Stargrace standing on the rock to the left, amidst the Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance

I don’t typically do pick up raids, for numerous reasons. They usually end up being huge disasters that leave me with large repair bills and a sour taste in my mouth. So last night when I was randomly sent a tell on my illusionist asking if I wanted to join a Deathtoll raid, I surprised even myself by saying sure I’d tag along. The Lucan D’Lere Raid Alliance is a mixture of mostly Legends of the Tundra (with wonderful coercer Rorion leading that night’s raid) with some unguilded, and Salarionn acting as tank for the night from Forsaken (which is a fairly acomplished T7 raid guild). There was a member or two from HoE, as well as myself from Torrent Knights (which died once Vanguard came out, but there are 4-6 of us who still frequent the guild and don’t want to see the level 60 home dashed so easily). It was a fun night, even if we didn’t accomplish killing the corpuscle (also known as the splitting drake, and a pain in many people’s arse) and we also called it a night on the diseased based snake who has a nasty AoE and port / root deal. Tarinax did fall on the third pull, having some issues with him clambering his way into the wall in behind the raid force and then AoE’ing us all with his frontal when ever he could. Meanie.

It was a change, from the raids I’m used to. A bad thing? Not really. I did enjoy myself. Will I make it a nightly ritual? Probably not. As fun as it was, I missed the polished feel from my previous raids. In my opinion it went very well for people who perhaps don’t raid together all of the time, and who are still working their way through the lower end of T7. One small pet peeve I had this time was the amount of noise on the vent channel. I actually liked the method my previous raiding guild used, on teamspeak (the alliance used Ventrilo) during the raid, only the raid leader / officers / tanks had access to voice. Which meant people were paying attention to the raid, and not breaking out into the latest sports scores or discussions on breasts as we’re going over the strats for a particular fight — that is purely situational though, I realize that interaction with people is what makes these mmo’s thrive and succeed, it’s the community and bonds you form. I’d just rather only hear one voice at a time instead of 10, and have it be on the situation at hand so I can do my job as a raider (I know, I know, raiding is not supposed to be a job) rather then have to listen to a whole lot of other stuff that I don’t have any input in. Maybe that’s weird of me to say, but I like to raid and know I do a good job, and pay attention and get that job done. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel good. Just my weird twisted views.

As another first for the evening, I betrayed my 52 necromancer over to a conj! Oh, and I also run a second account now. I moved my 70 fury and the 52 necromancer conj over to the new account, so that I could box them (and anything else I decided to make) along with the characters from my original account. Worth it? Well, here’s how me and my boyfriend rationalized it.

• Already paying for station access (price hike had not occurred yet) for EQII and Vanguard, but have no interest in playing Vanguard. This basically meant I was paying for 4 character slots, and adventure packs, and that was it. I don’t play anything else on their play list.
• Play frequently enough and can box smoothly enough (I play the 2nd account we had along with my account to level up alts and what not) that the account would not go to waste.
• Having a Call of the Hero character, as well as a character who can port, on a 3rd account, would benefit both his characters and mine (Can always park the Fury in Sinking Sands and port to all the EoF zones just fine, as well as dragging the conj to the basement of SoS or even Nagafen if needed and port people down).
• Gives us an extra 2 character slots compared to station access, for a total of 12 characters vs. 10.
• Veteran rewards to a larger amount of characters (the new account came with 6 months of veteran rewards, as well as the boxed rewards for each expansion since release, including the DoF statue, the KoS house plant, the EoF whirly clockwork pet thing.

So in the long run it was worth it. It also resolves my issue about the lack of population. I can box myself when I don’t feel like grouping (which is frequently) and I have extra character slots to create more characters (for example if beastlords come out with Kunark, or that Fae that I haven’t made yet). I’m pleased with it so far and don’t regret giving up Vanguard in the least. I figure perhaps when the first expansion for it comes out, I’ll give it another shot, but until then the bugs and glitches and over all beta feel, was just not what I was looking for.

Dasie, standing in Everfrost near the Numbnuts — er, Numbfoots

Traveling through Norrath yesterday, I was surprised to see such a decline in the population of certain zones. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that EoF offers content from 1-70, as well as the fact that a lot of people are already 60+ and are adventuring in higher end zones. Just as an indication, I ran through at about 4:30 EST and the populations were as follows: Nektulos Forest: 5 people in the zone. Enchanted Lands: 8 people in the zone. Thundering Steppes: 4 people in the zone, Everfrost: 0 people in the zone (besides myself).

