Complete Heal

Howdy strangers. So here I am roughly six months since my last post and it feels like it’s been even longer. Where have I been? Well, I’ve been gaming on and off over the last few months but mainly I’ve been focused on RL activities (work, family, picking up some new hobbies etc…) Life is great though so I can’t complain – things are calming down enough that I should be able to get back to updating the site more frequently.

What’s new in my online adventures? First of all, I spent a few weeks playing World of Warcraft with my priest but it just didn’t stick. I even bought tickets for Blizzcon but now I’m not sure that I’ll even fly out to Anaheim later this year. It’s probably too late to sell my tickets so I’m may be out $300. At the same time, I’d save a few thousand dollars by staying home so that might make more sense in the end. Who knows maybe I’ll end up going after all as attending a Blizzcon would be something to check off my gamer bucket list. I have to be honest with you guys though, World of Warcraft just isn’t my thing – no matter how much I try to force myself to get immersed in it. In the end, I think it’s all the instanced dungeons. EQ2 has the same problem. I just miss open world dungeon crawling and being somewhere with a group only to see another group of people run by on their own adventure. Don’t get me wrong WOW and EQ2 are great games they just lack the immersion factor for me these days and without that factor I’m just not that into it anymore.

I tried some Age of Conan with the Godslayer expansion. I even leveled up to max level with the “free level” feature that they put into the game recently where you are awarded a level or two a week just for keeping an active subscription. I didn’t enjoy leveling up in that game very much so my theory was that I could get to max level and have a fresh start but it just didn’t feel all that fresh. There is a whole new expansion worth of content to check out but I’m not motivated to play AOC at the moment. Age of Conan feels like a cramped fish bowl sitting on top of a mountain. You see so many interesting things but just can’t get to them. EQ2 held my attention for a few weeks as I got my Fury on Nagafen up to max level and then betrayed and made him a Warden. I did some entry level raids in the new expansion but it seemed like group content and overland pvp dried up due to the implementation of battlegrounds. Needless to say, battlegrounds got old quickly for me and playing a Druid just seemed way too common so I put EQ2 back on the shelf for a while.

As the list of titles that interested me dwindled, I found myself deciding between Vanguard and EQ. I really wanted to spend more time in Vanguard but it’s hard to justify a large time commitment to a game that is effectively down to a single server. Granted, the world of Telon is huge and having all the players in one realm probably makes a lot of sense but I don’t know how long a game on a single server (other than Eve) can survive. Last week SOE laid off 34 employees and early rumors had several of the remaining VG developers getting their walking papers. Fortunately, these rumors seem to be off base as it appears the developers in question remain at SOE. What would make me want to spend more time in Telon? Honestly, some direct communication to the players from the developers regarding their master plan for the game and reassurances that the game isn’t going anywhere. Those reassurances plus details on new content in the coming months would go a long way to calming my Vanguard jitters. Until then, my 40th level Bloodmage will remain on the fence – waiting to see what happens.

With all that out of the way, guess what was left? Everquest of course! As the title of this post indicates, absence makes the heart grow fonder. In the last month or so, I’ve leveled up an Enchanter on the recently combined Luclin / Stromm server. He’s now locked at level 65 with about 80 AA points and has joined a new casual paced progression raiding guild called Visceral. The guild is planning on going through all EQ content starting with the Planes of Power expansion with a two day a week raiding schedule. It’s exactly what I was looking for. Sometimes coming back to EQ can be difficult because players are two boxing or using mercenaries and groups at low levels can be hard to find. At the same time, high level veteran players have so many AA points that the gap seems monumental. However, in this guild I’ve had groups almost instantly upon logging in each day and everyone has a great attitude. At the moment anyway, people are playing because they love the game and everyone is helping each other out. It’s a guild full of EQ veterans, returning players and people looking to relive experiences they had years ago. I know it’s not a novel concept and many guilds of this nature don’t make it very long but I’m hoping this will be different. I could really see myself leveling up with a group of people over the coming months and experiencing a good bit of EQ content that I missed over the years as I went looking for the “next best thing.” Perhaps, sometimes we are staring it right in the face but we just don’t notice it.

The guild is currently recruiting all classes and all levels (below 65). We have about 115 members now and had our first little mini raids this afternoon – taking down the Dragon Xanamech Nezmirthafen in Plane of Innovaiton which gave us keys for the Factory. Inside the Factory, we killed the Manaetic Behemoth which was a fun fight. Our raid split into two groups and each group was charged with keeping a constant stream of adds at bay (go go Enchanter) long enough for other groups to down the boss. That’s it for now, back to Norrath.

