Going Nuts In Norrath

New characters come and new characters go, but those that get blogged about at least have a vague chance at a state of semi-permanence around here. So with that in mind, ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Dr. Prezzlewick M.D. (Many Deaths):

“Take two of these every hour and if you’re still alive in the morning we’ll try something else.”

Not much to report on as yet, other than a nice and speedy progress through the early ranks and the starter chain of quests in the Kelethin area being explored. I’m liking the healing powers a lot and there definitely seems to be a lot more in the way of ‘decent’ loot being dropped by low-level mobs these days (three orcs in a row dropped stat-filled helms, for instance).

I’m going to try and rush him up to 30 as I’ve yet to take a character past there. I’m also going to go all-out in pursuit of guild membership and pick-up grouping. I don’t take up much room, won’t get in the way, am fully-house trained and are quite content to just sit at the back and fling out healing spikes as needed.

Gosh, what are you doing here? Thought this place was boarded up ages ago. Could do with a bit of a clean, couldn’t it? Dust and cobwebs everywhere. Blimey…

Yeah sorry, I kind of let this place go to pot a bit didn’t I? ‘Nuts’ was actually created with a specific intention - although I never quite made it clear on the site previously, I am/was actually the editor of EQuinox, the official EQII magazine that you may or may not have heard about elsewhere - and this site was initially started in order to explore the world of EQII bloggers for a feature in a future issue. I never expected to carry on with it for more than about a month or so. Except that I started to really enjoy the daily chronicling of my Norrathian exploits, and even if the viewing figures barely peaked double figures on a good day, it was fun to keep it up. In fact, that one day when the WordPress dashboard indicated over 70 people had logged on and read the story of my ship-boarding calamities, I nearly had a heart attack.

The pressures of magazine production take their toll however, and with each issue’s print deadlines looming, the site naturally took a breather as I concentrated my daily efforts into making the final pages as good as possible instead. Then with the currently extended hiatus for what was going to be a frankly stunning issue 3 (if I do say so myself) and a doubtful future to work out, I sadly let my EQII playing slide a bit. Plus I started getting into Pirates of the Burning Sea, a bit of EVE Online (I also work on the official magazine for that one, E-ON), PKR.com (poker’s an old passion and I’m trying to win enough money to buy the fourth edition D&D gamebooks!) and, oddly, Crysis (almost finished it now). So my attention to the site waned as I didn’t think I could really keep it up and/or contribute anything useful to the already-crowded bloggysphere.

But then something unusual happened. A couple of nights ago I casually logged back on, purely out of a sense of havingnothingbettertodoness, joined the AB server and rolled a brand new healer, a Templar (a class genre I’ve never really explored much before), started out in Kelethin, went through ten levels in one session and suddenly it hit me:

I F*****G LOVE THIS GAME!

Seriously, why did I ever stop? The Living Legacy promotion certainly seems to be having the desired effect of bringing players back to the game - the zone was as packed with new toons as I could ever remember an EQII zone being, the chat channels more active with friendly discourse and idle musings than at any time in memory, and the overall sense was one of a world on the up, an MMO with an actual future ahead of it - something that I think we EQII veterans have all, in our heartiest of hearts, started to think nervously about just lately.

So, I’m going to stick with it again, that goes for the blog too. I can’t guarantee to update it daily, or to fill it with the pretty pictures I used to (I always used to keep forgetting to take screenshots at appropriate moments and ended up having to try my best to recreate the situations to illustrate my tales in the past - I know, I know. Don’t let daylight in on magic and all that…), but I’ll do my best to let you know how I get on with young Dr. Prezzlewick, old dwarf vet Prezzer or any of the other two dozen alts I have running around the various servers using names that have some variation of Prezzer in them (it’s an old habit I can’t shake, that and giving all of my characters ginger hair), and bring you whatever thoughts I can as they occur to me. I may throw in other game references here and there, but this is mainly an EQII blog and I’ll do my best to stick to the topic at hand. I owe you, my audience, that much at least.

All seven of you. Ahem…

Couldn’t really let this pass now, could I?

http://adelecaelia.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/paul-prezzer-is-so-sweet/

Golly! T’weren’t nothin’.

An interesting post by Ethic over at Kill Ten Rats on the whole grouping and social issue (I did some browsing following yesterday’s post telling of my own woes). The original post is good, but the discussion spawned afterwards is where the real meat lies.

One thought to spring up following yesterday’s War And Peace-sized missive was a campaign to bring Airwolf back to television (if Battlestar Galactica can be reimagined and Knight Rider can be refreshed (possibly NSFW), why not the real classic, eh?). The other thought, more sensibly, was of tutorials. Seems to me that there are beginner’s guides and starting quest lines covering all sorts of aspects of EQII gameplay – from combat to zone exploration to crafting – but none that really go into educating people into the very key reason EQII exists – online interaction with fellow adventurers.

I’m not merely suggesting a series of Very Hard quests that necessitate multiple party members to defeat (that would be Heroic mobs as far as I understand it) as these could easily be got around by out-levelling the mob in question. Instead I’m referring to a series of quests, certainly within the first three tiers of the game, that not only encourage grouping with their objectives (multiple levers that must be pulled within ten seconds of each other in differing locations, for instance), but also guide the player in the arts of recruiting groupmates in the first place.

Nothing compulsory of course, no reason to force a solo-oriented player to mix with others if they don’t want. But at least something there for people that suddenly want to dip their toe into the multiplayer waters to be able to head in the right direction.