Have the original zones to the game become obsolete?

I figure once a week (or more if I’m feeling up to it) I’ll do a feature post on a specific zone. Outlining a few of my favorite quests, along with screen shots of course. Maybe (if I can get my hands on any, I’m horrible for it though) some information on lore. I’ll keep it to the original zones in the game, the “forgotten” zones so to speak. I’m trying to work Dasie’ achievement points anyhow (ew, she’s sitting at 38, such a slacker compared to my other two level 70’s) so the travels through the zones will be a good thing, she can brush up on old quests and mentor down for turn ins. She’s the only one of my characters to have completed the prismatic 1.0 quest with Darathar, which I’m not even sure guilds do any more. That’s one bad thing about being able to ‘outgrow’ the content so to speak. Unless you have a large amount of people working on the quest, chances are the majority are never even going to see it once a few expansions have gone by. The gear gets out dated and is no longer of any value to have at that level, you can find crafted and dropped gear that surpasses the raid stuff.

Looking through her quest journal I was ashamed to see I only had room for two more. Not only that, but she had a level 18 quest from Antonica that had been there since July 2005. I hate deleting quests, I’d much rather complete them if at all possible. Especially if it’s to a chain or perhaps a quest that I may not remember to get again. I really wish SoE would impliment a system where if you chose to, you can see the quest icon (a yellow feather) over the heads of everyone who has a quest at all, no matter if the quest is grey or not. Maybe that’s a feature that they could add eventually, I know I have submitted it as an idea before.

So Dasie hit level 68 in jewel crafting, did an order for a few moonstone pieces, I didn’t charge for the combines because she still gets fairly nice experience off of them, I’d have wasted the coal on crafting a few apprentices anyhow. I also got her two aa’s, working on her Tunare deity quest. I had her mentored down for the earlier turn ins and netted about 20-25% experience each quest. There are 4-6 quests for each deity, so that’s always very nice.

Cancelled my station access, there was no need to pay $29.99 a month when I’m no longer interested in Vanguard at all. Maybe when the first expansion comes out and the bugs are fixed I’ll go back to it, but in the mean time EQ2 will remain my home. Especially because I’m already looking forward to the Kunark expansion. SoE will continue to get my money though, as I’m probably going to invest in purchasing a second account for myself (making this three total accounts for the household, since my boyfriend also has an account) and eventually transferring my 70 fury and my 52 necro (who is going to betray to a conj) over to that second account. Why bother? Well, number one my computer can handle boxing flawlessly, on balanced settings. So when I need a port, or a CoH (Call of the Hero) it’d be nice to be able to use it for my own characters. Plus then I can play a DPS or a healer or both to the 70 Shadowknight on the other account. One of my friends on Najena and her husband actually 4-box, and each have a second account that they play. It makes up for the lack of population or the desire to group with others.

Why bother playing an MMO if you’re not going to group up and be friendly? Easy, for the community. I don’t have the patience most of the time to deal with people. I hate waiting around. I don’t enjoy teaching the game to someone. That doesn’t mean I’m a bitch nor am I rude in game I’m actually quite nice, but I value my ‘alone time’ so to speak. I group with my guild mates and those I’ve met who know how to play their class. I do on occasion join a PuG or two, they’ve not all been bad, I will admit. But at the end of the day no one else pays for my subscription except me, and I should be able to play the game exactly how I want to. If that means not hanging out with a tank who couldn’t tank their way out of a wet paper bag, then so be it. I do like to chatter to people though (especially on the crafting channel) and I can be helpful when I put my mind to it.

So, we’ll see how things go from here.

A little garden sanctuary in Stargrace’ house, complete with fountain and roses

Yesterday being the first “real” game update of Vanguard and not just a build patch, I expected servers to be down for quite some time. I was not wrong, last night attempting to play around 6pm EST resulted in the message that servers were down. Around 8pm EST I began the longest download of all time to reinstall all of the graphics that were for some reason missing / needed to be replaced from their earlier patch. I didn’t log in for more then 5 minutes when the channels were flooded with people complaining, those threatening to leave for other games, and various random insults. So I logged off and headed to EQ2.

