August 2008

The Million Goblin March

stargrace August 21, 2008 No Comments

Yesterday I managed to complete the Thuuga chain of quests for the fourth time, this time Silhouette being the one to earn the fancy fabled wrist piece. The spell crits are really nice, not to mention the health and power on the item. I adorned it, and bought a few other adornments to try to ensure a little more survivability. I’m not certain yet if it helped that much, but they were just treasured adornments that are easy to obtain.

The screen shot is Silhouette being trained (by the handy shadowknight of course) through the mines to reach the final named that she needed. Sure, I could have killed my way there but what fun is that? The quest is very easy for players to complete, and can be solo’d at least by the classes I’ve completed it with thus far. I wouldn’t want to solo it with a healer since it would probably take all day just to kill through the mines.

Clockwork Gamer created this amazing little guildhall cost calculator, be sure to check their site out and figure out how much status and coin (maybe even someone’s first born thrown in there from the looks of things) your own hall will cost you. I worked out the details for Nostalgia – and was surprised that we will at least be ready by the time the halls go live. The total initial cost to purchase the hall itself as well as our five chosen amenities will be:

121p and 14,000,000 status

The weekly upkeep will only be 1p95g and 130,000 status which is really not too bad at all. The amenities I picked were fairly simple. We obviously need the recall to guild hall item, as well as the banker, a fuel merchant, rush order writs, and I went with an npc who will port to the druid rings since that gives us a variety of areas to head to without splurging on bells and spires and what not. Once we hit guild level 35 (we still need to hit level 30 first, we’re creeping up on 23) we can add two more amenities, again for a cost.

I’m actually not upset about the cost. I know players and guilds who can afford the T3 halls plus amenities. Maybe not the status, but one has to remember that these guildhalls are supposed to be extravagant, they’re supposed to be for those who worked hard and the longer your guild has been around, with dedicated people, the better. Nostalgia has only been active since April, and the EQ2 branch only since May. What we’ve accomplished in the few months has been great, and had we been active since the release of EQ2, we’d be even further along. Incentive for players, I hope.

Goudia Now Sings Sad Songs

stargrace August 20, 2008 No Comments

A screenshot of Grover (Goudia’s pet) looking on quizzically, wondering what they were doing in Qeynos, what had happened to Goudia’s fancy blue cap, and why she was wielding some lower class weapon as opposed to the highly sought after troubador epic.

Could it be?

That’s right. I betrayed my level 80 troubador over to a dirge yesterday.

WHY?!

Well. I actually had some very valid reasons, aside from just being bored of the troubador. I enjoy a few of my other level 80’s more then I enjoy the bard – and while the troubador is quite sought after for raids, the same can not be said at this point in time for general groups. Since I don’t belong to an overly populated guild always running instances, my characters thrive on whatever they can find. Which, for the troubador was surprisingly little. Dirges get a m2 hate transfer choice at level 60 that doesn’t get an upgrade (I discovered that yesterday). They get two forms of rez (single target and group). They get a parry buff (more important then a defense buff which troubs get and is easier for tanks to cap out) and melee procs (seems to be more fighters and scouts these day then mages, and even healers are melee-ing it up). Dirges also get stoneskin, which makes any fight better – troubadors? They get a spell proc (only helpful to those spell casters and a few fighter taunts will proc it), they get jesters, which is nice but so is the 20% increased proc chance from troubs. Nothing about the troubador really stood out to me to make it better in a GROUP situation.

So I betrayed, to be a better group member. Plus why not, I may as well. I did end up spending 80p on loams for all my skills again, and I’ll have to do the dirge epic since my troubador one gets to collect dust in my bank. No, I’m not selling it – just in case. No doubt some where down the road I’ll betray Goudia back. This is not the first time after all.

After making all my skills, and looking through all of my new aa, I’m happy with the choice. I’m still a bard at least, and I’m playing my other characters more these days anyhow. We’ll see how it goes!

EQ2 Guildhall Revision

stargrace August 19, 2008 6 Comments

This just released…

some changes to the guild halls (posted by Rothgar):

Since our unveiling of Guild Halls at Fan Faire we’ve heard lots of feedback, over 60 pages worth! This morning we discussed a lot of this feedback and have decided to make some changes.

