West Karana

Fighting evil by moonlight	Filing papers by daylight
Always ready for a real fight, she is the one named… oops, sorry.

City of Heroes’ Issue 13 code name: Architect, is going to be introducing DAY JOBS!!! Because, staying up all night fighting good and evil alike just isn’t tiring enough, you have to put in your eight hours at a job. EVE Online has had offline progression from Day 1. Having your character progress in some way even while not logged in is genius, though this is more along the lines of The Sims’ day-job-you-never-actually-see than EVE’s skill training, which occurs whether you are logged in or not.

Where you log out determines your job for the day. Log out in a university, and you’re a Scholar, and you earn Salvage. Log out in a hospital, and you’re a Caregiver, and get Health Regeneration buffs. Any place of note you can log out, gives you SOME sort of job. As well as the stuff you get just for doing the job, there are badges and titles available if you do the job consistently enough, and they increase your earnings for the job. Do multiple jobs and get Accolades for even more rewards.

My ex-main that I haven’t logged in for a year or so would be Paragon City Mayor by now, I bet. Though I imagine they will cap the amount of rewards you can accrue while logged out.

But that isn’t the best thing. Issue 13 also brings along player-generated missions and story arcs. This is the sort of thing which will be the salvation of MMOs, in exactly the same way it’s been the salvation of FPS and RTS games for the past decade. Give the players the tools to make their own content, and a lot of it will be crap. But some of it will be an order of magnitude beyond what anyone else has done.

Write GOOD missions as determined by the community, and even more exclusive rewards open up.

This is VERY exciting stuff. CoX has the big advantage here in that their mission environments are procedurally generated, whereas games like World of Warcraft make theirs by hand. It’s good to see they are taking what I consider a weakness — bland, generic missions — and turning them into a strength.

Judgement Robes and Ninja Pigs in the world of Moo Shu

Well, I was intrigued enough by the chance to test out Wizard101’s item shop that I snuck back into game today to have a look at what Prospector Zeke was selling.

There’s a Prospector Zeke in every world; he usually gives out the collection quest they have in each world, where you have to find very small things in every zone of a world. Dwarven Smiths in Wizard City, Scarab Beetles in Krokotopia and so on. For this last bit of beta, he also sells items of great power. The Zeke in the Olde Town district of Wizard City even sells a pet dragon.

The Zeke in Moo Shu, and friend

You buy these special items — which are well above the power of the usual items you’d find — with KingsIsle Crowns, which apparently you will be able to either buy, get as part of a subscription, or both.

This interview over at Yahoo says:

Jonric: Since you’ll have a cash shop, how will items sold there differ from the ones we can obtain through play?

Todd Coleman: We intend to offer a pretty big array of items in our catalogue, but we have to be careful that we don’t undermine the balance of the game, shortcut the advancement curve too much, or make it unfair to other players. We haven’t announced specific details yet, but those should be coming soon.

A game that charges a subscription fee AND has an item shop? Isn’t that — double dipping?

They do have interesting things planned for after release… like… pet olympics? From an interview with MMOSite:

MMOsite: What else can the players do aside from monster killing and pvp? How important a role do crafting and player economy play?

Todd Coleman: Most of our focus so far has been on adventuring and advancement. We do intend to add a host of secondary activities post launch, like Off-Campus Housing, Crafting and Pet Olympics… but to get us started, we spent all of our development effort really polishing the core game: exploration, adventuring, questing and dueling.

Anyway, I have not been able to really pin down their plans. I don’t think they have actually *announced* anything publicly — definitely not on their website, and the interviews don’t seem to cover payment plans.

Best guess still is a free to play portion, an item shop, and an optional subscription plan. Basically, every business model, all at once. Is that weird?

Judgment, one of the creatures item shop garb can get you. 125 damage per pip.

Anyway, we’ll probably hear more very soon. But for the sake of their target ‘tween’ audience, they’d better include some sort of free-to-play option, and it looks like they will.

Quick comparison of “Hours Played” from XFire for some MMOs, and a ballpark estimate of subscriber activity, given a baseline of five million active WoW players in North America and Europe:

Wizard 101’s beta is ending, and all characters will be deleted prior to the game going live. So this is a goodbye to Tara Mythcrafter, Adept Conjurer and part time Pyromancer.

