How a Saturday Should Be
stargrace 
Despite the heat wave Ottawa seems to be going through lately (ugh I’m eager for snow) yesterday was a fantastic Saturday. It was one of those days I could just play whatever game I wanted, I had no obligations anywhere, and I had a blast. I love days like that. In fact I love them so much I think Sunday will be following in Saturday’s footsteps.
I started the day out in World of Warcraft. I’ve settled down on the Ravenholdt server where I have four characters, one actually being a main. I play a blood elf priest the majority of the time tagging along with a friend who plays a troll warrior. I love playing my healer classes, and we’ve just hit level 47, almost 49. With the latest patch giving us epic mounts at 40, we’re now running all over the place at light speed. I’ve never gotten a character over level 50 before even though I’ve played off and on since release, so we’re coming up to content that is still quite new to me. I enjoy it. I also have a 38 shaman, 38 hunter, and 21 mage. They’re mostly just craft characters, with the hunter being my ‘farming’ character. Skinning and mining so I can make some coin for the others. We joined a small little guild (I mean, maybe five people in it) and it’s actually been a lot of fun. WoW still won’t ever be my main game of choice, but when I want to just kick back for an hour or two it’s certainly fun and easy.
The remainder of my day was spent patching Aion (ugh it had been a while, there was a lot of work to do) for their last beta testing weekend, and then playing some EverQuest II.
In EQ2 a few things happened. First of all, I decided to switch from playing my illusionist to my troubador. I know, I flip flop more then, well, pretty much anyone I know. I had a line of thinking for this, and it still (so far) makes sense (in my head). The illusionist has far more gear then the bard but if I concentrate on the bard for a bit that’s easily fixed. I was wearing two sets of T1 gear, and with my spare shards decided to switch so I was just wearing the bard set. Now I need more shards (as usual). I really miss being able to trade shards via the craft system.
There was a pick up leviathan raid going on, and I decided since it’s my troubadors next update I should try to get in. After sitting in group for 30 minutes we discovered that no one in the raid actually had access to leviathan – and so I decided to leave and free up room for someone who DID have access.
Many people don’t realize that YES you do need access to enter the Leviathan raid. So what is this access?
You need to kill the Overking, and you also need to kill Venril Sathir. I had already defeated Venril Sathir the previous week, it’s the first encounter I needed for my epic. All I needed was the Overking. Low and behold Paradise Lost decided to head to Chardok and take down that Dizok, so I tagged along to get my Leviathan flag.
There’s no quest involved, and there’s not any way (currently) to tell in game exactly what you have access to and what you do not have access to. This day in age I think that’s very important to a game. How do I know if I can get into Poets Palace – while there may not be a whole lot in EQ2 that requires access, there are still things. Not to mention those blasted druid rings, how on earth do I keep track across so many characters who needs what. It’s frustrating to say the least – I did hear that they’re adding a keyring type command in an upcoming patch / expansion, so we’ll just have to be on the lookout for that.
We had two groups of guild mates and two groups of PUGS who needed the update. The raid was incredibly smooth, no wipes. Exactly the type of raid I enjoy! I was starting to get a little irritated at the heat by that time, with both the fan and the AC going, so I logged off for the evening and decided to spend an hour or two in bed reading before I fell asleep. All in all, it was a perfect Saturday, and I had a great time. Hopefully everyone else had a fantastic weekend thus far as well, looking forward to hearing all about it!
See you in Norrath!
