My clan is really looking forward to Age of Conan. The hype surrounding it is building and we’re gearing up to get involved. The fact that it’s coming out right after college classes get out is no coincidence, and we couldn’t be happier about it. Some may dream of summers on the beach. Gamers dream of summers in a dark, treacherous cavern surrounded by foul-smelling, green-tinted creatures.

One of the things that struck us as we were reading about the game, was that many classes have healing abilities. Healers have direct heals, obviously, but there are several classes which have a chance of proccing some sort of heal on hit. There were so many, we posited that some fights might take awhile to finish up. I’m sure it works out fine, but it’s a rather amusing thought.

Our clan plays a lot of Defense of the Ancients (DotA).  Most of our evenings are consumed with getting people together on Battle.net, finding a host, and sucking it up for a few hours.  We’ve been playing this game for over a year, and despite marked improvements in our gameplay, there is an utter lack of teamwork among us that even complete strangers seem to be able to pull off.  Most of our mid and late game is spent arguing over whether we should push into the enemy’s base or not, how stupid a teammates items are, or even how much dumb shit one of us managed to pull off in the early game which is now the direct cause of our loss.

Somehow, whether it be the fact that nothing spectacular has come out to draw us away, or that it’s just a really great game, we still play it, and we still play it regularly.  The fact that really good play requires a high level of teamwork draws us into the game and at the same time is the very thing that prevents us from being really good.  We have our moments certainly, those rare games when everything falls into place and we completely demolish the opposing team, but those are often over-shadowed by our losses.  We, five players on Ventrilo, somehow manage to lose to five people who can only communicate through type, and often do not know each other at all.  Maybe there is a certain strength in the unfamiliarity.  Thrust into the world of DotA alone, one must learn to play, or one will be tagged a noob.  In order to be seen as someone who doesn’t suck balls, you have to know what the hell you’re doing.  In the safety of our gaming clan, fairly poor to mediocre play is looked over, and ridicule is only reserved for the truly bad.  Perhaps each of us should strike out on our own for awhile and learn to play with people who aren’t our friends.  Unfortunately doing so would pretty much negate the reason we do play.