May 2010

Not Exactly Excited

stargrace May 13, 2010 12Comments

While the choice of gems in the above picture may not exactly be something you’re into, we all love free things! EverQuest II has a very short promotion right now where players can claim these items from the station marketplace for no cost – and you can’t really complain TOO much, since they’re free. This is a pretty good marketing tactic, although I’d rather have a choice of free things to claim that’s just me. Players who have perhaps never opened the market window before will be drawn to do so. Those who were not even aware of it existing suddenly have a reason to peek at the other goodies that are located in there. Will it increase sales? Probably.

There is another promotion much like this one taking place on the days around the release of Halas, an ice cat that will be ‘free’ in the marketplace for players to claim. That one I’m quite excited about, even though I haven’t shown much enthusiasm for Halas in general.

Why am I not excited about Halas?

• It’s a starter zone, and I can create no more characters thanks to the very strict “7 or 12” character limit depending on your subscription plan.
• I have no motivation to grind aa since I have everything I want on my main character, and SOE scrapped the idea to add an extra 20 aa so that players could finish out their lines.
• Halas is great (starter zone) and with it comes two new raid zones. Except I no longer raid, so that means for players like me there is very little about this update to get excited about. A starter zone and raids. No mid-level content.

I think that I’m simply in a phase right now where I’m bored of EQ2. I’ve been playing other games (EVE and WoW) and content doing so. No, I’m not leaving EQ2, I never do, but it’s been a while since I’ve taken a break from it and I’m embracing the idea while I have it.

There are a few things I would love to see implemented that would refresh this burnout feeling I have but number one would have to be:

• Allow players to gain thousands of aa even if it’s for meaningless goals. Examples of these would be removing the racial abilities and character traits and allowing people to grind aa towards them. Things like Enduring breath, extended food, drink, poisons, and potions. Allowing characters to select more then one craft default. Allowing us to grind aa towards innate run speed. Silly little things that we all know are just a meaningless grind but keep us motivated and working towards a goal. Currently, in EQ2, if you are not a raider, once you hit level 90 (unless you’d like to constantly grind battlegrounds) the only thing left to do is create a new character. What happens when you’ve created all of the characters you possibly can.

Perhaps I’m a little bitter this morning, but in the mean time EQ2 is simply on the back burner for me. Though I did add another 6 books to my player written book collection, which was fantastic. 326?! Yes please!

Making A House A Home

stargrace May 10, 2010 0Comment

It’s not that surprising that like a lot of players out there, when I’m not out adventuring or doing old quest chains (which is what I tend to do a lot of the time) I enjoy decorating. Making “my” own personal space in the game, even if it is just in an instanced home (or guild hall) that 99% of the player population will never see. It’s something I pride myself on (as anyone who has been a long time reader of this blog knows) and something that I greatly enjoy.

Lately I’ve been working on making the guild hall on Antonia Bayle seem more like a home, and less like a massive empty hall. While Oasis hosts my T1 hall (Dragon’s Flight) Antonia Bayle is home of my T2 guild hall, Torrent Knights (random tangent, whoever decided to create the guild “The Knights Torrent” a month or so ago, I’m flattered, but dislike that our names are so similar). The T2 hall is GIANT compared to the T1 hall, and while I do enjoy it quite a bit it also means a LOT more space to work with to try and design it into something.

Downstairs has been fairly simple, there are a number of smaller rooms clustered around one ‘central’ room, sort of like bedrooms. Each one has been designated to the founding members of TK (who also happen to be members of Nostalgia for those who remember from EQ1) so that entire floor is mostly taken care of. The ‘entrance’ is pretty self explanatory, and I’ve set aside a room for a library. We’ve also got a crafting area, and other NPCs set up like broker, banker, etc.

That still leaves one entire (rather large) side of the hall to decorate, and I have not decided what to do with this portion yet. I also have to keep in mind that there are a few other people who use the hall, so it’s not just about what I want to see, but what would everyone enjoy.

Coming up with these plans and ideas for decorating is something that really pulls me into a game, and makes it my own. In order for a game to have ‘staying’ power, I really need these personal little touches to draw me in. Something unique, so that I can call it my own.

How about you?

A Huge Thank You

stargrace May 9, 2010 1Comment

Last week I spoke about how I had finally managed to reach my lofty goal of obtaining 300 player written books. Not only that, but thanks to the wonderful community, I have (as of the time of writing this) not only reached it, but surpassed it by 21 books. I suppose my next goal will be to reach 400+ books, or perhaps even 500 as time goes on. This project started out fairly small but has grown by leaps and bounds, and I just wanted to extend an enormous thank you to everyone who has helped me out by adding a book (or two or three) to my collection. Even those who simply put their works up on the broker so that others may purchase them.

Thanks to these player created works of art I have been able to travel through all kinds of Norrathian history, and read about their experiences. It is one thing to read the lore of the game as written by the developers, and quite another to read it as written by a player.

A giant thank you to everyone who has donated books to me over the past little while, you know who you are. If you’re interested in reading the books for yourself, PLEASE don’t hesitate to head to North Freeport on the Antonia Bayle server, the mage tower (bottom floor) where the magical housing is. You’ll find my Norrathian Museum there under the name of Ellithia.

Thank you all again.

For a complete list of the books I currently own, please feel free to check out my “Player-Written Books” section, I update it daily.