West Karana

Last night, I was going to get my necromancer, Dorah, over to Najena. No matter what. I tried their automated transfer system with a couple new names. Neither were in use, according to EQ2Players. Since Sony TSRs can’t actually move characters themselves, their jobs are to pass you along to someone else — either make it my fault somehow, or have me contact an in-game GM. But I’m pretty sure in-game GMs can’t perform a character move, either, so I was not going to leave until the TSR gave me a different solution.

It’s like one of those old fights against a demon you read about. They try to distract you, they shift form, but you just have to hold on until they tire and then do your bidding. I got instructions to petition. On how to petition off-line. Instructions for configuring my Internet Explorer correctly (which was funny, since I was using Firefox 3 under Linux. No IE there.) The site tried to discourage me from coming by having a certificate with credentials not matching the site, which had my browser warning me of a possible phishing attack.

At the end, I got him to send me a form asking for a manual character transfer. So I filled that out and returned it. Maybe it was just another, successful, attempt to get me to go away, but it was something I had not seen before. I believe, though, that TSRs should have the ability to escalate concerns to people who can do the things they can’t. Maybe I’ll find out, at last, why I am being accused of a Service Violation whenever I attempt to transfer a character that needs renaming.

Anyway, that was pretty exhausting, when all I really wanted to do was to play. So, last night was gonna be the no whining, gonna get a goddamn group and PLAY EQ2 night… and it was.

I talked with some friends for awhile, almost joined a Shard of Hate raid, but stopped myself in time; almost joined a couple of instance groups, joined a guild just for someone to talk to… Oh yeah, you’re looking at one of the newest members of Dark Alliances. A high end raiding guild on the Befallen server. Another one, actually. The raiding guilds on Befallen can be split into four types. Those that can clear Veeshan’s Peak, and therefore can get you your Mythical epic. Those that are working on clearing Veeshan’s Peak. Those that are working on Tier 2 or 3 raids, and every other raiding guild. Serious raiders go for the first type. Most of the rest are scattered through the VP guilds that are still working on the gateway encounters. Every other guild is just essentially a feeder guild for the top ones. This is the standard ladder for raiding guilds everywhere — in EQ and WoW, it was the same way. Simple raider economics.

I told them up front I would be able to devote no more than two days to raiding, and they eventually accepted that. Tonight was to be Protector’s Realm, the most lucrative Tier 1 raid, but I can’t attend because tonight is Nostalgia night, and nothing is more important than Nostalgia. Rescheduled from Friday because tomorrow is David Cook night. Oh, yes. I will be talking about the American Idol tour Saturday — sorry :)

Long story short (a phrase I should be prevented from uttering), I’m in a guild, and a bunch of us went to Runnyeye and ruined the day of a bunch of goblins. First time there with Dina. They wanted me to bring Dera, my inquisitor, but after being kicked from the last group I joined there, mid-dungeon, me sitting there in a tent deep in the dungeon while one of the group brought a healer bot to replace me, made me reluctant to try healing there without an uber raid geared cleric, so I said no, no, a thousand times no until they relented and I brought the bard.

Troubadours have little love from SOE. For one thing, our class name is misspelled. SOE is on a one-company mission to convince the world that troubadour is spelled “troubador”. Reminds me of the time they unveiled the space shuttles and the banner for the Endeavour was misspelled Endeavor, which actually is the correct, modern spelling, but the space shuttle was named after Francis Drake’s Captain Cook’s ship, and that was spelled Endeavour. Anyway, troubadours punch up mage DPS, and themselves depend upon mage buffs to increase their own DPS. Last night’s group had the usual number of mages, which was zero. It did have a guardian, three scouts (including me), and two healers. A dirge, that buffs melee, would have been perfect, and since the vast majority of groups have far more melee than mages, a dirge is nearly always a better choice.

Anyway, long story sh… oh, sorry. We descended to the very depths of Runnyeye with only a couple of wipes of which none were my fault (thankfully, way to make a first impression and all), and did hunt, kill and slay. I got a new bow and a new mage/bard cloak (no mages, defaulted to me, nice) that has a tattered graphic, so I will continue to wear my Brell Day cloak over it. The swashie was just hauling in the chain armor, the Blackened Iron stuff which aged well on its 500 year journey from old Runnyeye.

