After all the feed back with the first Article I have decided to ask other members/guild leaders the same questions and try to get you different views of Perma-Death play. I was able to contact Lessah of the Sublime Perma-Death Guild on the Sarlona server (also a commentator for the widely known DDOCast pod show) and let her go over the same questions that I asked Parvo (of the Mortal Voyage guild on the Arrog server).
Lessah has some different views on how Perma-Death works. Hope you enjoy her thoughts and ideas.
1. What is a Perma-Death Guild?
Perma-Death is short for Permanent Death. This means if you go into a quest and die, and nobody in the quest can raise you, you are dead, you get to delete and re-roll. We do not use rez shrines. Some guilds allow looting of corpses. We also allow the passing down of one heirloom item to your re-roll. Everything else is either deleted or sent to the guild banker. Perma-Death guilds can vary significantly. Some are very loose and flexible with very few restrictions, like Sublime on the Thelanis server or the Extreme Explorers on Sarlona, and some are very rules-driven with lots of restrictions, like the Valhalla Perma-Death Guild on Sarlona, or The Core HC Perma-Death Guild on Khyber.
The one thing these guilds have in common is the fact that death holds significant meaning for each character. The core rule of starting over with nothing after you die makes even a familiar quest exciting, makes low level loot seem interesting, and collectibles valuable. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat bring more and more players to Perma-Death every day.
2. Why the need for a Perma-Death Guild? Perma-Death is more about the journey than the destination. When I first began experimenting with Perma-Death play, I was not in a PD guild. I can tell you that the average leet player has no time or patience to wait for you while you experiment with slower-paced play and careful strategy. I was being dragged through quests with no clue as to what the goals were and many times I felt a competitive air about who killed what and how fast. In some cases, things were dead by the time the party reached a common room. I did not enjoy this. I wanted to play in a way that involved the party solving dilemmas as well-formed team.
After a few weeks of frustration, I found the Sublime Perma-Death Guild, on the Thelanis Server. It was perfect for me. Here was an entire guild full of players who thought as I did. Not only that, they taught me to play the game in entirely different way, to approach situations from several angles and to get the most out of resources. Here were people who were not concerned with the kill count at the end of a quest, only that everyone walked out alive and with a sense of accomplishment!
3. Do players in a Perma-Death Guild ever get to play end game content? The answer is yes. Let me preface this by saying that the monsters are not going anywhere, and the chests are always full. In Sublime we have our sights set on endgame content. We have been building a pretty solid wrecking crew to tackle content that was previously unheard of for a Perma-Death guild. We've done the dragon, we have almost a full raid worth of titan flagged players, many flagged for the demon queen, and we are running Gianthold quests with relative ease. I won't lie to you, it took me a long time to get here, but it has been worth it and I feel excited each time I step into a high level quest with a group of Perma-Deathers.
Keep in mind that in a Perma-Death guild it is especially important to cultivate new members, help lowbies, etc. Most regular players have characters at various levels across the spectrum instead of just marching toons up to 16 as quick as possible like in regular play to go grind the end game. Remember, it's the journey, not the destination.
4. What are the biggest challenges in running a Perma-Death Guild? Perma-Death Guilds have internal issues from time to time just like any other guild. From a being both a Guild Leader and an Officer in non Perma-Death guilds, I can tell you that the drama is far less intense as the average Perma-Deather seems to be very patient and mature. The biggest conflicts in our guild comes from dealing with decisions about new content that may deviate the Perma-Death concept, hirelings for example or the DDO store (rest shrines, mana pots, and spirit cakes oh my!).
There are also challenges in being a member of a Perma-Death guild. You must have patience and if you don't have it, you have to be willing to learn it if you agonize over having to run Waterworks or Tangleroot AGAIN then Perma-Death may not suit you. A dash of humility also helps, Perma-Death players are leery of showboaters and zergers, and they often do not mesh well with Perma-Death play. So one big challenge for new members is gaining the trust of other Perma-Death players. The cerulean hills, to cite a low level example, are littered with the lion-gnawed bones of hasty, reckless Perma-Death players. "Look, there's a lion, no two! Three! Four! Five! MOMMY!"
