Only Halflings Need Apply

I meant to play EQ2 last night. I created the level 73 spells for my defiler who had gotten her level earlier in the day, and I had every intention of logging in and finding something to do, inching my way perhaps towards level 74. I had not logged in long before all that changed. 

It was all HER fault. Again. Reading the Nostalgia chat channel last night you’d have felt the pull and I like any others were unable to resist the lure of this siren’s call. She was having FUN, and I wanted to have FUN too and before I knew it I had hit subscribe to my EQ1 account. 

Yup. That’s right. I was minding my own sweet innocent business and Tipa started talking about how awesome these ‘hirelings’ looked. How she was going to find a little halfling gentleman to hold her hand fight for her and take the brunt of any hits. I wanted a piece of that pie too. So I resubscribed to EQ1, patched for an hour (it’s been a while since I played) and dug up my old UI which was (surprisingly) updated for the newest expansion Seeds of Destruction (which I ended up with a free copy of, so how could I NOT subscribe?). 

I logged in my druid and we went to play in Griegs End, experimenting with the new toys tank. Wow. That’s the only thing I could think of to say. The hirelings work AMAZING and I think they’re a huge help for players who may not be end game yet or who are unable to get a full group and who need a little ‘help’ getting there – for no other reason then the fact that this is a 10 year old game and the population (while it’s still quite larger actually on Luclin) it’s not what it used to be. 

Kanad decided to log in and we headed to Plane of Storms to see how the mini-tank held up there. He wasn’t much of a talker but he was quite easy to heal. We did have him completely buffed up (thank gawd you don’t need an aa for that) and at one point or another we found ourselves with 4-5 adds. He taunted them off of whoever shouldn’t be tanking (that would be everyone) and though folks did drop down to around 40% health or so, we had no deaths and things went pretty smoothly. My cleric managed to ding 61 in our brief trip (granted, she was 97% into her level when I had set her to aa only) and 30% or so into it. 

Since Nostalgia The Guild has been tank-less for a little while now, these hirelings seem perfect for us. Of course, we’d love to have a REAL tank in there as opposed to an artificial one, but it’s nice to know that the Friday night adventures won’t come to a stand still because we lack a class (or two). Looks like I’ll be re-joining the Friday night fun as well. I had stopped just because I didn’t feel right spending $15 on a subscription for a game I played once a week, but perhaps with these hirelings (which you can read more about in more detail at West Karana of course) I’ll feel a little more inclined to play. I had a LOT of fun last night, and I’m looking forward to more. Dang that Tipa and her ‘fun’ in MMO’s.