Above is a screen shot on the upper portion of Stargrace’ 5 room house. I decided she needed a little get away up there, complete with comfortable benches, roses, and a fountain for that quiet gurgle sound that we all adore. Banzai trees and bushes complete the little nook on the upper level. All I need is a few books placed I think, I did add a box of chocolates to one of the benches. After all, what’s more relaxing then curling up by a fountain with a good book and a box of chocolates hmm?

My mystic hit 26 yesterday, playing in the Ruins of Varsoon. I love that zone when it’s empty. Other wise it’s typically packed with farmers (not that I’m any better, running through the zone hitting as many named as I can). I was a little too small to handle very much, even though I was boxing a 70 shadowknight who was mentored down to her level. Trying to decide when I want to betray to a defiler. Probably not until T6-T7 I think, if I even get her that high. I bought the templar a buckler of blight, which drops from Obelisk of Lost Souls, I could have probably tried to get one myself, but there’s really not much to spend coin on in game, so I decided to splurge and drop the 5p on it. It’s a huge upgrade from her past one. Maybe later today I’ll do the final grind to level 70 jeweler for her.

Since they’ve added a bunch of new Lore and Legend books to the game, that’s one of my goals, each one of my characters actually need to work on it. The clockwork one is located in Steamfont Mountains close to the Klak’anon entrance, Werewolf is in Loping Plains, in a bookshelf in Somborn, Brownie is in LesserFaydark in a tent in the lower grove area, Minataur is in Steamfont in a bonepile near the southern crater in Smokehorn Baison, Bugbear was in Kaladim in a wheel barrel near some goblins, and Kobold is in Butcher Block in the same hut as the transmuting vendor. Sadly enough, my illusionist only has 10 of the L&L’s completed at all, there are over 30 in game right now. Ouch. Pieces are at a fairly reasonable price on Lucan D’Lere — except for the new ones. Or werewolves at least where the pieces can go for anywhere from 1p to 10p depending on what you need. Gives me a goal at least to work towards though, and something to do.

Not sure where this cheerful guy is from? Hint: In order to spawn some named, you place him and his friends

Yesterday was very much an EQ2 day, remembering all of the reasons that I fell in love with the game to begin with two years ago. It was nice to get away from the bugs and lag and just, everything, from Vanguard. My mystic (who’s going to go defiler eventually) got two levels from 23-25. She also got a tailoring level to 31. My jeweler (and 70 templar) Dasie has been sitting at level 65 forever, so I decided it was about time I at least get her to 70. Using some of the three year veteran crafting experience rewards, she hit 85% through 67. It’s about one potion a level, so I can hit 69 before I’ll run out. Of course now she’s out of vitality, so that really sucks. I figure I’ll wait a day or two before getting the last two levels. Then I’ll have the 70 illusionist / 70 provisioner, and the 70 templar / 70 jeweler. Next? The fury is level 70 in adventuring, but level 60 in woodworking, so I’ll try to get her to 70 as well. The sage (level 52 adventurer) is at 60 too. The alchemist (42 assassin) is sitting at 50, where she’ll stay for quite some time.

I did a run through the Shimmering Citadel, which is where the screen shot is from. It’s still one of the best zones to farm the high end T6 masters (which are still far too rare), even if you get no masters at all you’re guaranteed a platinum in vendor trash, and typically a few crafting rares (on very difficult setting, which lets face it, is not all that difficult at level 70). A level 58 defiler ancient teachings spell dropped, but there’s one on the market already for 8p, so mine’s up there for 5. The legendary robe also dropped, another 50g or so. If you’re looking for shinnies, specifically the ones for the moppet house pet, the roof top of shimmering citadel is fantastic, there are about 6-8 shinnies that spawn around the roof top where the mirror is for the citadel, and you can just run in loops farming them (everything is grey).

I also did a fast Acadechism run, nothing interesting dropped but it was fun none the less.

One huge difference between Vanguard and EQ2, is that when you run around from place to place in Vanguard, you get a sense that it is a world. It’s huge, and there’s huge spaces of running with nothing around. It can take you a real life hour to run from one place to another on the same continent. In EQ2, it feels like zones. Antonica is a zone, Thundering Steppes is a zone, Feerrott is a zone. It doesn’t feel like the world of Norrath, it feels like a bunch of zones of Norrath. It’s great that we can all buy these 50% speed mounts, but they’re hardly ever used, because there’s no real place that you need to run (with an exception of quick jaunts through zones). It’s one thing Vanguard really did right (in the mix of so much stuff that they did wrong).

