2007

Shorty, Go Home!

stargrace December 9, 2007 1Comment

One of the more amusing quests that came out with RoK, is one of the language quests. This weekend I decided I’d level Arysh some, and get some aa. The easiest way of course through questing. She decided to pick up the three tome quests which are static spawns, one in Kylong plains, and two in Fens of Nathsar. After picking up the pages, turning them in to a collector, each one gives a sub quest (or two) with a few easy objectives. The one in Kylong has you kill 15 skeletons, one in fens has you kill a few cockatrice, and the final one has you feed a froglok some people food. At the end of the froglok language one, Shorty, decides to stick around for a bit, rambling and trailing after you. He doesn’t just trail after you either, he gates with you if you try to shake him off.

And boy does he talk. Almost none stop. He takes off after some amount of time on his own, but no matter what I did the little green shorty refused to leave Arysh’ home. So far the weekend’s been fairly productive. With a Mistmoore Inner Sanctum (MMIS) raid scheduled for this Wednesday, I decided maybe I’d be able to wiggle Arysh onto the raid rather then Goudia, depending on our turn out (or I offered to box). Arysh has been on the stage of SoD where she only needed the 6 pages and the named afterwards, so I talked to Shadowgeist and asked him if he thought we could duo this yet.

I played Goudia and Arysh (Troubador and Warden) and he played the tank, and we managed (Him at level 80, as well as Goudia, and Arysh at level 75) to duo right up to the named (where we stopped for the day and decided we’d do the rest Sunday as I know guild mates need them too). I was impressed. The zone IS still difficult. They still cast dots left right and center, they still stun, adds are still a pain (though we had 4 encounters at one point and still managed to survive) but it was doable. There were other raids running through on their way to MMIS so at times the zone lagged and that wasn’t quite fun, and yes, we did die (though a few times we died on purpose so we could make our way to the back staircase instead of the front doors) but I was still happy and proud that we managed it. Goudia is way at the beginning of SoD, Dasie has hers already and has for a long time now. If there’s a chance of me switching off to my warden I’d gladly take it.

I had the sage make all of Arysh’ spells up to 75, 8 more fire emeralds and she’ll be done, always a good thing. I’m just now starting to get to the good quests with legendary rewards. I haven’t taken her to Jarsath Wastes yet but I want to start working on that shortly. She also hasn’t started the Kunzar Jungle quests, I’ve stuck to Kylong Plains and Fens of Nathsar, aside from that one Crypt of Agony instance run. Sitting at level 75, 50% through it, with 118aa. I’m quite happy. I always did enjoy playing my warden.

Granted there are 100’s of druid types on the server and every second group I hear asking for a healer is looking for plate or chain, but oh well. It’s supposed to be what I want to play, right?

Another full day of Christmas shopping / decorating today, and then some game time. Ah, ’tis the season.

What Happened To Just being.. Nice?

stargrace December 7, 2007 6Comments

I hear the conversations every day on 70-79 channel, “So and so took my named, how dare they!” and similar conversations. They’re met with the typical answers, there’s no such thing as camps in EQ2, you should have been quicker, lock your encounters, etc etc. So today when I was out adventuring on Arysh (who dinged 74 warden) I just couldn’t help but ask myself what ever happened to just being nice.

Typical scenario here. I’ve got a scaled wolf from the Field of Bone charmed. It’s a level higher then me, which means it’s prone to breaking. I wander over to kill some prowlers I need for one (of many) repeatable quests. I spot the named up. Make my way over to it. There’s another druid with a charmed Yeti not too far away, also killing prowlers. I have issues, charm breaks, I’m hurting pretty bad. Eulic from Mayhem (a raid guild on AB) sees all this go down. When my charm breaks, he charms the scaled wolf that I had charmed, and takes down the named with me standing right there (I obviously don’t lock my encounters, I never have).

Sent him a tell, saying that was awfully rude, why hadn’t he just asked if I’d like some help, and grouped up so that we both got the aa (it dropped treasured, I have no idea if it drops anything valuable, I just wanted the aa from the kill). He says it’s fair game, and that’s the way the game is played.

