April 2011

A Good (Bad) Freeblood #EQ2

stargrace April 9, 2011 1Comment

Thanks to the Velious rewards I received my Freeblood race once DoV went live in February. I held off on creating the new character because I really had no interest in yet another alt – not to mention I wasn’t really playing that much EQ2, and when I did play I already had 10 characters to choose from. Of course sooner or later the itch to level something up – This time I decided upon a ranger. I had no idea that Freeblood could be ‘good’ aligned  (as well as evil), but I’m a ranger starting in Halas – a very ‘good’ city. I’m sure the guards never noticed why some of their citizens were a little more pale then others, or why some went missing. Besides, I swear Kameeko (the ‘good’ ranger) had nothing to do with those things. Well. I’m almost convinced. I decided to go all out and also purchased the Freeblood lair when station cash was having a sale – the problem with this purchase is that it’s a one time use tied to the character. Not an issue for the average player perhaps but I’ve been known to delete level 90 characters (bye bye dirge) and re-create all of my characters minus a very small handful that I just can’t part with. This creates an issue for me on a few levels. Did I REALLY want a ranger? Well. I’ve had one before but again she was deleted some time back. I WANT to like the ranger, I just couldn’t create any sort of tie between me and the character, and in order to feel that (for lack of better word) longing, to play one – well. That bond has to be there.

I’ll give it another shot (haha, ranger, shot, see what I did there!) and maybe this time fall in love with the character – as long as she stays in her ‘natural’ state and doesn’t transform into the hideously ugly old lady that every vampire female seems to transform into at the click of a button. It’s gross, trust me.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Talk Housing #EQ2

stargrace April 8, 2011 0Comment

I (and many others) have been eagerly waiting the changes that are coming to the housing system in EQ2. In EQ1 you can already purchase multiple homes (2) and while there are not quite as many options (smaller lots, etc) you can also purchase guild neighbourhoods from the station marketplace. Without getting into the RMT discussion, it’s at least nice to see that there are options out there. Lets face it, these days it’s not just hack and slash that is drawing us to games – it’s also the amount of personality we can interject into our characters and how much we can personalize them and their “life”.

Housing in EQ2 has grown by leaps and bounds over the years, but the next update will really take it to the next level. If you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps playing that other game) and haven’t been listening to what the new updates will encompass, here’s a few questions answered:

Q: While you are putting in the ability to own more than one home, could you please also add in the ability to share homes with other characters?

A: Prestige Homes allow this already. Add each character to the others’ trustee lists, then link the homes together via portals. Voila! Now your homes are linked and you can edit them freely.

Q: Change *Guild Port Doors* to be heirloom/attunable (heirloom selfishly because my main character buys all the doors for my other girls) rather than no-trade and let the location of our attuned guild port door be where the “Guild Portal to Player Housing” sends us to. This would allow us to use the “Guild Portal to Player Housing” to load in to whichever of our multiple housings we choose, or even into a home where we are trustee if that is what we desire.

A: More good news. This already works! You can place your Prestige Home portals in your Guild Hall directly, *and* the current “Member Housing” amenity now allows you to travel to any house that is linked in your home network. This can be a large amount of houses if you have lots of links and friends.

Q: Multiple Character Housing:  Add the feature “Tenant” to the house window’s access tab. When the owner of a house flags a character as “tenant” on the access tab, an option will unlock at the bottom of the house’s access tab for that trustee to “purchase room”. Any time thereafter that the trustee visits that house, they can open the house’s access tab and click on the “Purchase Room” button at the bottom of the screen.

A: So basically, [you want to] allow automation of the current thing you could do by making that player a trustee of that house and requiring rent to prevent you from turning off the Trustee flag on them? (RL landlords could only dream of having such an easy eviction process. I can see how that could make the system safer for “renters” by preventing easy landlord lockouts.

The attraction to the decorator is obvious. And we have a feature coming up that would allow easy advertisement of the properties, so yeah…this might work. I’ll jaw it over with the team.

Q: The limit to the number of displayed vending boxes should be removed all together, but if that is not possible, you should at least increase the number of displayed vending boxes allowed in the home by number of tenants (ie if a house can have 10 active displayed vending boxes placed within the home, each tenant added to the home should increase this number by, at the very least, the number of broker slots the house allows).

A: We might consider something like this in a future update. It’s a decent idea. Needs some considering. The current house vendor system is only marginally successful. There’s definitely room for improvement.

 

I am incredibly excited about the multi-housing feature, and all of the neat goodies that will go along with it (including some guild hall amenities). My museum currently fills one 7-year veteran reward estate, and I’ll be so happy to move Stargrace to an actual home, with like – a bedroom. She’s getting a sore back sleeping with all of those books pictured above. Housing is always the one feature about EQ2 that I simple adore (and this goes for EQ2, EQ, and Vanguard) and I still wish more games looked at it as a valuable part of game-play. It’s a great way to wind down after doing some adventuring, and gives players a location to just hang out and do their thing. Maybe some day in the future we’ll see more dedication towards it.

In the mean time, happy gaming. No matter where you find yourself!