GnomeDepot.Net

Fair warning, this is likely to ramble a bit.

Tuesday saw the release of the fifth EQ2 expansion - yes kids there are other MMO’s out there that don’t have War in the title anywhere and they’re still going strong. From all accounts the launch went pretty smooth, to be honest this has become expected from the EQ2 dev team so hats off to them for raising the bar.

Some initial impressions:

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Despite the title this isn’t a political post.

Since Lore had to work almost every night last week I started out the week doing the D.I.R.T.Y. quests to pick up some more of the furniture available from the vendor. Since I was going to Loping Plains anyway I swung by Kelethin and picked up the writs with both Sisca and Acsis because, with the guild halls, we can use all the status we can get. I also really want to get the harvest chest amenity, which is 5 million status up front.

After doing the first round of writs I realized that Acsis had almost 1.5 million status and Sisca had another 600,000 so with the 2 million we already had in escrow we were getting close. I became very focused on getting to 5 million and spent most of the week doing the D.I.R.T.Y. quests and a round or two of writs every night.

On Friday I realized that I was halfway through 67 and 70 was within reach so I became focused on reaching 70 before the release of The Shadow Odyssey. Either Lore or I have said in the past that we wanted to push to level X but we always managed to get side tracked by something - finishing off some gray quests just to get them out of the book so we could start, grinding up tradeskills so that we could catch up our spells and gear to make easier etc. - but for some reason this time I decided to force myself to stay focused.

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Just trying creating a post on the iPod touch I picked up used yesterday.

It works but it’s extremely slow, so don’t expect a magnum opus.

This week is my birthday and Lore got me the collectors edition of Fallout 3. I still consider the original 2 some of the best games ever and I have high hopes that this one will carry on that tradition.

Last night I was torn between attempting the newest D.I.R.T.Y. quests and playing Fallout…Fallout won and I have to say that so far it’s done a pretty good job of bringing the classic series into the modern world.

The first half an hour or so was basically a combination tutorial/character creation session which was pretty cool but I’m hoping there is a way to bypass parts of that since it’s really only entertaining once. I don’t think it will be a spoiler to say that you actually get to start in The Vault in this one and after the tutorial part and the  initial quests that have you leave the vault I spent the rest of the night in the first town you come to.

This is where I can really see shades of the original games. After 3 hours of running around exploring town, talking to people and picking up a bunch of quests I already have what appear to be conflicting quests and I know that choosing one side is going to have an impact on how the story progresses.

So far my only complaint is the first person perspective and the real time combat. I’m getting used to the first person part - though I still don’t like running around either armed or with my fists up like I’m about to punch everyone - but I think the combat might take me a while. I need to play around with the VATS (paused slow motion Action Point based system) to figure out if I can make it come closer to duplicating the strategic turn based combat of the originals.

I’ve seen a couple of complaints about the lock picking and hacking mini-games but I find them entertaining. I find it interesting that they managed to give them appropriately different feels. The lock picking is a slightly twitchy while the hacking is a more mental exercise though neither is overly difficult. It’s true that as an RPG it should be about the characters skills and not mine but I find it a bit more immersive to participate in these activities and I can see that it would be easy enough to tweak the difficulty of the mini-game to make it easier for more skilled characters - I’m not sure it works this way I can just see how it could be made to.

The Halloween event has started in EQ2 and Sisca, Lore, and Acis decided to kill things that go bump in the night. We first met up with goblin illusionists who made us look creepy; the fun part was, our look changed every time we zoned. His goblin friend suggested we pay a visit to Loping Plains, as a friend needed a meal, so off we went!

Here Acis and Lore as Vampire Twins — this one amused me greatly, since normally it is Sisca and Acsis who are mirror-twins.

The look changed again as we arrive in LP:

We grabbed the Nightmare rides to Sonborn cemetary


and headed in to meet this friend. We were accosted as we arrived — something bit my neck, and everything went black! I woke in the merchant shop, and went out to see if I could find out what was going on. I found a man in mourning and a priest dithering about trying to cleanse the man’s home — we agreed to go in and find the ritual book (the previous volunteer, with book, never returned) and perform the ceremony.

Sadly, I left my camera behind, so we’ll have to do without pictures from here-on unless Sisca remembered his.

The haunted house was actually pretty entertaining: get jumped by vampires, find a key; retrieve items for the ritual; get jumped by vampires and find another key. Repeat until all ghosts are seen (mom, 2 kids, baby), vampire-filled coffins are torched, and so on. When we were finally ready to perform the ceremony, the ghosts were successfully sent home, but we were accosted by the vampire sire. After chasing him from room to room we found ourselves in the basement. As he died, he mocked us, saying that he was not the source of the evil, and perhaps we should look in the mirror! Doing so, we were accosted by someone who looked remarkably like Sisca! Once he was properly put to rest, we explored again — the ghostly family had departed, but they left behind a toy chest containing a mask, which Sisca claimed (and taking the mask was itself a quest btw). We then went out to reassure the priest that the house was cleansed.

We actually ended up cleansing the house twice more, so that each of us could acquire a mask; we also discovered that starting with the 2nd time through, L&L books were scattered throughout the house, allowing us to pick up some of our missing ones. Each time we zoned in we acquired the cleansing quest anew, so we were able to get both quest rewards, as well as quest exp each time (though the AA was only for the first time). Still, there were enough named on the first round to get a fair bit of AA, and Sisca and Loredena both leveled during the runs through.  /edit to add:  The funniest part to me was that Sisca was the doppleganger all 3 times!