I haven’t posted much in the last two weeks primarily because I’ve been pretty busy in real life and was out of town last weekend. On the gaming front, I’m excited about spending more time in the final Aion closed beta; which starts tomorrow and runs through the end of the weekend. I have mixed feelings about investing a lot more time leveling up my Aion beta character since it will get wiped soon. If I’m going to grind, I’d like it to count – know what I mean? Be that as it may, I will try out some different classes and look around a bit more this weekend. I hear they are going to have some live events so that should be pretty cool.

What have I been up to in the virtual world recently? Well, I tried to give Warhammer and AOC another shot but couldn’t get into either game. I lasted a few hours in Warhammer over the course of about a week and about 15 minutes in Conan. Both games have their strong points but not enough of them to keep me playing. They just aren’t fresh – at least to me. Speaking of another game that isn’t particularly fresh, I did manage to gain a few levels in World of Warcraft since my last update. I took my blood elf priest up to 77 from 75. The best thing about hitting 77 is that you get cold weather flying which enables your character to fly in Northrend. A recent patch increased the regular (non epic flyer) mount speed to 150% so you can really haul ass if you know what I mean getting quests done. After running around for 6 levels, it’s nice to fly once again. It’s also nice to be able to fly without a timer (Aion) and without being 50+ (Vanguard.)

My priest also picked up the dual specialization option so he now has a healing spec and a shadow / dps spec. You can switch between specs for free in town and your spell bars update automatically between the two specs. There is no charge to switch. Very cool… Another thing I noticed while leveling up is that the game is incredibly smooth and polished. Everything just works and it feels right. The quests for example have great variety to them. So far I’ve gotten to unleash rats on npc corpses, unleash termites on a lumber mill to spawn a mini-boss, fight dragons while flying, rescue Undercity from siege, torture a few guys and a few more interesting things.

Another cool thing about World of Warcraft is that the seas are actually populated with interesting things. In other news, I read today that they are going to bring Onyxia back soon for the 5th year anniversary celebration and that might be just enough to get me motivated to grind out those last few levels to hit 80 before Aion releases in late September.

Vanguard had a double experience weekend last weekend and I missed it once again. That’s a bummer. The party I was running with a lot has continued to grind through the 40’s and last time I checked they are 45+ now. That sucks for me because they will be out of range soon and I’ll need to find some more random folks to try to hook up with. Personally, the solo content in Vanguard just seems a bit stale. I know it’s there and doable but it’s pretty difficult on my blood mage and just doesn’t have the fun factor to be honest. At least not compared to a few other games. Vanguard shines in the group environment so I’m going to need to find some new groups. My blood mage is still stuck at 40 but he should have quite a bit of rest experience by now. I’m still planning on leveling him up to max level but it may take me a while. The rate at which new content is released is rather slow, so I don’t really see any reason to rush it. In other Vanguard news, the spell animations have been fixed and they patched in a new overland raid mob this week. I’ll be back with another update in a few days.

Over the last few days, I’ve been back in Age of Conan. I wanted to check out how they have implemented DirectX 10 and also check out how my new video card performs in game. I’m running a GeForce GTX 285 now and I’ve noticed it does amazing things in Vanguard, EQ2 and Age of Conan. The card really shines in Conan.

When I reactivated my subscription, I was still sitting at level 57. The last time I played, I had rolled up on the new PVP server but got a bit bored in the mid 50’s repeating Villas. This time, I started off in E. Mountains and did most of the quests there before hitting up a relatively new zone added to the game called Ymir’s Pass. The new zone has a pretty good story line and lots of quests taking you through the snowy mountains and fighting some rather scary looks mobs.

At the bottom of the hill in Ymir’s Pass is this large wheel where slave labor keeps it turning 24/7. I wasn’t too jazzed about that deal so I laid waste to all the guards surrounding the wheel. Unfortunately, they respawned. Imagine that?

I managed to hook up with a number of folks who were in my old guild and joined their new guild. After leveling up a bit, I joined them in Keshetta where we had some major AOE grinding going on. We would pull about 25 mobs at a time and then lay waste to them. Back in the old days, this type of pull would bring my computer to it’s knees but today it ran super smooth and looked fantastic. I’ll give it to OpenEdge1 – AOC is indeed an amazing looking game. He’s right about character and mob animations – they are the best in the business right now. DX10 environmental effects look great and really add a lot to the environment. Finally, I have to admit – the game does run smoother than Vanguard.

