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.