EQ2

Pathing Back ‘Home’ #EQ2

stargrace October 13, 2012 2 Comments

I’ve been having a lot of fun in WoW, and before that, GW2 – but something is still missing. In WoW it is too easy for me to get to 90 and have all of the gear that I can possibly get without becoming a hard core raider. LFRaid and LFDungeon take care of that – plus there’s all of those caps on valor and justice to deal with. WoW does a nice job of keeping me in line, and making me follow that carefully laid out path. Some times I enjoy it, the lack of ‘thinking’ required to play. I gleefully hunt up companion pets and chatter with friends. sadly, the new ‘grind dailies until your eyes bleed’ method of MOP is completely unappealing to me. You need faction for everything. You need it for recipes. You need it for gear. You need it for valor gear. Since the removal of tabards to earn that faction you’re left with 300+ dailies. Golden Lotus pretty much did me in, I dislike that faction with a passion that goes beyond what it deserves. I just don’t enjoy grinding out dailies. While there is still lots to do, it’s not stuff that I actually want to do. Thus MOP takes a back seat, and when my 1 year subscription ends at the end of this month I’m debating whether or not I want to renew.

In true nomadic gamer fashion, I wandered over to EQ2 where I’ve barely played the past year or so. I know only a handful of people, no one from my personal guild. That’s alright. There’s lots for me to do and I started off by working on heritage quests because they scratch a nostalgic itch for both EQ1 and EQ2. The first day I completed In Honor and Service, An Axe from the Past, and Dragoon K’Naae of the Thexians. Today I completed War and Wardrobe, Restoring Ghoulbane, and Reaching blade of the assassin. This evening I’m working on The Rescue of the Green Hoods, and Training is a shield. I’m basically working through the giant list of heritage quests in order by level, starting with the lowest. I’d like to get back into doing groups and dungeons and the like, but I don’t have the faintest idea where to start. That’s not such a big deal because Chains of Eternity is not too far away, and I could (if I so wished) “start over” when everyone else was making the climb through the new expansion as well.

I’ve missed housing, a lot. In fact one of the main reasons I’m working through heritage quests is because I’d like to create a HQ room in my Norrathian Museum. My library now has over 600 player written books, by 300 authors. These are things I’ve spent years working on (quite literally) and take a lot of pride in. As much as I may dislike certain policies or actions by SOE in regards to their game, deep down it still offers me more than most of the other games I have on my plate. Of course in a week or two or three or a month or six months, I’ll change what I’m playing again. It’s just how I am.

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

Still Not Quite There Yet #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace July 14, 2012 5 Comments

Sony announced last week that players would be able to complete dungeons as their characters instead of having to pick an avatar to play, and I thought that this would be a fantastic way to motivate players to actually complete the dungeons – I was wrong. It’s not enough.

Player created dungeons are great in theory, but in practice there is still too much missing from them to make them worth while for players. Number one, you barely get any experience from completing them. If you run a player dungeon and then go run a regular zone or even quest for the same amount of time, you will find yourself quite far behind. As an example, I took my 90 shadowknight through a dungeon that was 90 minutes long (and rewarded 300 tokens) – gaining not even 60% of a single aa. In that same amount of time, I was able to gain 10 aa mentored down to 65 and running through New Tunaria.

Now lets take a look at the tokens. The shop is located in the station cash shop, and there’s very little motivation for players to actually spend the tokens aside from picking up the mount (500 tokens) and maybe some repair kits. The gear available is sub-par compared to items you can solo quest for, and also random from chests (and flagged as no value, so you can’t even sell it or transmute it).

There are no shinies in player created dungeons. There’s no trash loot. There’s no chest drops, no spells, no craft recipes. All of these things are reasons why players should (and will) continue to quest and explore through regular overland zones instead of the creations of other players.