Speaking of Vanguard. What’s AOC have that Vanguard is missing? PVP! At the end of the night, we got into a battle with a few rival guilds and had a nice 30 minute war back and forth inside the main city in the zone. AOC has PVP experience, levels and armor sets now and it’s nice to have PVP with a purpose once again. After your character hits level 60, he can be apprenticed up to 79 so that he can contribute in a battle with higher level players. I’m not sure how it works exactly but we had lots of fun. I managed to climb up to 64 in the last week or so and have decided that I’m going to finish the push to 80. Until next time.

It’s pretty late once again so this is going to be a short post. I got a few levels tonight in AOC and had lots of fun. Today was a big day as it was patch day and lots of new content was released including a new raid zone, a new max level group dungeon, a max level solo dungeon and a mid level dungeon designed for players in their 40s. Tons of bug fixes and other improvements also came down the pipe today. I also noticed a new tab in my video settings called something like “DX10 test settings.” I believe DX10 will hit the live servers with the next update and I’m really looking forward to checking that out.

The night began with running the four daily vistas and getting a level and a half or so. I then went over to E Mountains and starting working on my level 50 destiny quest as well as some random quests in that zone. Before too long, our guild was heading off to Keshetta again and I couldn’t pass that up. Check out the player pet pictured above. I don’t know what AOC does with skinning and lighting on their models but they look amazing.

We ended up grinding mobs AOE style tonight and I dinged 56 a few minutes ago before logging for the night. I’ll be traveling this weekend so the updates and leveling may slow down a bit but I have to say any of you guys who tried AOC at release and unsubscribed – you really should check it out again. It’s come a long way. Plus the new fresh start servers put you on an even playing field. Hell, Funcom is even adding new developers at a time when many MMO developers are laying off staff. That’s got to be at least a halfway decent sign in regards to the future of the game.

Last night I had a change of heart. In an earlier blog post, I vented about guild mates who zoomed past me power leveling as I was doing level appropriate content. At the time, I was grinding through the Black Castle instance – struggling trying to get a group willing to stick around long enough to figure out all the puzzles and tricks that zone has to offer. During the play session that night – which lasted several hours I might have gained half a level. My guildies, on the other hand, managed to gain 5 to 10 levels in that same time frame.

Our guild is short Guardians and Priests at the moment so Theo and I have drawn more interest from the guys who raced up to 80 in a matter of days. We’ve been grouping with higher level guild mates in places like the Eiglophian Mountains pictured above and below making solid progress.

Last night however, we got a group with the guild all stars and headed to Keshetta. Apparently, Keshetta is the highest level zone currently in the game and is the location of a number of great AOE grind spots as well as some of the high end raid content.

The screenshot above is deep in the zone looking back at what I think is the Black Ring Citadel. I’m pretty sure that castle is the home of Toth-Amon who is the Lich King so to speak of AOC. The castle looks amazing as it sparkles and gleams in the distance. After taking in a few sights, our group formed up and we got busy pulling. Normally, my idea of pulling is one or two mobs – three tops if I’m soloing. Last night was a bit different.

What was different? Well for one we were grouped with a few 70+ players who have cool pets like the guy shown above. Also, we didn’t bother pulling one or two mobs – instead we pulled 20+ mobs each time. It was mass slaughter. It was so bad, the first pull my computer froze up and I was told by our group leader – appropriately named “Saytan” that it’s a good plan to turn down or turn off particle effects on these type of pulls. This guy had a very Conanesque accent on Ventrilo which made the whole experience even more enjoyable.

We split up into two groups and farmed two different camps. Unfortunately, before we could really get rolling PVP called and our higher levels went out to squash the competition. While we were at it though it was lots of fun. Experience was very nice and it was definately more exciting then grinding out daily quests by yourself in the villas. I’m hoping we can work our way up to 80 soon and form the first real raid force on our server. For now, I’m about halfway through 51 and looking to keep things rolling tonight. I think I’m changing my tune on leveling quickly. I don’t have lots of time these days so every moment in game counts. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.

