Are you curious about the population of EQ these days? Did you want to try out the latest progression server that opens on the 15th of this month? Well, SOE has been kind enough to activate closed accounts to give you that opportunity. My EQ account is currently active but it will be nice to poke around on my 2nd account which has been closed for some time. Anyone else plan on taking advantage of this? I’m looking forward to exploring the Fippy Darkpaw server!
Are you ready to relive the greatest memories that you’ve ever had in EverQuest? On February 15, 2011 you can roll a new character and jump into the Fippy Darkpaw Progression Server and race through Norrath starting with the legendary first three continents and planes. To get you started, we are thrilled to invite you to come back to play for FREE from 2/10/2011 – 2/21/2011.
It’s that time of year once again, where we annoy and disgust our closest friends by drooling all over our latest love interests. EQ2 started their Valentines Day celebrations this week although it was not without glitches. There is a long list of patch notes for today about them, in fact. Just one problem, the issues that I was experiencing don’t seem to be common nor are they listed here. I use the streaming client and I am unable to see any of the new Erollisi Day items – this includes the gazebo, the new divider, the crafted books, tables, chairs, and candles. I posted on forums but no one got back to me about any of the issues nor did I see anyone mention that they had the same problem so I really have no idea how to fix this. I’ve scanned twice without any luck. Hopefully the patch today brings some light to the matter. The items are in my inventory, they’re just not able to be placed / seen.
If you’re interested in a rundown of the events for 2011 you can find some great write-ups over on Eq2.wikia:
My Romantic Reputation
Shortly after you log in this Erollisi season, you will receive the quest My Romantic Reputation.
Your Secret Admirer
Once again your admirer is back, mailing you a fresh-cut rose. This will help you get started on My Romantic Reputation and earning Titles of Love (see below).
Since I skipped Erollisi Day last year almost all of the quests were new to me, and I had a fun time completing them all. I didn’t experience any of the other bugs that players had such as crashing in Halas or having issues completing quests – but again I’d really like to be able to SEE my rewards.
Do you have any special in-game plans for this Erollisi Day? Let me know in comments!
Posted above is the 2nd EQ2 developer chat regarding DoV which is due to release February 22nd (pushed back from February 8th). There is still an NDA in effect for the expansion, but I wanted to talk a bit about what we know so far. We learned from the first dev chat that there will be an in-game calender added. I am incredibly excited about this as it’s a feature that I’ve /feedbacked numerous times while playing. From what we’ve been told it will be able to track things like the Moonlight grotto events, and you’ll be able to add guild events to it. You can liken it to the WoW calendar that they’ve had in game for quite some time. What surprises me is that it wasn’t added when the EQ2 guild window underwent a revamp. In specific the guild window allows you to track “DKP” and assign numeric values to each member in the roster. It’s not very fleshed out and I don’t know if any guilds actually USE this feature aside from goofing around but it’s there none the less. I think adding a calendar at that time would have made sense, but it’s better late than never.
Flying mounts – I’m actually not excited about these, for a few reasons. Number one I’ve spent a lot of time collecting ‘ground’ mounts, and once flying is introduced it’s going to make those worthless (I could be wrong here, this is just me stating an opinion). I’ve also considered a lot of the EQ2 zones as being ‘flat’ with very little that I would ever need to fly over in order to get around. I realize that Velious zones will be tailored to suit this new form of transportation but I just don’t see it as a big deal.
Public quests really interest me and I’m curious about how well they’ll scale up and down as well as the basic mechanics. There are many spells I have as a healer that I can’t use outside of a group, so I wonder how the game will accommodate that. I also wonder how participation will be rated, and if they’ll even be popular in a game like this. We’ll just have to see!
Are you excited about DoV? What part are you most excited about?
For me personally, at the moment – it’s crafting. I’m looking forward to a new epic quest chain, new recipes, and owning multiple homes. As for the rest, well. We’ll just have to see when the expansion releases.
A fair number of my friends have already written glorious posts about Star Trek Online’s latest episode titled “The Vault” so if you want a good read with information that actually makes sense (as opposed to my ramblings) be sure to check out Tipa, BlueKae, and MMO Gamer Chick and their write ups. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but it was a lot of fun, although I found the reward a little lacking. It’s a ship device that launches level 9 (for me at least, no idea if rewards vary or upgrade based on player etc) ships that fight for you. The item only has 20 charges, so once they’re used up that’s it.
The experience on the other hand was awesome and I managed to hit Lieutenant 10 which means I am just one small level away from 11 – and tier 2 ships. It will be my first promotion (I don’t count moving from Ensign to Lieutenant as a real promotion since that happens as soon as you’re done the tutorial) and I’m pretty excited about it. Yesterday was a nice glitch-free play session, and I think I’m finally beginning to understand things a little better although I can still never remember the names of weapons/gear/places and I don’t speak the “game language” at all so I end up fumbling around talking about “that thing over there” and pointing while waving my arms.
Missions are broken into categories and I’ve noticed there are a few public quest types. I’ve had a lot of fun with public quests no matter the game they seem to be implemented in and it sort of surprised me to see them in STO. You may consider this the lazy mans method of grouping since you’re not actually forced to communicate or group up with anyone that you don’t want to, but you’re still all working towards a common goal.
I inched my way to Lieutenant 8 this weekend and learned a lot more about what I should be doing in game. Sadly my learning was also hampered by some pretty annoying bugs in an area I was attempting to do missions in. One required me to deliver products to a planet in need – you may be familiar with this quest called ‘The needs of the many” the problem is there appears to be a respawn timer for you to be able to help planets. Plus it took me an exceptionally long time of scanning in the Delta Volantis Sector just to find a place with a planet to aid. Once I received the message that I should go help I entered only to fly around in lazy circles. Turns out they didn’t really need my help after all.
In that same sector I was helping a friend scan down and explore different locations. One place we were sent to had a ground mission that started off wrong right off the bat. We were there, but our bridge officers were no where to be seen. Well, that’s not exactly true, we could see where they SHOULD have been standing on the mini map. We just couldn’t actually SEE them. Our mission was to clear out groups of Klingons, so we decided even though we couldn’t see our bridge officers we’d attempt to do just that. Except it wasn’t just our bridge officers who were lost under the terrain, it was also the Klingons. It’s really hard to fight things that you can’t see. We knew we were surrounded, but we may as well have been fighting ghosts. The one saving factor was that our bridge officer ghosts could see these new Klingon ghosts, and we could target through them. It was a lot of melee combat that ignores shields and after dying a few times we decided the ghost Klingons and bridge officers were really not worth it, and called it a night.
Despite the bugs I still had a lot of fun. I answered questions for Q’s son (thank you Tipa for letting me know this was not actually who I thought it was) and won some nice items. I sold a few extra things that I didn’t think I’d use in order to fund some purchases. Picked up some photons for my ship and spec’d down that line for space combat. I’m really excited about getting to the point where I can fly a different ship, an actual science vessel would be nice.
Tipa asked me what I thought of STO compared to EVE and I replied that I felt it was much more hands on. Since you’re in control of a character that can leave the ship, and because you actually control the movement of the ship in specific. In EVE I’m so used to orbiting around the bad guys as I fight them (or some other entity in space) where as in STO I actually have to move around lest my shields get low on one side. The crafting on the other hand is far superior in EVE, and the learning curve in EVE is also a lot higher. Both games feel foreign to me since they involve science fiction which I know little to nothing about. Playing a game that’s basically written in a completely different language from the one I am comfortable with still proves to be quite challenging. I had the same feeling with Perpetuum as well.
stargrace 
