However, I think once you hit the level cap then the time factors diminish because suddenly there isn’t a race to get to the top of the ladder any more.

One thing I do love about EQ2 is the mentoring ability. I’ve always wondered why WoW never implemented it?

I’ve tried to have characters in which you only play with that person, but people generally get bored with that method; but thats the only way to really guarantee that you’re on the same page

LOTRO being my main MMO “home” I can guess there’s some disappointment on the kinship’s behalf when I up and disappear on a break. When I was last super-active (SoA game and early MoM) I was pretty much *the* Loremaster in the kinship. There were a few others leveling up as alts, but only the kin leader and myself had them as mains but we also knew our stuff. So when I left, they lost that and had to recruit outside the kin, which I encourage anyway. I’m not them, so I can’t comment much more than that other than it’s probably like a job or whatever — people come and go but life moves on.

From my perspective, now that I’m trying to return, it’s like I’m still in a kinship but who are these people again? The names I remember from a year ago or more, I’m trying to regain a feeling for who they are while trying to get to know all the people who’ve joined while I was on break. Any clique’s I may have been a part of back then have reformed in my absence, which leaves me solo during this time. So for me, it’s just as lonely trying to return (possibly more so) than if I wasn’t in a kinship at all. That camaraderie or the whole “family/friends” dynamic has been lost. For now. But it’s a weird feeling…

One is I believe semi-retired and has *tons* of 80′s. He’s a great guy, we love to have him, but, where he used to be very effective on his main, he’s slipped quite a bit. In his case I think it’s a ‘dilution’ effect, where he’s got so much in his head from so many different toons that he isn’t as sharp on his main as he could be.

The second guy I think may be unemployed. Chances are if I logged on in the middle of the day, he’d be on. After a sluggish start with us he became a real go-getter. He would tank/dps for us in 10 mans, and then pug pretty much every 25 that was available (we’ve only recently started doing 25′s after a long hiatus). He’s got two toons that don’t need anything from 10′s, so he doesn’t sign up for guild runs (and on at least two occasions he signed up for guild 10′s, and was either late or a no-show because he was in a 25). Now he’s got a third toon to 80 and is busy running that through everything. His free time has allowed him to outstrip pretty much everyone else in the guild.

It’s really tough for me to just “rein it in” in an MMO since I’m on the more hardcore side of things, so I’m usually a higher level and by the time they catch up, I’ve found a guild to raid with lol.

Building alts to run alongside ‘time-poor’ friends is the way to go to avoid a lot of the hassle. Or several of them perhaps? See you on the Shrub side.