I had a few hours today to get back into AOC and managed to go from 46 to 48. I started off running through the four villas – killing every mob in sight and turning in the daily quests for each zone. During one of the villas, I ran into this cool library. You are in the villa trying to destroy an artifact and it’s in this area. A boss guards it who teleports around the room attacking you from various directions. He’s pretty easy as long as you down the 2 roamers before you pull him.

These crazy plants are a pretty common mob in the game – almost like an orc in other games such as EQ or EQ2. In the villas, they scale to your level as do all the mobs in the villas. The plants don’t seem to put up much of a fight but they look kinda cool and give experience nonetheless. I keep having Little Shop of Horrors flashbacks every time I run into these guys.

After finishing up the villas, I ran back through Tarantia and caught the photo below. I think this town looks pretty cool. I remember when I first got Conan and ran through this capital city. I couldn’t wait to explore all those little houses up on the hilltop. Unfortunately, they are just eye candy – similar to a hollywood movie set facade.

Next up was a trip to Field of the Dead. This is a 40+ zone and it was nice to get out into the real world after spending most of my time recently in the villas. I did a number of quests near the entry point to the zone. One of the key abilities my class has is a very nice AOE knockback w/ damage. My normal routine is to run around and gather up a bunch of mobs and then fire off some cone shaped dps spells at them. Once they surround me, I knockback and throw some HOTs on myself before resuming to burn them down. It’s lots of fun.

After dropping a few named like the bearded guy below, I dinged 48 and called it a day shortly thereafter. I’m really looking forward to hitting 50 soon. At 50, casters get the spellweaving ability. It’s basically a way for casters to channel some very powerful spells and is Funcom’s caster version of the combo system for melee characters. I should have an update on that and more very soon.

I’ve been playing Conan over the last few days and am closing in on level 46. I’ve been running the Villas which are AOC’s version of daily quests. The villas are solo instances that open up every six hours in the Noble District of Old Tarantia. The mobs in the instances scale to your level and you fight several bosses along the way like the big fellow shown below. You also get a quest for each zone daily so you can generally grind out a half level or more doing them. On PVP servers, it’s a relatively safe although boring way to level.

I did manage to finally buy a horse last night. The lowbie horses cost 75 silver and another 25 silver for the riding skill. Thanks to a contribution from one of my guildmates, I was able to get the white horse shown below and catch this epic shot galloping through a field of flowers. Doesn’t seem very Conanesque but what the hell.

The Sanctum of the Burning Souls is a 6 man dungeon on the far eastern side of Wild Lands of Zelata. It’s got 5 bosses and about 10 quests or so that are done inside the zone. Last night we gathered up a strong party of players – averaging around level 40 and headed in to see what treasures awaited us.

The screenshot above is outside the entrance. There was a timed kill quest that most of us got right outside the entrance that puts a swarm of flies around you. The quest is bugged and you die regardless of whether or not you complete the quest successfully. We figured out it was best to die inside the Sanctum so that we didn’t have people in the party rezzing miles away from the zone and slowing down our progression. After waiting 6 minutes or so, each of us exploded from the bugged quest and after rebuffing we were ready to roll.

After clearing some trash and picking up lots of quest objects on the ground we descended a set of stairs to an area with blood filled pools. Statues on the side of the cavern dripped down blood into our area and inside the pool was a menacing looking boss mob. He’s known as the Ancient Blood Defiler (shown above.) We burned him down without incident. Next up was a mob that used to be bugged to the point of her just standing there. When I played Conan on release, we would do this zone and hit the second boss – Princess Akivasha. She now fights back but was no match for our skills.

As we got deeper in the zone, we hit the boss below. I think we did him out of order as I’m pretty sure he is supposed to be the final boss in the zone. Like all the bosses in here, the fight wasn’t very difficult. We got two or three bind on pickup items off him and every other boss in the zone.

Then we hit the Ancient Drowned One. He has a face only a mother could love if you know what I mean. Like most of the fights in here, it was tank and spank. Not much to say really.

After that we fight, we hit the Ancient Dark Beast shown below. Again, not much new with this encounter. We were a well oiled machine, needing only one healer and a tank along with some dps.

We ended up doing the instance again and were a bit disappointed that several of the bosses dropped the same gear the second time. We were hoping for a bit more variety in regards to itemization with the boss drops. I hear itemization improvements are coming soon. Isn’t whatever MMO feature you are looking for always “on the way” or “coming soon?” At the end of the day, we celebrated two great runs in front of the treasure chest below. Sanctum is a fun dungeon but it could use a bit more scripted encounters as well as an upgraded loot table to make repeated runs of the place more enjoyable. I also feel like instance mobs so far don’t give enough experience – at least relative to their difficulty and risk. You get more experience per mob soloing Conan’s version of the daily quest – called Villas than you do in these instances.

