West Karana

Photoshop stitched together four screenshots to make this, automatically. Pretty neat!

No, it’s true. We went to the Plane of Time tonight.

Once upon a ‘time’ (sorry), that meant you had completed all the raids in Planes of Power — lessee if I can remember them — Terris Thule & Saryrn, Grummus & Carprin & Bertoxxulous, the Manaetic Behemoth, any trial in the Plane of Justice (didn’t have to kill Seventh Hammer, though), Aerin’Dar & three Halls of Honor trials & Mithaniel Marr & Agnarr, Vallon Zek & Tallon Zek & Rallos Zek the Warlord, Solusek Ro, that alligator in Plane of Earth, and then the Elemental gods — Fennin Ro, Coirnav (entire raid — 14 minutes or you fail for three days), The Rathe Council (12 raid mobs — six mezzable, six not — need to die within 8 minutes of each other, IIRC), and Xegony (google ‘xegony boobie taunt’). After doing all that — and how many times for each raid before all of 72+ people were flagged? — you could zone in to the Plane of Time.

Now it’s about as hard as walking into a wall. Just hail this bozo and say “Got the time?” and *poof*, there you are. He’ll also send you if you say, “please make a year of determined effort instantly pointless”. Nah, kidding about that one. Maybe.

Honest truth is, I would so love to raid Plane of Time, one last time. In fact. I would run every one of the raids leading up to the Plane of Time again. Because they were SO. MUCH. FUN. If you were in a raiding guild, it was never better before and never got better after than it was in the Planes of Power. After PoP, *NO* MMO dared to ship their game without a full set of raids because how else could they EVER hope to compete with EVERQUEST?

That’s died down some lately. But how many games tried to copy the master? WoW for sure, but they flinched, made their max raid size 40, and then 25, and now 10. Devs give a nervous little laugh at the thought of MEGA RAIDS that required 72 people to accomplish — that needed raid leaders and sub leaders and team leaders and so on.

Anyway. So, Plane of Time. Big whoop :) Not like we could ever raid it.

The latest patch notes told of a mysterious wanderer last seen in the Dreadlands who seemed awfully concerned that the veil between the present and the past was being rent asunder by some dreadful force.

He sends people to check on reported disturbances in the Field of Bone, Warslick Woods, Commonlands, Qeynos Hills and the Rathe Mountains. So I’m thinking, Kaesora, Dalnir’s, Befallen, Blackburrow and … but that doesn’t work, there is no dungeon in the Rathe Mountains, unless they added one I don’t know about. Best check this out. I thought maybe I’d get an update just for zoning in, but no such luck.

Field of Bone was infested by dragons. These dragons were in a state of high dudgeon. They’d just be in a horrible fight over the Field of Bone against the Iksar emperor Ganak, and things were not going well. Next thing they know, they’re here, Jared’Dar’s bones are picked clean in the center of a mysteriously appeared crater, the entire area seems to have not seen war for centuries… it’s very confusing. One poor dragon was not only pulled through time, but universes as well — ripped right from World of Warcraft.

Mmm, yummy troll dinner snack!

Whaaa? Where’d that troll go? And why are my colors kinda dull? Mother?

With Warslick Woods being so near, I zoned over, had a quick look-see for Grachnist the Destroyer (nope, Mr. Shrunken Goblin Earring once again being a no-show), and then tracked a couple of bright red dragons in the area. I wondered how they were doing. Really. My only concern was for their health. As in, their percentage of health. As in, steadily declining toward zero.

This guy was doing fine, if somewhat bewildered. Cousin to Vishimitar, if I know my dragons. The color, anyway.

Now this guy grew tired, and more tired as I watched. In fact, I took out my bow, hit my Trueshot Discipline, and helped him become tired even more quickly as the bard kiting him did his thing. Bard had a gnome mask — those are RARE. Anyway, when he saw the adds that were following him die, and me plinking away, we grouped up, finished making the dragon very tired, and I got a quest update when it finally lay down for a good nap.

The bard grabbed the loot and logged. I felt happy to have helped out.

By that time we had a fairly full group of people online, so we headed off to Lavaspinner’s Lair once again to try out luck there. Three people needed drakes and two needed spiders; just because I wasn’t paying attention, we went to the drakes first. Seja and I finished our drake collection quests, Mantis made some progress, Coldheat hit 60, everyone else made between 2-3 AAs, it was all good.

There was a raid mob on track, and we kinda were heading toward it when sanity prevailed. We turned back and pulled another, easier named, killed that no trouble, then were ambushed by Crimsonwing once again. Crimsonwing took her death well, except near the end where she gated away and summoned people, one-by-one, to die far from the group and surrounded by adds.

I have to admit I’m not feeling the love for Crimsonwing that I probably should.

Since we aren’t getting enough people on to raid, we’re likely going to be leveling up again soon. If we’re just going to be doing group things, might as well get to level 65 so we can go to the Bastion of Thunder and just have a good time with the grouping. BoT is all sorts of fun. Good challenge, good xp, good loot, a LOT of different places to go. Looking forward to it.

Another Friday, another entirely new zone, and we still are ages from seeing more than a fraction of the game.

Last week, we started doing the faction quests that open up the main mission arc of the Dragons of Norrath expansion. The first brought us to Stillmoon Temple, deep inside the Broodlands. Last night, though, we stayed a little closer to home, and headed into Lavaspinner’s Lair.

