500 People LFRaid #EQ2
stargrace 
What happens when you play on the busiest server and there’s a live event that takes place on Saturday? Well, the screen shot above is just one of four instances of Eastern Wastes that opened up on Saturday afternoon as Antonia Bayle completed the Wizard Spire Reconstruction event. There were over three full raids in Easter Wastes 1 and 2, with over two full raids in 3 and 4. Each raid consisting of 24 people, plus numerous others who were outside of raid (my group included). Why was this event such a big deal? A number of reasons. I think it has less to do with the fact that we finally have a means of steady transportation to these zones and more to do with the rewards offered. If you took part in the final epic battle you were rewarded with 500 tokens (remember, 50 buys you a velium shard which is used for ry’gorr armor) that could be spent at merchants for fluff armor, mounts, and house items, you were also rewarded with a pocket teleporter in order to get to Easter Wastes at the click of a .. clicky, and you were given a title – and nine plat. Not too shabby.
I had no issues completing the Eastern Wastes battle, but there were problems with the Dragon Ring event that took place later that day in Great Divide. See, zones typically top off at 50 people for Great Divide due to the Public Quests and issues with lag. There are means around this by simply inviting others outside of the zone to your group. They can then zone over so you’re both in the same instance. Great Divide wasn’t exactly made to withstand 500 people all gathered, and when the final Dragon Ring event spawned – no one could see it. The battle couldn’t really take place because everyone was being killed by the epic encounter that was invisible, and lag was so atrocious there was no point in getting anything done. A developer ended up coming over to Antonia Bayle to progress the quest for players who were unable to get their updates. By that time I had moved on to something else so I decided to forgo the Great Divide update.
Still, it was fun, even if this was the … fourth? Time we’ve rebuilt the transportation system in Norrath. First there were griffon towers in Nektulos Forest and Thundering Stepps, then there were Wizard Spires numerous times, and again and so on.
Tinkerfest begins on July 29th which is an event that I know a lot of players are looking forward to. I am unsure of what the quests will involve, but there’s always some really neat crafted house items for players to obtain. These live events have been a lot of fun, even if they haven’t ran perfectly. I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself! As always happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath.