November 19, 2008

No TSO in Sight for this Ottawa Resident

stargrace November 19, 2008 6Comments

Apparently those polar bears got stuck in snow, or were stopped at the boarder with their bags of video games because as of 7:30pm on the 19th there is no date or time given on when the TSO expansion (retail) may actually be for sale. EBGames claims they MAY get it by Friday, Best Buy has no idea what the game even is, and Furture Shop has none ordered at all.

I wouldn’t mind getting the digital download if it wasn’t for the bear mount with 52% (that’s 62% with aa) run speed. Why did they have to add a USEFUL /claim item to the retail box this year. Why did they have to be DIFFERENT rewards at all. 

Bitter? Sure, a little bit. I have articles about the new expansion due on the 8th with no expansion in sight and no one seems to understand what’s going on. EBGames even told me yesterday after I talked to them that they would have it today. Today they’re claiming they have no idea and I should check in Friday. Sighs. I do get to enjoy reading everyone else’ post on it though, and watching them explore the new zones and the new goodies while I work on my harvesting quest. 

Why does this have to be so complicated. LoTR’s expansion is full on the shelves and so is WoTLK. Maybe this is just a sign. 

Sorry for the rant, it’s rare that I do it but this is one of those times.

A Harvesting We Go

stargrace November 19, 2008 2Comments

 When I first interviewed Sony Dev’s for Beckett MOG about TSO I specifically asked if there would be any incentives to get players out into the older zones. I always disliked how as soon as a new expansion was released, there was 0 reason to continue on through the old content. Their answer sort of confused me, and confused me even more when I actually took a look around TSO and the content offered. 

Quite a few of the dungeons are located in old world zones. This includes Lavastorm, and Everfrost as well as Commonlands. There’s also one huge quest line and while it’s not directly related to TSO it was implemented with GU50 on the same day. 

Of course I’m talking about the fabled cloak for harvesters. I’ve been working on this quest chain (I still don’t have TSO) off and on yesterday and today and I’m actually finding it quite challenging for a few reasons.

Number one, each tier the quest wants you to harvest more and more items and amounts of said items. You start off in T1 harvesting 5 of each item and work your way up stage by stage. I’m on T4 now (Zek and Enchanted lands) and it wants 15 of each item, in each zone. That’s a lot of harvests. 

One life saver while I have been doing this quest has been the gnomish divining rod. This is a tinker made item and it allows you to track nodes, as well as anything else that lays on the ground, shinies and book pages. If you leave the track window open (like regular track) and run around it will show the nodes in the order of proximity to you. So you can leave it up and run around and know if you are at least close to any of the nodes you need. I also used this item yesterday when I was hunting down my carpenter pages. Some liked to hide off to the side and it was getting a little frustrating. 

Aside from the sheer number of harvests you’re required to obtain there is the difficulty in the type of harvests. Don’t have your fishing up quite yet? Well you’ll want to because these quests all require amounts of harvested fish from specific zones. Remember all the times you complained about dens giving out too much meat and not enough pelts? Well now you’ll want those meats and NOT the pelts. Of course they’re no where to be seen. 

It’s nice to see a some what complicated crafter quest. Though I can see how low level adventurers may not be able to complete it since most harvesting areas are populated by aggressive mobs. That could add to the thrill though, having to dodge and duck away from the mean things trying to eat you. Me, I’m thankful that Silhouette is 80/80 already while I attempt this. 

The quest sends you into every tier, and pretty much every old world zone. Last tier I had to harvest from both Nektulos Forest and Thundering Stepps. It’s a lot of fun meandering your way through the forgotten zones and visiting things you haven’t seen in quite some time. Of course there’s still a lot more to go. This quest takes a lot of time and I’m looking forward to that, keeps me out of trouble while I wait for those polar bears to show up. 

The merchant bug from yesterday / this morning has been fixed (thankfully) so people shouldn’t be selling body drops for 3p a shot any more while being gouged on their repair bills. Apparently I was wrong. Checking the MoTD shows that the bug is still in place but is being worked on. I expect that the lag will still be there tonight when the servers fill up but that’s a population thing and I’m glad to see it. I wish there had of been a little more lowbie content to draw some new players into the game, but I can’t be picky. A few people that I know have returned for the expansion, here’s hoping they stick it out this time around.

TSO Launches – And So Do The Bugs

stargrace November 19, 2008 6Comments

If you read the official forums at all, you start to wonder whether anyone out there really enjoys the game they’re paying to play or if they just enjoy ranting in a public place. Wading through the forums does bring to the attention that although the servers were some what stable last night (as in, they didn’t completely crash despite the issues they had) for TSO’s launch, it’s not without it’s bugs. 

There’s one particularly large bug that in the past would have warranted the servers coming down. Such is not the case this time around which means more and more people are taking advantage of it. You may notice in game that merchants are buying your trash items off of you for a LOT less then they used to. On the flip side, some items that used to be worth 10g or so are now worth 3p depending on the merchant you use. Menders are charging anywhere from a few gold to repair your gear to upwards of 8p. 

