May 2015

Ding, 15 on Ragefire

stargrace May 30, 2015 No Comments

Thanks to the early orc camps I was able to inch my way to level 14 and that made a huge difference to me because that’s when I got my next tier pet, and it conned yellow to me instead of dark blue. Once I picked up the spells I thought I would use (there’s no use in picking up every single spell right now, plus I just don’t have the funds) I headed back to that bandit camp that was giving me such problems before. This time I was able to easily break the camp and settled in to a nice round of killing for the next little while. The magician managed to ding level 15, and 32% in – the druid hit level 15 and 5% in before I called it a day. I need a bit of a break from camping to work tradeskills and of course gather my level 15 spells.

For the mage that means another pet – but I’m not going to pick it up because I’m happy with the current one I have, and all pets this tier will be the same level. I also got a new nuke that does far more damage than the last one. It’s over 100 damage instead of 42. I’m sure it also uses a lot more mana, too. The druid reaching 15 means the first of her port spells, Ring of Karana and Ring of Surefall Glade. I’ll be doing some traveling to pick those up, because who wouldn’t want their port spells. That’s a big plus of being a druid. She also got a new skin like rock spell at 14 that I haven’t picked up yet.

The game is bustling with players. There are over 400 magicians in chat this morning, along with over 400 in my ‘regular’ channels preventing me from joining them. People are all over the starter towns, and yesterday there were 5 instances of Commonlands up. The main one had 90 players and each subsequent instance had 40+. It’s really nice to see the game get so much love. I can’t help but wonder how long it will last.

Why Am I Playing on Ragefire?

stargrace May 29, 2015 2 Comments

I’ve been playing on EverQuest progression servers for a number of years now, but I typically end up going back to my ‘regular’ server sooner or later where I’ve already established a character (or two, or three). The problem with established servers is that EverQuest is still very much a group orientated game even for their later expansions, so unless you’re bringing friends with you it can get a bit lonely. Especially if your main characters include a level 97 bard and a level 100 enchanter. They’re not exactly the optimal classes for boxing with, mercenary tanks are alright but they’re not nearly as good as actual players with thousands of aa. I love EverQuest, and I tend to return a few times a year in order to get my ‘fix’ – especially since I can’t seem to get that fix in EverQuest2 any more, which used to be my go-to comfort game. What I love about it is the fact that my characters actually take a lot of work in order to be any good, and it takes time to get things done. I’ll probably always have a soft spot in my heart for EverQuest, and judging by the swarms of people playing on Lockjaw and Ragefire, I’m not alone.

The druid and magician are each level 13 now. I settled in for a nice evening of camping orcs in Commonlands. I was doing bandits for a bit, but the respawns are incredibly fast, and I didn’t have a stable amount of crowd control in order to feel confident taking care of things quickly. It was just safer if I went to an orc camp and pulled the whole camp of dark blues all at once, rather than trying to break a white / yellow camp with fast respawns. Still, it gave me a chance to collect some belts and turn those in to Freeport for some experience, coin, and faction.

I noticed at the log-in screen that Vox was the latest ‘new’ non progression server, and that server was released three years ago but is still categorized as ‘new’. I almost wish they would release another new non-progression server, for people who may want to start fresh with others but who don’t have the time / patience / desire to start with classic EverQuest. Of course that means people would be level 105 within a week I’m sure, but it’s also a chance for the community to move through the game together, and make friends / new guilds until everyone (once again) gets bored and leaves. I wonder what the population is like on most EverQuest servers. On Drinal (my main server) the general channel has 198 people in it, but talk is pretty light and that includes players from other servers who join the drinal general chat (I see a few ragefire folks on there).

When I got bored of orcs I headed back to Freeport to relax with a little fishing, and to work on my forage skill. Skills seem to crawl by, especially when you’re eager to raise them so it’s a good time to sit back with Netflix or Hulu. I’m saving up the fish I catch to work on baking, fish fillets will get me pretty far. I made my first 100 plat, and I’m sure every bit of it will go towards tradeskills aside from spell purchases. Research doesn’t use the classic method, but uses vendor sold items along with hides that drop from mobs. It’s a lengthy and expensive hobby, but right now it’s making money as people want their spells. I know we have quite a wait before an ‘official’ bazaar opens, and in the meantime there’s the EC tunnel, but I’m looking forward to that one feature.

One thing that has surprised me is the number of people playing who have never played before, or who just don’t remember anything about the game. I’ve heard so many people asking about mailboxes and other features that classic EverQuest just doesn’t have. It also looks like the pressure has lessened on Ragefire a bit now that Lockjaw has opened. No queues this afternoon – the real test will be to see how things are over the weekend.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Ragefire Progression – Day Three & Four

stargrace May 28, 2015 No Comments

How things change in just a short amount of time. I decided after day two that I didn’t actually want to play a tank “just because” I thought they may be needed. In fact that’s a very silly reason to play any class and it typically ends in disappointment (at least for me). I decided to create the most disliked class, a magician. Why? Because my pet could tank for me, and when I didn’t have a group, I could still solo. I’ve never played a magician before and they’re disliked because on classic their pets tend to be better than most other melee classes. I can completely understand the dislike, but in the end I decided that shouldn’t be a reason not to play one. I also decided to start boxing my second account along with my mage, so I created a halfling druid. I admit right now my main reason for creating this was not for ports, but because I love forage. It really comes in handy.

So my human mage and my halfling druid headed to Freeport until level 5, and then commonlands where I was instantly killed by griffons roaming the zone. Forgot about those. I spent a few hours running around commonlands and while the experience was nice, I couldn’t settle into a proper camp, so I spent most of my time running. I decided to brave Nektulos Forest and figured it would be ‘safe’ if I stayed away from the guards. It almost was, too, except you need to swim across a river of pirana if you’re agro to the guards on the nearby bridge, and those hurt. Once you cross, you’re next to an orc camp that was way too high level, and then you reach the wizard spires where I began camping until the druid and mage were both level 6.

