Shards of Destiny – Excited?

I love reading up about the game updates that are coming to EQ2, I enjoy the way the world feels as though it is always evolving and changing – and with so many other games on the market these days I think that it’s an essential part of game play. People will grow restless and bored if their online world remains the same year after year.

So game update 53 is just around the corner, supposedly set to go live in September. I am not too excited about the new content being added per say (after all, I haven’t finished Lavastorm yet since its revamp, nor have I explored the order of Rime) but I am excited about a few of the features coming to the game.

The number one feature that I’m excited about is auto mentoring. I’m of two opinions about this particular bit of news. On one hand, I am exceptionally excited because it will mean I can go and mentor down by talking to an npc, and be able to complete quests and raids at a level that won’t turn them all grey. This is fantastic news to complete old quests, kill named that I haven’t killed before, work on quest chains that I’ve never completed. I’m excited. It means Spirits of the Lost may be a potential target once more, not to mention all those other raids that I’ve never managed to do with various characters. I’ve posted numerous posts in the past about how I dislike the fact that in EQ2 you can out level content rendering it all but useless. I miss being able to obtain loot from all levels like EQ or even WoW. You don’t WANT your player base to look back and say they have no reason at all to enter a zone. Ever.

On that same idea, I hate the fact that now people will have even less of a reason to help out their friends and mentor new players. You could typically find all sorts of people willing to help you out if they had not defeated an instance or a boss in a dungeon before because they could mentor you to help out, but with the ability to auto mentor you could just set yourself 10 levels higher then the encounter (rendering it “green” which is easy mode) and defeat it yourself. Whether or not this actually creates any issues will have to be seen, but it’s something that stays on the back of my mind. Maybe the opposite will happen and even more people will mentor down and group together helping one another out. Wouldn’t that be grand!

Being the avid house decorator and owner that I am I was also pleased as punch to hear about the new revamp coming to housing. I believe it’s only a select few houses that are getting updates, but as I look over my collection I’m fairly confident I own at least one of every type of house available, something some where is going to get a face lift.

I hope there’s enough content coming forth to keep people entertained until February. I do have to say I was quite sad to hear that the next expansion is being pushed back from its typical release date – but I know these things take time and the developers schedule is certainly not bound to my personal wants and needs (aww).

We’ll just have to wait and see!