You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘EQ2’ category.
Lots of mission running over the weekend, exploring Kelethin and Greater Faydark and clearing most of the quest lines on offer. Grender’s Lair was pretty well constructed, and I did enjoy the idea of searching outwards only to fight the climax right under the heart of the city itself, nice pacing overall and it didn’t outstay its welcome. Although I have to question the notion of the black market dude setting up shop just outside his lair. Plus, the Grender himself could have done with a little bit more of a dramatic payoff rather than just rushing into a fight and dieing without so much as a by your leave. A few mocking conversation paths first or something – the typical Bond-Main Villain verbal sparring before the rabid badgers with machine guns are let loose and everything a’splodes.
We’re going to try an experiment today. Blogs are all well and good for mouthing off about your favourite MMO and patiently, maturely and rationally explaining in minutely constructive detail why certain aspects of the game could do with improvement and enhancement. You’ve seen the ones: “This game isn’t WOW so it obviously SUCKSZ!!!!”, “My healer class is TOTALLY underpowered because I can’t nuke an entire zone in two seconds. I’m cancelling my sub!!!”, “Yor 18th century pirate game is a COMPLETE RIP-OFF because it isn’t set in space with ninjas which is totally what I was expecting it to be based on a mis-assumption on my part after looking at a single pre-alpha screenshot, so youre company SUCKS BALLS and has BETRAYED it’s customers!!!!!!!” Fume, pant, rage, stomp.
Finally, after a couple of weeks on the AB role-playing server, an actual moment of gen-yoo-wine role-playing took place. A rare late night, well 2am, here in the UK must have coincided with peak US hours and just as I was preparing to wind things up for the evening (morning) after a solid few hours killing orcs around Kelethin and clearing a few questlines…
… (Quick aside: the learning to speak Faelish/Faelian/Faelenese/whatever quest with you running around the nearby pub speaking gibberish to everyone inside, while brief, showed some lovely comic writing and dialogue and was a great little diversion from what is either a far too serious nature to the game, or is the kind of comedy that really died out with early 80’s sitcom writing. Memo to SOE: let your quest designers go crazy like this a lot more often and it’ll do everyone a world of good. If you’re going to go comedy, go Seinfeld, The Office, or dare I say it, Monty Python, rather than Leave It To Beaver or Mr. Ed. Although maybe that’s just my cynical British sense of humoUr coming through) …
… when what looked like an NPC with a quest feather above his head stepped out of the descending acorn elevator, hailed me by name and started telling me about his love life. A live event, of course, which I quickly cottoned on to by the NPC having a green name instead fo the usual white, the slowly gathering crowd of players settling down to listen to our hero’s tale of ardour, and the fact the NPC was answering my typed questions directly. Cool, I’d not done something like this before and settled in for the fun ride ahead.
I gather that America recently celebrated International Thank God You’re Not British Day or something (which, given our truly, truly words-fail-me godawful public transport systems, rampant knife-crime culture stretching even into our nurseries and day cares, dependence on reality/freak TV shows for any sense of self-worth, and inexplicable addiction to publically insisting we’re any good at various ball sports that all possible evidence indicates to the contrary, I can fully understand, if not exactly patriotically get behind). It was also Malawian and Venezuelan Independence Day (whatever else you may think of him, Chavez throws one hell of a good party), Filipino-American Friendship Day (play nice), and tomorrow sees Tanabata, the Japanese Star Festival in which two astral lovers kept apart for the whole year by the Milky Way are allowed one day to be together… bow-chikka-wow-wow…
Meanwhile, Norrath is celebrating what I can only assume is an upcoming crossover with the Half-Life universe thanks to all these portal storms and I for one am already prepping myself for my epic crowbar weapon questline. Truthfully though, I love these so-called ‘live events’ in-game, another sign that there’s plenty of life and ongoing dedication for the game (do I really sound that much of a cheerleader? Oh well…) and constant freshness in the game is always something to be applauded. One of the guys on the Massively podcast said it best recently in a comment about how workers and scaffolding have suddenly appeared in one of WOW’s areas (I don’t honestly know the game that well so forgive the lack of details), indicating that an upcoming game patch will introduce a new dockside area. Rather than just springing a whole city expansion on you, you lead into it by showing it being built – all helping to keep the immersion factor alive and strong. The whole thing with the Plane of Fear in a previous EQII update – with the gates being unearthed prior to going live – was another good example.