Help me, please, and you shall be rewarded

I decided that the blood mage was just not for me. I’ve played healers in pretty much every MMO, and while they’re fun, they’re also just not my thing after some time (hence me moving from Templar -> Fury -> Illusionist in EQ2), and I always have been an alt-o-holic, so I made a little paladin to test the waters a bit, after hearing some good things about the class (I actually hear good things about every class. Except Rogues. Who are broken). Anyone who knows me to any degree, knows I never play tanks. Ever. I have one of almost everything in EQ2, same with EQ1 where I have a 70 rogue, enchanter, and cleric, but never a tank-type class. I’ve tried and have always found that they’re just simply not my thing.

Until Vanguard.

After a few hours I’m already in love with my paladin. It’s nice not to be so squishy. Yes, my dps is a little slow, but I can tank, and heal. In white gear (that’s gear with no stats at all, just ac) I can tank three-dots my level or one above. I’m only level 9, but wow. So much fun. So will I stick it out? Well, we’ll see. I’m certainly excited about the class, and that’s always a huge bonus.

It helps that the high elf areas are exceptionally well done. Very pretty. Lots of quests, though I’m in dire need of a mail box some time. I haven’t been to the city yet, just exploring my way along. I wish day time lasted a bit longer in game, I know they want everything to be equal but it’s night time and raining far too often. In WoW and EQ2 I never had to use a torch of any kind to light my way, in Vanguard when the sun goes down it’s time to bring out that trusty torch or else you’ll be walking into trees and fae and other sorts of things.

Been playing a bit on EQ2 as well. I bought my Illusionist a guild level 60 mount, all armoured. I’ll post some screen shots of it here later.

Level 23, Satia staring at.. well.. what IS that?

My blood mage finally hit 23 last night, and I’ve got another small complaint (of course I do!) about Vanguard, but it’s something a lot of people probably like about the game. There’s no real indication of where you should go to leve. Especially coming from other continents. So while I finished almost all of the quests between Misthaven’s Crossing and Stormwynd and Ulla’s Tower and that general area, I have no idea where to head to next, the quests don’t send me anywhere else. I’ve done the vampire slayer quests and if I continue randomly to the next marked outpost on my map, the area is crawling with level 27-28-29 mobs, which are a little bit out of my league right now.

Moving to another continent provides me with the same issue, no idea where I should be. So I’ve been using the /who all command to figure out where a good area may be to level up. /Who all 19 25 for example. The majority of people were in the areas that I’d already been to. Small wonder. Then there’s the groups who are constantly working on the Infineum chain, those who are working on the Tsang weapons, there’s the Hilsbury Manor area, and numerous other dungeon type places. This game really is centered around having a static group (or at least a bunch of willing people to group with) so if you’re used to solo’ing (like I am) after the 14-15 level range, you’ll find it difficult to get much accomplished. Now, that’s not always a bad thing, this is an MMO after all, why play it just to spend time alone. But anything that requires a group also typically takes a lot of time to finish as well. So if you don’t quite have the hours of game play you need, or are simply in one of those moods where you’d rather be alone, then the game at times could seem a little stale for you.

I did splurge and finally buy myself a blue dress (in skill range, not in colour) last night, the green one was looking a little rough around the edges. I also found a neck piece upgrade, and a new belt, and new gloves. It’s interesting playing a blood mage, I typically try to balance out my + spell damage focus gear, with my + healing focus gear. It’s typically better for me to have + healing on, because when I’m in my dps stance, my spells already do 25% more, add some sizeable heals to that, and I’m pretty set. I can’t typically play in DPS mode in a group though. Every 5 seconds my health drops by 5% to give me blood points. It means I’m constantly healing not only myself, but whomever is tanking (or ganking). Though I can siphon health away from mobs quite nicely, it still means I’m using power to heal two people instead of just one, and with only one group heal that requires a lot of power to cast, it’s not exactly the best way to conserve energy.

