Complete Heal

Fan Faire 2010 has now officially come to an end. There are a number of sites that have been covering the event this year such as EQ2 Wire, so my plan is just to recap some of the conversations that I had with various developers and point out some things that I found interesting. I apologize for the wall of text and any typos that follow as I don’t have much time to proof this post before it’s time to get some sleep for the night. I’ll clean up the post and get a good number of pictures on the site once I get back in town on Tuesday.

Overall

In my opinion, this year was a bit subdued vs. prior years. The main game hall seemed to be toned down and most of the focus was on new releases including DC Universe Online, The Agency and the Clone Wars. I didn’t see any official game stations running EQ, EQ2 or Vanguard. Sure there were tournaments and game room machines in the back of the main hall but it just seemed to be a bit light on the bling factor this year – at least as far as the AAA MMO titles were concerned. I think attendance might have been down a bit this year too. On the subject of new games, I will say that DCUO looks amazing. I think that game has a great future. I also really enjoyed talking with the SOE guys this year from Smedley on down. You can tell they are passionate about making games and they enjoy getting feedback from their customers. It’s a really unique dialogue that goes on between developer and gamer at these events and it’s one that doesn’t happen in many other forms of entertainment. WIth that said, the following is a recap of my thoughts on the weekend.

EQ

The new EQ Live server will be a time locked progression server. The developer I talked to about this said that they know players want it out earlier but the team is focused on releasing the new expansion – House of Thule in October. They don’t want to take the focus away from the expansion and the new content that follows so the current thought is to wait a few months after the expansion releases before the new server is released. The current projection for the launch of the new EQ progression server is the second week of January.

The new EQ expansion will include another 5 levels as well as player housing. My understanding is the player housing will be connected to the guild lobby but it will be a separate zone with stand alone houses.

The EQ population is relatively stable and depending on which numbers you look at the game still has about as many subscribers as EQ2. The games go back and forth as far as which has the larger population. Speaking of population, the devs have considered a free to play approach (something like all servers are free to play up to level 50) but nothing like that will be coming soon. They aren’t really in favor of going the route of EQ2 Extended where the F2P model is on separate servers. They are also very aware of the overall EQ Live community feelings about paying for power vs. earning what you have and will tread lightly on this front. One last thought, one developer I talked to referenced Nike’s “Beat Adidas” campaign in regard to the EQ Live vs. EQ2 mix. In other words, when Nike came out their sole goal was to one up their rival. It sounds like internally, the EQ guys are still mixing it up and trying to compete with the newer and sexier EQ2. I really liked hearing that – a little rivalry can be good for everyone.

Vanguard

When SOE said Vanguard wasn’t on the official list of Fan Faire games – they weren’t kidding. I couldn’t find a single developer in Las Vegas this year for Vanguard. They didn’t make the bus trip. They also had a kiosk running the game last year but this year? Nope. There was a live quest on the schedule but I took my wife out to lunch instead. There was still a Vanguard banner hanging in the main hall but that was about it.

I did learn a few things about the game – even though the developers were absent. First, there are no plans to shutter the game. I spoke to John Smedley, President of SOE, directly about the game. Let me say that he was open and honest and we had a great dialogue. He was a pleasure to talk to and regardless of what people say about the guy he is a gamer at heart and cares about the games we all play – including Vanguard. I asked him if the game was in maintenance mode and he said it’s a step above maintenance mode. The truth is that the remaining developers are shared with other games (EQ2, EQ Next etc…) and they allocate time for them to work on Vanguard as the schedule permits. I basically understood it to mean that Vanguard doesn’t have any more full time developers. That was a bit of a disappointment but Smed stated that he thinks the game will stick around for a few more years. He’s also open to ideas on how to make the game more popular.

He acknowledged the chicken and egg problem with spending money on the game and I thanked him for all the effort and money they put in the game since they acquired it from Sigil. It’s truly come a long way. We also talked about doing some kind of free to play server for Vanguard but he wasn’t sure how the “core gamer” that’s left in Vanguard would respond to such a thing. Russell Shanks, EVP / COO of SOE was sitting next to him when we spoke and they both were interested in giving Vanguard a spark of life.