A lot of people look to Free Realms as an alternative to run-of-the-mill MMOs. I look to games like Wizard 101, with very innovative design and mechanics, to show us what the future might look like.

I did go back to the Emperor’s Throne Room in Krokotopia, by the way, and it seemed about the same as before, though not as buggy.

No word yet on the subscription price, or whether a portion of the game will be free. Beta testers will get an item nobody else can get, which is likely a pet of some sort.

Here’s the email:

The faculty here at the Ravenwood School of Magical Arts would like to say THANK YOU to everyone who joined us for the Summer Semester of beta test play. We could not have done this without you.

The game, with many new improvements, will launch soon! While we are very excited about rolling these new changes out to the Wizard101 community, it means we will have to delete all characters (but not accounts) from the game. We truly apologize for this inconvenience. We will let you know very soon when the characters will be deleted. Be sure to check the website and your email for details.

When you come back to Ravenwood School, there will be a few surprises just for you, our beta test players. As a special thank you, beta test players will get a limited edition game item that no other Wizard101 player will EVER be able to get. To get your reward after launch, be sure to log in using your beta test username and password again. Stay tuned for more information on your special reward.

We know you’ll miss your characters. Take lots of screenshots of your characters, so you can recreate them after launch! We would love to see your screenshots, too. Send them to us at community@wizard101.com, and we’ll put them up on our community site!

We hope you will join the Wizard101 community to celebrate the game’s launch and start a whole new adventure to save Wizard City!

They are also having a screenshot competition; send in your favorite screenshot, and they may be posted on the official Wizard 101 website.

Good luck, and see you in Ravenwood Academy sometime soon!

Stout Henry walked with a quick step toward Cotsberry Market, leading a beautiful brown mare. He looked up at the morning sun, adjusted his broad brimmed hat, flipped back the corners of his tattered cloak with the hand-stitched emblem of a wolf howling at the moon adorning the back, and took a sip from the water skin slung at his hip.

Before long, he caught up with an old woman pushing a cart full of apples. “Hail, apple merchant!” called Stout Henry cheerily, “Tis a beautiful day, is it not?”. The old woman looked back over her shoulder. “Hmmph. Be a darn sight better day if’n your horse could pull this cart to market.”

“Oh ho, no, no can do, grannie. A horse like this one costs at least six thousand gold coins. She is far too nice to pull a cart.”

“Six thousand coins, you say?” croaked the woman. “One gold coin would buy a dozen like her. Why, I doubt there are a hundred gold coins in all of Farthingham. You’re putting me on, you are.”

“Well, that is what I’m going to sell her for at yon market. She’s a good one, she is. I was lucky to find her in the Duke’s stables.”

“The Duke, you say? If I were you, boy, I’d get on that horse and ride as fast as I could. You best be well away from here before he comes looking.”

“Oh, no. I’m only twenty-five. Have to be thirty to ride, you know. I say, though, you ARE planning on selling those apples at market?”

“What kind of idiot question is that?”

“Well, then, I have some things I need to sell to you.” Stout Henry unswung his pack and set it on the ground. “There’s these brass candle sticks I got from the chapel up the way, I’ll sell them to you for a dozen gold coins each. Here’s a shiny pebble I found on the ground, I think it may be magic, perhaps you could use it for jewelcrafting. I found a squirrel dead on the road where a cart had crushed it, so I have some squirrel eyes and a really nice squirrel tail for you. What say, a hundred gold coins for everything?”

“You’re mad,” she muttered, and went on her way. “You don’t see pebbles like this one every day!” he called.

She continued to ignore him as he passed her by. Soon, he topped a hill and saw the brightly colored tents and pavilions of the Cotsberry Market spread below him. He marched into the middle, horse in tow, and yelled at the top of his voice, “[Duke Ferd's Parade Mare] 4 SALE. HAS 4 LEGS, TAIL, TEETH, CAN BE TURNED IN FOR Find the Duke’s Stolen Horse QUEST OR SPLIT INTO PARTS. 6000 GOLD OBO. PST.”

“What the hell does OBOE PISSED mean?” asked a young cloth seller from the door to her tent. Her raven hair was tied back in a knot

“It means, babe,” said Stout Henry, leering, “that I’d like to imagine you with your clothes off. What say you and me… pretend to undress each other.”

