West Karana

Because FRAPS conked out on me, and I didn’t notice until after. there’s no screen shots of our night in the Bastion of Thunder.

No screen shots of our first, tentative pulls of the giants of the lightning wing.

None of Niiko zipping around at bard speed, threading the monsters with song into beads of pwn.

None of Mantis, trying to keep his warrior mercenary from breaking his own mezzes :) That was fun!

Coldheat’s just-in-time complete heals when we had three of them on us at once. Or Qutey’s heals taking up the slack in between her massive DoTs and nukes…

Kasul down in the foyer, getting more xp than all of us as he single pulled giants to his own merc pet.

No screen shots of the time when we realized that despite being just 60-61, we could kill the wing bosses, and we did.

No screen shots of those stupid lame pauldrons nobody wanted, but kept dropping.

Grats “Rigged Dice” Coldheat on a spectral parchment and a glyphed rune word AND some PoP quest shoulders.

We got a few more specs that were randomed off. Grats Qutey on her BoT tower key. And grats everyone on their new levels.

And sorry about the lack of screen shots. I was SO ANGRY when I saw I had nothing but memories left from the night. But the memories were good memories, so I guess it’s okay.

It’s hard to explain just how much the mercenaries of the Seeds of Destruction have changed EverQuest. It’s like a whole new game, now.

So this screen shot entirely contains my philosophy of life. I’m in this really stormy place, and I’m fighting for my life, but some souless minion is trying to save me, but he’s about to be eaten by a giant bear he can’t see, and there’s some huge guy with a “wide stance” lurking about, and someone not even in the screen shot keeping everyone alive.

That’s it. Now you know everything important about me.

But seriously.

The mercenary hirelings in EverQuest’s new expansion, Seeds of Destruction, are made of 200-proof AWESOME.

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Massively is reporting that Seeds of Destruction goes live today. Since I abandoned the high level game over a year and a half ago, closer to two years, I haven’t really kept track of EQ expansions. They tend to cater to the max level raiders with a zillion AA, and keeping up was just too much of a grind, so I quit and haven’t particularly missed it.

The new stuff is more of the same — grind levels to 85, and then, here’s some more dungeons for people at the level cap. I took a peek at the new stuff with my cleric, just running around, and it’s totally gorgeous — and I STILL had no desire to play my cleric again. Almost two years and the burnout hasn’t faded a bit.

I love playing my 60 61 ranger, of course, but I’m a little bummed that I have to tank everything because all our tanks quit. Rangers can tank, but we’re really more like dps, and I haven’t got all the defensive AAs to really tank effectively. I don’t have ANY defensive AAs; I’ve just been buying the offense AAs. Thinking that at some point I would be able to, you know, be dps.

Every expansion has a little bit for people not at max level. Depths of Darkhollow had shrouds. The Serpent’s Spine had a totally revamped newbie experience. Prophecy of Ro tortured and killed Freeport, Ro and the Commonlands, and left their bruised and bloody corpses for vultures to pick over. Sorry. I guess there was actually nothing positive about Prophecy for low levels. Well, auras for some classes. Anyway. The Buried Sea introduced Fellowships and campfires. Secrets of Faydwer had very cool crafted adornments and powered armor.

Seeds of Destruction brings hired mercenaries to join your party. I don’t know if low level groups can hire them, but I hope they can. It would be odd having to depend upon an NPC to keep the mobs taunted, or the tank healed, but if it works as well as heroes do in Guild Wars, it could change EverQuest entirely.

Now, I don’t expect the hirelings to be as good as those in GW. EQ has *never* moved far from their core philosophy that everything done for xp is best done in a group. That’s EQ’s “thing”. After all, if you want to group on a regular basis with NPCs, well, Guild Wars is right over there, and it’s free to play to boot.

Will the warrior hireling, though, be good enough so that I don’t have to tank?

I didn’t get the expansion for free, even though I went to Fan Faire; last time I logged in, anyway, it said I was missing it. So I’ll be downloading it tonight. And if I can hire a mercenary warrior, then Friday, I’m bringing him along with us to Plane of Storms and he can tank for us.

See how that goes.