I’m playing with the theme, so the appearance may change randomly and without notice until both Sisca and I are satisfied. Excuse the dust!

Apparently we were set up to require site registration to comment (and since we host our own site, the generic Wordpress id didn’t work). For now I’ve turned that off, but I haven’t found the place to turn off comment moderation, so I suppose that’s the compromise. I don’t really expect much spam anyway.

With the advent of guildhalls starting at guildlevel 30, The Revellers made a strong push to level the guild. Sisca and I are two of the only four active members right now, and we have the highest-level adventurers (and I have one of the two level 80 crafters). Everyone helped though — we ran alts and mains both through some of the lower-level heritage quests, everyone did the harvesting quest series for the guild construction, and we all did both adventuring and harvesting writs.

For the final push, Sisca, Acsis and Loredena (all 63/64 at the time) collected all 4 of the ‘kill Sentries in Tenebrous Tangle’ writs and headed topside. We could get there, kill 20 sentries, and head back to Qeynos for a fresh batch of writs in less then 10 minutes per cycle. Three or four rounds later, we dinged 30!

After a fair amount of discussion, it was decided to purchase our guild hall in N Qeynos. We considered Gorowyn as being accessible to good and evil alike, but since we are primarily Qeynos based, and I liked the ‘look’ of the Qeynos halls better, that’s where we settled. Sisca, as original guildleader, did the honors. We failed to get a ‘now purchasing’ screen shot though, sorry!

We’ve designated one room as a library, and other as the crafting area. Kennet, Reyder’s monk alterego, is busily experimenting with housing items before decorating the room he called dibs on. He has some unique ideas, so I’ll be sure to post screenshots once he progresses a bit more!

Technorati Tags: eq2,everquest 2,the Revellers,guild Halls

Since the last EQ2 update I’ve been pulled by competing desires.   Guild Halls our coming next update (probably today!), so we want to get the guild to 30 – as of Sunday, we’re 70% through 29!  Considering our size (4 active members) I’m really happy with how far we’ve come!    At first I was running all of my avatars through the harvesting quests – the first time with each, you receive AA, and you get guild status.  Also, 10 gives a scroll for one’s house, 20 a statue, and 30 a title.  I think Loredena, Serrenial, and Fellbrood made it to the title – Serr can harvest tier 8, so she actually did all harvesting quests, while I actually push Fellbrood’s armorcrafting to 40 just to open up another harvesting tier.   I liked the evil side statue (a dragon) better then good’s ( a knight) but don’t really have the energy to grind out that many more harvest runs with my other evils.  Taking my lower level avatars harvesting in higher-level tiers was pretty good guild status (at 30 Lemi got 16K for tier 7, which is better then Serr gets doing a level 80 writ!) but rather slow and death-prone.  I did do all the levels of the crafting journeyman series with each as I went though, as well as Duggin’s where available.

This last update also added a murder mystery – the Seeress of the Temple of Life (Rodcet Nife’s prophet) was killed.   Everyone ran some of the (rather boring) bone chip quests to get the orb to 100%, and then we spent time solving the mystery on both sides.   I really enjoyed the first time through on either end, though it most definitely is time consuming!  But, the evil and good sides are of course close parallels, so not quite as entertaining the second time, and the third and fourth was rather boring.   The quest rewards are exceedingly good, so I’m glad I ran it with my main avatars, but it was a bit tedious towards the last.   One thing about the rewards is quite nifty – two of them grow with you!   They are at the x5 level, and they can be mounted to display in your room.   Mounting and then unmounting them (making them usable again) will set them at the closest x5 level.  Thus, should you acquire them at 25, you can level them to 35 and so on to 75.  This makes them exceedingly good rewards all told.

When I was a kid my parents were involved with a wide variety of groups from garden club to bridge groups to bowling leagues while I was involved in scouting and church groups. As an adult, back before the spread of the Internet, I was in my share of bowling leagues or softball teams. I also was a member of HAL-PC (the Houston Area League of PC Users) back in the early 90’s and not only participated in the BBS message boards but also attended the monthly meetings and other social gatherings. All of these things were really about finding a group of people that you enjoyed hanging out with and creating an excuse to hang out, laugh, joke and talk about the things you had in common.

While listening to a recent Van Hemlock podcast [27 August 2008]  I came to realize that, for me at least, MMO’s in general and specifically the guilds or groups of friends that I play them with take the place of those social gatherings. They are primarily an excuse to get together and laugh, joke and talk about our common interests and maybe pick up some new interest.

Even the hardcore raiding guilds could be considered the natural evolution of those social structures. If you’ve ever been around a bowling alley on league night you’ll realize that while many of the leagues are an excuse to get together and drink beer, some of them are actually very intense and competitive with their members spending a lot of their time perfecting their game. (Hmmm…there’s a whole other post in this.)

Since Lore and I are hoping to grow our guild, The Revellers on Permafrost, I think I’m going to try and use this realization to craft our recruiting message to be something other than the standard “friendly, casual, group of friends” message that most casual guilds such as ours end up with.

So if you’re looking for a guild on Permafrost that’s more like popping in to your local pub than clocking in to your second job. Where you can find someone that can help you with your tradeskill questions or put together a group to help you finish off that heritage quest that’s been in your journal for months or just find someone to chat with while you run around harvesting/soloing. In short a place “Where everybody knows your name…” (NORM! - and if you get that you’re probably around the average age of the guild). Check out The Revellers either at our website or in game.