“Hah,” she laughed, smirking. “The only thing you’re gonna lose is your head. That’s Duke Ferd coming up the road with his elite guard, or I’m blind. He’ll be wanting his horse back, I think.”

Stout Henry stood staring at the plume of dust raised by the galloping horses. “LFG Duke Ferd’s Revenge! PST!!!!!”

“Loofug? Pissed? That’s Ferd, but he is most definitely pissed.”

I was writing a new Stout Henry story last night, when I got the idea to try and model him with the character creators from all the MMOs I had which could actually make unique characters. That left out EverQuest and World of Warcraft right off the bat; neither one has many character choices and people generally look a lot like other people of their race and gender.

I started off with City of Heroes, because its character creator is legendary. Unfortunately, the options are not tuned so much for a medieval adventurer wearing simple clothes and wielding a staff. Still, after a couple of tries, it didn’t come out too bad… but it wasn’t Stout Henry.

Next up was EverQuest 2. Unlike EverQuest, EQ2’s character creator is pretty customizable. Stout Henry would be a bruiser in EQ2 terms, and I soon had a decent looking character, except that the clothes were entirely wrong. Also, he’s a little TOO clean cut. Personal hygiene is not at the top of Stout Henry’s priority list.

Given the discussion we were having yesterday about the Vanguard character models, I figured I’d have a go with theirs. When I saw the Qalian human disciple, I’d found Stout Henry. Nothing to be done but level him up to 3 and buy a staff, and there he was. My hero.

City of Villains

EverQuest II

Vanguard

Since I was in City of Heroes *anyway*, I decided to look in on my mastermind, the villainous Tara Mythcrafter. Next up on her mission list was a mayhem mission, where she would go to Paragon City and raise havoc and rob a bank and survive somehow. I failed the mission right at the end. But I had realized why I always fail these missions — I keep thinking the point of the mission is to rob a bank. That is NOT the case. The POINT of the mission is to cause MAYHEM — killing the good citizens of Paragon City, blowing up cars, breaking through barricades, defeating so-called heroes, and in general, making your mark on the world.

Next mission sent me to the PvP area, so I went to Booty Bay to look around. Some sort of player-run PvP battle was just ending, so I made a note to look them up when one was starting, and went to Pocket D, the CoX nightclub, to hang out with some fellow costumed adventurers.

There weren’t enough people there to make it interesting, so I accepted a team invite and as anyone who looked at Xfire saw, spent the night in CoV, doing missions and hitting level 19.

After the team broke up, I got a new mayhem mission from my contact, returned to Paragon City and played the mission how it was meant to be played. I blew up EVERYTHING. Cars, trucks, mailboxes, bus stops, phone booths, cardboard boxes… here’s me and my crew villainously attacking a dumpster.

We robbed the bank, too, and defeated the heroes they sent at us. Afterward I kept blowing up cars and cardboard boxes, working on badges, until the timer ran out.

I did get some writing done, but not enough, so that will be tonight’s job. I hope I don’t get sidetracked again….

I signed up for Twitter a long time ago but forgot entirely about it until now. Anyway, my username there is tipadaknife (a play on Tipa the Knife from my rogue days, and Tip of the Knife. I can’t remember who came up with that. It wasn’t me, but I grabbed on to it :)

As I think of other social spaces I belong to and actually occasionally check, I’ll add them to the Contact Me! widget on the sidebar so we can all meet up on our various places to be.

I didn’t just play Guild Wars this weekend. I stopped into Wizard 101 a little, and, oh, finally got around to moving Dina from Befallen to Najena, where she happily joined Nostalgia. Almost as soon as I got transferred and reset my AAs, I got a group invite to Runnyeye 2. Who was going to be the enchanter for the run? Me. Yup, troub mezzes were going to be the only thing between us and total annihilation. It got a little nervewracking on the final epic x2 mob, since the usual strat is to mez all the adds, kill the boss, then kill the adds. Well, I can only keep two locked down. Three with no resists, but that’s iffy. The group leader figured out a strat where only two needed to be mezzed at a time, we did it, and we won.