My wife’s been out of town for a few days and so I’ve been flying solo with the kids. Last night I fell asleep putting them to bed around 8:30 but woke up several hours later around midnight. Why am I telling you all this? Well, when I woke up I logged into World of Warcraft and resumed leveling my Shadow Priest. I made it about 50% of a level into 74 before shaking my head and turning off the game to log back into Age of Conan. Something about the Warcraft universe I’m just not digging these days. Maybe it’s the Harley Davidson mounts, the paint by numbers questing or maybe it was this quest I was doing where I had to kill these little robots and they kept talking trash to me in voices that reminded me of a middle school 12 year old chess team. Whatever it was, I couldn’t take it anymore. My tolerance for all things WOW is very low at this point. It’s a shame because I’m sure there are many redeeming qualities about the game but it’s just changed so much since I really enjoyed it back in the MC and AQ40 days. Once I shut down WOW, I played Conan all night and haven’t slept since. Just like the good old days.

The grind to 40 was a bit tedious as the quests became more spread out and I ended up running around all over the place trying to turn quests in here, there and everywhere. I did manage to find two solo instances in Kropshef that I thought were lots of fun and very well designed. The first was Pyramid of the Ancients. The zone features disease clouds, spikes that pop out of the floor and more including an incredibly complex PVE fight with the final zone boss shown below. He killed me over and over again and I never got him down. Later on, I researched the fight and got the strategy down but by then I had moved on to greener pastures. My buddy Theo knocked it out earlier in the night and said it was a fantastic encounter.

Once I finished most of the quests in Pyramid, I ran a few yards away and dropped into the Treasury of the Ancients. This zone lies beneath a cellar looking entrance near the Pyramid. When you come down the first set of stairs you see these greek looking statues lining each side of the hallway. As you progress down the hallway, you notice there are no mobs around. At the end of the hall you are blocked from the boss by a blue force field. When you turn around you notice the doorway into the zone has been sealed and the statues start coming alive one by one and two by two until you have cleared all the statues. You then battle the boss in a final fight to the death. I give both of these solo zones two thumbs up.

Once you hit 40, you have the ability to purchase a mount. Since I ordered a collectors edition way back when the game released, I have the Siege Elephant mount on my account for every character. I also snapped up a Best Buy coupon for the free Rhino mount so I have both CE mounts. It was nice to be able to get back on these guys again but it’s too bad they are slow as hell. I mean I think they are slower than walking but at least they look cool. Once I save up 1 gold I can get a real horse.

We also knocked out Sanctum of the Burning Souls tonight – which is the next big instance in the game and I hit level 43. Unfortunately, I’m a bit too tired for any more updating so you will have to wait until tomorrow for the low down on those updates. I did manage to have a party – Age of Conan style in Kropshef before logging for the night. I was surrounded by a mob of topless npcs. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why these ladies wanted to run around topless in Hyboria. I think I laughed more than I found it alluring. Such is the adult content in AOC.

This blog entry will cover my adventures inside Age of Conan’s Black Castle dungeon. Last night we finally got a group together and took on this revamped instance. I have to say that after it was over, I had mixed feelings about the area and about the game in general. Without further adieu, here we go.

As I mentioned in a few prior AOC blog updates, my buddy Theo rerolled a Guardian and I’m playing a Priest of Mitra. We are both mid to high 30’s now and can form a solid core to any dungeon crawl group. The picture above was taken after we zoned into the instance. Black Castle is arguably the first big group dungeon experience available in the game. It received a total revamp form the developers in recent months and promised a refreshing group experience in a game that typically sends you off soloing or grinding quests.

Once inside the zone, it’s best to head downstairs. There are two downstairs wings and each one has your typical trash mobs with a boss at the end. The first boss we ran into is the lizard type mob pictured above. He was a pretty straight forward encounter. The difficulty in the encounter came from us trying to figure out how to play our characters in a group environment. For example, there are no direct taunts so it’s somewhat unconventional for the Guardian to keep aggro. I don’t have direct target heals but rather they are mostly heal over time AOE spells. Positioning is important as you need to keep the party in a little ball most of the time so the healers can make sure people are getting the benefit of the various heals that you are cycling through. It seemed to me like everyone was just trying to figure out how to play their character in a group environment.

