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.

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.

Almost 4 1/2 years after launch and I’ve got my first max level character. In fact this is my first max level character in 10 years of playing MMO’s.

Even scarier is that the next day:

Acsis only took me almost 3 years to cap.

Shortly after that Lore also managed to ding 80, I’m not sure what her played time is but I did manage to snag a screen shot of her ding

I also managed to get Sisca to 80 in Alchemy over the weekend so now I just need to get Acsis 10 more levels of Tailoring and I’ll go from 10 years of no characters at any level cap to 2 characters with both tradeskills and adventuring levels capped.

We also started doing the daily quest for Void Shards and managed to get the first 2 pieces and by the end of the week we’ll have the third. I think our next goal is to get Lore’s mage caught up and I wouldn’t mind getting my ranger leveled so we have a scout class to give us some versatility. I’d also like to spend some time mentoring guildies to see if we can put together a group and maybe start in on some of the TSO instances. I also want to get the crafting epic done with Sisca and Acsis is about halfway through the harvesting cloak so he’d like to finish that off as well.

So still plenty left to do and I haven’t even started in on my other 12 alts

Since she hadn’t really gotten any of her other tradeskillers through the introductory quest line in the Moors she brought along Serrenial, her 80 Provisioner. This matched up well with Sisca, 67 Alchemist (Sage line), and Acsis, 52 Tailor (Outfitter line), giving us coverage of all 3 of the base skill lines. So off we went to isle of Mara.

Apparently the Gnomes in Steamfont were having an issue and could use the help of some skilled crafters so Acsis fired up a portal and we headed off to see what we could do to help. When we arrived at Gnomeland Security we spent several minutes running around looking for someone to direct us before we realized that there was a new doorway that led to an underground research workshop. Zoning in there we saw this giant dragonbot on a rampage tearing up the place. Talking to the foreman revealed that they had built the dragonbot to help defeat the bot that had gone haywire and driven them out of Ak’Anon all those years ago but, again, something had gone wrong and he was malfunctioning. Not to worry though, they had a cunning plan! They would just build a bigger and more powerful bot to beat up the bot that they had built to beat up the first bot. Gnomish logic. Oh well they were willing pay good money, they were providing all the raws and I had a druid to get me the hell out if it all went horribly pear shaped.

The crafting part was fairly straightforward. There are 4 phases to the build, and if you do them one phase at a time you can watch the construction happen. Each phase need 3 each of 9 different items, 1 item per tradeskill class. So, even if you have a full group of 6 someone will still have to do combines for items outside of their primary skill set. With our little band of 3 that meant that 2/3rds of the combines were going to be outside our comfort zone. All of the items needed come from a special recipe book that they also provide so you really don’t need to bring anything. Though I would strongly recommend bringing any tradeskill stat boosting items you have, those out of class combines will really make you work for it.

A couple of hours later we had finally managed to get all of the pieces together and the gnomes went to work building their killer bot killer bot while we sat back and watched. Once he was completed he quickly waded in and actually attacked the other bot instead of turning on the gnomes like all their other creations.

Cue Robot Wars theme music

In case you were thinking of trying to take him out yourself

  Victory!

The good news is that once our guy had beaten the dracobot he just stood there and allowed us to loot. Awfully nice of him.

Each of us also got a token that we can collect and use to spend on various tradeskill focused items, including mounts that up your harvesting skills, at a merchant in Mara.

All in all it was an entertaining way to spend an evening and, for tradeskillers at least, it resulted in some nice rewards without actually having to kill a single mob. When you combine these quests with the dailies in the moors and the other various tradeskill focused items that were added with this expansion I think that all tradeskillers need to get together and buy Domino a really nice dinner at the next Fan Faire.

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:

Logging in on Tuesday night I had to spend the first 30 minutes or so organizing my hotkeys since you now automatically get App1 versions of your level 50+ spells/combat arts just as you did pre level 50. Sisca was a few levels behind in the Alchemy thing so was missing all of the level 68+ CA’s and I had apparently missed some of the lower level ones as well. Acsis was also missing a good 10 levels worth of spells since my Sage was only level 61.

I ended up taking the long way to the new airship landing since I forgot that I could use the house item you get for the shiney collection quest from the world event to port you right to the landing pad in Sinking Sands. Once there I joined the throngs lined up, many riding their new bear mount, waiting for the boat…err airship. I was a little worried that the crowds were going to make the new area unplayable but I had forgotten about EQ2’s world zone instancing system and there were already 3 versions of Moors of Ykesha to choose from when our airship started to pull out. There were still plenty of people there but it never really impacted performance and I didn’t feel the frustration of 20 people camping every spawn. We were able to move through the zone and the tradeskill quest lines as fast as we wanted.

Last night I managed to finish off the first series of tradeskill oriented quests as well as a couple of the new tradeskill daily quests. The tradeskill quests require you to craft level 70 items which are a bit of a challenge at level 61 but I was able to get the 4th tier on every combine. I was a little worried about attempting this with a level 50ish crafter but then I realized that even if you only get the first tier of quality you can complete the quest it will just take more combines. The other worry is the fuel costs but the reward seems to be configured so that even if you only get the first tier and have 4 times the combines you’ll still get your fuel costs back. If you can do it in fewer combines you’ll net a bigger profit.