I think it’s that ‘immersion factor’ that led me to starting Prezzlewick on the AB server rather than elsewhere. I’d like to have the option to dip into being ‘in character’ now and then, to really get into the world and its story, and AB seemed the best place to do that without being pointed at by people and chased out of town with sticks for being strange.
I also love the fact that the players themselves on AB (and LdL) organise and run ‘events’ of their own, be it a simple tavern night to a full-on ‘adventure’. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m hankering towards the fourth edition D&D books for an upcoming gaming night, the first time I’ll have DM’d a pen-and-paper game in about ten to fifteen years and the whole idea of ‘creating’ and ‘character’ is very strong with me right now and to see it working online is immensely appealing.
Anyway, not much point to the above. I was going to go into a whole routine about ‘In-Game Holidays I’d Like To See’, but after a Freeportian version of Pamplona’s running of the bulls (using hungry wargs and a generous helping of barbeque sauce), I got hungry and started to think about other things instead. Maybe another post down the line.
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.)
Having spent literally minutes mulling over my options as were left to me at the end of the last post (which alt to be my main and which area to go to with him), I think I’ve decided to split duties between my Dwarven Monk in Butcherblock, and my Sarnak Fury in Nektulos Forest. I really couldn’t abandon my first real main EQII character for some young upstart, I felt I’d invested far too much pain, humiliation and column inches in him to just throw the little one to side of the road without even stopping to open the car door first. And since he was the first to get to Butcherblock and had already started carving out a name for himself as the premier Aqua Goblin dispatcher du jour, it wouldn’t be right to stop now.
But Nektulos was always an area that held some interest for me. The only time I’d encountered it before was months ago on a magazine screenshotting exercise, which required the rapid creation of a random alt (an iksar funnily enough so maybe there’s some karma in all this somewhere) with inherent invisibility powers, a skipping past the training island and a quick sprint straight past anything with teeth to the entrance of NF, and then a madcap race around as much of the locale as possible, snapping scenery shots like a crazed wildlife photographer covered in BBQ sauce and running around a lion enclosure. I think I was level 4 which meant even the grass was auto aggroing me.
In fact, it’s usually a safe bet that if you ever see a ridiculously low-level character running around completely unsuitable environments in what appears to be a mad panic, constantly stopping to crouch or jump on a rock to get a better angle on a shot, chances are it’s me doing my best Peter Parker impression while on Official Business. Sometimes I wish EQII came with a set of ‘Press’ armour, bright, blue flak jackets with the legend “Don’t Eat Me, I’m A Journalist!” written across the back and that have the dual effects of removing any aggro, but also prevent you from attacking anything.
Anyway, the point is, I’ve seen Nektulos before and it has an appeal, one that I’d like to explore at a more suitable pace and progression. It’s definitely time to start exploring the lost art of Pick-Up Groups in more depth as well. So far, all I’d managed to achieve on that front was to join a silent mob slayer back in The Caves who must have fallen into the old trap of assuming I Know What I’m Doing and without a word just proceeded to attack anything that moves without even stopping to draw up a plan of action, assign group roles, fill in ANY forms in triplicate whatsoever, or even introduce himself.
That and one other time I haphazardly agreed to join a PUG that was setting out for Fallen Gate (I think it was, can’t fully remember for sure) but was having difficulty locating a healer online to join us. So instead of the much promised adventure and excitement I thought I was going in for, I spent a confusing fifteen minutes trying to work out how the teleport spires worked, then an oddly disconcerting dash across the Commonlands with my distinctly Qeynosian dwarf, and then much sitting on rocks and waiting while the group leader cursed constantly about how no one plays healers any more before he gave up on the whole enterprise and logged off. Leaving a nervous and suddenly bereft of companionship ‘goodie’, knee-deep in ‘baddie’ territory. Thanks a bunch.
So basically I haven’t had the greatest of luck with groups to date, but I’m not going to let that get me down. I know there has to be some decent action going on out there, and I aims me to find it. I’m fully house-trained, I promise not to steal loot (in fact I won’t even roll for it, how about that? I’m just happy to help out), and I’ve recently started to get a hang on what all these combat arts do so I might even prove to be useful. Look out world, I’m coming for you!
A lot to cover as I’ve been getting quite heavily into many aspects of EQII lately, not least of which is enjoying the low-level area of the Kunark expansion along with 98.7% of the rest of the game’s population it seems. Prior to that I’d started off on a few of the early Butcherblock quests, gathering sandal ingredients for the fisher bloke on the beachfront, swimming back and forth to the aqua goblin island to retrieve pages of a book (haven’t you people ever heard of saddle-stitch linings or leather-binding? Honestly, Norrathian books seem to fall apart at the slightest gust of wind) and generally avoiding dying through my monk invisibility skills and hit-and-run, take ‘em down one at a time, Predator-style tactics.