Afterward, I was pumped to continue, so I went out in search of void storms of my level. Darklight Woods didn’t work for the quest, unfortunately. Neither did The Bonemire. And neither did Loping Plains, though the scary beasty in the picture above dropped some unusual weapons; a long bow and this weird sword. So I guess this kind of stuff can drop even when the mobs are gray to you. I still hope to finish the quest enough times to get the black chain armor, as I have on my Arasai assassin. But I saw the gi that Stargrace’s brawler has, and I might get that for my own young Arasai bruiser, Winterwing.

Anyway. Tonight: EQ1, Veksar! A trip to the original zone to get psyched for its re-emergence, Ry’leh-like, in EverQuest 2. I’ll be tracking some of the easier Luclin raid mobs; not Va’dyn, but there are others we might be able to do that people may have forgotten about. I have stopped playing Wizard 101 — it’s a fantastic game, but I am now waiting for release so I can play it for real. Saturday is going to be all about the Guild Wars, and I’ll write a “Day 2″ post, which might, hopefully, bring me to level 20.

Have a great Thursday!

Last Tuesday, the second progression gathered for our second time in Paludal Caverns. Back In The Day… I start out so many sentences about the EQ groups that way? And yet, you really can’t go to these old places without saying that a lot. Every camp we moved to carried with it a dozen memories. Here’s the place I ran into Jaasur who restarted on Stromm when it opened, same as I did, but didn’t stay with it. Over here was the bandit camp where I really learned how to play a cleric. Here’s the small rise where two groups would chain pull the bandits. Here’s that icky disease crud that made clerics (again) so incredibly popular in PC. In all the time we were there, we were the only group.

We had just one death, when we accidentally left an AFK person behind and he got Teh Killt by the fast-respawning fungus monsters. For the rest of the night, we’d use his looted corpse, tied to a stout rope, to lure monsters out of hiding. Nothing brings monsters to the table like the sniff of high elf pâté.

Experience in the caverns was as good as ever, and after a slow start, more people arrived and we ended up with a full and very fast- and over- pulling group. Most of us ended the night in the area of level 20; even though I took an hour break in the middle, I still ended up over the weekly level limit at 21. Hakiko, the Tuesday progression group leader, has allowed Blightfire quest armor for next time, when we explore the Estate of Unrest. So that’s something I’ll have to get working on.

The Mistmoore LDoNs didn’t disappoint. They aren’t the most challenging LDoNs — that honor goes to the Guk LDoNs — but they always have been the most intense. We didn’t have enough for two groups to start, but as we did our first run — a normal difficulty romp — enough people showed up to start a second group. Relm, as usual, graciously took over the tanking duties for the second group, and as usual, completed two LDoNs while we in the first group were dragging our feet through a hard difficulty number.

Afterward, enough people had to leave (or get food) that we were able to do one final hard run. One particularly bad fight was saved by our dear old friend, the Chaotic Jester. Coldheat the cleric, and Minxes the necro, were both entirely out of power and we still had several mobs of an overpull to take down. I summoned the jester, and the first thing he did was restore all of Coldheat’s mana. And then he did the same for Minxes. And then he tried to get us to eat poisonous bread because, of course, he giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other.

Even though EQ2 is perhaps too new to really succumb to Nostalgia, still, I’ll never turn away a chance to create another alt, so I cloned my Arasai, Winterwing, once again, and brought her into the world of Norrath anew as an Arasai assassin, Brightknife. She fights by flickering in and out of visibility, flitting about, and striking from a dozen directions at once. Her dps is pretty incredible, but when it comes to tanking, well, let’s just say I’m desperately waiting for Cheap Shot — the brief stun — to come back up so I can get behind and unleash a devastating backstab-stealth-BIG backstab combo that is usually all that separates me and humiliating defeat. Only have the armor and weapons picked up from Darklight Woods quests and apprentice I combat arts, though I hope for that to change if I can ever get SOE to transfer my necro/jeweler over. It keeps FAILING. So she still is entirely untwinked, sitting at 13 with 3 AAs, and thinking about heading over to Timorous Deep.