Vindication for troubs in groups :) The main tank had actually never grouped with a troubadour before, and wanted to know what, if anything, troubs could do that was useful. Well, troubs can mez… that should be good for something. By the end of the run, everyone in the group had learned the pleasure of Song of Magic, Countersong, Perfection of the Maestro and Jester’s Cap as well.

I won a Brigand master in the group, Dispatched. I sold it within minutes for 400p. Unfortunately for me, troub masters on Najena are so expensive that even with 400p, I would only be able to buy a couple of the more useless ones. So I opted to not buy any of them. Unless I am planning on raiding, I don’t really need them if I have Adept 3 spells.

Today, before I started with Guild Wars, I took a couple of hours to rearrange my bank, get all my crafting materials set, put what I didn’t need on the broker, and get my tailoring from 52 to 56, taking advantage of the double xp weekend, a full bar of tradeskill vitality, and two Drafts of the Skilled.

Next time they have a double xp weekend, I’ll finish it up to 60. But Tier 6 tailoring is so mind-blowingly awful, that I want every possible benefit I can get before I put shuttle to loom.

I stopped into Vanguard a little because I’d heard they finally updated the character models. So on the left, you see my bard in EQ2. And on the right, my bard in Vanguard. It should be noted that both halflings are fair skinned. This is part of the reason I don’t play Vanguard much. My character creeps me out.

Played some wake-me-up Audiosurf. Since the last time I played, they have started adding new artists you can download and play to — today, “The Tunics”, a pretty good English indie-style band. You can send the songs you play to to Last.fm, and you can see a quick list of which songs you are the champion on. So, some nice new stuff.

I also finally joined Xfire. I’m tipadaknife there, if you want to add me. I’m Tipa on Last.fm if you want to friend me there, and if you want to add me on LinkedIn or Facebook, let me know :) Or if you know my real name (no huge secret, but that doesn’t mean I want it grabbed from here by a spambot), well, use that for LinkedIn and FB.

Okay, this is skipping ahead a bit, but I’m so mad. I basically manage to single-handedly hold the Sunspears together after Spearmarshall Kosmir became demon-chow. Veshta totally killed us. We fled to some caves — caves filled with vermin! Huge bugs! Koss was kidnapped! So I pretty much had to do it all myself. Afterward, I was totally the hero. It was MY place. MINE.

So WHERE THE HECK did all these OTHER players come from? *I* didn’t invite them!

Sigh.

Okay, wayback machine time.

When we left back at Day 2 (and sorry for no Day 3 last week, I was at the SOE Fan Faire), I was level 19 and finishing up all the quests I could find before I moved on.

Today, I lept right into the fray. The Castellan in the Sunspear castle gave me three tasks that I needed to complete in order to prepare for the battle against Koura that was sure to come.

The first task was to bolster the army by going to the Sunspear Tombs and enlist the help of the dead. Which is kinda weird because, hey, they’re DEAD. They probably got dead by LOSING, and I doubt death has given them many opportunities for training, except for training in decomposing or providing homes for worm colonies.

But hey, I’m not in charge (yet), if that’s what i gotta do… so I went to the tombs and knelt in front of the gate, and a Sunspear warrior appeared — and attacked us. Just as a test. And guess what — we WON. EASILY. I DON’T see how much help a bunch of dead warriors will be when their leader can’t even put up a decent showing against a bunch of newbie adventurers.

So, color me dubious.

The second task was to train some recruits, which just involved taking them bug hunting. But they would come in handy later (although not handy enough to change the outcome of the battle in which they took part).

The third task was to obtain the blessings of the wind gods to give us safe passage from Istan to Koura.

This involved summoning the wind spirits — and killing them. See a little pattern here? After we killed enough of them, they promised to speed our ships on their way. Which is really interesting, because we basically kicked their butts. We kicked ghost butt at the Sunspear tomb, wind spirit butt at the docks, and we expect these people to HELP us?

Well, I think we have to really wonder about the quality of help we will be receiving from them. Or, who they will be helping.

Anyway, tasks done, we formed up on the docks, marched into the ships, and the wind spirits sped us to Koura.

Ah, the sounds and smells of battle. The crash of high-flung stones plowing through the troops. The screams, the blood, the horrid monsters, barely controlled by their summoners. The thrill of victory.

Not, of course, OUR victory. Not even MY victory.