Another developer told me they might end up moving the Vanguard servers to the East coast. Not sure really what the point of that would be but it would be closer to me so that can’t be all bad. This same developer said VG was considering the F2P model but the recent staff reductions hit VG pretty hard and he didn’t feel like the resources were still there to invest that much time in the game. That was also a bummer. I was pitching an idea of a free to play Vanguard server to let people who bought the game come back and see how much progress had been made since release and maybe they would transfer over to the Telon server or subscribe to keep the game alive. At this point, why not do it? What’s the alternative?

EQ2 Extended

As you all know, EQ2 is coming out with a F2P service called EQ2 Extended. It’s currently in Alpha and beta begins on August 17th. The Senior Producer of EQ2, Dave Georgeson, talked about the philosophy behind this “experiment” and spent a lot of time listening to players and getting their feedback. It’s clear that he is trying to breathe new life into EQ2 and I think that’s a good thing.

EQ2 Extended is basically an attempt to get more users into the EQ2 universe and really to raise brand awareness for Everquest in general. It’s not designed to replace EQ2 Live. According to Dave, EQ2 is their most important product in their stable of games. EQ2 Extended is going to run on separate servers and will release with only one PVE server. They would like to add a PVP server under the service but it won’t come out right out of the gate. Characters transfers off EQ2 Extended won’t be allowed because of “duplication exploits” and “EQ2 Live players don’t want to play with characters who bought their way to power.” Seemed reasonable to me.

Many people lamented losing the 14 day free trial and were concerned that this would dry up the number of players coming into EQ2 Live. The devs stated that very few players convert to a paid subscription after going through the free trial so their take on it was that it wasn’t very effective at getting new players anyway. They are hoping EQ2 Extended will be more productive and cited all the good press they have gotten recently – even being in the Wall Street Journal.

The devs are prepared to offer special incentives on the EQ2 Live servers should the population start dropping such as mounts, armor sets etc… with multiple month subscriptions and they want both services to succeed. You will be able to copy your character from the Live servers to EQ2 Extended for a $35 fee. Players from both PVE and PVP servers will be able to copy characters over into the new servers.

Dave also confirmed that no new items with stats will be coming to the marketplace on EQ2 live. That was good to hear. He said the EQ2 population has been stable since the release of the SF expansion and any perceived drop in population is more a result of people transferring over to AB and Nagafen (the higher population servers.) If EQ2 Extended takes off, there will be more money for advertising an investing back in both models of the game.

EQ2

GU57 is coming soon and is all about bringing new players to the game. It features new spell effects, greater performance out of Shader 3.0 and much improved ability to render Flora without framerate hits. They eventually will be using the EQ2 Extended streaming launcher for both versions of the game and from what I hear that thing is very slick. GU58 is due in October and will feature the Guk Spire Dungeon, new items on SF bosses and a redo of Greater Faydark.

The new EQ2 expansion was announced and as expected we are going back to Velious. The official title of the new expansion is EQ2: Destiny of Velious. I think it’s interesting the expansion, due out in February, is referred to as “part 1″ of the Velious story. Will the rest of it be in future game updates or in the 2011 expansion? No decisions have been made as far as I know on that subject. The expansion will not have a level cap but there will be more AA available. The biggest news was that we will get flying mounts in all zones. The first flying mount will be questable. I bet one day we will be able to buy them with station cash – just saying

Server merge discussions are ongoing. The new expansion zones are level 86+.

EQ Next

A new Everquest game is coming and right now it’s PC only. It’s going to have the name “Everquest” in the title although right now it’s referred to as “Everquest Next.” We had two surprise panels that were not on the official schedule about this game. A few notes follow. First, there is a very senior team on this game right now – including the director Clint Worley. The game is going to use a modified version of the Free Realms Engine but the concept art and in game screenshots that they showed us didn’t look very Free Realms like to me. They are going to have PVP in this game from the beginning or as Smed said “pvp done right.”

