Nearing the End
stargrace 
It’s almost that time, the time when I feel as though I have ‘beaten’ EQ2. Thankfully this comes slightly before the next expansion, due out in February. I realize that a lot of people feel as though you can never ‘beat’ an MMO because of it’s ever evolving nature, but I certainly think that we all have personal goals and once we’ve accomplished them we’ve felt as though we’ve beaten the game.
For me, this list is quite short. 200 achievements, level 80/80 (that means maxed out crafting as well as adventuring) my mythical weapon, the best gear I personally can get (in my ‘mains’ case this happens to be T4 and instance jewelry), T7 mastered (spells), and that’s about it. As of last night, I am sitting on 199aa, and I’ve already got the other smaller goals taken care of.
Excited? Yes, I am.
On the other hand, that also means that all of the quests I do AFTER I hit that 200aa mark becoming a little less meaningful to me, because I won’t get any experience at all out of it. I’ve always hoped that EQ2 would adopt EQ’s method of alternate advancement, where you could dump points into personal run speed, food duration, and being able to train in more then one craft talent. I’d pay a good amount of aa in order to become a dual crafter, and not have to have a unique character for every craft available. I suppose my next ‘thing’ to do on the mystic would be tinkering, because it’s a pretty useful skill to have and I have guild harvesters who can take care of the basic ingredients for me. Aside from that, I think my mystic will be ‘done’. Which brings about the question – what next? Or rather, who next. I’ll still be playing EQ2 of course, I adore the game, but I’ll need to move on to a character who needs a little works. I’ve got lots of those (14 in fact, not including Ellithia) on multiple servers, so we’ll just have to see.
I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend, no matter where you found yourself. Thankfully real life deadlines have come and gone for this month, and I have a little breathing room. I spent some time in WoW inching my priest to level 54, some time in Aion beginning the 20-30 grind, and a lot of time in EQ2 working on those achievements.
I decided to go LFG which is something I don’t typically do. As luck would have it, there was a Najena’s Hollow Tower group looking for more, I joined up and they had room for Hamal (assassin). I’m typically leery of PUGS, but I do like to meet new people.
This group was pretty amazing, we finished the entire zone within 15 minutes without any deaths. Hamal and I picked up the ‘sense of urgency’ achievement, and while we didn’t win any loot, it was still a fantastic clean fun run. Afterwards Hamal and I used the chronomagic feature to level to 50, and headed to Everfrost and Commonlands shard instances, not for the shards since I don’t really need any, but for the aa experience that came from completing the missions.
Over all, it was a great night. I also remembered that Maj’Dul has red shinies, and as I was on Lucan D’Lere running around working on my peacock quest I picked myeslf up a new house item. Couldn’t have asked for a better time in game!
The enchanted grotto event was a little late coming into game yesterday, but there were posts on the forums that suggested it should be fixed by the 20th of next month, not to mention the fact that the events are in place for 48 hours each time (so you have until midnight tonight to adventure to the mushroom rings). For myself personally, I ran the quest with two characters who had never done it before (the “new” main, Sharatan) and picked up some nice house goodies along the way. One being the flower wreath that’s pictured to the right. I wish there were some sort of circlet option like the one you’ll find in the station market place, but I figure I have spent more then enough money on station cash this month (close to $200) in order to move my characters to their new homes.
