I was just about to write a letter to Al Gore, thanking him for making up global warming, but that was before a foot of snow fell outside my house...bring back my warm winter!
Yeah, more Oblivion...No Valentines update of any sort, romance was more Ryans fotre and he left this blog at the alter. Figure that out at your own discretion.
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[Adventures in Oblivion - Fun With Guilds]
There are four major guilds in Oblivion: Thieves, Mages, Fighters and Assassins. I’m still trying to not be an asshole player…so no assassinating for me. I’m not really handy with the spells, so I ignore the Mages Guild. The Thieves Guild requires too much effort on my part to even discover, so I guess that leaves the Fighters Guild.
By the time I finish with these idiots, I’ll have regretted my choice ten times over. I’ve since done the Mages and Assassins quest lines, both being very fun and interesting, while the Fighters Guild was a constant exercise in grind questing. Let me compare the three quest lines, and illustrate how bad the FG is.
Major Crisis: The Mages Guild plot revolves around the feud between the Guild and the Necromancers, who are actively and currently succeeding in attacking the Guild. Your role turns into discovering the plot, and eventually taking the fight to the Necromancers head honcho…The Dark Brotherhood (Assassins) plot involves a traitor from within and finding a way to stop them before the entire Brotherhood gets killed off…The Fighters Guild major crisis is a rival Guild is muscling in on their operation and having better success at it. Seriously, one of my FG quests was to secure future contracts for Guild members who were too busy getting drunk at a bar to do anything else. Let me repeat myself: I was doing a quest to ensure future quests for people other than myself, because they were too busy drinking to do it themselves.
Advancement: Mages Guild associates are nothing more than little bitches. I needed to acquire recommendations from every cities Guild leader before the main HQ let me in and promoted me. From there I was privy to more important, plot related quests. I actually had to prove myself with some bitch work before I was trusted enough with the important shit. The Dark Brotherhood had me go around killing people, with escalating importance and difficulty before I eventually became the right hand man of a leader, thus placing me in a key role for the eventual end game. Again, I proved myself with bitch work before I was trusted with the important shit. The Fighters Guild put me on inane contract after inane contract, some based around the rival guild, slowly advancing me in rank, but never moving beyond inane task-work. I proved myself with bitch work, only to be given more bitch work.
My major problem with the Fighters Guild was that the crisis I was given, the rival guild, never really felt all that important. Sure, the Blackwood Company is cheating and using backstabbing tactics to get the upper hand, but it always seemed that the FG was never really that interested in doing anything about it. The FG was losing contracts, members, and prestige, but the collective attitude from the guild was little more than a “Damn those guys. I wish there was something we could do about them” followed by a shrug.
The Blackwood Company's major draw was they were willing to do the things the Fighters Guild wouldn’t, or couldn’t, handle…while the Fighters Guild was the go to destination if you wanted someone to help you pay off debt, find out why your pet rats are dead, or to do a fucking escort mission. Half my quests in the FG made me wonder what kind of operation this was anyway since they revolved around the ineptitude of the guild itself. There’s the before mentioned quest where you get work for a few drunk slackers, two where you’re doing someone else’s contract entirely cuz there couldn’t be buggered to do it in the first place, a couple where you go and figure out why your fellow guild mates haven’t returned yet (spoiler-they fucking died). Hell, my first FG quest was to run weapons over to three waiting members in a goblin infested mine. Seriously guys? None of you though it a good idea to bring weapons? Are you that fucking dense?
An honorable mention goes out to the one quest where I’m tasked to hunt down and kill several escaped convicts. That seemed solid in the sense that “Yeah, escaped criminals. Defiantly something you call the Fighters Guild about. I sure hope they’re all not to busy dying or picking flowers for some other quest so they can deal with these dangerous killers.” My only gripe about it is it seemed to give the impression that killing them wasn’t the only option. Maybe convince one or two to turn themselves in…but no, killing is the only choice. Not saying there was anything wrong there, but the illusion of choice gave me different expectations.
Maybe it’s me, but if I need to hire a fighting guild, and choice A is a bunch of pansies who like doing WOW style ‘collect X amount of Rat Meat‘, and choice B’s slogan is that they deal with the shit choice A is too chicken to fuck with, then I’m gonna go with choice B. Losing business and members to Blackwood? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Don’t just whine about it and automatically assume it’s because they’re cheating scumbags. Cuz even if they are cheating scumbags, then that’s only 50% of your problem. The other 50% is the fact that the Fighters Guild is a fucking joke.
Anyway, the whole Fighters Guild nonsense came to a head when I was on a quest to figure out why people were disappearing or some shit. I was led to a cave where a bunch of tinkerbells attacked me. Clearly these “disappearing people” were dead, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to confirm it. Inside I was greeted with a bunch of dead trolls. Something was familiar about this place. Had I been here before?
I get to where the map says I need to be but there’s nothing. There’s a chest in back but it’s empty. I’ve been here before, haven’t I? I must’ve raided this cave before when I was trying to raise the gold for my “stolen” pumpkin/self defense murder bounty. I didn’t notice any bodies or anything important during my first run through, and I sure as hell don’t notice anything odd now. So…what now?
I check online to find that there is a bug in the game that if you clear out the mine before the quest, then you’ll never be able to finish it. I’m stuck. There is no body, or journal, or whatever it is I needed to find in here. The quest in unfinishable. And that was the last straw. I had been putting up with this endless parade of a retarded plot for long enough, and when it threw me an impossible to complete quest, it officially became time for me to rethink my guild choice.
Someone needs to die for this, and I know just the assholes to go to…
Next Time: EVERY problem
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