Oh, we were well-routed by forces beyond our control. The wind spirits brought us here because they knew what we would find here. Our own deaths. The Sunspear dead must have been nearby as well, to carry their dead back with them to their eternal rest in the Sunspear Tomb. They carried Spearmarshall Kormir with them.

We started off well, going from place to place, easily defeating the enemy. One of the new recruites even figured out a way to turn the bombards against the city, opening its heart to us. And so we rushed in, certain of victory. Spearwarden Veshta of the Koura, though, summoned the power of the disgraced Sixth God, Abaddon, and four demons appeared. One bit through Kormir, and busied itself swallowing her from the inside out. Those of us that lived ran and ran and ran. Most of my squad survived, but Koss was gone. Dead, captured or scattered, we didn’t know. But as the days and weeks passed, as we Sunspears stuck on Koura looked for a place where we could stop running and regroup and no word came, we had to come to terms with his loss.

I chose an anonymous henchman to take the place of the boisterous, fun-loving Koss.

We Sunspears and Istan in general aren’t any too popular on Koura. A lot of the people think we got what we had coming to us on the Consulate Docks. Donkoro, who thankfully had managed to escape with me and had invaluable wisdom to share, suggested a friend he knew. That friend wanted nothing to do with us, but he did know of a cave system which would be perfect, if bugs hadn’t overrun it. Perhaps we could…?

Oh, yes we could. I eat bugs like that for breakfast.

Um. Not really.

With the caves cleared, the Sunspears that survived the rout trickled in (and opened a new hub). We took on odd jobs. While interrogating a Kouran scout, we heard tell of some prisoners that had just been captured. Koss? No, these prisoners were all dead, and the villagers who had been healing them were themselves arrested.

We freed them, but they hadn’t seen anyone like Koss. Although…. there were rumors of some very important prisoners at a castle on the coast. We soon found out that Koss was alive, and among them. KOSS!

What do you think? Of course we rescued him!

After that, I spent a few hours working on random quests. I got my first elite ability, Simple Thievery, from a corsair named. He had a regular skill I don’t have yet on him, so I might go back for that one, except that it took a very long time to fight down that deep. So: level 20 — would be like 22 if I were still leveling, but that’s two more skill points to use. Opened a new hub with a new advanced weapon crafter (haven’t found armor crafter yet). I can now change my secondary job, have a new hero skill trainer and a new regular skill trainer.

I only got two blades on the Consulate Docks mission because I couldn’t find the last field marshal units before I accidentally triggered the final encounter, so I’ll have to go back and do that again. I am now a Sunspear General and well into the main portion of the game. Sixteen missions to go in the main plot, but I’m taking my time and doing every side quest so it may be some time before I finish Nightfall.

The plan was to help everyone get to level 60 so we can start doing some of the two group raids in Kunark, Velious and Luclin — things like Velketor the Sorcerer, Trakanon, Venril Sathir and such. What better way, than through the hot zones? The hot zone for our level was (was) Riwwi in Gates of Discord. Not the best place in the world, but we made plans to go.

Then SOE came out with a new list of hot zones, and Riwwi wasn’t anywhere on it. Plane of Storms was the level 60 hot zone. Perfect! We’ll go to Plane of Storms!

Except that not all of us were level 55 or over, so that couldn’t happen. We went to the level 55 hot zone instead, Old Sebilis.

Old Sebilis had always been on the list of Nostalgic places to visit, but there are so MANY places to go and things to see that we’d just not gotten around to it. Now we finally had a firm reason — we would go there and level.

Back when Kunark was new, I don’t remember OS being all blue and light blue at level 55. I remember going there and grinding AAs there, when 60 was the level cap. But it was all blues and light blues last night, and even with Lesson of the Devoted on (double xp for half an hour) and it being a hot zone, I barely got a level out of it (level 56 now).

Since we had too many people for one group but not quite enough for two groups, we formed a raid and headed down to Trak’s Lair to farm some spells, kill some juggernauts, and see if Trak was up.

Experience dropped to 1% per kill.