Nonetheless, progress was being made, levels were obtained, quests ticked off and even a wrong turn in Globbsunk Cove which instead of leading to a final quest item, instead brought me face to eye with Leviathan. The all-seeing monster of the deep. Ol’ Squiddy McTentacle (yes, it killed me so quickly I didn’t actually get a chance to see its proper name, okay?). Which is one of the things I love about this game. Every time you think you’ve seen all of a certain location, something mysterious and terrifying is always waiting just around the corner.
Then, just as I was starting to hit my stride and beginning to throw off the shackles of ham-fisted gameplaying, really start to enjoy myself you know, Kunark hits and a quick nose around with a Sarnak alt suddenly turns into my main EQII’ing experience and before you can say “Well that was inevitable when you stop to think about it,” McStumpy Carrotbeard the Monk is somehow no longer my number one guy. The alt has become the master and this scaly fella below has jumped into the lead position as my highest-leveled character. How the hell did that happen???
I’m beginning to think that banana-tinted aftershave was a mistake.
Damn you, bargain aisle!
The solo starting path for Sarnaks in ROK is surprisingly well structured and it was probably that being-led-by-the-nose aspect that kept me playing through it. None of the vague wanderings found in Antonica, never a moment when I’m not sure how to proceed, and even a surprisingly well-designed selection of quests that, while still mostly of the Kill X mobs variety, at least peppered with enough imagination and plot exposition to paint a really entertaining picture of life in this neck of the woods. Plus it looks gorgeous, but then you all know that already:
Can’t be that advanced a civilisation. Haven’t even invented escalators.
But it puts me in a quandary. The next step for my Sarnak Fury is to head over to Butcherblock. So which of my now two mains do I carry on with? I’d like to stick with the dwarf as BB is based around his kith and kin after all (the main reason I went there in the first place), but the Fury is proving to be a lot of fun to play and he’s kitted out quite well now. Can a Sarnak go to Thundering Steppes and have a worthwhile time? Should Nektulos Forest be an option? All advice welcome to the usual address…
(With apologies to Don Martin) Aargh, run! Splash! Faloop faloop faloop! Tum ti tum! Yike! Crash! Gersplash! Faloopfaloopfaloopfaloop! Blaargh! Runrunrurnrunrunrunrun JUUUUMMMPP! Splash! Faloop faloop faloop! Lolz newb…
Anyway, I’m on the boat at last. No more briny mishaps and we’re off. Hard a-port Mr Captain. Steady the tethers, bosun, frame the mainsplice or something. Zone boundary sighted off the starboard bow and so on. All seemed to be going well at last until my very own iceberg loomed into metaphorical view. Seems we had no sooner zoned into Butcherblock when EQII/my PC/the great god Thor and his vengeful minions decided they weren’t done taunting me just yet and the game froze. Stone dead. As lifeless as a wax museum in a mausoleum.
I tried my usual three-point plan for dealing with this sort of thing, but since swearing in a Russian accent, hitting the monitor with a shoe to try and dislodge the pixels (don’t ask), and stomping around the room occasionally turning to glare menacingly at the screen didn’t seem to be working, I went for the old Vulcan Death Reboot instead, thinking that at the most I’d have to respawn at the docks and start the boat trip again (minus the theatrics of last time). More fool me.
Relogging into the game I find myself not amongst the tranquil sea and sarcastic seagulls of the Thundering Steppes dockside, but standing amongst towering rock formations, parched looking desertscapes and a small outpost of dwarven folk. Seems that rather than respawn me in the sensible position of anywhere near the point I was at when the game froze, it dropped me randomly onto the map several miles from safety and surrounded by arcane beasties that would sooner use me as a toothpick as look at me.
Did that rock just move? What about that tree? That mound of dirt is definitely looking at me funny.
Ordinarily my reaction to such imminent danger would be to hit the old Call Of Qeynos hotkey (always got that one on standby dontchaknow) and warp the hell to the safety of my tavern room. But I didn’t think I could face all the hassle of getting back to TS, messing with the docks and having people point and laugh once more, plus I have a handy stealth power that should see me safely past the beasts of fearsome size and dubious formation (I mean, really, how does something made of rock breathe?). Only problem is that stealth isn’t a permanent state. It only lasts for as long as I have Power in the tank. And naturally there isn’t nearly enough to get all the way to the docks from here, especially as I don’t really know which way the docks are. Sigh.