You’ll read about it here :)

I’ll say straight out that I can be slow sometimes. Even after all the clues from the last update, even after I knew that the Herald of Druzzil Ro would be sending me into Norrath’s past, I didn’t really connect the dots, right away. I landed in a place called Oceangreen Hills, and the area chat channel was called The Void, so I just assumed that I had landed in a particularly verdant part of the (incredibly inaccurately named) Void.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon this fishing cabin on a narrow lake, with a group camping it, that I realized the truth: This was Hadden’s cabin, the guy who once dropped the Fishbone Earring — he lived here. And Oceangreen Hills? They must be Qeynos Hills. In fact, every single place I had just visited seemed oddly familiar for a reason.

This fortress is approximately where Blackburrow will be dug, but it otherwise doesn’t resemble the place.

I got here through a long, twisty tunnel. This can only be Surefall Glade, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find a tunnel behind that waterfall. I was being chased by too many things by now to really stop and look things over, though.

A spire surrounded by the adherents of Bertoxxulous. This would be just outside of Qeynos in ‘modern’ times, but by the time Qeynos was founded, the followers of Bertoxxulous would have moved to the sewers.

A fortress or keep under construction. Gone by modern times.

Oceangreen Village, AKA Qeynos.

This? Why, the road to West Karana, of course :) WK hasn’t been updated, unfortunately :/

The two zones were fairly busy with explorers and with groups. Really, actually, kinda looked like nice, but I didn’t see anything that really struck me as amazing. But then, how much can you actually learn by just running at top speed around the zone?

I didn’t find out how to get to any of the other new zones; I’d love to see Kaesora as it once was, though at 75 (was playing cleric), I am too low to get a group for any of the new zones. Which is EQ’s continuing tragedy. Without having a good guild or lots of friends, there’s not going to be many groups. Especially for clerics — most people can 2box a cleric, and now that druids and shaman get rezzes, there will be even less call for them outside of raids. But I guess that’s always the case for a support class.

I do hope the new expansion goes well; the zones I saw are as beautiful as anything else in EQ. But I can’t think of anything, besides hirelings, perhaps, that it offers people who aren’t max level and raiding.

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.

I’ll be seeing these live hopefully later today, but here’s my first reactions to the expansions.

EQ2: The Shadow Odyssey

So, we’re getting Lost Dungeons of Norrath, EQ2 style. I don’t know if this means the return of the Wayfarers, but I kind of hope it doesn’t, as the Wayfarer’s led into the ugly Gates of Discord and Omens of War expansions, which kinda broke the whole fantasy feel of EQ with their SciFi aliens from across the 8th dimension, a mistake finally corrected with Dragons of Norrath.

Anyway, expect a single gorup focus, the reurn of Innothule Swamp and its signature dungeon, Guk.

Also returning is the dungeon of Befallen, which is a little odd, since we all kinda thought Stormhold was Befallen, given the NPCs like Gynok Moltar who spawn there, the heritage quests like the Bone Bladed Claymore that go through there, etc. and now, here’s Befallen.

It won’t really feel like Befallen unless you can fall into a deep hole, die, lose all your stuff and have to start over.

Ah, Befallen memories.

Remember how much people hated that whole aliens from across the 8th dimension thing in GoD and OoW? Well, they’re BACK.

They are adding Guild wars-style hirelings in case you need someone for your group. This can work out one of two ways. Either the hirelings are awesome, removing the need to find a real human for their spot and removing the need for clerics outside of raids entirely; or they are weaker than players and useless. Guild Wars does it th first way. I expect EQ will be going with the second/ Shrouded characters are far weaker than the equivalent player; I expect the same for hirelings.

But, if you could have a full group of competent hirelings to help you, then perhaps new players would be able to level up to their fifties, where grouping begins, without having to two box or get powerleveled.

Anyway, time to get ready for a fun day :)

Play EverQuest? Want to get in on the ground floor for the next expansion, Seeds of Destruction? Now’s your chance to sign up to get into the beta. EQ SoD beta starts August 19 and ends October 7. EQ lead dev Clint Worley says they’ll be letting people in in stages, so sign up early to get in early.