Who else is on this team? I was told by another developer that some of the Vanguard guys have been moved to this project. I didn’t get specifics but he also said that Sillius continues to spend a good bit of time on EQ2. He’s probably working on the new expansion. There was a lot of talk about immersion and with the Free Realms engine there will be no zoning in overland zones. It will be like WOW where you can basically walk anywhere above ground without zoning. There will be instanced dungeons and solo, group and raid content.

Things will look familiar if you are a veteran of Norrath. They mentioned that they are considering “corpse run servers” or “hard core servers” to appeal to the old school core gamer. That comment got a loud round of applause. There will be fewer classes than EQ2 and classes will have more defined roles – think Enchanters and Bards from EQ Live. The team has a lot of old school EQ developers on it and they are leaning on that experience a bit more than EQ2 when it comes to vision and direction for the new game.

The new game is very colorful and vibrant. Characters have big shoulder pads – almost WOW style. The engine is very scaleable so it will run on most laptops and yet still look amazing on high end gaming rigs. The game world is up and running now internally – they can move around the world etc… It’s still going to be a while before it comes out though – probably at least a year maybe two or more.

EQ2 PVP / Battlegrounds

They are focusing on improving class balance, increasing the efficiency of the matchmaking service, dealing with AFK issues, and making daily quests funnel players into specific battlegrounds – perhaps generating greater rewards such as AA or tokens etc… They want to reward players proportionately vs. time spent so longer matches / instances should yield greater rewards in the future.

They are also considering allowing character transfers to and from the PVP servers in the near future. They are thinking about 1 vs. 1 PVP matches and ranking ladders. They also addressed giving mentored players on PVP servers the ability to fight back if attacked – this may happen one day but no guarantees. There was talk of a “Battlegrounds Hub” where players who go from their home server to the battleground server could remain on that server to form groups with people etc… This would cut down on the performance hit that battlegrounds are having on the Live game as people zone back and forth between servers. Finally, they talked about how well the new hardware has gone on the Nagafen server. That’s it for me tonight – need some sleep.

Vanguard is down to two servers – Telon (US) and Halgar (EU). I suppose they still have a test server but for all practical purposes the population that remains in the game is split up between those two servers. As you all know, with server consolidation comes pros and cons. On the positive side, Vanguard is a huge world with no zone lines (unless you count chunk lines) and what used to feel rather empty due to low population now feels vibrant and alive. At least it was this weekend – probably due to the bonus experience which runs through Tuesday morning. If you combine one US server with a bonus experience weekend you get a glimpse of the critical mass needed to make this game shine. It’s just a shame that it isn’t that way every day. Oh what could have been!

Every time I play Vanguard, I’m just blow away by its visuals. This weekend I was also blown away with how smooth the game actually played. I guess style is a personal preference and beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but as someone who has spent a lot of time in many different online games there is something about Vanguard that just captivates me. It really feels like the true successor to Everquest.

SOE recently announced that they are offering a new F2P (free to play) service for Everquest 2. It’s called Everquest 2 Extended and it’s basically a streaming client that can be downloaded quickly that allows new players to test drive the game free of charge. Once this service goes live, new players can check out the game (with limited functionality) enough to decide whether or not it’s the game for them. If they wan’t to play casually, without all the bells and whistles, they can continue to do so. The idea however is that they will get out of the newbie areas and truly get a feel for the game. Once they get a taste of the depth of content and the game in general, they might become subscribers or buy items from the cash shop. Say what you want about cash shops and free to play games, I guarantee their new F2P server is going to feel vibrant and alive and have a high population. Perhaps that’s just what Vanguard and EQ need as well.

On the Vanguard front, SOE spent the last year or two squashing bugs and adding content while making the game more newbie friendly. It really is a great game but like so many other titles – once the game isn’t on the shelf it’s up to viral marketing and digital downloads to get new players interested in trying the game. When a game has had bad press – it’s tough to convince players to drop their current game and invest their hard earned money in a monthly subscription to “test the waters” again. What happens? Eventually the developer ends up consolidating servers as existing players get burned out and they reduce overhead to try to continue to make the game profitable. Finally, the servers get shut down. Does it have to be that way?