After disposing of the first downstairs boss, we cleared the second lower level corridor and ran into the guy pictured above. He was quite angry but went down pretty easily as well. We were starting to figure out our group roles by this point and things started getting smoother. Now it was time to head back upstairs. What did we find at the top of the stairs? Another instance. Inside the Black Castle are at least 2-3 (maybe more – I lost count) mini-instances. On the plus side, this zone is huge and it took us hours to clear everything. It almost felt like a raid zone from EQ2 in size.

What was my favorite part of the zone? The puzzles and traps for sure. The picture above shows our party advancing past the first big upstairs puzzle. It’s basically a long corridor with these statues that are shooting flames out toward the center of the room. If you run down the hallway into the fire, you die instantly. Fortunately, there are two pressure pads that players can stand on to turn off the flames. With two players standing on the entry pads, the rest of the group can advance safely down the hall. Once at the other end, two more guys need to stand on pads on that side which allows the first two pad holders to advance. The next puzzle we encountered involved a constant stream of adds and some snakes that we couldn’t damage. We finally noticed that a light shining into the room led back to a giant eye high in the wall above us. Our ranger was able to shoot an arrow into the eye and disable the spawns. There are two of these traps to dispose of to continue advancing in the dungeon.

As we got deeper in the dungeon, we came upon another puzzle. This puzzle involved an Indiana Jones style big rock that comes smashing down the hallway. Players have to dodge the rock by jumping into the side corridors as they are fighting the trash or they die instantly. Unfortunately, I was looking at a drop and got smashed in the face the first time the rock came bouncing down the hallway. Once we got past this trap, we ran into the boss below. Once we engaged him, a bunch of trash mobs spawned and started trying to leap into a big circular pit in the center of the room. As long as they were leaping to their death, we couldn’t kill the boss. We Designated some dps to take care of the adds and killed them before they could jump. This allowed the rest of the party to dps down the boss.

Once this guy was down, we moved on and ran into our next encounter. We approached a room with some kind of monster torso on a table. Our job was to use collected body parts to assemble this monster and then use gems we obtained on the way down to start a summoning ritual – bringing him back to life. He arrived with lots of friends so be prepared to dps him down along with the adds.

Deeper in the zone, we ran into the boss shown below in what appears to be a library or a storage facility of some sorts. He was relatively uneventful but was useful for a quest update.

The final boss in the instance is shown below. We had to clear a ton of trash to get up to his platform. Once we killed all the trash, we noticed these Mantis type mobs positioned all around the circular platform and they appeared to be sleeping – enclosed in a grey mist. Once we engaged the boss, the fight began. At certain intervals, he dropped to his knees and became immune to damage. Waves of 2x Mantis attacked the party and had to be dispatched. Once each wave was down, the boss stood up and the main encounter resumed. After 3 or 4 waves, we were able to knock him out and we successfully cleared the Black Castle.

So, what did I think about the experience? It was interesting – I guess. I enjoyed the puzzles and some of the scripted encounters. Except for the exploration factor, I just didn’t feel like it was worth the time and effort it took to clear the zone. The experience gain was crappy and the loot was mediocre. The mobs in Black Castle are heroic yet my experience bar barely moved. For the first 20% of the dungeon, most of us only got 1 xp per kill as the entry mobs were grey to Theo at 39. Make sure your highest level group member isn’t too high or your group won’t get experience.

Like most of Conan, the environment was beautiful yet very instanced. To me, something about it didn’t seem quite right. Parts of it almost just seemed thrown together. For example, one of the downstairs bosses had about 15 trash mobs right in front of him. The mobs are just dumped in a little cluster where they wander back and forth with no apparent rhyme or reason. You just grind them down and then you kill the boss. It just felt rather generic. I felt like I had done that 100 times before in every other MMO known to man.

I think what bummed me out most about the night was that in all the time we spent in there we barely made any experience and left with little to no loot. At the same time, we had a group of guild members who were getting powerleveled. They were in the final end game instance with some level 70-80 characters and whatever they were doing out there was getting them a level every 10 minutes or so it seemed. These guys went from level 37 to level 52 or so in the 3 hours that it took us to get 6 bubbles of one level. It was a bit demoralizing and made the game feel a bit broken. Watching those constant dings while we toiled away on level appropriate content just gave me that bleh feeling. I hope that feeling doesn’t linger.