EQ2

Betrayal to Fury (again)

stargrace May 28, 2010 5 Comments

I love freedom in my MMOs. Freedom to do what I want with my characters. While it’s not exactly a perfect system, the ability to betray between your counterpart class in EQ2 is something that I really enjoy doing. I also like the fact that I can do it without having to pay cash for it. In a perfect game I’d extend that quest so that you could betray from one completely different class to another without being restricted by your counterpart, but hey we can’t all get what we want.

Back when EoF was the expansion just coming out, I was playing a fury in a guild called Torrent Knights. I loved the fury, a whole lot. Mid way through I decided to betray to a warden for the good of the guild, and then shortly after that I stopped playing the druid all together and moved on to my illusionist being my raid character. After that, it seemed like everyone and their dog played a druid and so I decided to move on all together, and while my druid has always been what I consider my ‘favorite’ character it was also my least played. I know that ideally I would just play whatever I want to play and not give a second thought to how many other people are playing that class (especially since I play the character very well) but in order to have ‘fun’ in end game groups I want to be playing something that doesn’t have to spend hours upon hours LFG because there are already too many of them out there. Hence the alts.

Now that time has gone on I’ve been getting back to my roots so to speak. I love my druid, and it seems like I spend hours LFG no matter who I’m on so I may as well play what I love. I spent most of Wednesday evening betraying her back from warden to fury, and then spent all my money purchasing diamonds to get expert spells created, and headed to the docks of Nektulos forest to pick up my new mythical. Thankfully since I had completed the level 90 version there’s no need to do the complete quest over again, you just go talk to the shady merchant and they’ll sell you the mythical + spells. The only thing they don’t sell you is the house item, which I was sad to see because I’d certainly pay to add that to my collection.

Pictured above is the ‘new’ fury with her mythical brandished, looking all fierce – except for the fact that Snowflake decided she wanted in on the screen shot and it is hard to look menacing with that cute ball of fluff just over Arysh’ shoulder.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Halas is Live, and Excitement Follows

stargrace May 26, 2010 3 Comments

Yesterday the latest patch for EQ2 went live, and while there were some glitches, it was still a pretty nice patch. The biggest news was that Halas went live, a new starter zone for players. Sadly, I am restricted to 12 character slots and all of those are filled with level 80+ characters. While I can run through the zone and still do the quests ‘grey’ it’s not something I want to do quite yet. That being said, I DID head over to the new zone and move two of my characters to the amazing 5-room housing that went live. I’m even debating moving my Norrathian museum to the new housing, although that would mean moving over 700 items and placing them again. This is not an idea I’m taking lightly, and it’s still something I’m trying to come to a decision about. I just love everything about the new homes.

With this update also came shader 3.0 – and my iksar pictured above looks great with it. Sadly, a lot of my characters do not look so great with it, they look a little too ‘shiny’ and some of them just look horrible (my gnome is now as white as a ghost, and my kerra is now charcoal grey instead of white). The housing and architecture of the game look amazing – for the most part. I have encountered some items that simply are not ‘complete’ like the frames to LoN paintings, the Venril Sathir painting with moving mist, and a few trees have lost their textures.

The new travel system is something I’m really enjoying. Selecting a location from a map rather then having to ‘zone’ from bell to bell. I haven’t had time to check out the new druid ring live event yet, but that is next on my list. There were some of the usual expected glitches, but over all it was a nice update. What does everyone else think of it so far? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Not Exactly Excited

stargrace May 13, 2010 12 Comments

While the choice of gems in the above picture may not exactly be something you’re into, we all love free things! EverQuest II has a very short promotion right now where players can claim these items from the station marketplace for no cost – and you can’t really complain TOO much, since they’re free. This is a pretty good marketing tactic, although I’d rather have a choice of free things to claim that’s just me. Players who have perhaps never opened the market window before will be drawn to do so. Those who were not even aware of it existing suddenly have a reason to peek at the other goodies that are located in there. Will it increase sales? Probably.

There is another promotion much like this one taking place on the days around the release of Halas, an ice cat that will be ‘free’ in the marketplace for players to claim. That one I’m quite excited about, even though I haven’t shown much enthusiasm for Halas in general.

Why am I not excited about Halas?

• It’s a starter zone, and I can create no more characters thanks to the very strict “7 or 12” character limit depending on your subscription plan.
• I have no motivation to grind aa since I have everything I want on my main character, and SOE scrapped the idea to add an extra 20 aa so that players could finish out their lines.
• Halas is great (starter zone) and with it comes two new raid zones. Except I no longer raid, so that means for players like me there is very little about this update to get excited about. A starter zone and raids. No mid-level content.

I think that I’m simply in a phase right now where I’m bored of EQ2. I’ve been playing other games (EVE and WoW) and content doing so. No, I’m not leaving EQ2, I never do, but it’s been a while since I’ve taken a break from it and I’m embracing the idea while I have it.

There are a few things I would love to see implemented that would refresh this burnout feeling I have but number one would have to be:

• Allow players to gain thousands of aa even if it’s for meaningless goals. Examples of these would be removing the racial abilities and character traits and allowing people to grind aa towards them. Things like Enduring breath, extended food, drink, poisons, and potions. Allowing characters to select more then one craft default. Allowing us to grind aa towards innate run speed. Silly little things that we all know are just a meaningless grind but keep us motivated and working towards a goal. Currently, in EQ2, if you are not a raider, once you hit level 90 (unless you’d like to constantly grind battlegrounds) the only thing left to do is create a new character. What happens when you’ve created all of the characters you possibly can.

Perhaps I’m a little bitter this morning, but in the mean time EQ2 is simply on the back burner for me. Though I did add another 6 books to my player written book collection, which was fantastic. 326?! Yes please!

Making A House A Home

stargrace May 10, 2010 No Comments

It’s not that surprising that like a lot of players out there, when I’m not out adventuring or doing old quest chains (which is what I tend to do a lot of the time) I enjoy decorating. Making “my” own personal space in the game, even if it is just in an instanced home (or guild hall) that 99% of the player population will never see. It’s something I pride myself on (as anyone who has been a long time reader of this blog knows) and something that I greatly enjoy.

Lately I’ve been working on making the guild hall on Antonia Bayle seem more like a home, and less like a massive empty hall. While Oasis hosts my T1 hall (Dragon’s Flight) Antonia Bayle is home of my T2 guild hall, Torrent Knights (random tangent, whoever decided to create the guild “The Knights Torrent” a month or so ago, I’m flattered, but dislike that our names are so similar). The T2 hall is GIANT compared to the T1 hall, and while I do enjoy it quite a bit it also means a LOT more space to work with to try and design it into something.

Downstairs has been fairly simple, there are a number of smaller rooms clustered around one ‘central’ room, sort of like bedrooms. Each one has been designated to the founding members of TK (who also happen to be members of Nostalgia for those who remember from EQ1) so that entire floor is mostly taken care of. The ‘entrance’ is pretty self explanatory, and I’ve set aside a room for a library. We’ve also got a crafting area, and other NPCs set up like broker, banker, etc.

That still leaves one entire (rather large) side of the hall to decorate, and I have not decided what to do with this portion yet. I also have to keep in mind that there are a few other people who use the hall, so it’s not just about what I want to see, but what would everyone enjoy.

Coming up with these plans and ideas for decorating is something that really pulls me into a game, and makes it my own. In order for a game to have ‘staying’ power, I really need these personal little touches to draw me in. Something unique, so that I can call it my own.

How about you?