EQ

Rain Of Fear #EverQuest

stargrace September 17, 2012 1 Comment

Cold weather is coming (slowly) and with it of course my usual fall Nostalgia. No matter what game I play, none compares to how much I loved EverQuest, and so I decided to dip back into game. It wasn’t that long ago that I was playing steadily, my enchanter and necromancer are both level 90, and while my houses have been repossessed, I still have my belongings in escrow.

SOE also announced the 19th EverQuest expansion, ‘Rain of Fear’ which I am looking forward to. This expansion will bring the level cap to 100 – wow. It also adds a whole bunch of other neat features, and also some features that have been a long time coming. I’ve highlighted some of the most exciting points for me personally.

• Level cap increase from 95 to 100 – Achieve a new max level of 100 and set a new standard of gameplay.
• Hunter System – Gain special rewards and titles for defeating large numbers of foes.
• Aggro Meter – A brand new tool to help better manage your aggro. You can now see your aggro level relative to your group.
• Collection System – Discover items throughout Norrath and collect sets for exciting rewards and titles.
• Improved Brokering System – Sell items in the Bazaar while being offline! More flexibility as a buyer to search and purchase from anywhere in the world.
• New Linear Item Progression – Stats on armor collected will increase as you move up from one tier to another.
• Customization with non-visible armor – All non-visible armor in Rain of Fear can be worn by all. You’ll be able to customize your stats for every encounter.
• Class-specific stat distribution – Collect items that are designed specifically for each classes’ abilities.
• More than 1800 New Spells (Ranks 1, 2 & 3) – Exponentially add to your spell arsenal.
• More than 550 AAs – Elevate your power and abilities like never before.
• More than 3500 New Items – Create your own identity with thousands of new items.
• More than 3000 New Tradeskill recipes – Increase your value across Norrath by creating items only available by your craftsmanship.
• More than 110 Quests – Challenge your skills and gather useful loot.
• 13 Raids – Collect valuable rewards from all new adventures.
• 9 Zones – Be the first to discover untouched lands of Norrath.
• 19 Missions – Experience intriguing lore and immersive Missions.
• Continued opportunity to kill off Halflings.
• Legends of Norrath™ – 5 Digital Booster Packs.

Into Argath, Bastion of Illdaera #EQ #EverQuest

stargrace November 17, 2011 2 Comments

It was time. Ninga and I headed to steamfont where we waited for the blimp to arrive to take us to Argath. There’s a platform up on a hill not far from the Ak’Anon entrance and when the blimp is about to enter the zone you’ll see a zone wide message indicating it’s on the way. If you don’t want to travel there the ‘old fashioned’ way you can use a guild portal (if you happen to belong to a guild in any case) or you can see if you can hitch a ride from a druid or wizard who have unlocked their travel spells. For me the entire blimp ride was nostalgia of boat rides. We giggled as the blimp slowly came our way. It started off looking so small in the distance but when it finally docked and revealed its true size we were in awe.

Levitation doesn’t work in Argath, so if you zone with it on and expect to just drop off the side and calmly float to your destination, don’t do it. The view reminded me a LOT of the Moors of Ykesha in EQ2. You are confronted by alien type NPC on a long dock and meander your way further in to find the NPCs you’re looking for. Alt W (the ‘find’ command) lists all of the NPC you may be searching for in case you’re like me and unable to find your way.

Because the expansion is only two days old, the zone was absolutely packed. There were more than 150 people all trying to do the same small chain of progression which involves a language quest of the Argathians.

First time visitors to Alaris will want to speak with Atleris, the Council Pinnacle, inside the Council chambers.

The outer areas of the arms and the entirety of the belly are full of hostile creatures. Looters and thieves are found among the Argathians in the arms. And in the belly are the Erillion forces who will attack on sight, as well as the steel masses and floating blades who are enemies to both the Argathians and the Erillion forces.