What this also throws up, of course, is the aspect of class roles within a group. It’s all well and good to put out a quest that says “You will need three other heroes to complete this”, but far more useful might be for each class to have a ‘group specialization’ series of training quests. Could a dirge be rewarded with certain quest progression items if they successfully debuff twenty different mobs in a fight? This would require there to be a tank dealing the damage (and similarly gaining quest progression items when he performs a number of successful ‘pulls’) while the dirge concentrates on learning his particular role.

Not, I hasten to add, that group roles should be specific to individual classes only. We all know there’s a fair amount of role-crossover in EQII, so maybe a group gets to assign roles during the first stage of the quest, regardless of class – but thus allowing a player to learn just what roles are more ‘suitable’ for a particular career choice when they try a tank-damage dealing bard and fail the quest big time.

The typical bloggers’ cliché is to have a post that states: “I’m no game designer, but…” and I guess this is mine. I’m sure there are gaping holes in this idea that I haven’t yet thought about, but I figured I’d put it out there at least and see what people think (even if I now expect 90% of the responses to be about bringing back high-concept, low-budget 80’s TV shows instead).

My new life in Butcherblock (happy new year everyone, by the way – usual story of holiday periods, office moves and lack of internet connections are to blame for the sparse blog updates lately, but at least I’ve breached the mental firewall of letting this thing slip prior to Christmas and seem eager to continue into ’08)… uh, where was I? Oh, right…

So, my new life in Butcherblock has been temporarily delayed as a few unearthed areas of Antonica still rang out to me (will I ever get to leave this green and moderately pleasant if somewhat overly spacious land?). Basically, in tying up the last few loose ends in my quest journal before packing up and shipping out, a few more final strands shot up so I’ve been knee deep in McQuibble Farm scarecrows (is it just me or does the sudden rushing of a gang of x3 Heroic mobs at the end of the quest chain seem like a slightly unfair difficulty upramp?), camping out gnoll captains down in Blackburrow, taking a sudden and strange interest in harvesting and crafting, and impersonating Seaman Stains (one for the fellow Brits reading this) on the good ship Smarmy Sprocket and its crew of workshy fops.

The other EQII resolution that I’d promised to myself last time we spoke, was to start grouping. My first foray into that since could hardly be said to be pushing back the boundaries of gaming excellence however. My quest journal has had a handful of Stormhold-based quests hanging around in it for ages, picked up in a mad fit of peak many levels ago, and just hanging around like a bad smell, waiting for the day I’d reached a level sufficiently powerful enough to not be killed just by the wind rush thrown up when the front doors open.

As luck would have it the ‘level 20-29’ channel threw up a promising-sounding “SH group looking for mid to high 20s.” Assuming they weren’t referring to some kinky sex game I’d hitherto been unaware of, I sent back a /tell and was promptly accepted. Despite being a monk.

Eager to begin my epic afternoon of thrilling adventures and derring-do, I rushed towards the stony doorway, surprisingly didn’t die that much on the way, and leapt straight into the fray when I witnessed my party leader idly killing opening area goo things while waiting for the Avengers to Assemble.

And that’s about where it all fell apart for me and this is the indicative of my whole problem with grouping up in the game so far. This wasn’t the fault of the party itself, I hasten to add, but it’s just indicative of the typical grouping experience of the game. What happened from there on in was what can typically described as a madcap rush from one named mob to the next, barely stopping to catch breath and hardly even waiting for one corpse to hit the floor before we were speeding off to find the next.

Where was the thrill of adventure? Where was the exploration of (to me) an unknown environment? The tense advancement along unknown corridors, the glory and marvel on arriving in a beautifully dilapidated ballroom? We even seemed to just rush past the fabled glowing sword at the top of the spiral staircase that I heard was a major plot point but barely raised a flicker of interest from anyone here as we sped towards our next XP-boosting target. No one was speaking a word to anyone else other than to call out a target and debate on whether the drops would be any good. It was only once I’d finally had enough of this and called it a night, stepping back into the cool, evergreen air of Antonica at dusk, that I discovered I’d actually crossed off a couple of the Stormhold quests I’d been storing. Discovery quests mostly, but in all the non-stop running and slashing I hadn’t even noticed them dinging away.

Anyone know what’s going on? Answers on a postcard to… 

I guess that’s why I’ve been all too keen to keep soloing to date. When I’m running a quest, I like to stop and smell the jumjum beans. I’m actually interested in the content of the world that’s been so lovingly designed by the good burghers at SOE. I like to read the background, listen to the quest givers and know what I’m doing. The problem is, there are too few grouping opportunities for people who are still fresh to things. I have no problem with XP/loot chasing groups, let me be clear on that, but at the level 20-40 stage, it’s not what I’m after. I’m still exploring. I’m still excited by seeing a new area. Surely I’m not the only one.

Hence a proposal. The chat channels are often home to group inviting calls, but rarely do us lore fiends get a chance to know what’s waiting for us if we sign up. So how about setting up a new chat channel solely dedicated to letting those with a taste for a slower-paced approach advertise for first-time quest running groups? If you see “Looking for Firemyst Gully group, levels 20-25 needed, esp Healers” you automatically know that you’ll be banding with like-minded souls looking to explore quests for the first time and who will have an interest in following the plot.

Chances are I’m just describing a role-playing server, but I doubt it somehow.

(P.S. Apologies for the lack of imagery with the recent postings. I’ve been shuttling from one dodgy internet connection to another just lately. Hopefully normal visual servcie will be resumed shortly.)