1. Zone Art

One of the issues that concerned you was that the Tier 1 guild hall made use of the existing 5-room house. Initially this was added to give us another tier that originally wasn’t in the plan. However, we can certainly understand that the effort and cost involved in obtaining your first guild hall is significant, especially for smaller guilds. Tim “Haohmaru” Heydelaar, our zone art lead, made a huge commitment to guild halls this morning and agreed to building a new 5-room guild hall using the brand new zone geometry and textures that are used in the larger guild halls. He will also be making changes to the Tier 2 guild halls, adding a new atrium and expanding their size slightly over what we showed you at Fan Faire. The Tier 1 and 2 guild halls will still be located inside the city. If you’re concerned about travel, see #3 below.

2. Pricing

For some of the smaller guilds the pricing of entry-level guild halls was a barrier. We’ve decided to leave the pricing of the Tier 3 guild halls alone, but have lowered the price of the Tier 1 and 2 guild hall. Below is the new pricing table.

Tier 1
Purchase: 50p (Lowered from 100p)
Upkeep: 50g, 50k status (Lowered from 1p, 100k status)

Tier 2
Purchase: 250p (Lowered from 500p)
Upkeep: 2.5p, 100k status (Lowered from 5p, 150k status)

Tier 3
Purchase: 1,000p
Upkeep: 10p, 200k status

3. Accessibility

Many people were concerned that guild halls located in other cities would not be very accessible. You will have several methods to get to your guild hall very easily, regardless of its location. First, you’ll be able to purchase a house item from the city status merchant that will allow you to port from your personal house straight to your guild hall. Secondly, we’ve reduced the cost of the “Call to Guild Hall” amenity greatly. It will now only cost 1p, 250k status to purchase instead of 10p, 2 million status. In addition we’ve lowered the recast timer on Call to Guild Hall so you can use it every 15 minutes instead of once per hour.

4. Tradeskill Tables

Another concern was having to purchase amenities for each tradeskill table when you already have them available in your personal home. This made it difficult for small guilds because they’d have to use most of their amenity slots for tradeskill devices. We’ve decided to allow you to place your existing tradeskill tables in the guild hall and have removed them from the amenity list. Now smaller guilds will be able to use those slots for new features like the supply depot and harvester or convenience features like the fuel merchant and writ giver. Keep in mind that this removes 7 amenities so the original count of 40+ amenities at launch is now around 35.

We hope that these changes will have a positive impact and resolve some of the concerns expressed so far. Smaller guilds should have a much easier time getting into a Tier 1 guild hall and now have an easier upgrade path moving into the Tier 2. The amount of upkeep required to maintain a guild hall still greatly depends on the choice of amenities you decide to purchase.

We’re always interested in hearing your feedback so let us know what you think of these changes.

Mythical Updates in Protectors Realm

stargrace August 19, 2008 No Comments

It never fails to happen – once I settle on a main, something comes up that has me playing one of my other level 80 characters. I suppose it’s not that big of a deal, at least I’m playing after all. Right? Last night was no different. I spent most of the evening working on the Thuuga chain of quests for Silhouette. I’ve completed the quest three times already, once for the 80 warden, again for the 80 troubador, and for the 77 templar. Silhouette however, being the huge slacker she is, went without.

The fabled item is really nice though and there’s no excuse not to have it. Before heading off to do that I finished off the Waste Hunter chain of repeatable quests as well. I was hoping for an impressive bit of jewelery like the warden got – but instead my cloth options were forearms and sleeves, both of which I had better of already. Ah well.

I was about to call it a night, since it was already getting close to midnight, when a friend asked if I wanted to tag along on a Protectors Realm run just for fun. I said sure, they were short a healer or two (though I am sure they could have done just fine without me) and off I went. The zone was cleared easily, I didn’t die (thankfully, I always find it embarrassing when I get pummeled by an AoE as a guest on a raid – but maybe that’s just me) and once the final encounter was downed I noticed there was a little bit of loot designated to me. No, not a piece of gear.

It was the first update to my mythical, and I didn’t even know I needed it. I didn’t check ahead of time and had no inclination of ever working on my mythical unless I joined a raid guild. So I examined the little elemental sphere that dropped in my inventory, and ta da, first update done. The next one is Overking, and the final one is the Cinder Queen in Veeshan’s Peek. Since my warden is not even flagged for VP, and it’s rare that anyone really needs a druid, I’m content with this one step, for now.