I think SOE is figuring out that cash shops offer a great alternative revenue stream to the standard $15 / month subscription model and I hope they see enough life and future in both EQ and Vanguard to at least put one separate F2P server up for each game. I’m thinking something similar to the EQ2 model where new players can get far enough along to decide whether or not they want to invest in the game.

I hope to track down some SOE developers at FanFaire in Vegas next weekend and see if they have any plans to go down this road. It’s clear that they are interested in the F2P model but I’m not sure they will invest the resources at this point in EQ and VG. I think separate F2P servers with a little marketing could be great for both products and would enhance the bottom line for SOE. How can that be a bad idea? Bring on the newbies! I want full servers with groups going on in all level ranges. I want the masses to be able to experience these great games. Will it happen? I guess we have to wait and see. In the meantime, I took advantage of the bonus experience this weekend to spend some time in Dargun’s Tomb and Plains of Anguish. Ding 42!

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.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a few months since my last post. It’s been a busy time for me as work has kept me on my toes and I’ve had very limited gaming time. Since my play times were more limited than normal, I chose to spend what little time i had in game vs. posting about games. You might be surprised how much time even a low key blog like mine takes. As we move into the new year, my goal is to get this blog rolling once again. My apologies for the interruption.

Where to start? Let’s start with Vanguard. By now, most of you have probably heard about this post over on the official Vanguard forums. Vanguard has had it’s share of ups and downs but this might take the cake. In a nutshell, Silius announced to anyone who would listen that just about all the future content that was either in progress or had been promised would be suspended indefinitely. Instead of finishing off things such as alternative advancement, new raid content and class revamps – the developers are going to focus on squashing more bugs and adding single group content. I appreciate his honesty although it’s a bit untimely. It would be better to promise low and deliver high vs. the other way around. Seems like I learned that somewhere. Anyways, my Blood Mage is still stuck at 40 and with the announcement linked above and server merges coming (which may take the game down to a total of 2 servers) I’m on the fence about investing more time in that game. To be honest, I haven’t really played much since FanFaire. It’s still a great game but it’s clear SOE isn’t very interested in putting more money into what appears to be a sinking ship. Of course, people have been saying the ship would be swamped by now but it’s still plodding along with a number of leaks in the hull.

Since my last update, Everquest launched it’s new expansion called Underfoot. I’ve been debating making a return to that game on either the Luclin server (where I have a 75th level Cleric) or on Mayong (where I could dual box characters up from 51/50). After rolling up my cleric, I got a bit disillusioned when npc mercenaries were doing so well in group content and it was hard to convince people to take a low level healer with light AA points and ghetto spells over the well equipped mercenary with what seemed like infinite mana. Fortunately, in the new expansion group content, the mercenary healers aren’t doing as well and clerics are rejoicing. I got into a group yesterday for Ashengate since it’s the 75+ hot zone and had a good time. Perhaps I’ll invest my efforts in EQ once again – not sure currently.

The last time I talked about EQ2, I had rolled up a Templar on Antonia Bayle and joined a progression raiding guild. They took the holidays off from raiding and I took the holidays off from EQ2. Well, that is until I got the urge to return to my pvp roots and rolled up an Illusionist on Nagafen. I’ve managed to level up this new character to 57 so far and have ambitions of hitting 80 with him before the new expansion Sentinel’s Fate hits in mid February. I’d also like to continue to do some progression raiding with the Templar. Speaking of the next EQ2 expansion, I saw some new screenshots yesterday that left me scratching my head a bit. Floating islands and panda bears? Hmmm, where have I seen those before? I hope there is more originality on the way and not rehashed Kingdom of Sky zones with World of Warcraft pandas. I have faith in Brenlo as the EQ2 producer so let’s see what happens.

I also had a decent run in World of Warcraft where I managed to get my Priest all geared out in Epics and did some raiding. It’s fun but doesn’t seem to have that intangible factor that just makes me want to log on every night. I’m not sure where I’ll be spending most of my online time in the first quarter of 2010 but wherever it is you can bet I’ll be sharing my journeys with you guys. I’m going to enjoy the holidays with my family for now but just wanted to stop in and give you all an update. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

The most recent update to EQ2 came with a station cash item which lets you change your race. My 80 Fury on the Nagafen server started out as a Dark Elf. This new station cash item gave me the chance to transform him to a smaller race and to add wings! I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. SOE successfully got me to engage in microtransactions and purchase the racial change potion. Here is a screen shot of my character just prior to the change. Notice the pop up window where you can select any of the available races in the game. Neat stuff.

