New to Server

[Kafanar]

Hullo, I am starting a toon here. I am not seeking a guild as of yet. I am however curious about the breakdown of the guilds here. I am curious to see if there is a variety of guilds here and as to what they may be. Examples being raiding, family, and so forth. I know this a new server so am also curious as to what the server populations experience with the game may be. I know with the FTP there came alotta new players to the game and i dont doubt the IQ of those players but DDO does seem to take awhile to learn. Thanks for any input on these topics.

[LordMond]

First off, Welcome to Orien!

As to your questions about Guilds.....my best advice would be to check out the Guild recruitment forum specifically for this server as I did when I wandered over from Argo. You can get a feel for what aspects of the game each Guild focuses on from their recruitment message followed by a quick trip to their website. Make sure that their objectives in DDO match yours- if you're a casual player, you're probably not going to enjoy a powergaming Guild in which the focus is getting to 20 ASAP. It's what I did and I found a good bunch in the (warning! shameless plug alert!) Defenders of Orien.

On server population....your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea what the statistics are and no idea where to find them. Turbine, it seems, isn't free with that information. What I can say is that there seems to be rarely a lack of low level groups (level ranges 5 and under) at any time of the day or night. Once you get around level 8-12, as I said in another thread, the picture takes a decided turn for the worse. It has gotten a smidge better over the last few weeks but I put that down to Christmas vacation from work or school so the server population ticked up a bit. Now that that is over, I suspect that it will be quieter now. Above 12, all I can do is speculate, as my highers toon is 12. It would appear that a reputation for competence at that level range will do you more good that the LFG screen. Once people know that you aren't a liability to a run, you'll be on some Friends lists and they'll contact you when they need a well-played >insert class here<.

Final point: IQ of the ftp crowd. You're right...but the ones at the shallower end of the intel pool won't hang around too long. Darwinism affects the virtual world every bit as much as the real one.

[Mysterium]

There seem to be a pretty wide variety of guilds springing up on the server, from raiding guilds to casual guilds to roleplaying guilds. Most of them are small, as the server population is still fairly low. That is to say that the population really drops off past level ten or so. Of course, this will gradually change as the server community becomes more established and players level their characters.

I can tell you that we already have a great community here on Orien, small though it may be. If you choose to play here, I don't think you will regret it.