Also got to uh, level 6 outfitter. Yes, I know, slacking big time. But I was an outfitter, then switched to artificer, then switched back to outfitter. With the double exp weekend in, I haven’t crafted hardly at all. Plus we all know how much of a grind crafting is (in pretty much every MMO I know, except WoW where it’s as easy as clicking one button for instant no-fail combines so long as you have the required materials). Hoping to work that a little bit more, and perhaps find my way to 24. We’ll see how it goes.

Hey Rasko, no time to dance with the ladies, back to the quest!

Yesterday was quite a day. My blood mage hit level 22, the double kill exp weekend seems to be living up to its name, people everywhere. At least where I was. Even the crafters pulled themselves away from the tables long enough to see some sunshine. While there’s no double exp for quest turn ins, if you find quests that require killing and not just a whole lot of running around, the experience is quite nice. Especially if you’re in a group like I was for the better portion of the day (even with all the corpse runs.. oh my goodness, while the corpse runs bring back some pretty awsome memories of EQ1, consenting monks to drag / feign death their way into safer ground, it’s… just.. painful some times).

So how did I spend my day, besides hunting down various group members corpses?

Working on the infineum cloak quest, strange things are afoot. You’ve probably seen one or two people wearing it, it’s dark grey with a white stripe along the edges (I think, I’m tired now so maybe I don’t remember it properly). You can get the quest starting at level 19, but it’s a difficult one. Unless you have a bunch of very nice higher level people to help you out, I’d say wait until 23-24 before attempting it.

Name: Strange Things Are Afoot

Location: Coterie Infineum Sanctuary, Donovan’s Roost

Quest NPC: Scholar Donovan (( A little gnome, standing on the upper portion of Donovan’s Roost, which is South West of Khal — he will NOT have a quest icon over his head, but if you hail him and talk to him a little bit, his text will eventually offer you the quest ))

Required Level to Start: 19

Go north once you’ve hit the entrance of the mines, you will see some golem rock mobs in the mines. You need to find the wanderer named Warden Pondar, the quest gives you the general location, hail him to get the next update in the quest.The Warden will tell you to find a slave. The slave is hidden behind a crystal outcrop near the mine’s entrance. Follow the right wall to the first crop of crystals. The slave gives you another quest called “Helping a Runaway slave”. You must kill a captain and get the key to unlock the slaves girdle.

Continue the wall you and you will move through a crystal maze that takes you to a camp up on a hill. Captain Fubared is at the back of the camp. You can go around the camp to the pavilion and kill the mobs there and inside the tent. If you fail, be sure to wait for respawns, or else they’ll spawn as you’re fighting the captain (and his spawned adds, more about that in a minute).

Take the key to the slave and update your quest to find the mob Infineum Thrall near that area. You have to kill them and loot the pick axes. After you have all the pick axes you have to harvest 5 rock nodes. They’re semi rare in the same area, they’ll have a ! indicating you can harvest them. Return the quest to Donovan, who’ll in turn reward you with the cloak.

Tricks of the Trade

The Captain fight is the first fight I’ve encountered that required a strategy to succeed. There are numerous ways to killing him. The method a majority of groups on the server use is the following:Bring two groups into the tent (once it’s cleared) and wait for the Captain to spawn. He will be non-aggressive. Have someone with the quest hail him, and he will turn and attack. Have the group SLOWLY DPS him down to 80% (He is a four dot by the way), he will spawn TWO Three-dot (they used to be four dot, be happy) adds, one will be a healer. Have the SECOND group, take care of these adds, as well as everyone from the first group, EXCEPT the main tank and one dps, who stays on the Captain. Once the two adds are dead (kill the healer first, and have a bard or other crowd control person handle the add until people can get to it) turn back to the Captain. Kill him to 60%, he’ll spawn more adds. Rinse and repeat. He spawns adds every 20%, and they have to be killed (while he gets killed, slowly, or else you’ll be swamped with adds). Be sure those healers get taken down first, or else they’ll heal him. The good part to that is at least he won’t spawn adds if he was already below 20% and he heals to 60%, so long as he already spawned the ones at 20%.

