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.
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!). Haha, that was my take on it as well. I tend to mess around a bit and then an alt will totally take my fancy and I’ll play her like crazy. Yeah, I like to level quickly but it did seem like the curve is sort of the wrong way ’round.
But I have to admit, a friend of mine who only plays one character is now thinking about an alt because he’ll get the bonus and “it won’t be such a grind” – so I guess it’s them that they are aiming it at.