You basically buy the item in the cash shop and then click on the potion. A confirmation box pops up as soon as you select your new race and then…. voila you are a different race. I have to admit the whole thing made me feel a bit dirty as I was rather attached to the old race after playing that character for countless hours. If you could change your race, would you do it? The price for the racial change potion is pretty steep at $25. I asked myself – how much is my time worth? I can tell you that $25 is a drop in the bucket these days so why not do it? Sure beats trying to level up a new character to be a different race.

What race did I go with? Well, the Fae of course! The EQ2 racial traits were recently redone and the Fae offers decent stats for healers – see info for all the races here. Since I was doing new things, I decided to move my apartment to Qeynos (I used to be in Exile and before that Freeport.) That process was also easy as all of my old housing items from Freeport just showed up in a moving crate once I bought my new pad. I spent some time unboxing stuff and enjoying my Woushi achievement plushie. Going through my bags, I also had been given a Kunark achievement robe (shown above.) This character killed Trakanon and cleared VP before it was nerfed, but he’s been on ice since before the TSO expansion. I’m getting the urge to dust him off. Stay tuned.

We had an extremely short raid on Wednesday night. I logged in to find that we only had an x2 online with 2 people making up part of a third group. We were scheduled to go kill Gorenaire to continue our T7 progression since one of our short term goals is to hit Deathtoll very soon. We zoned into the the x4 version of Ascent of the Awakened even though we were down 10 players. I knew the raid would be challenging, but it was about to get even more interesting. Once inside the zone, I got a message from our normal main tank Templar asking me if I wanted to try main tank healing for the night. It was a hell of a night to try, but I gave it a shot nonetheless.

Our first pull didn’t go so well and our dps was really light because we didn’t have enough players. The low dps put stress on my mana and it was a challenge in the beginning keeping my group alive through all the cures, aoe attacks and stuns. Eventually, I got in the groove and we took down the dragon with 14 players and a brand new main tank Templar. Since we didn’t have the raid force to go much deeper, we called it a night. I think the entire raid took about 45 minutes.

During the past week, I’ve also been playing Aion. I managed to level my Cleric up to 18 and get in my first group. The screen shot above shows our group’s main tank standing next to me and she obviously heard about my EQ2 accomplishments. I figured out that killing EQ2 dragons gets you chicks! Grouping in Aion is much more fun than soloing and allows you to get lost in the moment – forgetting that the game is so grindy. I got some great upgrades like the helm I’m wearing above. While I had a good time, I don’t know if I’ll be able to dedicate the time required to reach the end game in Aion. There are just too many other games that offer more enjoyment per hour spent playing and they tend to pull me in their direction since I have limited play time these days. I’m having a blast raiding casually in EQ2 on AB, there is a pvp server merge coming out today which should spice things up on the Nagafen server and I may even start spending more time on the 360 with games such as Dragon Age: Origins and Modern Warfare 2 coming out soon. This is a great time to be a gamer. I just wish I had the free time now that I had back in college.

We just finished up raids for the night clearing Labs as well as the contested mob: Mutagenic Outcast. We were able to get all of that done with an x3 of level 70s which I think was pretty strong. Our guild of casual T7 raiders is actually very talented and we drop raid bosses while having fun at the same time. There’s nobody yelling “minus 50 dkp” and there are no Chuck Norris jokes. It’s serious, yet relaxed and I’m digging it.

Labs was a pretty fun raid zone. There are lots of named mobs wandering around and the zone looks pretty solid – it actually has some color and feels like a raid zone in it’s scope. Sometimes, EQ2 has a tendency to be all drab looking with zones full of greys and lacking color. I wouldn’t call labs as colorful as say anything in World of Warcraft but for an EQ2 dungeon it was pretty solid.