That’s still 10x better than group xp per kill in Karnor’s Castle in EQ2’s Rise of Kunark expansion (which was 0.1% per kill). How the devs thought making an open dungeon with (a) no xp, (b) no loot, (c) difficult to kill mobs and (d) only a couple of quests would be the best way to introduce people to the expansion, I’ll never understand. We soon realized that SOE had decided to discourage grouping until the level cap. So Karnor’s was like a giant middle finger stuck in the middle of the Kylong Plains. Ah, bashing Rise of Kunark just never gets old, does it?

If you take a really close look at that screenie, it shows the first thing on my track list as “a fallen monk”, and there’s Sisca laying there dead. I thought that was a funny coincidence, in a macabre way.

Anyway, we (re)learned a few rules about Old Seblis. 1) Myconid adepts really suck. 2) So do Myconid priests. 3) No, they really, really suck. 4) People who flop past you to ninja the one named who was up that would have given one of the enchanters, at least, a cool looking robe which is absolutely valueless to anyone not in a progression guild, also suck.

We finally made it to Trakanon’s Lair. Trak wasn’t at home, and neither was Tolepumj, the enchanter frog who, until very recently, had been on track. Now he was mysteriously disappeared, yet all the golems that guard him were still up. How could that POSSIBLY have happened?

Sigh.

Okay, I NEED to tell this story about Crimson Eternity, my old guild back on Erollisi Marr.

Westleey was the guid’s lead rogue, raid leader, and guild leader. I liked him a lot, but he could rub some people the wrong way. But he was a good raid leader and took the guild much further than any of us ever thought we would go. Nonetheless…

One day, we’d headed down to kill Trakanon. Back then, Trakanon and Venril Sathir were on a scheduled guild rotation, to cut down on the race for the two most hotly contested mobs in Kunark. Trakanon dropped fangs for the Veeshan’s Peak key as well as all the Kunark class breastplates. Venril Sathir dropped all the Kunark class legs. So it was important that when CE came up on the rotation, that we drop the mobs as soon as we could, so that the next guild in line could schedule their kills.

It was more a contractual obligation thing by then.

Everyone who was online at the time, about four groups or so, headed down into the bowels of Old Sebilis. Monks split and pulled all the juggernauts from the lair. All that were left were Tolapumj and Trakanon.

Tolapumj, being an enchanter, can sometimes charm people. When an NPC charms you, YOU become an NPC. And, you can be killed by players, like any other NPC. When Westleey got charmed, he told the raid that he better not see ANYONE attack him.

As one, the raid turned to him.

Looked at him for a second.

And pasted him all over the cavern.

—

Anyway, once we cleared Trak’s lair of jugg’s, we split for the night.

Me, Tsukiko and Soaridor headed to the Plane of Justice to get Sejal flagged for the Plane of Storms (and the Plane of Valor) by completing one of the trials. We couldn’t think of any trial we’d want more to do than the Trial of Execution, and so that’s the one we did.

Way back when, until you finished one of the trails, you couldn’t progress to Storms or Valor no matter WHAT level you were. They later let anyone level 55 or over in, and suddenly the Plane of Justice turned into a ghost town. We had no trouble with the trial, finished it first time, and Sejal was the only death. Which wasn’t a disaster, because I had somehow morphed into a level 75 cleric on the way to PoJ.

Afterward, Sejal, Tsukiko and I went to the Plane of Sky and farmed island keys until we got to the fourth island, Pegasus Island. We could have cleared the island, but the weird spawn time for the Keeper of Souls (two hours after the first island mob and all the things it splits into were killed), plus the knowledge that the Keeper death touches and we had virtually no DPS, certainly not enough to kill it before it DT’d the three of us, prevented us from moving on up to the fifth island — to another mob that ALSO death touches.

Next week is Labor Day, so we’re off. The week after — PLANE. OF. FUGGIN. STORMS. Or maybe Blackfeather Roost.

Kid’s MMO Wizard “Harry WHO?” 101 came out with a huge update yesterday. Even though I stopped playing the game much to avoid burning out before it goes live, it seemed a big enough deal to warrant stopping by.

The big news is the revenue model. It is likely that there will be a two-tier model for the game, with a certain amount of content available for those who play for free, and additional areas reserved for subscribers. It looks like the fee for subscribers will be about $10/month. Nothing has been announced officially, though, so it is all subject to change.

