Silly Far-Stretched Comparison of the Week: “..Free Realms looks and feels like an overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW..”

To be clear this was a quote from some blogger and not the opinion of the fine folks over at Spouse Aggro

That got me thinking and then this morning I was reading through the comments over on Broken Toys post about the game and it kind of congealed.

For all of you out there that are trying to compare this to WoW – or whatever your favorite flavor of the month is – I just have one thing to say…

LEARN 2 PLAY!

You know like you did when you were a kid.

No, really. Put your achiever, must get to max level and get the uber gear mindset back on the shelf and just go out and learn how to play again.

I’ve got 2 young nieces, 7 & 9, their parents don’t really like them watching TV and they tend to regulate how much time and what they can do on the computer. They don’t seem to mind that much though because they have more dolls and horses and such than you can shake a stick at. They even have a small tent setup in an otherwise unusable area of their house that is filled with these dolls and such that they call their cloud castle. They spend hours playing together, making up stories or acting out stories from their books. They also spend time competing, racing each other, playing soccer etc.

I can see them playing Free Realms now and jumping from job to job, game to game, achiever to explorer to socializer.

If you really think that this is just a “overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW” then this game is not for you! This game is only for the truly hardcore PLAYer’s that really understand how to go into a world and make it their own and to do so for nothing more than the FUN of it.

I knew that this was a long quest that involved harvesting in every tier but I actually enjoy harvesting and, being 75, only tier 8 would have me harvesting in zones with agro mobs. How hard can it be, right?

It started off simply enough, go to any tier 1 zone and bring me back 10 or so of multiple items from the various nodes. This took me longer than I thought it would mainly because shrubs were almost non-existent – right, who’d a thunk it since it wasn’t that long ago that you could zone into T1 or T2 and find nothing but shrubs up. Next up was T2, I had Acsis port us over to Antonica and we were able to complete everything but the fishing without even getting out of site of the spires.

Next up T3 and this is where it started to get complicated. He wanted you to harvest equal quantities of the same items from both Thundering Steppes and Nek Forest. TS was no big deal, I know several good harvesting spots for all of the various nodes there but Nek has never been one of my favorite zones so I haven’t spent a ton of time there. Still I managed to find an area that I could run back and forth through and get most of the harvests, except for dens. T4 was a repeat of T3 except he wanted stuff from Zek and Enchanted Lands. Again, easy enough and, being 75, I went deeper in to both zones to leave the easier to get to harvest for the lower levels.

For T5 it was off to Rivervale and Feerot. Much like Nek Forest, Feerot has never been one of my favorite zones so I decided to put that off. I know Rivervale, I’ve harvested in Rivervale even when it was still green, this should be a snap. Two hours later I was finished with everything except DENS. In that entire time I had seen maybe 10 dens tops and you didn’t just need 20 or so of the pelts but also 20 or so of EACH type of meat from the dens. Frustrated, I gave it up for the night and started thinking about finding something else to focus on.

The next night Lore had her Paladin, Serrenial, working on the quest and she was up to Rivervale as well. She said she was seeing quite a few dens up if I wanted to come over and finish that off. I decided to tempt fate and head over there one more time but this time with just Sisca, Acsis would have to wait to get his cloak. It still took me about an hour to finish off the dens but apparently having Serrenial in the zone is what it takes to actually trigger the bloody dens spawning. Next up was Feerot and after my experience in Rivervale I have to admit I was dreading this since just moving around and seeing in there can be frustrating. I headed in and picked a direction and just started running as best I could in that maze until I came around a corner and ran into wall of dens, probably 6 of them all in a row, put there I’m sure just to taunt me after Rivervale. This led me to a little area around a pond that I could circle and harvest non-stop so I had everything except for fish – no fish in the pond just those strange snake things – within an hour. I pulled up the map, found the nearest river and headed off to finish up my fishing.

After the hell that was Rivervale and T5 I was dreading T6 but it was back to being simple, head to Sinking Sands and clear cut the zone. Next up was T7 and Kingdom of Sky was in for the slash and burn treatment. Finally T8 and off to Kunark where stuff is still green/blue and agro. Funnily enough it took me less time to do Kunark than it did to finish even Nek Forest much less the bloody, stinking, cesspit that is Rivervale.

So back to the brat…err eager young man…that started the quest for a final turn in. Oh, yeah he’s been working on your reward but his tailor friend is finishing it and she just needs you to bring her a Mantrap Root – oh just a simple T8 rare that’s really rare. Luckily I had one from one of the tradeskill missions, I’ve never actually harvested one of the things. Give her this rare prize and viola…

This is what a weeks worth of harvesting will get you.

Oh and if you’re wondering the helm is:

One of the quest rewards for the new Frostfell quests.

And now it’s off to Frostfell and running quests to get tokens so I can buy all the shiney new stuff from the broker.

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

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!