We picked up the first quest required for language progression, one from Captain Walkath, that required us to fight a few of the Erillion invaders. The problem was that so many other players had the same frame of mind. We found ourselves a little niche and went to work on the small group of mobs before deciding that we would probably have an easier time of things if we waited a little while for the initial rush of players to pass through. The encounters were not especially difficult at this level, our group consisted of monk (Ninga), healer merc, enchanter (myself), and tank merc. Mobs can be partially slowed, but they haven’t been able to be fully slowed for a few expansions now.

We killed one of the 14 mobs we needed and then decided that our time would be better spent continuing our progression of the Underfoot expansion (two expansions old now) so we headed to Pellucid Grotto. I loved what I saw of Argath, it’s just a little too crowded for myself. We’ll be back before too long, I’m certain.

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

Veil of Alaris – Day One #EQ #EverQuest

stargrace November 16, 2011 No Comments

Yesterday was the release of EverQuest’s 18th expansion, Veil of Alaris. The game was down for 8 hours and servers came back up on time, but that’s not to say that the release was completely flawless, there were a few issues players experienced. The largest one was that unless you purchased VoA you were unable to access your potion belt, something that’s been in game for a little while now and allows players to use potions from within their bags by hotkeying them. With the newly revamped hotkeys something in the code messed up. It’s going to be fixed in a future update though so don’t be too concerned. There were also a few issues people had with the changes to guild rosters, you can name ranks and assign them properties much like you can in EQ2 (and I am so glad to see it).

My first day playing VoA wasn’t spent IN VoA so much as exploring the features that had been added. The biggest change for me was the one to hotbars. Players are now able to open 10 hotbars at once, and customize them in a large number of ways. You can resize them into different rows and as big or small as you’d like. This makes reading my hotbars much easier, as before the lettering on the buttons was so tiny I could barely make it out. I picked up a new mercenary, one that comes with the VoA expansion, pictured above. The swinetor salver is a healer mercenary, and played just fine alongside my shadowknight in Ssra (the level 55 hot zone).

I’m really glad that mounts no longer glide to a stop, they have an instant stop-go motion, something that was released a few patches ago and had nothing to do with VoA. The games population (at least on my server) is still nice and busy, which I was happy to see.

I’m hoping that today I get to explore some of the zones and get into some trouble. We’ll just have to see. My 90 enchanter now has 5 more levels to climb, although from what I saw in chat channels last night some players already hit the new level cap. Since there’s so much to do in EQ I don’t really see it as being much of a problem, they can grind out the rest of their EQ days working on progression and alternate advancement, where it’s quite normal to see players with upwards of 5,000 aa.

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

Anything But Dead #EverQuest #EQ

stargrace September 15, 2011 2 Comments

Any time I find myself in a video game, chances are I hear a discussion about how game X used to be good and popular, but then event Y took place and KILLED IT. I chuckle to myself, wondering how these people could possibly think a game is ‘dead’ if even a single player is enjoying it (as long as the game isn’t shutting down). Yesterday, that game was EQ1 – and if you take a look at the screen shot above, I think you’ll see it’s anything but dead. This is just one of many populated servers, happens to be Drinal, the server I play on. Of course the game isn’t at its prime any more and after so many years that’s completely understandable, but it’s certainly no where near dead.

What keeps people playing this ‘ancient’ game? Is it the amount of time they’ve already invested in it? The difficulty involved in mastering it? Friends? Fear of change? I suspect it’s a combination of all kinds of reasons, and I imagine that the type of player still playing EQ1 as opposed to those who play more recently released MMOs may be different.

I suppose I’m just tired of people making assumptions about games that they personally no longer play and haven’t for some time. A game may be dead to you – but there’s a lot of others who still enjoy it on a daily basis. One thing I’m worried about with the next EQ expansion adding guild halls is that this central gathering location which you see above as the guild lobby will become less populated – and I think it’s REALLY important to have a location like this – unlike EQ2 where everyone is constantly hiding away in their halls and homes and you can play the game without ever seeing a gathering of this size. I’m hoping since players gather like this to share buffs and timers don’t tick down that it will remain as it is. A focal point for social happenings. We will just have to see.

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