Enounter difficulty has been revamped once again. In my limited testing in Hyde Park in Marleybone, the mobs were higher rank — rank 4 instead of rank 3 — but weren’t elite and came one at a time. This makes those fights significantly easier.

Moo Shu, the highest level world currently released, was widely thought to be un-soloable by any level appropriate (30+) character. Combined with chained encounters containing thirty or more battles in Marleybone in order to unlock Moo Shu in the first place, a lot of players have gotten to Moo Shu only to give up in frustration. I’m not sure what the patch has done for them; I didn’t see any friends on in Moo Shu so I couldn’t check it out.

The real test would be to return to Krokotopia and try the Emperor’s Throne Room instance again. That was broken the last time I tried it.

It’s still a fun game. Now that it seems certain that it will cost some money to see everything, it’s fair to ask if it’s a $120/year-fun game? I can’t answer that. My gut feeling is that there is not a year’s worth of content in the game, and there is almost no replay value. If they keep the grueling, multi-battle instances as they are now, it would be hard to imagine anyone playing through it more than once.

It’s definitely worth playing it through that once, though, perhaps re-subscribing as needed as they add new worlds.

It’s just my duty to Norrath to fight back against the Void Tempests, but when I heard a reporter with the Befallen Banner shouting about some marvelous device in Neriak, well, I just had to turn in my shards and check it out. There was a gnome with shoulderpads that would have fit someone twice as wide. when i asked him about them, he said he didn’t have a choice, that was the uniform, and the human who had worn it last had forgotten to re-adjust the shoulderpads and there just wasn’t time and … but you know, gnomes have those high, squeaky voices, so I excused myself and went inside.

Well, turns out some bug — um, some Arasai — had just invented a new lamp, but needed some bits of glowing fairy dust to activate it. I tried to separate the Arasai from his fairy dust, but he waved of my attack.

I sullenly looked for some fairy dust in Neriak, but apparently they clean up after themselves almost like real people. Darklight Woods — no fairies! Nektulos Forest — not far from the tunnel to Darklight Woods in the forest…. fairy heaven. I took care of the fairy problem AND filled the lantern with bits of fairy dust.

Twenty dead fairies later, the lamp shone with a deep yellow glow. I returned to Neriak, and the bug graciously allowed me to keep the lamp, and even gave me some Steaming Jumjum Pie! I was so happy! The gnome from the Banner interviewed me, and when the paper comes out, I’m going to buy a dozen and give them to everyone in the Fool’s Gold Inn so they can see how I finally made good after all these years.

The lantern and the pie are the pefect start to a Pie Shrine! People will come by to look in shock and awe at its mystical crust… its steamy filling… it’s unmistakable aroma…

Plus, I finished the Void Storm quests, got my armor, some shinies, an emerald that bathes me in green light and some furniture, and still have some points left :)

And all I was PLANNING on doing tonight was getting ready for the move to Najena. Oh well, maybe another day.

This is a story about Stout Henry, an average citizen of an average land, doing the average things one might do, in a land far away.

“Forsooth!” cried Stout Henry from his reading chair, as the morning sun’s bright beams seeped around the edges of the dark oilcloth that covered the window. “I have wasted my last candle on this tale!” Stout Henry hurled the badly penned tome, with its thin parchment color, to the ground. “And now I must be about my morning tasks, with no benefit of the double experience a feather bed might grant. Well, I be off!”

Stout Henry tied his tattered wooden cloak around his neck, and picked up his carved staff. Shading his eyes against the light, he stepped out of his small cottage.

No sooner had he done so, than a beagle, its tongue out and lolling, rushed up to him with a joyful bark!

“Back, foul vermin!”, he cried, as he stove the puppy’s head in with his carved staff.

Farmer Jonas ran up, anger and shock twisting his normally placid face. “What have you done to Poochie!” he screamed.

Stout Henry pulled a small book from his tunic and quickly flipped the pages. “Farmer Jonas, I do apologize. I have been tasked with killing three large dogs by a wandering guardsman I met upon the road yesterday. Poor Poochie wasn’t quite large enough to satisfy him. But if you would just step back a pace or three, I’ll have her fangs for the witch over in Cotsberry and her two front feet for the gnome by the mill who is tryin’ to build a machine to stop time.”

Farmer Jonas knelt by his dear, dead puppy. “P-p-p-poochieeeee!!!!”