I’m skipping out on the latest games because I’m still having fun with the old ones. I do understand why people want to be playing the new shinies. They’re new and shiny! I want to as well! But a game has to be EXACTLY what I want before I’d be willing to give up games and friends in order to start entirely over. And I just don’t get that feeling with this year’s offerings. If Spellborn is as incredible as it looks, I may try to entice some friends into giving it a shot with me, but that’s not something I need to worry about until next year. Spellborn is scheduled to come out THIS year, but we’ll see. I’m skeptical. Or maybe I just want it to come out next year so I have this year for EverQuest 1 & 2.

If SOE DOES announce an EQ3 for the PlayStation 3, that would be the reason for me to finally buy one. I’ve been hooked on EQ since 1999; I’m in it for the long haul.

With my EQ2 raiding career at an end — I just don’t have the time for a six day a week raiding commitment any more — and the EQ1 guild up and running now, it’s time to start adding back in the other games I want to play. I love EQ1 and always will, but EQ2 is my home.

I know I’ll miss raiding. But every night we would meet at 8pm, run to 11 or 12, and then I’d have to do my writing for the night if I hadn’t completed it before. Since just keeping up with my raid commitment meant more than 20 hours a week raiding, I stopped logging in at any other times because that was already too much time spent playing MMOs. So the group instances I loved — gone. Playing the alts I cherish — gone. All gaming but raiding wiped out. That’s the raiding trap. You raid casually, learn to enjoy being part of a larger group and trying to be as effective as you can be. That’s a lot of fun, but you want more, and so you join a raiding guild. Now you are owned. You have just voluntarily given away all your free time. Saturday was our only day off, and you can bet I played no EQ2 that day. Raiding sucked away all that I loved about the game, except raiding itself.

I was falling asleep in a Shard of Hate raid a couple of weeks ago. I was also falling asleep on my day job, my writing was increasingly sloppy, my boss at work told me people were noticing I was dozing off at odd times in meetings and such, and it looked like my desire to raid could endanger not only my health, but my real income. And so, though I meant to log in and explain all this, I could not bring myself to click on the EQ2 launcher for weeks.

Once again, like EQ1 and WoW before it, I had let a game come to dominate my life. If I clicked that icon, I would by that small movement of the fingers, put my life and livelihood at risk.

There’s a reason raiding guilds are dominated by teenagers, college students and the unemployed. Who else can really afford the time? Not that anyone can, really. And even if YOU feel you can balance a full time day job and a 20+ hour a week raiding commitment — I’ve proven to myself time and again over several different games that I cannot, as much as I would like to.

When Davic informed me that Delusions of Grandeur had deguilded me, I felt relief. A burden had been lifted. I wanted more than anything to be running around with the Big DoGs of Befallen killing big stuff, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t even log in to tell them why.

One of the unfortunate casualties of my love of raiding has been my alts. Their levels lurch upward whenever I am between guilds. The last interregnum got my inquisitor to 80 and my necro to 68. Now it’s time to give them a little love.

Perhaps to mirror the EQ1 nostalgia group, Stargrace has invited people to join her over on the EQ2.Najena server for some old-fashioned EQ2 nostalgia. Both EverQuests were meant to be enjoyed with a group of friends, to my mind the best way to enjoy ANY MMO. I was chatting with her this morning as I respeced to DPS and looked over the guild recruitment tool to see if there were any casual guilds I recognized. And I was thinking… hmmm… IRS incentive check… 7 main characters… wholesale swap to Najena server… Nah. Even I can’t justify $350 for that sort of change. Especially not after bringing a couple characters over to Luclin on EQ1.

But Winterwing, my Arasai bruiser. Maybe I could bring *one* over for a good cause. She’s hovering (as Arasai do) somewhere south of 30, fresh from soloing most of the Butcherblock quests. Soloing is pretty boring. If I had a regular group, though, that would be something.

Or maybe I could just save $50 and restart Winterwing over there, but this time as an assassin. A pure dps melee class — my favorite non-healer type of class. (Why choose a bruiser, then? I liked how she looked in a gi. Really.) I dunno. While it’s likely to be the continued adventures of Dina and Dera in EQ2 on these pages, it might just be a small winged faerie who gets to tell her story for a time.

I finally hit 31 in Rock Band last night after about a dozen duels of which I lost two.

Huh? Levels? Grinding? PvP?

