm still eager to answer questions new players have... I'm just not so eagerly giving aid and my time as I used to. I've been taken advantage of too many times for that.

A guy who sounded like a serial killer psychopath was my mentor in PSO.

Why in the hell would i teach someone to play a game in the the theme of a such a grand word?

Mentor, leadership, you people toss these words around like trash, they mean absolutely nothing when referenced with gaming, what do you hope to accomplish by using them when far better words are available and honest?

Good grief. (shakes head) This is as bad as using imitation crab meat as a substitue for crab. Fake is fake, and wrong is certainly wrong.

My mentors were tutorials and this nifty thing mmo's used to have back when i started playing: the manual. Wish more people read them, with ANYTHING they did.

For more advanced info, like stat optimizing and ideal exp grind locations, I looked for guides online. Everything else, I learned the hard way, lol.

A 45-year old (in 2003) lady from the UK showed me the ropes in Legend of Mir 2.

MIss you, LadyShadow!

I learned things by the school of hard knocks, reading up wiki guides and such.
I used to mentored new recruits in our guild if I was not satisfied with their performance during raids. The feeling when your disciples doing their part well is just great. However there are few that unable to advance therefore had to be removed from the guild.

I learned to play from sheer curiousity of a huge MMO world that I heard other ppl play. The idea intrigued me. I mainly learned the ropes by asking questions in chat.

But the best system I found was games that have a dedicated Help channel. Or like in FFXI they have a in game Mentors that you can ask questions to. You get in game and ask a question under support, and the gets submitted as a question to the Mentor Linkshell. Only ppl past lvl 30 could equip a LS linkshell and the person had to willfully earn and equip it. So you usually got helpful advice. In game systems like this need to be in more games. Having someone give customized learning experience is far better than any in game tutorial