2009

Exclusive Interview with EQ2 Team

stargrace March 11, 2009 1Comment

Finally, it’s up!

A month ago I was granted an amazing opportunity to fly down to San Diego (all the way from Ottawa Ontaio) and interview various developer teams who work for SOE (EQ,EQ2,VG, and lets not forget the Community team!) – it was an incredible experience. Aside from celebrating the 10th anniversary of EverQuest in the latest issue of Beckett MOG (Massive Online Gamer), Beckett has posted the EQ2 team interview up for people to read. Keep your eyes open for future interviews (there’s still the VG one as well as an interview with Rich Waters, and the Community team) posted under their news section!

Read the exclusive interview here

Gaming

EQ2 Lavastorm Revamp (Shameless Plug)

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

I recently got to partake on a guided tour of the new changes happening in Lavastorm for MMORPG.com – and you can read all about it on their web site in this post here. It was a lot of fun, and the changes are quite exciting even if they are getting postponed for the next little while.

When they finally do get released, I’m sure it will be a blast!

Gaming

Oceangreen Hills, and Ding 78

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

After the fall of the Combine Empire, the majority of humankind spread out and occupied the center of what was then called Tunaria. These humans lived in small villages upon the fertile plains of Karana and in an area along the western coast called the Oceangreen Hills.

I’ve owned Seeds of Destruction since it released in late October, but I’d never set foot in it until yesterday. Sure, I took advantage of the mercenary and I saw everyone off leveling and having fun, but I stayed firmly planted in current-day Norrath while that happened. First thing I have to say, the music is incredible. I wish there were a CD compilation of the music for SoD, all of it is great. The second you step into Time and head through The Void the music just rocks. When you stare off into the sky and see Veeshan sprawled across, dead, it’s just very humbling.

There is (of course) a progression chart for SoD, which you can find on Zam here. There are missions (both solo and group) given out for various factions as you work through the zones and repair Norrath. Such a daunting task.

We picked up some solo quests that reward faction and another currency, Chronobines. I’m not sure what they’re used for yet, but I’m sure it’s spells and / or gear.

We worked on:

Tabron Caulria:

Each quest involves the infected and diseased creatures that are found all over Oceangreen Hills. The second quest was a huge pain because it required some dust off of skeletons that simply didn’t want to spawn. As we adventured through we also managed to kill two named who dropped some pretty nice gear – nice for us at least. Items in SoD have +700 hp on them these days, so when the lower end stuff has 400 or so, it’s still nice (even though not amazing).

We headed over to the Filed of Scale shortly afterwards to check out the zone and see how hard things hit for. It’s always exciting for me to head to a new expansion that I’ve never played in before (granted, almost everything that’s been released in EQ for the past four years is relatively new to me still). The mobs hurt, they hurt bad. The zone itself was awesome though, armies lined up and about 400 npc fighting each other. We found a little section of land to set up a camp on, and spent a little time there before heading off to a hot zone where my necromancer managed to land herself level 78! I’m so excited about finally hitting level 80, I’m sure the climb to 85 will be very slow, but I don’t mind. For the first time ever I may actually hit the level cap in EQ. Scary!

Gaming

My Welcome into Seeds of Destruction

stargrace March 11, 2009 0Comment

You say, ‘Hail, Zebuxoruk’

Zebuxoruk says ‘So you have finally come, to see again the ignominious end of beloved Norrath. Can you hear me, Druzzil? Are you there, Solusek? I am free of my cage. The language of the gods is my own, as are my many thoughts, culled and refined from a thousand million years of ongoing imprisonment. Yet there is no mana to empower my will, nor worshipers to sustain me. Norrath has been destroyed, sundered into [dust].’

You say, ‘Dust?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘I saw many things as I lingered in my cage. Armies of the unsavory pantheon, and their ignorant opponents, tearing the world apart, breaching the passage of days from What Was to What Is. See noble Veeshan, sprawled dead in the heavens. See the clockworks of Time sprung and broken. The Veil of Order ripped away again and again, delivering [Norrath] and yet also destroying it.’

You say, ‘Norrath?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘The world has gone, the planes are fading away, and all of you are but orphaned echoes of a dead time, doomed to endless rebirth in the stomach of a beast whose length is measured in aeons. Still you’ll try to save what can never be saved, to redeem for yourselves a tiny amount of illusion that the universe is not as it is. Gaze upon the grave of Veeshan, the lifegiver dragon, and know the [truth] of my words.’

You say, ‘What truth?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘You have done nothing, yet you are responsible! For all of this! You, the innocent, for despite your denials you are powerless to preclude yourselves from involvement in the greater tragedy, the hideous fate which sweeps away all memory, all context, until only the echoes of that mighty struggle remain. Know that the [corpse] of Norrath still bears the many marks of your intervention.’

