October 2008

EQ2’s Festival of Discord – Simply Amazing

Gnobrin, hanging out in the center of one of the tented areas for the Festival of Discord. I took some time today to wander around the area before events start later on tonight. The opening ceremonies were yesterday, and unfortunately I had a thanksgiving dinner so I could not attend. 

I expected to see a few tents, as I did with the Festival of Unity. 

I did not expect this HUGE fair ground site that I encountered today. Wow. What an amazing time and effort put into this by the players who are hosting this. That’s right, this is a PLAYER run event, where GM’s have graciously come along and aided them in their yearly celebration on one of EQ2’s roleplay servers. Isn’t it amazing to see where creativity will take you?

Again, if you haven’t gone to visit the Festival grounds, I urge you to give it a shot. The roleplay is fantastic, the grounds look amazing, and people put a lot of hard work into running these events. These are the things that make EQ2 home.

Festival of Discord Returns to Antonia Bayle

I wrote last year about the Festival of Discord, a player run event that takes place on Antonia Bayle. Checking out the eq2players front page, I learned that it’s returning this year. 

You can find a map of the festivities here, as well as a calendar of events. 

Antonia Bayle is one of two roleplay servers, and has an amazing community. I’ve also got a level 30 guild over there (I moved to Najena to be with friends, but still have a small number of characters over there) not that we’ll be purchasing a guild any time soon. 

Discord and it’s counterpart the Festival of Unity, are two amazing player run events that GM’s have gotten involved in over the years, adding decorations and a fair-like set up to the grounds in both Commonlands and Antonica. If you’ve never gone before I would HIGHLY suggest you check it out, I’ve gone to the festival of Unity twice now, and I went to the festival of Discord last year also. The passion and heart that these people put into their events is astounding. With the release of guildhalls even more so, there’s a ball and taverns set up as decorators frantically finish their designs for the public. 

Be sure to check out the offical forums for the festival here, you can get a clear idea of all the work that gets put into this, the guilds involved, and the times / locations of each event every day from October 12th to the 18th. 

Remember what I said about community being key in any mmo? This is why I game. It may not be every ones cup of tea, but for me, it’s everything.

Edit: Happy Turkey day or Columbus day or whatever you’re celebrating today!

Since Mythic seems to be so good about fixing things….

I was reading Ogrebears site today (thank you google reader!) and came across this post which really didn’t surprise me, and it’s not the only post like this. One key aspect to ALL mmo’s is community. Some of us find that easier then others. Lets say you’re not a member of CoW (there are a few out there, right?) and you pick up WAR and start randomly playing. How interested are you going to be playing a game where no one talks. This means you can’t ask advice for your class. You can’t easily see guild recruitment messages, you can’t ask someone ‘hey have you seen so and so? I have no idea where I’m going here..’ — you COULD ask these things in says, tells, or in a group, or on the scenario channel, but not out wandering around. 

No one talks. Even in the scenarios I’ve been doing, I rarely see any messages at all except maybe ‘hold this place! Work some defense!’ or other brief messages along those lines. There’s just no public channels for people.

Since plenty of other sites talk about how Mythic is ‘on the ball’ about fixing any and all issues that come along (ie: experience boosts for PvE, for low population servers, bug fixes etc) how long will it be before they notice their game has no welcoming community for the new player. This WILL be a turn off for people. 

Put yourself in the place of someone completely new. It’s a lot different when you start the game in a prearranged guild, or are playing with friends. Not everyone plays the same and some times it takes a bit to get warmed up. The game is so dang lonely at times, you’re left wondering if you’re playing a different version of the game then everyone else and these characters running around are not characters at all but some form of elaborate bot. 

I’m a huge advocate of community being key to any mmo. How much better would it be if folks could put out a “hey I need some help at this PQ” or “Hey we’re getting our asses handed to us in keeping this keep, can we get some help” and actually being able to bond with people outside of their own guild. How are you even supposed to know what sort of player a person is unless you stumble into a group with them and give them more then a second glance as you’re doing a scenario or taking a keep?

Worried about the amount of spam? Well there’s already LOTS of spam out there already and we’ve all found ways to deal with it. Seeing general chatter spam is a lot better then seeing nothing at all.

The Start of a Great Weekend

First of all. Why is a skin care site ripping my Mmo blog posts? As far as I know it’s been years since I talked about the maintenance of high elf skin compared to that of a wood elf. Seriously. I forget whose site I was reading, but I noticed they had a little legal disclaimer at the end of their post, so that any bots trying to take the article would be taking that portion along with it and people would at least know there the original site was. I’d hate to have to do that, but I’m starting to think maybe it’s a good idea. 

Last night, for the first time in a very long time, I worked on RoK quests with Stargrace (who’s been in the 70’s forever now and I had no intentions of leveling her again since every time I did a quest it made me want to gouge out my eyes) and actually didn’t feel the urge to get sick. This is a huge deal to me, I was actually having fun working in Kunzar Jungle, and got some upgrades. I made a list of ‘easy to obtain’ upgrades that I’ll eventually have to get. I also splurged and bought a few masters that were relatively cheap. I’m not sure why I had the sudden urge to start playing her, but I’m happy none the less. 

I wandered around doing faction quests for Kunzar Jungle, trying to make the zone a little friendlier to me. I had also not gotten any of the sokokar posts, and couldn’t use the druid ring, so I got those taken care of. Have I mentioned yet how swell it is to have a druid porter in the guild hall? Well, it is. When we made the decision to get one of those rather then another craft item or a different transportation sort, it was specifically because the druid rings port you a wide variety of places compared to the other methods. There’s also a new druid ring in Darklight woods. There’s Antonica, Commonlands, Darklight Woods, Kelethin, Kylong Plains, Kunzar Jungle, Steamfont, and Butcherblock. The rings may not port to the overrealm, but the antonica druid portal is right beside the wizard spires. 

I noticed SOE snuck a few ‘changes’ into various encounters when they added GU49, and people are not too happy. For one, that last name in Veksar. He spawns two or three adds (I forget the exact number) in his encounter during the fight – and people typically used to mez those each time they spawned, because he also has a nasty AoE that goes off and needs curing RIGHT away. There’s plenty of damage going on in general. Well, now those adds can not be mez’d, and there were some saying they couldn’t be stunned, or rooted, or stifled either. Aside from that encounter, there’s a Veeshan’s Peak encounter that was changed significantly too. 

Re-learning an encounter is not that big of a deal – but not telling people the encounter has been changed is slightly frustraiting and a waste of time for those who didn’t know about it. You head to the encounter thinking everything is the same as always and then 10 seconds pass and you’re thinking to yourself, woah, something is different. 

Last night Najena also had some server issues, something I haven’t seen in quite some time. We crashed twice, and channels messed up for a while. No idea what the cause was, but it was fixed within the hour at least.

Safe travels and happy blogging to everyone, happy turkey day on Monday for those fellow Canadians celebrating too!

 

 

Nomadic Gamer