The screen shot above shows a curious Lord Vyemm. He is the final boss in Labs and has a bit of a technical pull. It took us a few attempts to down him and it was really just related to getting the right positioning. This dragon was huge and hit pretty hard. You have to watch out for his tail as it will ruin your day if you aren’t careful.

After clearing labs, we headed outdoors for contested Mutagenic Outcast. I guess he’s not very contested these days since he is a T7 mob and there aren’t exactly tons of people trying to kill him anymore. Nonetheless, he gave us all we could handle on our last attempt but tonight we had a bit more well rounded raid, albeit a x3 still, and we decided to pay him a visit. I think it took us about 5-10 pulls before we finally got a good strategy going and we downed the bug. It was an intense fight and our romp through Kingdom of Sky continues. Until next time…

I’ve enjoyed the last week or so as I’ve had a chance to take a break from the nightly EQ2 action to branch out a bit and do some other things. What have I done? Well, first of all my Xbox 360 finally succumbed to the red ring of death so after resiting the urge for a few days, I finally went out and picked up a new elite edition along with NCAA Football 2010. I managed to get everything set up and discovered a little game you can download from Xbox live called Trial HD. It’s a motorcycle game where you ride these crazy courses while trying to keep you bike on two wheels. It’s simple, yet mesmerizing. I’ve played this game now for hours on end. During the last week, I also got caught up on sleep from the push to 70 which was a good plan because I knew T7 raiding would start tonight.

Before raids, I managed to get pretty far on the Claymore quest line. I got through the content in Sanctum, Barren Sky and Palace of the Awakened. This quest chain is crazy long but at least you get good AA points along the way, the end item is pretty sweet and it’s a nice achievement to knock out under the new achievement system.

Enough of all that talk, let’s get down to the T7 raid effort and our assault on Kingdom of Sky. The first screen shot of this update shows our level 70 raid force entering the Lyceum of Abhorrence which was the first zone we tackled together in T7. Most of our guild has been raiding together through T5 and T6 but several of us, myself included, are new for T7. We are still recruiting more so please feel free to apply here if you are interested in progression raiding. We have several guild leaders who are well seasoned in EQ2 raiding and most of us have raided all of this content before. It makes for a unique experience that’s serious and efficient yet fun at the same time.

Since we all just hit 70 recently, our raid force is geared out with Expert level spells (the old Adept 3’s) and a few masters. We have primarily mastercrafted gear at this point (the level 62 stuff.) We aren’t exactly blowing up the dps charts but we got the job done with surprising efficiency. We cleared all of the trash in this zone with little effort and even managed to get a quest done that is offered right outside the zone for some extra AA. There are four named mobs in Lyceum. They are the Essence of Fear, Gnillaw the Demented, Gnorbl the Playful and Vilucidae the Priest of Thule.

The last mob in the zone (shown above) took us two pulls to kill as we wiped at 5% on the first attempt due to running out of power. Unfortunately, the loot pretty much sucks in KOS raiding as a good bit of the stuff that dropped was pretty even to my mastercrafted gear. Oh well, at least the zone was fun and it gave us a chance to come together as a team.

Once Lyceum was clear, we went to the Fallen Dynasty expansion pack with a x2 raid force to kill Bonesnapper. This guy is a huge crab living in a cave who has a few unique characteristics with his encounter that make for a drawn out fight. It wasn’t necessarily difficult – just long. His loot was even worse than Lyceum as our guild bank came out on top for the night for loot. All in all, I had a good time with the first T7 raid night with Combine Syndicate on Antonia Bayle. I’m looking forward to the next encounter. Until next time, take it easy.

Let’s start off today’s update with a little exercise in statistics. My Templar on Antonia Bayle hit level 70 late Friday night and is now “locked” pending our raid campaign through T7 which starts next Sunday, October 4th. I’ve got roughly 4 days 16 hours played now on this character that was created on September 1st. I figure that’s 25 days to level 1-70 with my Templar and that averages out to about 4.5 hours played per day to get the job done. It doesn’t really feel like I’ve played that much but I guess the numbers don’t lie. Even though EQ2 is much easier these days as far as leveling goes, it still takes a decent investment. Especially if you have a real job, go to college, have a family or whatever your situation may be. All in all, I’m very happy with the leveling time and enjoyed the ride all the way.

