We’re famous. February 13, 2010

One of my guildmates has been recording our raids and posting them to youtube. For your viewing pleasure:

Does it count as a date if I invite you to the group? February 12, 2010

Allright, so who the hell decided to release the expansion so near to Valentine’s day? This is either SOE’s attempt to break up relationships so poor single schlubs have more time to play EQ2, or it’s the single greatest moment of planning in the history of gaming. Our significant others are all fatted up with chocolate and lovin’ and are more understanding and forgiving of us ignoring them for the next week. Genius, pure Genius.

It’s been a relatively quiet week although I’ve managed to squeeze some playtime in and even finish up some of my pre-expansion plans AND finish a long time goal that was purely egotistical that I have been putting off for a long while.

First, the raiding. I tagged along with the Dragon’s to Palace of the Ancient One on Wednesday night. We killed everything up to, and including, Mynzak (Munzok? No, Mynzak is in Palace, right? Seriously guys, stop fucking with us with this whole naming scheme.) Anyway, we killed a bunch of stuff. I spent my first DKP and got Abstalius’ hot little range item for minimum bid. It pays to come to the party late.

Last night I finished off a quest I’d been wanting to finish for some time. Vanity decreed that Castillion needed to have the title “the Ebon Dragon”. This is a long painful faction grind that was released with the DoF expansion. At least, I thought it was a long painful faction grind for the first 25k or so faction that I did repeatable missions for. Last night when I went back, I decided that killing every monk I met was a much faster way to raise faction and I had 50k and my title in no time.

The rest of my time has been spent finishing up some quests and grouping with random strangers. I managed to get closer on several of my pre-expansion goals. I mentioned that I was planning on calling in sick from work Monday, as it turns out Monday is a holiday for all of us Government employees, so I am off and it’s legal. I’m planning on getting up early and running as many TSO shard missions as I can so they’re ready to turn in on Tuesday. That will probably be good for a half level and an AA or two. We can hope. I’ll write ya Tuesday and do a final reveiw of my pre-expansion goals.

I’ve got more raiding tonight. I’m not sure where we’re headed off to, but I’m sure I’ll manage to annoy at least a couple of people. Happy Valentines day to everyone who celebrates it, and my condolences to those that do not.

Away!

On an unrelated note, I like beer. February 9, 2010

Real life kicked my ass this weekend between a sick wife, 14 hours of work scheduled, and the Superbowl. I still don’t understand the thought behind planning a change that goes from 10 PM on Saturday until 4 PM on Sunday on Superbowl weekend, then again, ’tis not for me to wonder why. Anyway, I didn’t log on at all Saturday or Sunday, Friday was quite the busy night though.

I logged in Friday for the raid. We headed back into Munzok’s Material Bastion and killed the first set of named with little trouble. The second named kicked our ass for the next couple of hours, which was a little discouraging. I really don’t think he’s that hard, we just could not manage to kill his adds. It seems pretty simple really, pull named, kill his adds when they pop, win. We weren’t hitting on all cylinders that night it seemed. I felt my blood pressure rising so I had a few beers and suddenly it wasn’t so bad.

EQ2 is solely responsible for my drinking problems, obviously.

Afterwards, we gathered up two groups and headed to VP for Anep’s Templar mythical. (Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that as well. Anep betrayed his Inquisitor Azznep to a Templar on Thursday.) So, Thursday night we completed his fabled epic and his first mythical update. Friday he was able to get in on a pick up raid for the Overking, and Friday night we two grouped Hoshkar and he got his mythical. We followed the two grouping of Hoshkar up with a two grouping of Venril Sathir to get another guildie his final mythical update on his alt Coercer.

I didn’t sign up for the raid tonight because the weather here in the Great White North is horrible and I may be playing chauffeur later on. It’s shaping up to be another slow week.

The good news is we are getting very close to the expansion. I’ve preordered mine and Sinnir’s. $70 for the Collector’s Edition for an expansion…….seems a little pricey..but I paid the $140 for both so I guess I’m part of the problem.

Oh well, you can’t take it with you when you’re gone and my kids can earn their own ;)

Stuck on that whole lottery thing. February 4, 2010

I’m here and here’s the happenings!