Once I hit level 6 I had about 200 bone chips on me, so I took both characters to Kaladim where I turned in bone chips to the paladin guild until I had reached level 7 and was almost level 8. I took both characters home, sold all of the items from the bone chip turn ins, and smiled gleefully at my 12 platinum. I was rich! Or so it felt.

I worked on my tailoring and baking once again, and through that spent most of my coin, but did manage to get tailoring and baking up a fair amount. I picked up my new spells, and headed with Kanad to Butcherblock, which is a relatively quiet zone much to my surprise. We found a quiet place to set up camp – and before I knew it, both characters were level 10.

Of course now I’m debating whether or not I want to play a warrior or a paladin instead of the mage. I’ve never played either of those classes. A paladin may be fun. The more I think about it the more the idea of a dwarf paladin really appeals to me. Hmm. Something to think about. I know I am pretty indecisive. I’m just trying to think ahead to future expansions and what would work best for me personally. I love grouping up but I don’t want to feel completely useless if I can’t get a group (which I think is the opinion of pretty much everyone out there). Suggestions?

Daybreak also decided to open a second progression server, Lockjaw. It’s still in the planning stages right now, but it’s supposed to help alleviate some of the queue pressure that’s currently going on. Problem is, I remember the last progression server I played on, and I remember when they opened a second server there, too, and I remember how that server eventually all but died off because the population does eventually thin out. I’ll be staying right here on Ragefire, queues and all.

Ragefire Progression – Day Two

stargrace May 27, 2015 No Comments

After getting my gnome enchanter to level 3 I decided that I just didn’t want to have to fight with the throngs of players for mobs in steamfont, and I also decided that I should create some sort of tank class, because hey everyone needs a good tank, right? I made a dark elf shadowknight named Blesse and set off to Nektulos Forest. Experience was much quicker here with the ability to pick through zones in order to find one that didn’t have a hundred plus players wandering around it. I tried to fight spiders in specific along with wolves because I knew I would want their silk and hides. Experience was much faster here and my tank wasn’t doing too poorly. Having harm touch helped once an hour, and Nektulos Forest was quite challenging, especially when a random red zombie would cross my path (which was often).

Kanad created a barbarian shaman, and after reaching level 5 braved the walk from Halas over to Nektulos, and together we settled in camping undead and other various denizens of the forest. After a few hours I managed to reach level 6, at level 5 I received my first ‘useful’ spell, which was a much needed dot. I also managed to do a little bit of crafting, raising my baking and tailoring a few notches. I was proud of the three plat I had earned, though I know some players are earning much more than me, and much faster. It was while I was leveling up the shadowknight that I heard of the bosses of classic having already been defeated by a guild using their mage pets to zerg. While I admit, taking down raid encounters is something I would love to do, I also realize that it’s probably not something I’ll get a chance to do because guilds tend to keep these things on lockdown on progression and non progression servers alike.

The wizard spire in Nektulos Forest had been good experience around this level, as long as I avoided the zombies that pathed by, but I knew that it would soon be time to head on to Commonlands, and maybe work on some of my other crafting skills in the meantime as well. Of course when I finally logged in for my next play session, I didn’t do any of those things, but that will come in another post.

On the weekend the servers were so busy that there was a queue to get in. There are people all over the place, even at off-peak hours which is something that I have missed seeing. I imagine that as time goes on more people will leave the game, especially depending on how long it takes for players to unlock expansions, how quickly we reach expansions that others may not enjoy. I’m hoping to keep playing for as long as there are groups to be found. We’ll just have to see.

Ragefire Progression – Day One

stargrace May 26, 2015 No Comments

Well, technically I suppose this is day two, or even day three for me. Day one was taken up with the server issues that Daybreak ran into, which included level 50s being created right from the get-go. After that, it was issues with login servers being strained by the mass of players trying to get in. For my specific case, I came across a new issue. I decided to create a gnome enchanter named Stargrace. Ak’anon was absolutely packed with players. Over 100 in the zone. I slowly made my way to Steamfont, and was met with another 100 plus players in that instance.

Now, Daybreak added a new function to starter zones that allowed multiple instances of the same zone up at once, and players could use /pick to travel between those instances every 5 minutes. This appeared to have worked for all starter zones – except steamfont. I didn’t know this at the time, and figured they had just disabled it for everyone instead. Channels like general were also being hammered, so they appeared broken on my gnome and I didn’t have access to anything except the enchanter channel.

Still, I put my LFG tag on and headed to the pit which was swamped with skeleton, rats, drake, and every other imaginable gnome class possible. I turned off grass particles since I could barely see and tried to tag a mob here and there.

The thing about the classic server is that even though we’re all trying to ‘re-live’ days gone by – a majority of players still want to do so on their own terms, which means solo. I saw perhaps one or two groups looking for more, but for the most part players ran around on their own competing with everyone else. The years of playing MMOs on our own have cultivated this notion that grouping is bad or not necessary. Thing is, this is EverQuest, and grouping is absolutely always the best way to go. You get a bonus for being in a group, mobs die faster in a group, and it’s just plain more fun.

I randomly sent tells and invited people to my group since so many seemed reluctant on getting one started. Really, that’s all it takes. No one wants to take the reigns so if you want to get something done you’re best off doing it yourself. Experience was still slow but that was because of a lack of mobs to defeat, especially with no /pick to make use of. Still, our rag tag team of gnomes got a few levels, and I left the first day at level 3. I decided to take a bit of a break to see if things died down any before making another attempt (note: no, they did not die down at all).