Last week SOE released game update 53 which included a whole host of changes and updates to the game. A new instance called Shard of Love was added which has an interesting story line involving Mithanel Marr and Erolissi Marr. The screen shot above shows our group battling against some rather nasty butterflies. Sounds scary, eh? The cool thing about this zone is that it scales based on level and as far as I can tell – it just drops housing items and a rare set of wings that you can equip. I wonder if the wings will let you glide like the Fae or Arasai races? Doubtful, but one can hope.

At the end of the Shard of Love, we fought Mithaniel Mar – shown above. I thought the zone was rather easy both times I did it last week but it was fun nonetheless. The last week of leveling was quite a blur. So much so, that I don’t even remember where I took the screen shot shown below. I thought the big insect guys looked cool so I figured I’d put it out there for you guys to see.

Once I hit 70, I really wanted to go through the Estate of Unrest. This zone holds many fond memories for those of us who played the original Everquest. The EQ2 version of Unrest was released with game update 32 as a free content addition to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion. Unrest is quite a time commitment as progression through the zone requires lots of keys, wandering through large hedge mazes and completion of many other mysteries.

The hedge maze is probably the biggest hallmark feature of the zone. Your group winds through these mazes to kill certain mobs which drop items that help you gain entry to the main house. Another thing about this zone is that you have to be careful harvesting shinies. Often times, someone will pick up a shiny only to have a gang of mobs appear from the trap. If you aren’t careful, this can cause a wipe in no time at all. It’s also important to stick together in this zone as it’s easy to get lost. Getting lost in here usually means death isn’t far behind.

Once you gain entry to the main house you work your way through the bar area. Once it’s clear, a sadistic bartender spawns and he’s not happy you decided to join him. After you show this guy who is boss, you stumble upon the ghost of a woman who was never able to have children. She’s locked in her bedroom being tormented by a gang of ghost toddlers – creepy. What’s creepier that ghost kids? How about the kid shown below? He just want’s to play with you…. Yeah, riiiiight.

After you clear the first few floors, you gain access to the basement. Before too long, I was face down in the dirt inside a jail cell next to the horror shown below. He was part of an encounter where random group members were ported behind prison doors. I never made it out of the jail.

There are several cool features about the basement such as a persistent mist, crazy skeleton heads and ghosts that appear on your screen which can cause you to scream or push you over the edge if you allow yourself to get lost in the experience. The instance has a lot of character and you can tell the developers at SOE put their heart and soul into this zone (no pun intended.) Seriously, I think it is some of their best work. My only gripe is that it takes forever.

The final fight, shown above, is triggered once you construct the boss from bones that you loot from random mobs in the bottom of the basement. He wasn’t too difficult and he dropped a armor set piece for our tank. When everything was done, it was pushing 3:30 am and it was time to call it a night.

Now that I’m 70, I’m working on getting more AA points and gearing up with all my Expert spells (the old Adept 3s) plus a full set of Mastercrafted gear. I’ve been exploring Kylong Plains a bit as the quest rewards are pretty strong and might be helpful for our upcoming raid plans. I’ve also been working on the Claymore quest line and plan to complete that as well as SOD in the next few weeks. The recent game update did a few other things that were neat like reduce the amount of time it takes to skill up swimming, melee skills, casting etc… That’s a life saver when you consider the increased leveling speed these days. Another neat feature that came in with the last game update is the Exp vs. AA slider. You can now move the slider to 100% AA, like I have it on now, and you combat experience rolls over into AA points. This should allow me to rack up quite a bit of AA in the near future.

I’ve had so much fun in EQ2 recently that my Aion character is still sitting at level 6. I just don’t think Aion offers enough of a new experience to warrant the time investment – especially when I’m so happy with EQ2 at the moment. I’m bummed about it though because I had a great guild lined up for that game as well. I just don’t have enough time to play everything at the level I enjoy playing these games at. I can’t really half ass games, if you know what I mean. The EQ2 community on Antonia Bayle is fantastic, I’m in a guild full of cool people and the game is just enjoyable. You guys should come join us!