Moving on Up

The disciple hit 19 last night, after working on the most annoying quest I’ve ever worked on. Growlius and I were sent to some mines in Misthaven to collect belts from locals, apparently Misthaven had a shortage and if we didn’t agree to this pants everywhere would drop. After killing well over 200 miners, and both of us needing 3 more belts, they suddenly decided to stop dropping. Ok, it wasn’t suddenly at all, nothing is sudden after spending a few hours there diligently working away at the quest. We only needed 15 total. This quest sucked. It’s the first time I’ve actually grown so frustrated with a quest that I finally just gave up. We gated out and maybe we’ll work on it another time. We both got a full level of experience in there, and when you’re only getting .5% a kill that’s just sad.

We also managed to finish the URT chest and leg pieces, so I’m no longer sporting an ugly green breast piece, but a dark purple one. At least it matches my legs. I got a few crafting levels and did some quest in Halgarad that rewarded me with 3 T2 rares. I did this quest on 3 of my crafters, since I could easily gate home and just walk one chunk over. I needed those rares in my first quest for a red item (much like an epic item) which I was ecstatic to get. Sure, it’s a crafting item, but red is red (the only gear higher is purple, much like mythical and there’s only anniversary gifts that are purple).

I couldn’t find the patch notes myself, but apparently people are exceptionally upset over GU4 that’s supposedly up at the end of this month. What I heard over the course of yesterday made me worry for the game. Number one, they’re adding helm graphics. Well, that’s great but very few people are going to walk around wearing helmets. We don’t use them in EQII, they’re not used in WoW, if anything there’s options to turn them off, not mmo’s creating options to turn them on. In direct response to the public getting helmets- they’ve decided to lower the amount of facial combinations you can make. At release, Vanguard boasted one of the most unique character customizations out there, and they had it. Everything from the arch of the eyebrow to the puffiness of the cheeks and the size of the breasts. In order to cut down the work getting helms in was, they’re removing a bunch of the customization. Bad move.

They’re also adding the MUCH anticipated flying mounts. Everyone who’s been playing Vanguard talks about these items, they want them probably more then anything else I have heard about. There are supposedly two being added. One will end in a raid, and the second one is raid only (as in, it can be obtained in a raid only). Now, realize that all my information is second hand from channels and I’m not sure how much actually holds any water, but that just doesn’t sound right. Have they not learned anything from EQII who has both group versions and raid versions of pretty much all their main quest lines now?

Vanguard works like EQ in the fact that content does not trivialize. Sure you won’t get experience any more, there’s a threshold for that, but if you want to go to the ant mine and take down the queen at level 50 (and gank it from a bunch of lowbies who worked really hard to get to that spot) then you’re more then welcome to, and loot the item that comes from the mob, and sell it on the broker or decon the item into a rare resource. Of course plenty of people spend their time farming and hanging out in known named locations specifically for this. So the next update is doing two things. Number one, named (boss) loot will be BoP (bind on pickup) ALL named loot, that is. Secondly, you’ll be unable to decon boss loot.

Hmms. Not exactly a bad change, but it’s the start of a slippery slope. Vanguard’s the closest thing to EQ out there (in game play, not in the way the world looks) and a majority of the people I have come across play VG straight from EQ. If they start changing things too much or continue to head down the slippery slope, they’ll loose those people (and I’ll have to spend even more time then I do now listening about how great EQ was. I KNOW how great it was, I was there!).

They are also changing the way people get dusts. I wasn’t sure of the particulars but it had crafters in a huge huff. Enough so that Silius himself (a crafting dev I imagine, his name is on the mythical craft bags we can claim) stepped into the channel to ask what people were saying. Something about them being mob drop or raid drop only if they were rare I think, instead of being able to decon them (to decon something is just like to transmute, you have the chance to decon for resources, or dust, and have a chance to fail. There’s no skill involved though, and anyone can do it with a vendor sold kit).

Those were the changes I heard most about. Again I haven’t actually seen a list, so I didn’t get to hear about anything GOOD that’s changing to Vanguard. Except the character models are apparently going to be changed in skeleton so that they’re easier to render. When they get that make over VG was promised I’ve no idea.

I’m still having plenty of fun, guild’s going strong, and there’s been absolutely no drama. We have our steady 5-15 people on nightly and I can’t stress enough how great it is to play with them. Even if we’re not a raiding guild. I’m still having a blast, which is important.