We are noobie friendly, we will teach you the ropes, but we will also allow you to make your own mistakes (and try not to let you accidentally kill yourself too much in the process). Dying, while an integral of the Perma-Death concept, is not the 'fun' part, and dying too often is one of the main reasons (in my opinion) that we lose new players early on. They get frustrated.
5. Can you share a great Perma-Death story with us? Oh yes I can! There are so many stand-out moments in PD play. I know I am in a good quest, for example, when I can feel my heart pounding and I am sitting on the edge of my chair. My best and worst moments have all involved my own death. One gloriously died fighting the named champions at the end of VON3 and one... well... he fell from the one of the Restless Isles to the haunted waters below. I was dead before I hit the water. The party had no way to recover me. He was level 13. I was so upset I cried. Can you imagine crying honest tears over the loss of a character? I can but that is the lot we accept in this style of play. Death happens. We move on, we rebuild. That same character is now almost capped at level 16.
I remember when the Sublime faced the Dragon in the Vault of Night Series for the first time. I remember the chills as they ran down my spine while I ran up the platform. I had done it before of course, but not like this. This was a Perma-Death party. Entering the quest we all knew full well that we were in an all or nothing situation. This meant we were either going to succeed and make our mark in DDO History or fail and write the biggest epitaph our guild had ever seen. Would you go into a raid knowing that the character you spent months building might never come back? I did just that, and it was the most exciting thing I have done in this game to date.
6. What would you tell a new person who is thinking about joining a Perma-Death Guild? Give it a try! First ask yourself exactly what you are looking for. Is it a slower-paced dungeon experience, a close approximation to P&P? Perhaps you want the game to be as challenging as it possibly can be? All of these things are up and running right now on every server in DDO.
Be sure and look at all the Perma-Death Guilds out there before choosing a specific one. There are many different flavors of PD. From hard-core to Perma-light some Perma-Death guilds do not even allow the use of Rest Shrines to recharge hit Points and Mana. The Sublime's main focus is on strategy and teamwork. We have achieved that in droves!
7. Can you please list the Pro's and Con's for being in a Perma-Death Guild?
PROS:
Perma-Death creates a culture climate that emphasizes teamwork.
Perma-Death allows for more creative problem solving during questing, no idea is too outlandish if it works.
Perma-Death is EXCITING. The more danger you get put into, the harder your heart pounds, the better it gets.
Perma-Death makes familiar content new by adding the threat of re-roll.
Perma-Death makes you THINK about what you are about to do in a quest.
There is a greater sense of accomplishment after you have completed something really difficult.
And of course the standard: going to strange, wondrous lands, meeting odd and interesting creatures, and killing them and taking their stuff!
CONS:
Perma-Death is a smaller gaming community, a sub-culture. You are limiting your options when you choose Perma-Death exclusively. We don't group outside of our guild so you might log in and find that no one in your level range questing. You must be patient in a Perma-Death guild.
Learning from your mistakes is not always easy. Mistakes are costly and wipe away days, weeks, or months of hard work. If you think your low level character is hard to let go of, you are right. Now, multiply that difficulty by a factor of ten with each level you achieve. It does not get any easier. Remember, this is WHY we play: risk vs. reward.
Think your own death is hard to deal with? Try being the accidental cause of someone else's. There is no lower feeling than knowing that you are the reason so and so is back on Korthos Island. It is for this reason that we often take our time exploring new content, setting up kill zones, scouting ahead, pulling aggro to a designated location for disposal, etc.
My last comment is both pro and con depending on how you look at it. It may take us longer to get through new content because we don't automatically know where everything is and we have to figure things out, and we are not always successful the first time. In my opinion, though, that makes the accomplishment of a difficult task so much greater.
For a complete list of Perma-Death Guilds, see the DDO Wiki page here: http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Category:Permadeath_Guilds
Thank you, Lessah for your time and hard work. I will contact other Perma-Death leaders on different servers to bring you a more rounded of how Perma-Death is seen and played.
Eldervamp
Aka: Chris Molsbee
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