EQ2s Sentinel’s Fate expansion launched on our anniversary. Naturally, being complete geeks we played on launch night! (Of course, it WAS a Wednesday, and we did our anniversary dinner on the following Saturday instead). Loredena (my guardian) and Sisca and Acsis (his monk and fury, respectively) are our usual trio, and they had been 80 for several months. I had started leveling up my original launch-day character (Daena, a conjurer), now moved to a second account, to 2-box but she was still only 76 on the 17th. Luckily it turned out that there were three different starting quest lines on Spire Island — one, from Felice Adae, was for 80 crafters, which all of us were, a gnome gave out a questline at 75, and then the city reps gave theirs out at 78. By the time we had done the gnome and crafting lines, as well as many of the quests stemming from that, Daena had turned 78. On Thursday night she dinged 80, and on Sunday night Sisca’s ranger Casis (slated to replace Sisca in the foursome) also turned 80. Of course, in the meantime our trio has hit 82
In ten years of playing MMOs, until TSO we had never had max-level characters. Clearly, while we won’t be the fastest levelers around, we’re going to max out again within a few months, which will leave a very long time at max this time around. Still, we have plenty of AAs to acquire and a ton of content left to explore (not to mention a stable of alts) so I’m not overly concerned.
First impressions: I loved that there is an extensive series of crafting quests. The first two to complete the initial lines (before the 4 daily crafting quests) made 2.5 levels each, which is awesome! The zones are huge, and a bit laggy due to the number of people, but that’s already improving. They are also really stunning — much brighter colors then EQ2 tended to use early on, and some fantastic artwork. The quests tend to involve an awful lot of running back and forth, which gets tedious, but also ensures you learn your way around. The coin is good, and the quest rewards were definite upgrades for Daena and Casis, whose gear was lagging, but not really for the others, who are in a mix of tier 1 shard armor (TSO) and Kunark quested. I love doing collections (ooh, shiny!) and there are a lot of them in this expansion — but there are also a ton of spawn points for the shinies it seems, so so far no difficulty in doing them. As a crafter, I appreciate that I can do my harvesting without much difficulty as well. I’m also looking forward to spending some time in the Hole once we’ve gotten a bit further along in our questing, and I like that so far everything has been manageable by our small group rather than requiring an optimized one (we never did do the missions in TSO for instance, getting all of our shards from the solo quest).
So, over at Clockwork Gamer, Kendrick posted on EQ2’s Research Assistants with a fishing comparison. A lively discussion ensued, but since it is pretty apparent that we have fundamentally opposing views on this, and since neither of us will convert the other, rather than continuing to spam his comment section I’m taking it to my own blog.
First, let me lay some groundwork. Kendrick is the guild leader of a large raiding guild – a casual raiding guild, but still a raiding guild. I’m the guild leader of a tiny friends-and-family casual guild. While I led a few raids in EQ, I’ve yet to be on one in EQ2 in 5 years of playing, and I’m unlikely ever to be on one. While I would enjoy doing the 12-man city raids, I have no interest in doing what it would take to turn my tiny guild into one large enough to do the 24-man raids, and I’m also not going to jump ship to a larger guild just to raid. Besides – week nights the only night I stay up past 10:30 is the night I have a team game of Civ 4 with friends, and Saturday nights Sisca and I play D&D with those same friends. I like my sleep too much to become a raider! (For the record, I’m over 40 and I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ launched in ‘99)
As noted elsewhere on this blog, Sisca and I only recently reached 80, with his monk and druid, and my guardian. Next highest in the guild is a 72 necromancer, followed by my 67 conjurer, and then a 62 berserker and a 60 wizard (who has been playing for about a month ). Even ignoring time zones and varying work/D&D schedules, with those levels and classes we’re barely capable of grouping up for instances in, say, Tenebrous Tangle – we can’t yet do Kunark instances let alone TSO ones as a guild.
Odus is continuing the void storyline, and bringing it to a close. It will tell us what happened to change the Erudites to how they are now, and give more lore/backstory about both the Kerra and the Ratonga (apparently there have been a LOT of requests for more Ratonga lore), as well as Al’Kabor and Al’Rod — backstory for Paineel too. Hinted that the Rime are somehow involved? There will be a ‘new’ villian — hinted at both the Rime and Sathir, so not sure. They said that Odus is part of an overarching storyline that has yet to be told, and that what happened in the past will be reflected upon the future.
They plan to bring back forum quests around the lore, and interweave those with in-game lore events. They indicated that Kerafym is not gone. Also, that dragon from Icy Keep will be back, all grown up, before the expansion — a two group raid, that they indicated was not intended to be particularly difficult, and is not tied directly to Halas.
The Erollisi storyline begun in February continues, they reminded us of the Innoruk quest line stating that ‘The daughter of hate, crowned in treachery, sealed the fate of Valor’s twin’ and thus the opening of the Shard of Hate leads to the opening of the Shard of Love.
