Good Things Come: EQ2, GW2, City of Steam

I'm all for deferred gratification but sometimes you can not have too much of a good thing. What with all the the kerfuffle over the Guild Wars 2 pre-purchase I was kind of expecting something more from ArenaNet than tumbleweed rolling past. It seems lax marketing not to have hammered home the advisability of pre-purchase with at least the announcement of a date for a first beta weekend, if not an actual schedule or, god forbid, a release date.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats says "ArenaNet promises that there will be a Beta Weekend Event at the end of April" in his recent piece (which I linked last time ). He doesn't provide a source for that but he was in the Press Beta so maybe he has seen a schedule. Posters on the Guild Wars 2 Guru forums also seem to take it as read that if there's no beta this weekend there certainly will be next. I have no idea where they are getting any of this from.

Where it all began...

Eager though I am to point my mouse at a GW2 icon I'm happy enough to wait until next weekend because this week is all about the dragons. As I write this, EQ2's servers are all down in preparation for GU63, the Skyshrine update. Kaozz isn't best pleased  about SOE's new Must Be This High To Ride rule, which arguably takes the Theme Park allegory a bit too literally. There's a 280AA gate to pass before Level 90s can begin earning xp towards 91 and adding Prestige Points (not Prestige Classes, which turned out to be a slip of the tongue by now-you-see-her, now-you-don't newish EQ2 Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale).

As far as I know (and I have done a modicum of fact-checking up to and including reading some stuff here and there and getting on a Griffin on Test to fly to the first quest hub in Withering Lands) current 90s can access all the new content regardless of how many AAs they don't have. Crafters, of course, don't need any AAs at all to get their two extra levels. Slackers.

I've been slavering for this update for weeks. I hate the phrase "I can't wait" because, well clearly I not only can but will. It's not like I have a time-machine (and if I did I seriously doubt I'd be using it to skip ahead to an EQ2 update, but as usual I digress). Not only do we get a new overland zone to explore and one of my favorite Everquest zones, Skyshrine, to hang out in but we're promised solo/duo versions of group dungeons, something I would very much like to encourage in all MMOs.

And most importantly of all, we get a huge gear upgrade. Yep, we just had one but that was almost a year ago. Nine months then... The solo quest rewards from Withering Lands, obtainable and useable at 90, look to be on a par with current near-top-end raid gear. Welfare epics FTW ! Even without the extra two levels that's going to open up a whole swathe of older content for current non-raiders with max-level characters. Assuming they like to do content the rewards for which are inferior to what they already have, of course. I do, but I'm funny that way.

You want it warmed up, luv?

Another thing I've been waiting on is the City of Steam alpha. No hint yet when it might appear but there have been some very intriguing additions to the website. If you're the sort that loves to absorb lore and background history for worlds that not only don't exist but don't don't exist yet, the COS team is beginning to put some casing over the cogs in the World section, but the part that caught my attention was this on housing.

I didn't even realize City of Steam was going to have housing, so the news that it won't be fully implemented in Alpha didn't come as a crushing disappointment for me. More "Wow! There's housing?!" They hardly need to apologize for not having it fully implemented in Alpha, but then I'm not convinced Mechanist Games know what an alpha test is. I went on at some length  about how impressed I was with their "Sneak Peak" and their version of alpha sounds a lot more like a fairly advanced beta to me. I wish they'd open it up and build it around us rather than try to get it just-so at this stage.

And finally there's that beta with pandas. What's that one called again? Oh yes, Eligium. I've downloaded it twice and installed it several times on various drives and it's never worked. I got as far as patching it last night, which was a first, but my virus checker was convinced it was malware. Getting past that, the client finally attempted to open the game, only to crash repeatedly on the loading screen with a memory error.

Some things are worth waiting for and some aren't. I'll have those 3GB back now, thanks Eligium. I'll be needing them in a week or two when that beta weekend comes around.

Getting Steamed Up

Oh look, here I am writing a blog post at ten past ten on a Saturday night. How did that happen?

Mrs Bhagpuss is away at the moment and I did sort of have a plan to play something other than EQ2 for a while. Then the whole PSS1 thing blew up and I found myself spending more time on EQ2Wire and the SoE forums than I spent playing. Even when I was logged in I was chatting about the situation while sorting my bank vault, which scarcely counts as high adventure.

Three points. Read 'em and weep

So this morning I was keen to throw myself into something. Something exciting. The GW2 beta application put Guild Wars at the front of my mind so I thought I'd go over there and look into this Hall of Monuments thing. Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to bother with it. Yes, I know I said I probably wouldn't even use the same account to play GW2. But I found that nifty HoM points calculator thingy and I had three points (and yes for the last time I know everyone has three points) so I thought, well I bet I could get a couple more and then I'd have a tapestry.

Do I want a tapestry? I don't know! I have no idea what it does. But I could get one, maybe. That would be good because then I'd have a thing that I don't have and that's always good. Isn't it? Don't confuse me!

Anyhooo... I did a little reading on the GW2 site and then I clicked the icon for Guild Wars on my desktop and what happened? Nothing. More than nothing, in fact. It seems my portable drive died in the night. I blame Eligium.

Kinda buff for a panda....

What's Eligium? You didn't follow the link, did you? Good move. You have more sense than I do, that's obvious. I probably shouldn't even have linked it. Eligium is a F2P MMO from Frogster that has pandas. They sent me an email saying they were in open beta so I downloaded it. I can't tell you what it's like because I haven't even gotten as far as character creation. Every time I try to run it it craps out on me. Late last night I tried to get it to run about half a dozen times and it kept crashing. Its on my portable drive and now my portable drive doesn't work.

Ok, circumstantial evidence. Whatever, my drive is fried. I spent a long time trying to get a response out of it with no success. Currently it is sitting on its eighth hour and counting of SeaTools recovery with over 2500 errors recovered. No Guild Wars for me. Also no STO, Allods, Ryzom or half a dozen other MMOs. Fingers crossed, maybe tomorrow.

Wurm then. I really wanted to play Wurm anyway. It's browser based so no problem there. Except it seems there's a client I downloaded and forgot all about that underwrites the browser. I put it on the portable drive, naturally. 

From our live feed

So I played EQ2. My conjuror dinged 89. But I didn't want to play EQ2 so I patched Rift and hit Play. The client hangs. Can't get in. I could work out how to fix that perhaps but it's getting late. So here I am writing this while LotRO patches. Actually it's done now, but it took twenty minutes.

What have I learned?

1. I need a back-up drive with all my MMOs on, fully patched. Like that's going to happen.

2. Maybe I ought to get Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur.  Just in case. Like we have candles and matches in case of a power cut.

3. Maybe Steam is not such a terrible idea.

I have been against the concept of Steam from the start. My games but not on my machine? Pshaw! Doesn't seem such a bad idea now, does it?. Tomorrow I'll look into it.

Meantime, LotRO's patched. Time to go hobbitting.