I was able to raid again on Friday. the guild started out with Munzok’s Material Bastion, but h-o-l-y hell the lag in that zone was unbearable. I guess there was an issue with our special quest reward earring that SOE has since patched. We quickly ported out of there and shot over to Miragul’s Planar Shard. Now, I think this was our first time to give MPS a real go. We managed to push the first three named over with little resistance and then stalled on the fourth named until time ran out. I had a lot of fun and it was nice seeing a new zone. I managed to bank a few more DKP, so I might be able to get some loots one day! Speaking of that, my RL situation that has been keeping me from raiding as much seems to be coming to an end, so I might be back to a more regular raiding schedule soon.

I was also able to finish Castillion’s harvesting, so he’s now 400 in all the harvesting skills. He’s also got a shiny pink and green butterfly cloak to show for it……yay..? I also finished a couple of quests, so let’s revisit my pre-expansion goals and see how I am doing on them.

• Max Castillion’s Harvesting
• Don’t forget to put my recruit-a-friend bonus XP mount on Castillion! (no reason to do this after all helps if I’m mentoring and I do that on Saynt mostly, and Saynt’s been pling alts a lot this past week)
• Claim all my XP potions, waiting till last minute on this for some reason. I need to claim the TONIGHT.
• Claim my LoN XP bonus cards. see above.
• Make sure I have my vitality refiller vet reward claimed.
• Earn 300 – 400 more plat. This is not going as well as I had hoped. I can hopefully still get a couple hundred plat in.
• Cheap shinies (in progress). – Currently have 36 collection quests ready for turn in.
• Finish at least 10 quests and have them ready for turn in (in progress). (never gonna happen but it’s on the list). – Surprise! I already have 9 quests ready to turn in and will likely finish 3 to 4 more.
• Win the Lottery.

I started writing this yesterday and wasn’t able to finish, so I’ll pick it back up today like nothing ever happened.

I raided last night! A mid-week raid! Hopefully, things in the real world have settled some and I can raid a bit more now. We killed Mynzak last night, and up to Gynok in TotMC. We didn’t take Gynok down, but I feel like we’re close. I am hoping we’ll drop him before the expansion. My 5th piece, the helm, dropped but I was outbid on it. The good news is I am slowly costing people enough DKP that I might be able to win something soon ;)

I am expecting raiding and raid signups to slow a bit after the expansion while everyone concentrates on leveling, but we’ll see. I am trying to convince Second String to take the day before the expansion off so we can run every shard mission zone and have all the missions ready to turn in on release day, but their level of dedication appears to be lacking. Priorities people!

That’s all the new for now. I expect tonight to be relatively quiet and then hopefully I’ll be raiding again on Friday. As always, you’ll hear about it here first.

Old Castillion had a farm and wishes he could pay someone to harvest it. January 29, 2010

Finally! I got a little time to play this week.

Wednesday I had a short window of time and was able to run Emperor’s Athenaeum in Jarsath Wastes. As I’ve mentioned before, I really think this is a neat zone. I’m still enjoying it and the last fight is still cool as hell. It’s also one of the rare zones that I can still get an upgrade to drop for me, so there’s that too ;) The group was just sick. Berserker, Illy, Coercer, Inq, Troub and Brigand. I felt really badly for the tank. He was a good tank and a good sport about it all, but we severely overgeared him and there was no way for him to hold aggro. The illusionist is a friend of mine, and a total bad ass, so there was some friendly competition with the parse. I won (barely) ;) I was putting up 13k parses, which is good for me, although not my highest. That’s mainly because the freaking illusionist bogarted UT, asshole.

Last night, I actually had a nice long stretch of play time. Know what I did? I harvested! Yes, the whole night, I spent harvesting. Castillion’s skills are now all around the 320 range (including fishing omfg!). So, I should have them capped before the expansion and be able to meet that goal. I  had a lot of fun just relaxing and chatting. It was kind of a nice break. (and thanks to Ysharros I did pick up the harvesting quest, thanks for the reminder!)