Other odds and ends: Kaitheel was surprised at how upset people were at Gardy Giftgiver having been beaten up, and we can expect a quest line around him this forthcoming Frostfell. There are no new deities being added with Sentinal’s Fate, but that does not preclude more arriving before or after. Minor deities may also return to the world, though not necessarily able to be worshiped (also, they aren’t extending the deity quest lines another tier). Currently the LoN dev team is entirely separate from those of EQ and EQ2, and the lore does not tie well; they would like better integration. Considering adding some small quest lines such that one is challenged to a card game in a tavern, which will trigger a LoN scenario.
A couple things I noticed — the dev team (influenced by Brenlo) are definitely making changes to encourage the less-hardcore amongst their audience. Someone complained about the research assistants, and specifically complained that it reduced what he could sells Masters at. Brenlo’s response? ‘As a 76 ranger with 30pp to my name, I don’t consider that a bad thing’. I’ll point out as well that when the research assistants were mentioned at the opening night kickoff, there were a cluster of young men who loudly booed; the rest of the crowd cheered. It appears that even amongst those hardcore enough to pay for Fan Faire, that it was in general a popular move.
During the session in which the change to all raids going forward was discussed, such that at each pull of a boss mob one can, through lore, set the difficulty level, a top-tier raider complained that this reduced his guild’s sense of accomplishment. This elicited a handful of responses: From the devs, they pointed out that since it IS handled through lore, the entire encounter changes based on the difficulty level, such that one might not even face the final boss on ‘easy mode’, and Rothgar pointed out the likelihood of achievements that indicate the mode/boss killed. Brenlo’s response was a bit more pointed — this is one of the few times I’ve heard a producer of any MMO state outright that it is a business decision. It is not cost-effective to produce raid zones that only 5% of the population ever sees (Brenlo’s stated percentage), and this change is in part to greatly increase the number of guilds that can work their way through the zones, and both see them and experience the lore.
I attended two EQ2 sessions at Fan Faire so far today. The first was on quest mechanics, the second on more-general game mechanics. What was interesting in the first was watching the process of rewriting a quest — in this case, that really annoying open-the-gate quest in Thundering Steppes is being rewritten! No longer must you know Halasian, nor come only during the day, to earn the right to come and go as you please. Further, the story line makes more sense, AND does not require you to lower your faction with the centaurs! Instead you’ll collect guard tower reports, find a box of coins (look under the sofa!) and kill a highwayman causing problems, all to make the road safer. For how the quests themselves are built, I’m afraid you had to be there, or talk to someone better at conveying it then me. suffice it to say that while flexible, the tool IS still by its nature limiting in what can be done. There was one point of interest though — there is a desire within the dev team to add other ways of advancing/completing quests that is not so dependent upon kill-10-rat mechanics. This will require rework of the tool, as well as some gameplay mechanics, but they seem to be keen to do something there.
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!
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 pushed Fellbrood’s armorcrafting to 40 just to open up another harvesting tier. I like 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 Hungry Halfling quests 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.
Spore is one of those games I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. It has a ‘god game’ aspect with initially creating your creature and having it evolve. Eventually it will hit the city builder stage (a gamestyle I enjoy) and then the Civ-game, which is also a gamestyle I enjoy. Finally your creations venture off into space, in what I assume will be Gal Civ-like 4X game.
What makes it unique is that, while a single-player game, it will populate your world with the creatures of others, lending it a multiplayer aspect. The creature creator itself was released earlier this summer, and I spent some time playing with it. I don’t know how practical in-game any of my critters will prove, nor do I know how any of the ones I downloaded to my creator will be. It’s nifty though how easily you can take someone else’s creature into your game. The intent is to have creature-casts as well as buddy (and ignore) lists. It launches in one week, and I’m excited to see how it plays out!
EQ2s Sentinel’s Fate expansion launched on our anniversary. Naturally, being complete geeks we played on launch night! (Of course, it WAS a Wednesday, and we did our anniversary dinner on the following Saturday instead). Loredena (my guardian) and Sisca and Acsis (his monk and fury, respectively) are our usual trio, and they had been 80 for several months. I had started leveling up my original launch-day character (Daena, a conjurer), now moved to a second account, to 2-box but she was still only 76 on the 17th. Luckily it turned out that there were three different starting quest lines on Spire Island — one, from Felice Adae, was for 80 crafters, which all of us were, a gnome gave out a questline at 75, and then the city reps gave theirs out at 78. By the time we had done the gnome and crafting lines, as well as many of the quests stemming from that, Daena had turned 78. On Thursday night she dinged 80, and on Sunday night Sisca’s ranger Casis (slated to replace Sisca in the foursome) also turned 80. Of course, in the meantime our trio has hit 82 
). Even ignoring time zones and varying work/D&D schedules, with those levels and classes we’re barely capable of grouping up for instances in, say, Tenebrous Tangle – we can’t yet do Kunark instances let alone TSO ones as a guild. 
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