So I did what any right-thinking man in my shoes would do, I cheated. A quick scan of EQ2Map.com, just to point me in the right direction (and to scare the jebus out of me) and I reluctantly set off, like a ginger ninja of the night. The aim was to keep heading for any spot that looked safe enough from wandering mouths, recharge the battery packs and head off for the next one. Eventually I figured I’d reach safety and be able to start my new life proper.
Except that wandering mouths, well… they sort of wander, don’t they? So every time I holed up thinking I was safely out of aggro range, over an Earth Elemental or similar menace would start to stroll, causing me to flee on many an occasion, several times halfway up the sides of sheer rock faces just to widen the gap as much as possible. Death teleportation wasn’t really possible as I’d already tired that and was only given the option of rezzing even further into the wilds than I already was.
A pretty nervous half an hour then as I hopped from one relatively barren spot to another, each time barely making it through a patch of wild things before the stealth power wore off. The final moment of terror came as I could see the goal, only to pop back into the visible spectrum just as an unseen winged, razor-tooth thing came around a corner and started charging as if I was trying to steal its eggs or something. Flashing my RSPB membership card didn’t have any effect so instead of heading for the entrance to the docks (cut off by more nasties), I sped for the only way out I could think of – the cliffside that led to the Butcherblock waters below. I think the rationale was: death by plummet is marginally less painful than death by gnawing.
Then salvation! The dwarf-devouring birdman gave up the chase just as the cliff edge came into view and somehow the impression of a dwarf-sized hailstone didn’t take place as my little monk instead hopped over the side and started to clamber vertically down. Now I’d heard that climbing had been put into the game a while back, but outside of some fun in the training area for Fae with my alt, I hadn’t actually encountered it. What larks!
Don’t look down. Or up. Or off to the sides for that matter. In fact just closing your eyes entirely would probably be best.
To cut a long story short, I proceeded to spend the next half hour scaling up and down every off-coloured wall I could find, now that I was free of aggro, before finally making my way to the dockside. All’s well that ends well. At least until my first quest task asked me to run around on an island outcrop full of auto-aggro aqua goblins. But that’s a story for another day (probably tomorrow if I’m to keep this blog going). If anyone wants to offer advice for a mid-20s monk with a yellow streak the size of the road in Oz, just making his way around this new land, I’m open to suggestions. Just don’t expect me to be any good, is all.
People say that with any trip, the journey is half the fun. Let me tell you a little about my journey to Butcherblock and why I think the word fun needs to undergo something of a radical overhaul.
As we all know (but took me a fair amount of searching to discover), the boat from the established world (in my case, Antonica/Qeynos-aligned) leaves from the pier in Thundering Steppes. So far my sole experience of TS is feeling the icy hand of zombie death as I foolishly took a quick excursion that way in my early teens. At least this time round I could slip into the shadowy embrace of my Monkly stealth ability to slip by any dangerous beasties unmolested. I’m still not brave enough to actually battle them myself, but it’s progress of a sort I suppose.
Reaching the dock wasn’t so much of a struggle (once I learnt to turn left at the end of the entrance valley instead of right and into Ravenholm. I should have realized though that the biggest danger I face these days doesn’t come in the shape of rotting flesh-covered bipeds, but in the far more familiar guise of my own stupidity. Spying the boat already moored at the end of the pier and not knowing how long before it weighed anchor and set sail I hit the sprint button, slammed on auto-run and started a 100-metre dash that would put a drug-addled Olympian to shame. At which point a passing do-gooder, seemingly thinking he could help, cast a Spirit Of The Wolf buff onto me moments before I step on board. Everyone ahead of the story here?
No actors were harmed in the recreation of this scene.
A screaming mass of ginger hair and blurred feet pelt straight onto the deck of the ship and, before I can stop it, right off the other side and into crystal blue waters below. Hoping no one saw such mania, or at least hoping that they thought I was recording some sort of stunt for a reality TV series, I sheepishly wade ashore, watching the boat casually head off to adventure land without me.