Then of course there is the issues with lag, crashing, and instances being unavailable. There are all the characters who now live in “HOUSING UNKNOWN” when you’re trying to buy from them on the broker. 

There’s an uproar over how many void shards you need to get gear, and the grind associated with it, as well as the fact that this expansion SOE decided to not add the +90 days that every other expansion came with. Not a game breaking deal but it was something customers had grown accustomed to for the last four years and they’re a little bewildered at why it changed now. 

Channels are no better. People complaining about everything from why their dire bear looks like a warg with a different head, to out right demanding their money back and how as a two boxer they’ve been left in the cold since everything is too hard. 

Lets not forget that the character transfer service has been down for months now, and they’re transfering by hand one request at a time. The number of posts about this issue is astonishing, especially since people are still willing to pay $50 for a service that doesn’t work. 

Best bet? Avoid the forums until things calm down, and in my case, selective reading. Hopefully things get fixed. The game was pretty much unplayable for a large potion of my friends last night, and half of them decided to log early for the night and just wait the rush out. 

I have my fingers crossed that tonight is better then last night, going to be dragging Nostalgians into the craft instances (as long as the polar bears show up with my copy of TSO).

Edit: Forgot to add two more to the list. If you find you can not chat in game – right click your chat window, and set your window settings to frame: none. This will fix it. Also, if you find you’re unable to partake in your world wide class channels that is because they’ve renamed some channels and they are server only. You’ll have to check the forums and see if there’s been a new channel assigned. For example guk.coercer no longer works, it’s their server specific channel.

What do You Mean you don’t own TSO Yet?!

stargrace November 19, 2008 1Comment

The polar bears who were scheduled to bring me my copy of TSO were stuck in the freak snow storm we had here in Ottawa yesterday, and no retail outlets were selling TSO. In fact some didn’t even know what TSO was as they stood dumbfounded at the counter wondering if TSO was some makeshift phrase for WoTLK. 

Alas, I won’t be getting my copy of EQ2’s newest expansion until later today. This may be a secret blessing in disguise though as I listened to channels last night of everyone else having fun (or not so much fun) in the expansion. The server was heavily racked with lag. Instances were up and down, and it took pretty much everyone 10+ minutes to zone anywhere. Not to fear though! There was still lots I could do even without TSO. I figure starting the content a day or two late means an extra day of interest while everyone else burns themselves out. 

So what is there to do if you don’t own TSO?

Well, number one there are the new recipe books for carpenters in The Village of Shin. If you hang around the Nuwin house (I may have that name wrong) you’ll notice pages fluttering around. If you’re lucky everyone will be so caught up in the expansion and in the other pretties they won’t notice it, because let me tell you 10 crafters all hunting for 2 pages in a collection of 7 every 2-5 minutes can get quite crowded. 

It’s completely worth it though as it allows you to make some very nice new furniture with the village of shin theme to it. It’s also not apart of TSO, it’s part of GU50, so you don’t need the expansion for it. I also picked up a new harvester quest in The Village of shin that requires a lot (and I do mean a lot) of harvesting. Enough harvesting to keep anyone happy for hours on end. There is ONE down side to this quest!

EVERYONE and their dog is out there harvesting, making low level zones crowded. I took a peak into Oakmyst forest and people seemed to have suddenly forgotten that there are other zones that also supply these harvests. Try TD or Greater Faydark or Darklight Woods if your server has suddenly become populated with people who are harvesting. The zones are far larger and the nodes friendlier. They may even take you out for dinner first. 

If that’s not enough to keep you busy while you frantically wait for EBGames to call you about a preorder, then take a look at your character select screen. If it looks anything like mine it will say the following:

Your characters are receiving 30% adventure bonus for having 3 max level characters. Your characters are receiving 50% crafting bonus for having 5 max level characters. 

That’s right! Lets SPEED UP the process of leveling for those who have done it time and time again (so we get bored FASTER!). I had really hoped that new character slots would come along with this expansion, alas it appears that I’ll be keeping my second account open a little bit longer if I want to give in to those alt cravings. Because RoK quest grinding is a complete turn off to my play style, I took my 51 bruiser and my 73 defiler and headed off to Steamfont Mountains to mentor a 37 ranger (Shadowgeist doesn’t have his copy of TSO either, it was alt night needless to say). I also claimed my 5 year veteran reward. I never understood why 

We recieve so many experience boosting potions for having our accounts longer then anyone else. By the time five years rolls around you don’t need those things any more. My bank is absolutely filled with potions that I will never use. 

Oh, and if you happen to have gotten TSO last night (lucky) you will notice that this expansion does NOT add the free 90 days like every other expansion that has been released. This was addressed in the forums, so if you see other people also wondering where their free days are, they’ll have to keep playing. I’m not sure why they changed them this expansion, but there you have it. 

In the end, I still had a fun night playing. Ardwulf was on (also combating the long zone times) and Kasul was on after a larger download, so I didn’t have anyone in guild talking about how awesome TSO was. Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to round up Tipa and Kasul and we can head to some crafting instances. I did manage to peek at the new merchants, and that Unicorn for 10 tokens is calling my name.