Ok. Well, I understand that there’s a whole persona that goes around with “contested” and named mobs. But what ever happened to just being nice. If you see someone in trouble, why not offer to help. Instead of trying to think only of yourself and snatching that named. It’s just a game after all. The problem partially is, I know these people are friendly to their personal friends, and their guilds, it’s just strangers who they feel they can be rude to. They sent me a tell back saying that my guild was of no importance, and that I couldn’t do anything to ruin their reputation due to the fact that Arsenal was small game on Antonia Bayle. It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not, why does it give people an excuse to be rude and mean.

It seems that people thrive on drama. The latest gossip that runs around the server involves a player sleeping with another players wife in real life. It’s broadcast all over the channels, and the response from the general public at times is just atrocious. That’s a personal matter between two (or three) people, why would you start broadcasting it across channels? Maybe it’s just me, and I just don’t understand something key here. Does that mean I’m looking for a carebear type game where everyone is smiling and happy all of the time? No, of course not. That’d be impossible to start with, and just plain weird.

That’s also not to say that nice things don’t randomly happen, they do. A friend of mine on Najena was grinding crafting writs trying to faction up to be able to afford her 78 and 79 sage books which were going for 4p each. Someone asked her for a few spells to be made, and she apologized, saying she couldn’t make them because she didn’t have the advanced books yet. The stranger paid for the books for her, and tipped her for making the spells as well. Random acts of kindness are out there. Just not enough of it.

Goudia hits 80, what do I do now?

stargrace December 6, 2007 8Comments

Goudia managed to ding 80 last night. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me, I’d been sitting at 79 for over a week now, barely playing the character. There just didn’t seem to be anything at 80 that I couldn’t do at any other levels, so I didn’t push it. Quested with Shadowgeist in Kunzar Jungle, which is still by far the worst zone to me, and for no real reasons other then I have a difficult time finding my way around it. The repeatable quests send you all over, and there are too many repeatables. Every second npc seems to have something he wants you to kill over and over.

Once I’d gotten her to 80 though the question sprung up.. what do I do now?

I’d told myself that one level 80 adventurer was all I’d have. I’d work my crafters. But crafting can only go on for so long before you need a change of scenery. So I ultimately decided that I’d level one mage, one priest, and one scout, to 80. For now. Of course knowing how I am, that’ll change next week. So today I decided I’d work on Stargrace (71 illusi) and Dasie (70 templar). There’s no way I can handle solo questing through all of those again with a templar all alone. It’d take me forever to kill anything. I do own two accounts, and I do enjoy boxing – however, the way I box is both accounts on one computer, and I alt tab between them hitting their hot keys (no macro’s at all) and play each as though they were individual. Of course my computer has other ideas with RoK. I can box in any other zone, I’ve even boxed on raids no problems at all. But the intensity of the RoK zones leaves something to be desired on my poor machine. I’m not even aware of my computer specs but it’s a fairly nice one. The idea of solo questing is enough for me to turn down my graphics until the characters are nothing but blobs in burlap sacks on the screen, and waiting for things to render when I’m standing on top of them. That’s how bad I dread solo questing with a templar.

So this morning I set up my graphic settings, turned the sound off of both accounts (the game runs better that way, go figure) and set out to adventure in Kylong Plains – which Dasie had never been to since the expansion hit. Of course that meant I had to do my sokokar quest. Again. This will be the 6th time I’ve completed the quest, and thankfully no more of my level 70’s need it (except maybe a crafter here and there.. and they can wait). Dasie was at 95aa when RoK released, yes, I slacked on her. She’s now close to 100, and 80% into her level. Servers came down (for nerfs, I’ve been told, but who knows) so I’m just waiting for them to come back up and I’ll continue on my way. Decided that today would be a good EQ2-day, cooking a roasted chicken with stuffing later on.

