We did our first Guild Mission yesterday. We gathered right north of Lion’s Arch – where apparently, every guild on our server had decided to gather as well. ;) Especially thanks to Culling, it’s important to meet somewhere empty, so you can actually see which of your guild members showed up. Before we could start, it took us a very long time to get organized. Most of us were in Raidcall as voice-chat is just so much faster and more efficient in organizing things. Still, it took a long time. At the end of the night, we also shared ideas on how to make everything a bit faster. Tonight, we met again. This time, putting people in groups happened fast. We knew where to go within a few seconds and everything went a lot more smoothly.
Tier 1 of the Guild Bounty Missions was relatively easy. Two mobs in two regions that you need to kill within 15 minutes. For that, we were split into two groups and roamed both regions. I guess guides that you can find online help a lot with finding out which regions the mobs appear in. ;) Other than that, I did not look at any maps with routes the NPCs can take. I think that takes the fun out of it. Besides, give us a few weeks and we’ll probably know the routes anyway.
Tier 2 had 3 (or 4?) NPCs which we managed as well. Tier 3 with 6 NPCs was a lot more difficult. While we were 6 groups, we just weren’t fast enough to find and kill all the NPCs yesterday. You have 15 minutes for each of those tiers, by the way. That’s why we decided to try again tonight.
As I said in the beginning, everything was better today. When I logged into Raidcall, I was already told which sub-channel to join there and which group I belonged to. We met in an area different from that of the other groups. No intermingling which also meant no confusion. Last but not least, the individual group leaders were all in one party in the game, so they could communicate with each other. We managed to kill the first 4 NPCs pretty fast. The groups that had killed their NPC then moved to the other regions to help the remaining groups. Thanks to the sub-channels in Raidcall, I didn’t hear anything from the other groups which also meant less distraction. When a waypoint was linked in guild chat, the group name was always mentioned.
What I want to point out with all that rambling above is that within a day, we learned how to organize the Guild Mission Bounty. We downed all NPCs within the time frame. We all knew what to do and where to be. At the same time, I’ve met – and heard – more from fellow guild members within the last two days than I have within the last few months. Our guild is special in that almost every guild member is Greek and we non-Greeks are in the minority. But everybody tries their best in communicating in English (us included, of course). Raidcall was no problem and while I did hear a few Greek sentences (I love the sound of the language), almost everything was in English and we understood each other just fine.
I share the opinion of some fellow guild members that those guild missions are great because they give us, the guild, a common goal to achieve. They make us work and play together and, in case of multi-lingual and/or bigger guilds, they bring us closer together and make us get to know each other better.
A word of advice, as I think some people were confused about this: You can see which NPCs you need to kill for the bounty. Open the Guild Panel, click on “Upgrades”, then on the “Missions” tab. The NPCs that were killed already are displayed in grey with a “Complete” next to them. There, you can also see how much time is left – also in grey. The picture shows you a Tier 1 Guild Mission Bounty where Diplomat Tarban is still alive while Poobadoo is already defeated and thus, shown as “Complete”. We had 9 minutes left to find and kill Diplomat Tarban. The text when hovering over the name does not show you the name of the region he’s in.
