Bumping this crusty thread because, well, I just ran 3 newbies through the campaign at a LAN party tonight, over the course of....some amount of time. (It's all a little blurry tbh.)
And it was a freaking blast. The most fun I've ever had playing this game, even more than over teamspeak when it first came out. The fact I was playing with three people who a) had really never played the game and b) were half fried from two days of all-day LAN gaming, really added to fun. When you're playing with 4 people who know exactly what they're doing, and are spamming Lightning Bolt, Time Warp, Nullify and all the other goodies, it's a little too easy to dominate and accidents can be more aggravating than funny.
But with total newbs, it's great. When people are making mistakes and making due with the knowledge and skills they've managed to get together, it makes things way more interesting. It ended up making for a better experience. The only more tactical playing I've done in this game is playing it solo. One guy basically did nothing but rez and launch heal-balls. One guy ran the Tron Robe and was basically a lightning shield shock trooper. One guy was using Crusader robes and was tanking (probably best because he was the most fried out of any.) I brought all the knowledge and cheap shit to the game, like being johnny-on-the-spot with Lightning Bolts, Elemental Spam, Nullify, ect...using the Rogue Robes (since I have a good chunk of the DLC.) Turns out having less health than your standard wizard makes the game more interesting too. All in all, great fun and tons of laughs.
I guess I sort of remember getting really jaded about this game at some point. I think it was playing through the Vietnam DLC solo and getting kinda pissed at the difficulty that did it. But tonight really made me re-appreciate how good it is in the right setting. Like I said, it's still fun with friends on teamspeak but somehow being in the same room with people made it a lot better.