You say, ‘A corpse?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘So predictable, you mortals. Set a problem before you and you must solve it; give you a chance and you will take it. Even when you confront the grandest context of your actions, still you leap to action with hardly a second thought. Have you ever given yourselves to the possibility that perhaps death is a better [alternative] to eternal fighting, and endless destruction?’

You say, ‘What alternative?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘If I had known what the ultimate outcome would be I would never have tried to give mortals the secrets I discovered. No, that was indeed a mistake. But perhaps I listen only to the voice of my own purposes, perhaps throughout the unknowable length of my imprisonment, I have lost forever the ability to empathize with those mortals I once sought to [aid] with the powers of the gods.’

You say, ‘What Aid?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘Know that it is futile to tamper with time. You gain nothing, for opening the timescape to your own intrusion opens it also for others. But you should know this, for you have already been through these portals hundreds of times, at least in my experience. What are You? What am I? The difference between us is meaningless. You are doomed to repeat the tragedies of time, and I am doomed to witness them. If you still choose to try and undo what has been wrought upon Norrath, I shall repeat these words yet again, yet again, yet again. ‘The Portals [beckon]. Do as you will’.’

You say, ‘They beckon?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘There, in times past, you may find ways to restore your [context], if ever it was truly that valuable.’

You say, ‘What context?’

Zebuxoruk says ‘The destiny of Norrath sits in peril as long as the enemy’s power is undiminished, in what was once called Oceangreen Hills. There must you re-establish the balance.’

So it was that I headed to Oceangreen Hills.

Gaming

Veeshan’s Peak, and Epics

stargrace March 10, 2009 3Comments

Yesterday I wrote a little about how odd it was to experience things in EQ2 first before finding them in EQ, and I had yet another strong encounter with this. It was only a few months ago that I did a dungeon guide on Veeshan’s Peak (EQ2 version) for Beckett, explaining the named encounters that you’d run into and a little bit about what it would take to defeat them – or at least what each encounter did (without giving too much away). I’d never been to Veeshan’s Peak in EQ – though I had killed plenty of Mistmoors friends so apparently I was amiable with the Ring of Scale. At least on my enchanter. The necromancer didn’t fair as well and after one kill (the dragon pictured to the left) she was agro to the entire zone. Hard penalties for killing dragons! Ultann, Ninga and I decided to head to VP and see if we couldn’t get a few clicky pretties that drop. I’m not sure about all the other servers but Drinal is pretty heavily camped, all of the PoP gods, and a good number of the Luclin named (Grieg’s End, the named in Umbral, etc) Trak is also pretty camped, as well as Seru and others. We did manage to find Maestro up, but no Innoruuk. Anyhow, it sort of helps that you take such huge faction hits for slaying dragons, as the entire zone was up with all of the named. We decided to only kill a few of the mighty creatures before calling it a day because it was annoying to camp fire around the zone in order to avoid as many faction hits as we could. Nocbot and Kameeko (the two amiable) stood far away and out of combat, while Ninga, Minxes, and Ultann pounded on the dragons.

We killed Hoshkar, Silverwing, and Druushk. The lute on the right was from Silverwing, and I giggled when I saw it. We didn’t have a bard in the group, but it of course made me think of the EQ2 halfling bard, the famous Tipa. It would have been a nice twink item for Ninga’s bard had we been able to drag him into the zone easily. The necromancer also managed to get herself a clicky staff, we all giggled at the graphic though, it’s just a straight wooden stick. Very drab compared to what we were all expecting.

Afterwards Ninga headed to bed (sleep is important) and Ultann and I decided to work on the enchanter 1.5 pre-quest. It would be easier just to finish doing the 1.0 I think. You need to head to Veksar and gather shards (that only drop VERY rarely from the mobs in the theater) and spawn the dragon. I remember doing this once before but the zone is now very grey to me and it was really slow. The respawns were also slow, and we spend most of the time seeing how large of a train we could gather and fight all at once. After a few hours there not a single shard dropped and I decided this morning it’s probably just easier to finish off my enchanter 1.0 then it is to do the pre-quest for the 1.5. Hopefully I can get all of that completed before too long, we’ll see how it goes.

I also did a little crafting yesterday, working on my spell research. It’s expensive. It’s long. I did get three skill ups with over 100 combines. I suppose that’s a good thing? I still love crafting in EQ but wow when you miss out on an expansion or two you really get left behind.

Today I believe we’re going to explore Seeds of Destruction a little bit. Not everyone had the expansion until yesterday, but now we’re all sporting it as well as the two boxed accounts. One thing we certainly want to do is to do the progression quests in order to upgrade the mercenary that we can purchase. I haven’t set foot in any of SoD yet aside from those mercenary, and it should be a lot of fun. That, combined with working on my enchanters epic of course. I’ve been working on that for so many years now it would be fantastic to finally finish.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Exclusive Interview with EQ2 Team

EQ2 Lavastorm Revamp (Shameless Plug)

Oceangreen Hills, and Ding 78

My Welcome into Seeds of Destruction

Veeshan’s Peak, and Epics

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