You can argue that this is a good thing, forcing players to explore “the world” instead of being stuffed inside of solo dungeons – however, with the introduction of mercenary a lot of players are already exploring on their own and doing dungeons alone. Why not have them at least partaking in dungeons that are created by other players.

I really think that user generated content is incredibly amazing to have in games, but I also think SOE missed the point of them in this round. Players need more than a neat dungeon layout to entice them to do them more than once. It’s simply wasted resources other wise.

Exploring Anew #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace July 9, 2012 3 Comments

Ah how things have changed. I’ve been spending a bit of time in EQ2 as of late – I know, big surprise right? It’s been a few years since I’ve played the game to any extent, but I found myself missing some of those game aspects that EQ2 does very well, such as crafting and housing as well as user generated content.

Game Update 63 brought about a lot of changes, and so (of course) has time. The new level cap for both adventuring and crafting is 92. There are now ‘prestige’ points, which are in your alternate advancement tab but use their own point system. The cap for aa is now 320 – and everyone was granted a bunch of ‘free’ points because they lowered the amount of experience it required to get any. This means a few of my characters (without having even logged in) found themselves at 320 already.

There’s still a few things I don’t understand. A lot of people are running a sinking sands Skyshrine dungeon for mythicals – and I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out with time. (Edit: huge thanks for the comments that cleared up the one mystery) There are new dungeons to explore, including a solo / duo one in Skyshrine (I believe). There are new crafting quests, and new crafting apprentices. I haven’t managed to pick one up yet, but I hope to soon.

In a future game update players should be able to use their own characters to run player created dungeons, which I’m pretty excited about. One of the major turn offs at the moment for me doing a player created dungeon is the fact that the avatars are rubbish. I can solo them perfectly fine as a healer avatar, but not with anything else. They’re also quite boring to do alone. The rewards that you can use your tokens to purchase are also a bit lacking (imo).

I hear that PVP is also getting an overhaul, much needed. I’m excited about that, I used to love running the pvp instances when they first came out. I’m not an enormous fan of PVP but some times you just get that itch.

While everyone is off playing The Secret World (and let me tell you, temptation is hard to resist here) I’m eagerly waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out. I’ve pre-ordered and can’t wait. Even though I should be working on my Guild Wars 1 achievements, I know. I did manage to get a few more missions done in it. I should really buckle down – but those distractions! They’re everywhere!

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

Remodeled Starter Cities #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace July 7, 2012 1 Comment

I really like the newly designed Freeport. It takes a bit of time to get used to it, especially since we’ve all gotten used to having to zone from one section to another, but the transition was smooth and it’s much easier to get around now.

The newly designed Qeynos is in the works and should be out when the next update goes live (I believe, I could be wrong). I don’t know that I have any characters who even live in Qeynos any more, but I’m sure I can find one or two to use to explore the area.

Housing Hall of Fame (Oh My!) #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace June 27, 2012 1 Comment

Yesterday on a bit of a whim I decided to log into EQ2 – and I found out that back in February my Norrathian Museum actually won an award for housing and made it into the hall of fame. I suppose that shows how often I log in, as I had no idea.

The reward for this is an achievement, a title, and a neat trophy that you can place in your house (pictured above). I was tickled that I made it, I didn’t expect it but it did make me happy to know that people have been visiting the museum. The most noticeable thing about this player created house is the 500+ player-written books I have collected and placed, some of them years old now.

A lot has changed in game since I last played. The level cap I believe is 92 instead of 90. There are other changes that I simply haven’t kept up to date with. It feels a bit sad, since this is a game I played as my ‘main’ game for many years.

Despite the fact that I logged each of my characters in and had a poke around – I didn’t actually sit down and PLAY the game. I wasn’t interested in adventuring or crafting or doing anything more than poking around. I had no inclination to play. I just wanted to visit for a few minutes.

Whether that’s because I’m enjoying myself in Vanguard these days, or because EQ2 has finally broken its long term hold on me, I’m not sure. Either way, it was still a nice surprise to log in and see.

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