Checking myself for limpets, I take stock and decide to just wait patiently by the end of the jetty this time for the next ferry to arrive. Unfortunately, my inner three-year old soon kicks in and I find myself exploring the spiral gangplanks around the curious little building next to the pier as the boat arrives. Panicking, I start to hurry back down, cack-handedly misjudge a step and find myself exploring the watery depths once again. Realising that if I hurry I might just make it this time, I quickly swim back to the side entrance to the pier. Unfortunately as I dash towards the boat it starts to slowly move off. Ah hah, I foolishly think to myself. I can put Indiana Jones to shame here and I veer off to the left and up the spiral stairway once again, hoping to reach the top just as the boat sails past. With the kind of heroic leap that would put a salmon to shame I sprint and dive for the deck…
I call this piece ‘Epic Fail in Blue’.
… sadly missing by several clear yards and ending up straight back in Davy Jones’ locker once again. Sigh. I’m sure by this stage that I’ve got half the server watching this lunatic of a half-dressed, orange dwarf trying his very best to commune with his watery deity in the most flamboyant way possible. I drag myself out of the briny once again, stroll carefully and slowly back to the end of the pier, press the sit button and perch my physical self as far from the keyboard as it’s possible to get without defying the EULA.
Think that was the end of my travel troubles? Stay tuned for part two… Arrival At Butcherblock for the rest of this tale of one man’s madness.
I think I’ve finally given up on Antonica (cue: wild applause and back slapping from the learned). One thing that always stops me from making too much progress in any MMO I dare grace with my esteemed presence, is that I’m forever changing my goals. One day I’m determined to crack the crafting nut and set out with my many bags to the nearest tier-friendly hunting spot, gathering nuts aplenty. The next I’m seized with a desire to power level my way to Win city by farming whatever mob happens to rear its head (so long as it poses no real threat, can be easily dealt with before my own health drops to below 80% and doesn’t have sharp, pointy teeth for the biting and the gnawing and oyyyyy, glavin!).
My latest bête noire – I really wish I could just sometimes, you know, play the game for itself – was to try and heroically (in my mind) finish EVERY LAST DAMN QUEST ANTONICA HAS TO OFFER. Damn OCD. A combination of the EQ2I wiki and the EQ2 Questlist websites saw me in good stead regarding direction, and I’d managed to reach a level with The Littlest Hob… er, Monk that I could safely handle whatever the East and West could throw at me without too much pain and suffering and nightmares waking me at 3am. I suck at games.
First step, clearing the backlog of Far Seas Requisition Forms cluttering my quest journal like dusty relics of a more innocent time when hope and optimism filled my life, twin beacons of benevolence and happiness guiding my path and seeing me right. Now they were just grey annoyances that must be taken to the mouth of the volcano and dispatched with tremendous haste and extreme prejudice. A spate of animal genocide later and that was that. Between me and Lara Croft, it’s a wonder any animals ever sign up for video game duty at all. Natural ecosystem be damned. Take that Mother Nature!
Next up, the ‘Dancer’ mini quest line by the Claymore Memorial, by dint of it being first in the alphabetical list of uncompleted quests. So whose bright idea is it to make a quest that involves killing seven of a specific gnoll type of which only one spawns per day/night cycle? I know, I know. Mob camping. Old a concept as the MMO hills, but I thought we were getting past all those old sores these days? Not as painful as I was fearing though and with the ability to distract myself with real-life work while perched atop a rocky outcrop waiting for the spawn, we were swiftly done.
About then was when I took another look at the quest list in front of me and begun to realize the absolute folly of this chosen stone around the neck. Over sixty still to go and me nearing the upper regions of tier 3 and frankly I think I’ve just about had enough of this green and pleasant (and somewhat too widespread) land.
Oi, piss off. This is my dramatic ‘leaving home’ montage.
So I find myself contemplating life in Butcherblock Mountains, the thinking going that if I can’t complete every quest a zone has to offer, I might as well opt for a zone that still matches the level range I’m in, has some sort of lore-based connection with my chosen race, and is part of the ‘new’ content so that I’m not stuck in aging, ‘first-draft’ areas but in a place that other people actually seem to inhabit. To the Thundering Steppes I go! There’s a boat with my name on it.
My new home, some damp patches.
Okay, as I understand it, any new blog has to go through a mandatory early flurry of activity, followed by a slight drop off, then a promise of regular updates from there on in, rapidly proceeded by a lull lasting just enough months to make people start wondering if the author has given up the ghost, then finally a triumphant return to action for at least several months while the writer works through the guilt of his imagined neglect to the all-too few people who paid attention in the first place.
So that’s that taken care of then. On with the posts…
I give it till Christmas this time.
Going Nuts In Norrath 
Recent Comments