The so far the tradeskill daily quests almost seem like an exploit. The first was to collect 10 each of 2 different sea shells that were easy to get with little risk of getting in agro range of anything. Of the 2 I did last night the hardest was the mail pickup quest that required me to run to the 3 major “cities” of the zone and click a box. The other required me to harvest 6 berry baskets that were at most 1000 feet from the quest giver. Both of those netted me some faction and 25g, not very exciting quest wise but a quick 50g profit.

Speaking of profit after completing all of those quests I ended up about 4p ahead over 2 nights. Since we really just started playing in Kunark over the last week getting this kind of coin is new to me but if this keeps up I can see why they priced some of the guild hall amenities the way they did.

After 2 nights of running around I still haven’t found the starter for the adventuring quests or the new adventure dungeons though I have to admit I haven’t looked all that hard as I was focused on completing the tradeskill stuff. I’m trying to avoid looking it up but I may have to see if I can at least find a pointer to the quest starter.

Overall I’m really liking the expansion so far. It was kind of nice to be able to get tradeskill XP for doing something besides staring at a workstation for hours and I’m especially eager to try out the new tradeskill dungeons. The new adventure dungeons sound cool but I think I’d rather wait and put together a guild group to do those first instead of trying to 2box or duo them so they may have to wait a bit. Still it’s nice to have that kind of content sitting there and waiting for us.

I like the idea of the daily quests but I’m also glad that, unlike WoW, there isn’t anything that I feel I have to have that makes me feel forced to make sure I grind my dailies to get cash. Right now at least, I look at them as an option to pick up some extra cash now and then. What I’m curious about is what level you can start them and how the money scales. If I can pickup 25g a day with a level 20-40 character that’s going to make equipping them much easier. Of course that’s also going to make the economy for lower level items go haywire, or should I say more haywire since the prices for lower level items is already outrageous due to transmuting.

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.

On Saturday Lore decided to join me – actually she realized that I was ahead of her and she couldn’t have that, not that she’s competitive or anything – and we spent most of the weekend plowing through the Loping Plains quest lines while going back and picking up the Kelethin writs every once in awhile.

At one point she mentioned that we had never completed the heritage quests in Lavastorm, mainly because she need room in her quest log and she hates to delete quests.

I told her to focus

Sunday afternoon we reached the point where we were all but done with the Loping Planes quest lines and were being sent into Mistmoore Catacombs and Castle Mistmoore itself. Oh, and the one quest that had us zone into an instance to be greeted by 3 mobs that were each level 70 epic x 4 (that’s a 24 person raid for you non-EQ2 players in the audience) and this is the yard trash. The catacombs was mostly green but it was group con and every pull was at least 2 mobs so it was tough, especially if we got an add.

I think it was at this point that Lore suggested maybe taking a break and leveling tradeskills to upgrade combat arts and spells.

FOCUS!

We were all 69 by this time, I could almost taste 70, so we decided to head to Kunark and start in on the quest lines there figuring that would put us over the top. We did the sokokar quests, the first 2 or 3 steps of several of the other quest lines and completed a couple of city writs and by the end of the night all 3 had leveled to 70 – Lore even managed to level before Acsis so she’s a little happier.

At some point before we left Loping Plains the guild dinged 31 and when I checked before camping we were already almost 25% through. I’m not sure how that happened but I’m not complaining.

We also managed to get to over 5 million status so tonight when we pay the rent for the guild hall we’ll also be able to buy the harvest locker which is what started this whole thing.

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!

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.

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.

After killing off one last storm Klubya gated back and we decided to tackle the hideout mission again since it was the quickest that we had done. This basically involves going into an instance, slaughtering gnolls – any day you can slaughter gnolls is a good day as for as Klubya is concerned – then using the ever present explosive barrels to blow up their supplies. 30 minutes later we had blown up the last of their supply crates, woot, done lets get out of here…oh wait, it didn’t count for her shard?!?.

So we head back into the main lair and start looking at our options which boil down to doing this really annoying water area that neither of us likes or her figuring out how to solo the arena or attempting the Harclave solo mission – a pretty cool raiders of the lost ark kind of mission but extremely long and you end up fighting multiples so she’s not all gung ho.

Then I spotted a second arena entrance that’s labeled as heroic. This looks to be a group version of the standard arena mission so we decide to give it a whirl. It took us 3 tries to figure it out but we finally got through it and picked up some ok loot:

Sadly, it still didn’t complete her shard so we’ll have to figure something out on Thursday.

Some shots from earlier in the night (just because I want to play with Photoshop Express and Live Writer integration)

Beware the wrath of the golden Ogre.

Who says there are no flying mounts in EQ2

You have to admit, doesn’t look like your typical Paladin.

This, looks like your typical Paladin…well not really but still.