November 9, 2007

Rise of Kunark NDA is Finally Lifted – First Impressions…

stargrace November 9, 2007 6 Comments

It was announced this evening that the RoK NDA is finally over, and of course this will be one of many posts I make about the new expansion and my impressions of it. I won’t talk too much about it tonight, since my thoughts are all in a jumble, but I have got to say, wow. The screen shot above is Arysh riding her rhino mount (which she of course quickly named “Bessy”, prone to stomping on shinies rather then harvesting them and leaving giants trails of.. rhino gunk, behind her) in the Fens of Nathsar, just one of many beautiful zones coming on the 13th.

I had a blast partaking in the beta. Even though by the end of it I was getting slowly worn down by the constant “How can we get buffed to 80 with all our uberz stuffz” questions and comments. Didn’t they realize that all content had to be tested, with all levels of gear. Not just level 80 raid geared folks. Ah well. Turning off channels fixed that. I had added my character to beta before I even got in, in preparation. You can /beta add at any time, and I didn’t want to be waiting around while my “real” characters go there. I quickly found the way to Kylong Plains from the Antonia docks (or you can also take the docks in Commonlands, and a Griffin located on the beach in Butcherblock) and just stood in awe. Not only because of the shear number of folks who cluttered the docks and the incredible amount of lag that came with it, but just because of the volume of land that stretched out before me.

Kunark is huge.

You’ll hear it over and over again. It’s giant. The lands are some of the biggest any Norrathian traveler has ever seen. The first thing any person is going to want to do, is to grab the quest from the halflings on the dock, and attempt to get their Sokokar. Which I’ll talk about more another time. As a brief over view though, Sokokar work like portable (to an extent) griffins and more so like the horses you can find in Greater Faydark and Lesser Faydark. You find a hitching post, examin it and learn the “rout” to that hitching post, and then on your travels you find more hitching posts, thus being able to travel from one to another, or from one to multiple choices. The sokokar doubles as a little pet that can follow you around. You do fly on it when you reach a hitching post, but it’s by no means a flying mount for EQ2.

It seems like this was a huge eventful Friday for those involved in EQ2, not only with the NDA of RoK released, but with the games third birthday, and a few more veteran rewards hitting the game. Those are up in the next post!

Happy 3rd Birthday EverQuestII

stargrace November 9, 2007 1 Comment

The above picture comes from SoE’s official site, today was EQ2’s third birthday and with it they released some very cool rewards for those who have been subscribed to the game since the start. Only one of my accounts qualifies for this, but I’m excited none the less. The second account doesn’t even (quite) qualify for the two year rewards *grumbles* oh wells.

So what comes with this super duper birthday? Well, not only will you get to dance around in Billy form (and who doesn’t love Billy eh? He’s some what of an icon in EQ2 that’s for sure) you also get a new house item (of course I swooned over this) that reduces the coin value of your rent by 25% – very nice. You also gain a new title, The Zealous. Awesome. Of coures it doesn’t end there.

People will also gain 3x Draft of the Skilled and Draft of the Wise. Very handy for the new expansion. Of course, it’d be a lot better if I were not planning (as of yet) to use my dps in RoK (who has no veteran rewards) vs. the healer account that will be able to claim these. It should also be noted that no one will actually have these items until after RoK is released and the +90 days that comes with buying an expansion is credited to your account. Right now I’m up to 1365 days, that’s including the 3 years the game has been out, and the +90 per expansion. 3 months short of the 4 year rewards. Of course that’s assuming that RoK will add another 90 days to your account like the others did. If it doesn’t, it’ll be three more months (boo).

So happy birthday to the game (wow does it feel odd to say that) I can hardly believe it’s been that long already. I still remember my EQ1 days. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend, and eats lots of cake!

Still Counting Down to Rise of Kunark

stargrace November 9, 2007 5 Comments

There’s still an NDA, so I can’t write about what I really want to write, but in the mean time I’ve been clearing out old quests, working up those crafters, and making new friends. That’s right, Torrent Knights got a few new members over the past few days, and I’m of course excited to have them. The guild has never been especially large, and I never wanted it to be. I wanted it to be close friends who knew each other and got along. Of course it doesn’t always end up that way, get any amount of people together and you’re bound to have issues that crop up along the way. Anyhow.

Last night I invited a fellow blogger, you guys may know her from her postings over at Mystic Worlds, name is Saylah, though she’s under a different persona here in EQ2. So the little guild grows! We spent a bit of time chattering and talking about random things from WoW, to EQ1, and Vanguard. Mmo goodness. I also have a friend from EQ1 who is going to start playing when RoK releases. In the mean time they’ve been exploring Norrath on a trial account. I plan on asking them what they think of the game vs. their home in EQ1 once they delve a little further into it. Other then that, things in game are quite quiet. I’ve been working on my “pre-rok” goals, Goudia maxed out her tinkering yesterday, I have 11 collection quests saved up so far for turn in (and I’ll be getting more as I can) and I managed to complete two quests in New Tunaria last night with the help of Shadowgeist boosting up the aa that I still need before RoK.

This morning I’m working on the weaponsmith, trying to hit 55. So far she’s 50% into level 53, so it should be do-able if I can manage to keep myself awake long enough to grind off some rush orders. Ever since Calreth moved his main to Arsenal I’ve been missing his spam in guild events. He moved an alt to TK last night though, so I suppose he’ll still be around in some form or another.