The work I had planned for tonight was postponed, so I was able to sign up for the raid after all and I was slotted again! It looks like they put me back in the MT group. My fun days, well fun day, in the mage group is over. Damn it! I was going to show them all tonight! I even put my 4 piece bonus on to help the other mage’s DPS! WHY DO YOU TEASE ME SO WOLF/DD/OTHERPEOPLEWHOHATEME?!? I need a moment while I sit quietly in the corner and sob.

…

Of course I am kidding. The mage group IS fun, but the MT group is just as much fun and I really don’t care what group I’m in as long as I’m harassing these guys on the raid.

And um, hopefully we can get back into Kurns X2 this weekend, because I kind of let my instance expire and now I can’t take those screenshots of how to beat Sir Rouland like I promised. I’M SORRY, GOSH.

It’s been a long week and I am really looking forward to a nice relaxing night of virtually slaughtering all who dare oppose me. I don’t have anger issues, really I don’t.

Until next time, there will always be that one time.

Nobody Cares like a Bear. January 27, 2010

I haven’t played yet this week, just been too busy. I also won’t be able to raid on Friday as I am scheduled to work, so this is going to be a pretty quiet week I guess. I’m a little bummed as all I’ve really wanted to do this week is turn the lights off, sit in the dark, and play on the computer for a few hours/days. Alas, ’tis not to be.

There was a rather titillating announcement from SOE yesterday. The EQ2 pvp battlegrounds was officially officially announced and will be included in the expansion. I’m of two minds about this whole thing, and it’s possibly because I really don’t know much about the pvp/battlegrounds implementation or how it will affect the pve side of EQ2.

One one hand, I really enjoyed battlegrounds in WoW. In fact, it’s about all I enjoyed and pretty much how I spent my time in that game after I leveled up, and I took several long breaks from leveling at the top of each bracket just to hit the battlegrounds. I loved capture the flag in Warsong Gulch, and I even had fun in Arathi Basin. Then again, I didn’t really get into the rest of WoW, so that may be why I enjoyed battlegrounds so much there. Also, pvp was always a part of WoW to me. There was always pvp gear to strive for and the ability to run into open world pvp at any given time. The fights were generally fun.

On the other hand, pvp was never something I searched out in EQ2. The extent of my pvp experience in EQ2 has consisted of duels (since I’m on a pve server) and duels in EQ2 last about 3 seconds as a coercer. Either I stun lock/debuff you and you are dead before you even get close to me, or you are immune/can cure my stun/mez effects and you smear me (hellooo Crusaders). 3 second fights are really not fun, and they really don’t qualify as “real” pvp to me. I can only assume they will put some damage adjustments in that lower damage in pvp and outlaw some abilities in pvp. I am just not sure how exactly it will work yet, I just hope they do something to make the zones fun.

Fun. That’s another thing that concerns me. I’d like the battlegrounds to be fun….but not required, or even beneficial, for the pve side of the game. I don’t want to have to grind battlegrounds to get some item that I need for my character to be more successful in raids or pve groups. Appearance armor? Titles? House Items? great! Wand of Uber Striking that increases a classes DPS by 300 in raid X? No, thank you, no. I am fine with getting rewards that are only useful in battlegrounds, but I think in the long run that may discourage people from casually participating in the battlegrounds when they know they’ll be facing people wearing “pvp armor” and will not be able to compete with them. I don’t know what the right balance is, but I do know that I don’t really want battlegrounds to taint/color the great pve game EQ2 is.

I’m also concerned about class balance. I am concerned that SOE will begin to “balance” classes based upon their performance in battlegrounds and those balancing acts will affect our characters in pve. WoW is/was guilty of this when I played. I don’t know what SOE’s official stance on this is, but I hope that they keep the pvp gear, balancing, and whatever else, in the pvp zones. PvP was always an afterthought in EQ2, you couldn’t even duel at release. I, personally, don’t want an afterthought to start coloring what EQ2 has done very successfully for 5 years now.

Then again, what do I know about EQ2 pvp? Exactly nothing. I have been a carebear my entire time in this game.

I guess my general feeling of the battlegrounds is that they will be a fun diversion as long as they are segregated from the rest of the “real” game. I’m cautiously optimistic and look forward to reliving the fun I had in Warsong Gulch. I guess maybe I’ll be leveling the Pally to 90 after all, because crusaders will be monster flag carriers!

Would you really try to take a flag from him?