When I logged into EQ2 after some downtime, I noticed players were talking about a new quest chain that had been added. In order to obtain the quest you first had to have completed the signature line in Tears of Veeshan, which rewards you with a fabled mount. I had just barely completed that quest with my swashbuckler, Jacquotte, earlier on in the morning, so I was all ready to go.
The quest brings about years and years of story and lore that we have been participating in. It’s called Age’s End, and I have no idea what the reward is. The entire signature line to this point has been solo but the final quest we were presented with today ended in a x2 raid (12 person). Since so many people had been doing the same quest, we had a lot of people looking for groups. I decided why not, and joined in.
The first raid mechanic is pretty simple. You have to break some crystals while a giant dragon (Kerafyrm) flies around breathing on your raid. Dodge out of some red circles on the ground (meteor) and run out of the room (or out of line of sight at least) when the dragon shows up. There’s a few adds while you deal with the protectors of the crystals, but nothing too bad.
Then things got tricky. The first boss you need to defeat is Roehn Theer. Problem is you’re probably doing this in a pick up raid. If anyone besides one person hails the NPC, everyone will lose their quest progress. Fun stuff, right? So after we defeated the crystals, hailed the NPC, and then of course a few more players hailed the NPC, and low and behold we were told to defeat the crystals again (after having spent an hour or two doing that part to begin with). The next mechanic involves picking up a staff from the ground so that the raid can survive a giant AOE at 80% from Roehn Theer, but our bugged out instance decided not to work properly, and so that never happened. Everyone eventually got frustrated and left.
I’ve heard of a few raids clearing it, but honestly I was disappointed that a signature line (until now) that was completely solo suddenly required a x2 raid, and not only that but it was a hard raid, riddled with bugs. These types of roadblocks, especially concerning lore, are never fun. You already need to be a subscriber (it should open up to non subscribers after two weeks I believe) to do the content. Still, I met some new people, remembered why I hate voice chat, and did get to see some awesome lore before we failed. It wasn’t all bad.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!