Withered Goest Thou: EQ2

Saddle up your griffin, we're off to the Withered Lands! Along with everyone else. Within an hour or two of GU63 going live yesterday Freeport, probably EQ2's busiest server, had five instances of the new overland zone running.

EQ2's ability to spin up copies of any zone that gets too full means you never really get that glorious launchday crush, when frame-rates drop to single figures and it's ten men to every wolf. Still, it was busy enough. After a few minutes of being gazumped on ground spawns just outside the opening quest hub I took to the skies and went exploring. When it wasn't raining, that is. There's a storm dragon in Withering Lands who doesn't like to share the skies with anyone so periodically she makes it rain so hard griffins get too wet to fly. Or something. Anyway, you're grounded.

Did I take a wrong turning? This looks like Vana'diel

It's a nice hark back to the terrifying Wuoshi, who used to lurk in agro range of the Druid Ring in the original Wakening Lands. For a long time I had a low level character camped out there on a suicide mission. When my druid wanted to port to Wakening Lands I'd log the unlucky chump in first. If Wuoshi didn't eat him, it was safe to travel.

Nothing in Withered Lands seems to require quite that degree of paranoid preparation. My first impression of our new playground is that it's quite beautiful. It certainly doesn't look withered. Weird, yes. There's quite a variety of terrain in a relatively small area. Corrupted woodland, obviously, but also an odd flat pond with knee-deep water, a lot of craggy mountains, patches of hold-out Tunarean greenery and some arid dustland. Most of our old friends from Tunare's day seem to have survived the intervening half-millennium. I spotted mist panthers, raptors, giants, satyrs and the ever-unwelcome Holgresh but no sign so far of the clunky, clanky empty suits of armor I used to spend hour after hour dismantling in the olden days.

No fair! I wanted a blue one

The zone is one of the best to fly in so far. Lots of canyons to swoop through. Flying inside the giants' magnificent lofty halls is especially entertaining. It doesn't rain in there, either. If you'd rather not fly (and if you don't have Featherfall you probably shouldn't, what with the 20k falling damage I took when it started to rain and I was foolishly aloft with my crafting cloak on) there are horse stations scattered around. The zone is relatively linear and a ride on the very fast horse from end to end takes a good while, although not quite as long as the interminable canter from the Feerrott docks to Cazic Thule. An odd touch is that while riding you display a pennant and the flag is a different color for different characters. Not sure if this means anything...

Withered Lands is quite three-dimensional, with those canyons plus caves, tunnels and insect mounds. The color palette is very varied. Make the most of the scenery on the way to Skyshrine, because Skyshrine is "a city at war"tm and it looks just like the ones in every other MMO. People (well, droags) lying around all over the place, lots of things on fire, barricades etc etc. If you were hoping for a suave, sophisticated city of dragons to hang out in (I was) then you probably should have come a century ago.

Hey Jim! You left some green in. Boss is gonna be mad.

The layout seems to match the template of The Hole in Odus. A small quest hub where you come in and three wings of heroic content which are also available as three separate instances. The difference here is that the instances are tuned for duos. And they're orange. More orange than a Dutch football fan drinking Tango while eating a tangerine. I have never in my life seen so much orange.

The content itself seems fun, although the quest text manages to be both verbose and lackluster at the same time, which is quite a trick. EQ2 has a relatively high standard of wit and humor for an MMO but I've scarcely cracked a smile so far. The actual tasks are the usual; kill me eight of these, get me six of those, bring me back a wolf, find my missing patrol. Yadda yadda and indeed yadda.

 Norrath's Bore of the Year Finalists limber up

The New Combine expedition is as badly organized and ill-prepared as any expeditionary force not led by gnomes could possibly be and of course any random passing adventurer is going to do a better job than these clowns. It's handy, then, that said clowns seem to have more gold than the First Bank of Norrath to hand out, not to mention weapons and armor that would have been considered suitable for gods only a day ago.

Despite the complete lack of logic, internal consistency and anything approaching  sense in the basic set-up, I'm finding it a lot of fun. In fact, I wouldn't be here writing about it now if it wasn't that so many other people seem to have been finding it fun as well that Freeport has crashed. Again.

As soon as I can get back in, I'm going on a monkey hunt. Someone's going to give me pants if I bring him four monkey spell-books. And they're Godlike pants!

Double Eggsperience! : EQ2, Vanguard, EQ

It's double xp all Easter weekend in EQ2. Also in Vanguard. Probably in EQ as well although I haven't checked. Pirates of the Burning Sea for all I know! Consequently I plan to spend more time playing than posting for once. I have so much going on in all three games.

GU63 lands in EQ2 next week, bringing two (count them! TWO! ) new levels, Prestige Points (AAs with Attitude I believe), a new overland zone, Withered Lands, a new city/dungeon, Skyshrine, and the opportunity to re-gear level 90 characters to the current top-end raid spec just by doing solo quests.

My Berserker on Freeport, the one I made on a F2P Silver account just to futz around with back when EQ2X launched, ended up being the most completed, rounded EQ2 character I've ever had in seven years of playing. He's currently 90/90/316 (that's Level 90 Berserker, Level 90 Weaponsmith, 316/320 AAs if you left your scorecard in your locker). I'm hoping to get those last 4 AAs this weekend before SOE gives them to me on Tuesday.

Wear that thing and you're on your own, buddy!

The whole AA curve is being revamped, the result being that we all get a bump-up in AAs. That already happened to Adventure levels when they smoothed the curve there a year or three back. I don't recall it happening to tradeskills but it may have done. The AA adjustment is because of an unusual decision to set a bar of 280 AAs required before level 90 characters can start acquiring xp to get to 92.

My Beastlord needs five more levels to get to 90. Mrs Bhagpuss has two characters in the mid-80s that have been slacking while she designed and decorated about a thousand houses and another guildie is at 87th so the plan is to try and get everyone to 90 while the bonus xp lasts. I suspect we will be very sick of the sight of Chelsith come Monday. I have a bunch of crafting levels to do on all my otter-trainers, too.

In Vanguard I have a whole clutch of characters working their way up, all of them far too much fun to play to make it an obvious choice which should get focus. I really should concentrate on improving my Raki Disciple's Diplomacy but I can't fit any more scraps of paper in my Diplomatic Bag and I can never find the informants that want what I know.

So it's not chocolate! I'm eating it anyway.

Everquest I don't even want to think about. From my Druid, born on the day the Luclin server launched, which must be over a decade ago, still in the mid-60s and managing about a level a year on a good year, to my Beastlord beached at 84th to my latest addition, a level 20 Necromancer on Fippy Darkpaw, I have far more characters than I know what to do with. I daren't log in in case I create another. That's what usually happens.

Anyway, if I'm quiet this weekend, that's why. No bank-sorting, dungeon-making or decorating, just Kill! Craft! Diplome! It's the meaning of Easter, like they taught us at school. I think. It was a long time ago. I'm sure it went something like that.