Yeah, this is Rock Band. If you start exploring the Multiplayer menu in Rock Band, and avoid the unsatisfying “Band” player matching, where you and three random strangers from Xbox Live slowly come to understand why people suck, you’ll come to Tug of War and Score Duel. Score Duel was unsatisfying. Tug of War is surprisingly strategic.

You’ll rise the first few levels quickly — I was 27 after my first couple of hours. But it’s been a grind since then. I’d thought 30 was the level cap until I played someone who was 36. And so I grind. Some days it’s hard to find a group, but last night, I was getting them almost immediately, leaving me very little time to practice the quick stick twirl, which I find I am liking a lot more than the standard big spin. I saw a commercial for that new teleporting teenager movie, Jumper, and Samuel Jackson was using a big spin with this little grapple thing they use to stop people from teleporting.

So I’m a MMO player, so I guess I’ll be grinding to 50…. in Rock Band….

Vanguard: This is like Beta all over for me. In Beta, I played one day, meant to play again, never got around to it. Here, I bought the game, played one day, meant to play again, never got around to it. It’s not the bugs or lack of players or performance. It’s just TOO SIMILAR to what’s out there now. I was telling Genda the other night that I can’t see how Copernicus (from 38 Studios) can possibly succeed if they give us anything like what we already have. And that, I think, was Vanguard’s most damning failure. So, I’ll be uninstalling it. I can always reinstall it later. I just never have a free hour and figure it could best be spent playing Vanguard.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: My son got this over the weekend, he’s having a blast. He’s level sixteen or something now? Back in his level 1 ship, he can’t keep anything afloat. The lag is horrendous, but even with that, he’s having fun. He’s actually off the Xbox for hours at a time. He’s a pirate, of course, and he groups with other pirates and sails around sinking the French.

Naturally, if I play, I will have to choose the French. I have a great name: Bois Embrouille, but then I was thinking I could be Blanche DuBois, because I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.

No particular movement with my EQ2 characters: Winterwing became a 28 bruiser after doing the Nektulos Beach questline, then heading to Butcherblock to complete some of those quests. The quests are moving toward the higher level part of Butcherblock, near the Lesser Faydark zone. Soon she’ll be starting in Steamfont as I continue bringing my very first character through EoF. Dorah, my necromancer, reached level 67 as she worked through the lower Kylong Plains quests — and got her Sokokar, of course. Every single quest reward has been an enormous upgrade for her.

I didn’t want to talk about Winterwing before she finished the Butcherblock quest line, but while I was messing up an alliance between the Timorous Deep and Butcherblock aviaks, I looked up and caught the end of a partial eclipse of the sun as the un-blowed-up moon Drinal passed before it. Whichever artist did the sky — well done. I was blown away.

Also, note that Winterwing has a gi now :) That’s the Lonetusk Gi from a named in the Ruins. The stats are awful but… it looks like a gi, and now she doesn’t have to do the woefully out-of-date armor quests in order to look like a monk again. Well, bruiser.

I should rather have chosen a toilet for a picture for this post. Last night, several more people left the guild, including its former raid leader and main tank, some healers, a couple other random people… and those who are left are getting a little worried. Maybe more than a little. Especially a friend I grouped with last night to do some Fens quests. He’s got a physical handicap which he feels will hurt him should he apply to a new guild. It’s nothing he can help, and Lord knows we all need some compassion for people with his condition.

You see, he’s a paladin.

Yes, he is. And we love him anyway. But can he find a home elsewhere?

I may have to get in touch with Sally Struthers here. For just one raid a week, you can support a needy paladin and help him have a normal life.

The Escapist recently had an article called “Riding the Failure Cascade“, and though they were talking about EvE orgs, they noted that this sort of catastrophe piled upon cataclysm happens everywhere. First one thing goes wrong. Then another. Then an important person leaves. Then some follow. Then its rats + sinking ship = taking my chances with the sharks.

That’s where we are now. We’ve lost too many people to raid anything past Kingdom of Sky, the website is gone, our DKP history is gone. and the new guild leader is recruiting people in their 60s in the hopes they will grow and more importantly, STAY, one they’ve reached the cap.

I don’t like leaving places. and it would be silly to think about going anywhere before I hit 80 with both Dina and Dera, to increase my options. Heck, maybe the guild leader can pull it off… but it looks for sure like we’re caught in a Failure Cascade, and that only ends one place. The toilet.