2016

Beautiful, but Slightly Annoying

stargrace June 3, 2016 1Comment

I’m questing through Altar of Malice right now in EQ2. It’s the expansion that took us from 95 to 100, and it’s a few behind these days so everywhere I go is pretty empty as players opt to get to 100 by experience grinding elsewhere (I can hardly blame them). My first days in Tranquil Sea were uneventful. I didn’t enjoy the quest lines and the story didn’t pick up until I got to Phantom Sea. Then it all got much more interesting.

One of my least favourite type of quests are the ones that require you to harvest something but as you’re harvesting you get a message like the one below.

That’s right, you managed to pick up the item but OH NO it crumbled to dust! Now you have to harvest another one. Honestly, these quests are nothing but annoying, especially when (as I have mentioned numerous times) RNG and I are not friends. There’s a handful of these types of quests scattered throughout the Altar of Malice timeline, and every single one made me groan. Just let me harvest double the amount instead of tossing in these failures! At least then I have some idea of progression and achievement instead of feeling bad that I’ve failed, again.

With that annoyance out of the way.. the expansion is amazing looking. It”s probably one of the prettiest places I’ve seen in EQ2. The dungeons are beautiful, and I found myself taking a lot of screenshots.

Now I continue to work my way to level 100, so I can at least have one character at the cap. Sure, I’ve got two crafters (out of 9) at 100 already, but that doesn’t really give me the same sense of achievement. Ideally I’d like to get a few more characters to 100, but we’ll see how that goes (as always). It’s nice to be playing in Norrath again, even if my subscription is up in a month. I’d like to be able to afford a krono or some other means of subscription but at 100,000 plat that’s just a bit out of my range.

Still, I’ll enjoy things in the meantime.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Comfort Gaming

stargrace May 31, 2016 3Comments

I’ve talked about this before in-depth, but this week more than others I find myself drawn to “comfort gaming”. Basically just like comfort food, we all have games that we’re very comfortable with. Maybe we don’t give them as much attention as we wish we did, or maybe we’ve moved on over the years to something more shiny, or maybe we’ve just stopped playing for whatever reason. Whatever the case may  be, this week  has been all about comfort gaming for me, and nothing gives me that feeling like EverQuest 2.

Lets face it, we all have a really bad week here and there. Mine started out with a doctor appointment that I was pretty sure was going to be bad news. Turns out, it was. There’s potentially something wrong with my pregnancy so now I have to fly to Vancouver for testing (in approximately a week) so I can find out what’s wrong, and how sever it is, and what (if anything) I can do to prepare myself for whatever comes next. Getting bad news sucks. Getting bad news and then having to wait a week before knowing anything sucks even more. Getting bad news, having to wait, and then having to take an unexpectedly expensive trip to find out results is even more stress. Then I found out my friend in EQ2 passed away after losing his fight with depression (which I wrote about here, too). Needless to say my weekend and the beginning of this week has certainly been filled with far more downs than ups. I’m ready for something good to come along.

That’s why turning to these comfort games is something I fully embrace. I’m not saying ignore the world or pretend the problems don’t exist, but give yourself a bit of a break. You’re dealing with some pretty rough times, you need some space to step away and collect yourself.

I decided nothing really gave me that feeling as much as leveling up a new character and so I created two. One is Milay, a berserker, and the other is Quails, a channeler. I logged in a second account and decided to power level both characters (one at a time) because what I really wanted to do was just plow through content without any thoughts at all.

So that’s exactly what I did.

Both characters are now at level 50, brokers are stocked with lots of yummy items for sale, and I feel a bit better about things (or at least calmer). Is it a perfect solution? No, of course not, but I can’t stress enough how much gaming has helped me keep my sanity in otherwise impossible situations. I had a lot of fun, and got to relax. It’s a great combination.