“Heh, yeah, apparently he needs a ‘paws’ button. I didn’t quite understand it myself. Well, off I go. You wouldn’t happen to have any larger dogs back at your farm, would you?”

Making a mental note to stop by the farm later, Stout Henry left Farmer Jonas and the corpse of the farmer’s best friend behind as he wandered over to Cotsberry to deliver the dog fangs to the town witch. Along the way he passed a chapel, from which arose a joyful singing. Stout Henry checked his book, then sneaked in through the sacristy and broke the pastor’s legs with one swipe of his staff.

“No hard feelings, Father,” said Stout Henry. “But I can’t have you healing the congregation while I train my fighting skills!”

“But… they’re peasants!” gasped the pastor. “Why would you ever want to fight them?”

“Well,” admitted Stout Henry, “they aren’t the best. I mean, I would definitely like to be killing dragons, but I’ve been living here twenty-five years now, and I’ve seen precious few dragons, but you can’t hardly swing a stick without staving in the head of a peasant, so which do you think ‘twould be best to level up on? I mean, if you were me.”

Stout Henry strode into the nave, where the congregation, expecting their pastor but instead finding this poorly dressed man with a bloody staff in his hand, wearing a woolen cloak decorated with a poorly stitched picture of a wolf howling at a crescent moon, fell silent. Stout Henry weighed the brass bowls and candlesticks in his hands and tried to guess how much the merchant might buy them for.

“These are a rather poor kind of brass,” said Stout Henry, disappointment plain in his voice. “Well, I hope you lot have brought better coin in your pockets. Come now, who’s first, then?” He hefted his staff and set his feet apart in a fighting stance; the congregation screamed and run from the chapel. Stout Henry sighed. “Runners. Might have known. No fight in them at all.”

He unfolded a bag from his belt and filled it with everything from the altar that would fit, then went among the pews to see if anything had been left behind. Nothing.

“This is turning out to be a very dull day. A dull day indeed,” muttered Stout Henry.

As expected, SOE has made a whole new set of hot zones for nearly all levels. There are some old favorites, and a couple of new ones in the list. Hot zones give a substantial bonus to combat experience, and usually have some unique drops as well to encourage people to come to the zone.

20 — Lake of Ill Omen — great zone full of solo and group content
25 — Feerrott — The area outside the Temple of Cazic-Thule is particularly good
30 — Frontier Mountains — even without the hot zone experience, the Mountain Giant Fort is great xp. With it, even better.
35 — Tower of Frozen Shadow — an old favorite.
40 — Lower Guk — a great place for a group that doesn’t mind pulls of five to ten frogs at a time.
45 — Wakening Lands — the thick trees make this less than ideal, but the armor camps have easy pulls and decent loot.
50 — Old Sebilis — one of EQ’s most popular and largest dungeons.
55 — Blackfeather Roost — Not my favorite zone, and having to do quests to go to each island makes this hard to navigate.
60 — Plane of Storms — spent DAYS here working on Bastion of Thunder keys, a fun zone with many different things to see and monsters to kill.
65 — Sunderock Springs — wonderful quest zone.
70 — Riftseeker’s Sanctum — great place to bring a group, find a good spot and just pull to the pleasing sound of dings.

It’s already started on some of the larger MMO sites, but with the dropping of the WAR NDA, every WAR fan blog will fall all over themselves to provide, in great and explicit detail, everything you need to do, and in what order, locations provided, animated overlays to show you in what direction you should face, a comfy chair with wheels on it pushed by a kind old man with an English accent, lit signs floating in front of you saying “OKAY PRESS THAT BUTTON RIGHT NOW!”, and all so you won’t have to ever have to think you are experiencing Warhammer’s world with anything less than complete knowledge.

When this was done in WoW -> BETA <-, I considered the game pre-ruined by too much knowledge. Where’s the sensawunda?

But it’s much, much MUCH worse now. And I’m sure these posts outlining everything you do are incredibly popular. People are excited about starting a new game, sure, I understand that. But when the new players come into the world and find out there is nothing left to discover, that even by creating a character they have stepped on a well-trod path that has been mapped out by thousands, that there are no secrets — will they still want to play what has suddenly become just another button pressing finger exercise?