Twin Sunmergames 2016

Sunday a week ago my guild held a fun little social event that was dubbed - based on what was originally a typo but was quickly appropriated for its punniness - "Twin Sunmergames". As turnout for social events on dedicated social nights has been somewhat lacklustre at times, it was decided that we would actually sacrifice an ops night for this one, something I was personally quite pleased with. I'm actually one of the people who tends not to attend social nights, but it's not due to a lack of interest - the problem is rather a lack of time and energy for additional nights dedicated to group events on top of our regular ops.

As the theme was summer fun, we were instructed to show up in swimwear. I initially bristled at this a little, considering my usual dislike for all the inappropriately bikini-clad characters on the fleet, but I couldn't deny that it fit both the overall theme and the silly nature of the event in this case. Once I actually set my mind to putting an outfit together, I was shocked by the prices of a lot of potentially interesting pieces. Pretty much any piece of Covert Energy armour was going for several million credits! I remember when these were a super common drop from the current pack and nobody wanted them... I was proud that I eventually managed to settle on something that didn't break the bank while also still providing a minimum amount of cover for boobs and butt. I was particularly happy with the cheap piece of random armgear I found that - while not invisible - looked like fairly light armbands.

The evening itself was going to be split into three parts: a game that the organisers had dubbed "Hot Ball", a relay run on Ord Mantell, and a race to get through normal mode Legacy of the Rakata as quickly as possible.

"Hot Ball" took place in our guild stronghold on Tatooine and was based on using the Custom Huttball Stand, an interactive furniture item, to play what's basically a variant of Hot Potato/Pass the Parcel. For those who don't know, the Huttball stand generates a ball that looks similar to the Huttball, which players can pick up and throw around - but it expires after a little while, which causes it to either disappear quietly or explode, with the latter option tossing the person currently holding it high into the air. As blowing up your fellow guildies is always a popular pastime, this was unsurprisingly good for a lot of laughs. To keep things organised, we were split into four teams, and the judges made a point of timing the matches and keeping score.

The second activity of the evening was a relay run on Ord Mantell. To be honest I kind of expected this one to be the least interesting bit, because well... it's just running around, right? I guess the team with the most classes with speed boosts wins? Fortunately things turned out to be a lot more fun than that.

What caused a lot of unexpected surprises was the fact that the proposed course wasn't entirely straightforward, and it turned out that several guildies had apparently never bothered to fully explore Ord Mantell's map or hunt bounties there. This resulted in multiple people dying from falling off cliffs, into lava, or just generally running in circles like headless chickens because they couldn't figure out how to get up that cliffside. I never would have thought that a starter planet could be this deadly and confusing to max-level characters. The high point of the run came in the form of a surprising and particularly amusing twist, when the guy who everyone thought was going to win (as his team was the only one who had made it to the last stage of the relay so far) ended up going completely off the rails, circled the local volcano instead, and eventually had to give up without ever having reached the finish line.

Finally the evening was wrapped up with a race to get through tactical Legacy of the Rakata the fastest, for which we were split into three random teams. This is another activity that I would have expected to be relatively straightforward, but once again I had greatly underestimated my guildies' ability to cause mayhem. From wipes due to overpulling trash to foolish use of the /stuck command and clickable objects bugging out for multiple people, it ended up being quite a mad race. Interestingly, the team that ended up winning by completing the instance in a mere sixteen minutes probably approached things in the most conservative way, just trying to kill things quickly while moving from one objective to the next as fast as possible.

Want to get a glimpse of the mayhem? I made a summary video:



It's cliché, but having a good group of people to play with and do things that go beyond what the game's basic framework provides makes any MMO so much better. I can only encourage any guild who might be thinking about organising similar events; it's definitely worth it!