A Lavaspinner is a particular kind of spider formed of cooling lava and sent forth by their queen, Volkara, one of DoN’s earlier raid targets, to entrap unwary explorers in their burning webs to use as food for her young.

Our job was to kill those spiders and grab some of their webs — eight for each person who needs. And while we were there, maybe some blood from the higher-level Delve drakes guarding the nests in the northern part of the lair.

So, basically, an entire night spent getting uncommon drops from hundreds of mobs, because they are collection quests, the ABSOLUTE WORST kind of quests ever written in any MMO. The kind of quests that you don’t want to do in a group because it will take forever, but this being EverQuest, not the kind of thing you can do alone. Not at level 60, at any rate, and not Lavaspinner’s Lair.

Things went fairly well before we kind of all slipped into a pit, so that wasn’t good. Most of us died. On the way back, we were jumped by a bunch of mobs and a couple people died, cleric camped and those of us still alive evaced. Coldheat logged back in and rezzed the two with him, but then they got a respawn while the rest of us were fighting back. It was after eleven, we were all still kind of disturbed by the presidential debates — no matter what side you were on, it was pretty disturbing — so we called it, ported out or summoned depending on our live/dead state, and logged.

Final tally: 3 AA for me; bought Ambidexterity and have a point left over. Spending those points earned me some new AA titles, so I switched from my epic title to Huntress, just for fun. Huntress Tipa Tanglewood.

Since most of the screenshots I took last night were craptacular (why isn’t that word in the dictionary!? It should be!), I logged on my rogue, also by some wild coincidence destiny cannot explain, named Tipa Tanglewood, on Erollisi Marr, and headed into Lavaspinner’s to take somewhat better screenshots (the one up above is an example. See how good things can look when stuff isn’t trying to kill you?).

While there, I got to chatting with Egat, and then someone piped up in general chat that they needed to kill Emoush, which, I believe, is the second Dragons of Norrath raid. I was *right there*, so I asked if they could use a lowly 70 rogue — they could, I was in, and off we went.

Emoush is a huge rock dervish at the far end of a goblin temple in the Broodlands. This temple pops up in a lot of different quests and missions; it’s beautiful, sure, but it’s way too large for goblins. It’s very hard to believe they made this themselves. More likely it’s something they robbed from the dragons. Still, they’re there now and are about as friendly to strangers as these kinds of places normally are, so in we went, spreading death in dark puddles staining the stainless marble floors.

This used to take four groups back in the day. Seriously.

Emoush has a posse. Three goblin shaman who won’t allow him to come to harm. They’re pretty protective of each other as well, but they have a code of battle they follow. They can instantly restore one another to full health, but they will only do so if their buddy has been dead for more than thirty seconds or so. So all three have to die more or less at the same time, or they will just revive each other. We knocked them all down to about 10% one at a time, then did some absurdly awesome dps to vanish their hit points.

Emoush awoke, enraged, and with an urge to kill. I was going through my book of disciplines, firing one off and going on to the next. I may be only 70 and my gear may date back to Uqua, but I can still deliver a righteous stabbing when I want.

If he’s not killed in two minutes, he manages to revive all his shaman protectors who instantly resume protecting Emoush from all harm. We got Emoush — a (former) RAID mob — down to 20%, re-killed the shaman, and sent Emoush back to hell to keep them company — no problem.

One of the people in the group needed Gimblax, the first raid in Dragons of Norrath. Even before I quit, this was easily done by a single group. In fact, we rogues of Crimson Eternity would get the mission, sneak up to him, and then take turns tanking with Nimble on (immunity from melee for about 20 seconds) while the others stabbed, evading off to the next rogue when Nimble wore off. It was an easy way to farm radiant crystals and faction tokens.

So I snuck this time back into position, waiting for the SK tank to finish feigning to the mob. When he got there, we slayed. And that was the second (former) raid done.

I was enjoying my first Tipa group since like 2005 so much, I stuck around for another Stillmoon Temple mission. I did this a LOT back in the day; a rogue can make some of the yuckier bits go by much faster by using their ability to soundlessly sneak all over the temple.

We did it in record time and that was several dozen more crystals to my name. Crystals, used for buying DoN gear, used to be worth a lot of money, and that cash I did have in EQ came largely from running missions and selling the crystals. I doubt they have much, if any, value now, but those were good times.

When I turned in the faction token for that mission after, I went from warmly to ally with the Norrathian Keepers; this opens up every one of the DoN missions to me.

Not that there’s much point in them these days, but it’s another milestone.

It’s fun days like this that make me miss EverQuest. The sort of casual fun, exploration and (dare I add) competence that has been mostly drained from modern MMOs which abhor risk or danger while also ramping up the pace. So you do less, but look busier.

And I’m not being sarcastic when I ask, when is someone going to make an EverQuest killer? Dark Age of Camelot came closest, but ever since, the genre has focused more on graphics and fluff than deep gameplay. EQ is not a pretty game, never really was — but it is so deep. Impenetrably so, really. People new to EQ have real trouble with it.

And that’s why I wonder, where are the EQ killers — the games that have EQ’s scope, depth and challenge — but are somewhat less exclusive? Maybe one implies the other, but I’m still looking. EQ2 is a good game, but it’s not EQ. Vanguard is — well, it was supposed to be the EQ killer, but it missed the mark. WoW’s wild success has made the very thought of a challenging MMO anathema to developers; after all, who wants to go after a market of 100,000 when you could go after 10,000,000? I sure couldn’t make that argument.

But as a player, I very much wish someone would.