Everquest 1:

Bjoern – Level 30ish Dwarven Berserker created to play with the Tuesday night Nostagia group. No last name yet but I’m thinking of something like Ta’Rock.

Soaridor – Level 53 Drakin Mage created to check out the new race and, due to the increased speed of leveling, ended up joining the Friday night Nostalgia group. Currently replaced by Sisca but I may start alternating depending on the needs of the group.

Sisca Mainacier – Level 56 Human Monk, this was my original character in EQ, created back in October of 1999. I recently moved him over from The Tribunal when Nostalgia was working on Vox/Naggy. While I thought the tactic we came up with for Mage pulling Naggy was cool – basically the druid would cast her translocate spell on Soaridor and I’d run in and aggro the lair and get them to just outside then accept the TL to clear agro then gate back to the where I had bound just outside the throne room – I thought having a monk around would be more efficient. Besides, Sisca was still 51 since I’d held him there for the express purpose of pulling Vox. Got him to 56 so far but after the trip to Old Sebilis last week I’m thinking that depending on who’s available and where we go Soaridor’s DPS might be more beneficial at times so I may start platooning them.

Everquest 2:

Sisca Mainacier -  yeah, original I know. Once again my original character, created on launch day. Took some time off when I started leveling Acsis but he’s back to being my main now.

Acsis – Level 55 Dark Elf Fury. Created when Lore and I found it was basically the two of us left active and a Guardian/Monk pair just didn’t cut it. Leveled to the mid-40′s paired with Lore then I got my MacBook Pro and found that, with Bootcamp, EQ2 ran perfectly so I moved him to a second account and he was healer for Sisca and Lore. Currently on hiatus as Lore’s decided she wanted to try 2 boxing and has wanted to try out a Mystic for awhile now. I’ve switched to playing Malken for now but I could switch back and just play him as primarily a nuking Fury.

Malken Gneebiter- Level 31 Gnome Wizard. Also created shortly after release but didn’t see much play time early on because soloing a Wizard was…challenging. Once SoE revamped the outdoor zones to be more solo friendly I got him to 30 and with Lore’s move to two boxing the Mystic I’ve brought him in to add DPS to the group.

Klubya – Created to try out the betrayal quests, back before the revamp, he was put on hold when he found out they wouldn’t let him be a Paladin of Zek. I played him some this weekend while helping level the mystic and remembered how much fun a Paladin can be so he may see some more play time soon, I’m especially thinking of doing the storms quests to get him the plate appearance armor.

Dortmunder – Level 30 Ratonga Brigand. Created after the release of Kunark when Lore decided she wanted to try a Sarnak SK, I didn’t really like the Sarnak that well so I created Dortmunder to group with her.

By the time we stopped playing six years later, Serenya was 65, Loredena was 55, and Velma was 52 – we had moved Scooby group to the Trib, and I switched to playing Serenya with them. While Lore wasn’t played as much, those two once-a-week groups were still going strong, right up until the end.

In the years since, I would occasionally log in just to look around, but I never tried to play. Until this spring.I have been reading the blogs of Tipa and Stargrace for awhile, and they began writing about EQ Nostalgia.From their posts and the ensuing wave of nostalgia a new guild was born, Nostalgia on the Luclin server, and Sisca and I decided we wanted to be a part of that.

It started out as two once-a-week groups, one each on Tuesdays and Fridays, with Tuesday rarely having a full group, and Friday having as many as 2 full groups. First Sisca and I leveled up a berserker and beastlord to 25 for the Tuesday group, and then we ended up leveling a mage and druid to 40 for Fridays. The leveling was amazingly fast (50 within a couple days played)! We spent the first 10 levels in the tutorial (nicely done) and then moved on to the Serpent’s Spine zones. They were hotzones, with plenty of mobs, tons of quests, and good gear and drops. As soon as we could join the groups, we found the levels were flying by there as well! As soon as we hit 50, it was agreed the Friday group would hold at 52 for a few weeks – we killed Vox and Naggey with 6-12 people 3 or 4 times apiece, partly for the nostalgia, and partly to get epic drops for folks. Then we leveled to 55, and held there a bit to give everyone a chance to catch up – one thing about these weekly groups, on any given week we range from 4 to 8 people, and the group makeup switches up a fair amount, so we need to give folks who can’t play every week a chance to catch up.

I’ve noticed that between returns to college, holidays, and burn-out, that the numbers are dropping again.But we’re still having a lot of fun (now leveling to 60!) and once or twice a week isn’t a huge commitment so we continue to hang out.

Around May I started to get bored, as did Lore I think, and we sort of put the group on hold for awhile. Both Lore and I have hunters that are at 67 and the temptation is there to make that last push to 70 but she said she just couldn’t muster the energy and she has a much higher tolerance for these things than I do – every time I consider it my head starts hurting.

So today it ends.

I may be back at some point but I have to say that nothing I’ve seen coming out of WotLK is making me think that will be what brings me back.