I moved Dasie and Stargrace from Torrent Knights (my own little personal guild) to Arsenal, which is where Goudia is hanging out. I’m not sure how the guild will survive over the next little while, but we do have raids scheduled for next week starting Wednesday, so maybe we’ll turn around. I hate being spread out in multiple guilds, it’s annoying. Especially if I think someone may need me in the “main” guild. I’ll keep my smaller characters in TK while the bigun’s hang out in Arsenal. We’ll see how it goes.

If anyone else is on AB doing the 71+ grind of quests and wants the company of a templar, let me know. I’m already forming plans to convince Shadowgeist to re-quest all those quests with me again after doing them for himself and Goudia.

Just not Feeling it

stargrace December 4, 2007 12Comments

Lately, I just can’t agree more with posts like this one from Average Joe. You can’t just take a game like EQ2, where we’re all pretty comfortable with the method of leveling for the past 70 levels (sure, we gripe about the ‘grind’ but it’s really not THAT bad) and then implement the method that we see in RoK. It’s as one friend told me, they basically adapted to the WoW method of leveling – except they implemented it more then half way into the game, and poorly at that. There’s a reason the method works in WoW, and why it’s now failing in EQ2.

I’m discouraged logging in and finding only two guild mates on. The length of time it takes me to complete any quests with a healer, and the fact that if I’d like to group, I’m not going to find one for my troubador. Raids who asked for me to play a troubador are now asking for healers. The server log in is atrocious and just plain annoying. The crashes, roll backs, and lack of connectivity, are becoming unacceptable. I’ve praised sony plenty over the past three years, but I’m beginning to seriously question if this is the game for me. I’m actually beginning to miss Vanguard. Yes, the game was filled with bugs, which is why I ultimately quit it, but it was complex. The character models were ugly, but having three areas to level my one character (crafting, diplomacy, and adventuring) was unique. The classes themselves were unique. Having healers with stances, for example. I wish it had less bugs.

I hate the way EQ2’s decided to "wowify" themselves. If I wanted to play WoW, I would. In fact that’s why I have a subscription still active there, for those moments when I need to get away from EQ2 and take a break. Now they may as well both be the same game, with a few variables (pvp, etc). I’m starting to miss the PoA leveling, the SoS, the abundance of instances (Nest, Den, Blackscale, HoF, Vaults) and rewards that were on par with the risks involved. I’m actually tired of getting legendary items for walking 5 feet and hailing another npc in a chain of killing x number of y mobs, and walking 10 feet to another npc, rinse, repeat. DPS classes and even tanks are given a huge advantage in RoK leveling, even classes who are only mediocre dps still leveled fairly fast. At least my bard had track. She could kite. It was slow, but not painfully. My warden at least can do a little dmg and she has her thorn shield. The mystic, slow. Very. The templar, still doesn’t even have her sokokar quest completed yet. I could spend an hour killing Drolvarg alone if she were to solo it. Yes, I know "get a group!" …. ok. EVERYONE is solo’ing. They join together to do the heroic quests, and to complete instances, but other wise, they’re out there on their own. Not interested in a group. So why not duo the quests? Fine, it still takes me and the duo an hour to accomplish things. The quests looked unique when I first saw them, and interesting. However now that I’ve completed over 300 RoK quests, I notice the pattern between them all and how they actually lack creativity. Some of the rewards for quests are also the same as previous quests I’d already completed. I’m sure subscriptions are at an all time high, but unless something changes, and sony acknowledges that there’s an issue, I’m just not sure where I see things going.

Side note. The guild drama. It’s got to stop, soon, I hope. How did things go from being fine and having 24 people easily one day, to having maybe maybe 5 people log in now. Officers who are off completing major quest lines with other guilds and leaving their own behind. The theory of "every man for himself" is just so much clearer now and I dislike it immensely. This game wasn’t supposed to be WoW. That’s why I liked it.

Who Gives a Ratonga’s Ass…

stargrace December 3, 2007 1Comment

Signature I made for Goudia, there was going to be some wise ass comment about giving a rats ass.. but decided to leave it as is for now. Who doesn’t like cheese after all!