The issue with this method, is that every 20% he resets into non-aggressive mode, so he turns yellow. If the second group out dps’s you at those moments, or aoe’s in any way, they can (easily, and by mistake) KS (Kill steal) your Captain, and you can end up getting them the update, instead of yourselves. I should know, this happened yesterday for four separate groups who happened to be wandering through working on their quests. Two of them were kind enough to stay and try to help us complete our quests once they’d gotten their updates. So 6 hours later, we finally got ours. The group consisted of a 23 paladin, a 21 bard, a 22 monk, a 23 shaman, myself as the 22 blood mage.. and another class that I forget.. perhaps a dreadknight of some sort. I’d suggest you make friends with a psionicist. Those people are awsome. The power regen buffs they have is just, very very nice and probably saved my butt more times then I could count, especially in the beginning of the quest when I was the only healer.

If you’re going to one group it, be decked out in the best gear, and bring two tanks, two healers, and one CC plus one pure DPS. Be a few levels higher (23-24) and you should be able to accomplish it, or bring some higher level friends with you to run you through it. I know Stormhaven is one guild that brings their guild mates through it quite frequently, to help them out (those who have done it already).

The infineum quest chain involves more then just this cloak, there is also a ring apparently. Not sure if I’m so keen on doing all that over (again) and probably harder, but we’ll see how it goes. It certainly made for an interesting day.

Chi Sau Lotusfield, located in a building next to the harvesting trainer

Ok. Not sure what’s up but I’ve tried to write this article three times now to no avail. So here’s try number four. I did diplomacy. I finally beat the above npc and it was annoying as hell. It took me forever to figure out the key to beating him, but once I did it was so refreshing to have that quest completed. I hate the way the quest journal can not be organized by area, or level, or anything for that matter. How do I remember if one quest was gotten in Tanvu vs. another quest gotten in a random outpost on the way to Khal. Really wish they’d fix that. Picked up the infineum cloak quest with Rasklnikov, hopefully we can work on that some this weekend. Would be nice to be wearing a cloak. Think of it like a heritage quest from Eq2.

Switched my crafting around (again). For once I don’t care about housing, or furniture, so there was no desire to remain as an artificer. I switched for outfitting, since a majority of my characters wear cloth (or medium) and bags are never a bad thing. I hate spending money on gear, I’m always fairly broke. I’ll figure out how to make money later.

The bane of my exhistance, frenzied dreadwing venom, finally, FINALLY completed yesterday, I needed 10 of the things, for Ulla, NW of her tower. Only one or two ever seem to spawn though, and with others hunting for them, yeah. Not a fun quest. It took me about four hours to complete that one portion I think.

I’d post longer, as I had that nice long post already typed out I’m feeling cranky so I think I’ll just leave it at that for now. Happy hunting, with double exp (adventure / kill only) this weekend, it’ll be interesting to see how populated it is in game.

That’s my templar Dasie to the right.. but what’s wrong with that cloak on the left?!

So Vanguard is not the only game with bugs, seems like EQ2 was hit with one (or two, or three) when they installed the latest patch as well. I noticed as I hung around the broker in NQ that some people’s cloaks have taken on some interesting characteristics. For example in the screen shot here.. the cloak is side ways, and in front of the persons face. Behind me was another cloak, floating directly beside (and side ways) its wearer. Cloaks are rebelling! Watch out!

Vanguard has been especially annoying with their latest set of bugs, people who have been playing will know it well as the appearance bug. The one where you can log in 20 times and each time you look like someone new. Saving and loading a new character template does not fix it. So once my character looked some what similar to my original, I decided to just play like that. Also noticed that in diplomacy, when I switched gear around to get +25 with the nobles for a quest, it didn’t acknowledge the new gear. I logged out and back in and the gear showed up finally. It was reading 3 when it should have been 24. Grumbles.

Still debating with myself on which game to play and which one to get rid of. While Vanguard is “beta in a box”, it’s also new and fresh. My server is thriving (for how long, I’ve no idea). There’s plenty of “spheres” to work on. EQ2’s population may be lacking, but there’s a bunch of new quests. A very small population which is my issue. Three high level characters that I worked very hard on, and some crafters I wouldn’t mind working up. Is it worth it though? I’m really not sure. I’m reluctant to consider paying the $29.99, I could have TWO Eq2 accounts with 12 character slots for that rate, and just box. Sorry to drone on about a topic that everyone else is also commenting on, but it’s a hefty decision. I’ve got a month at least.

So in EQ2 I worked on my tailor. Got her to level 30. Farmed for her with my 70 fury, got some (useless) loam rares, and a root (wuwu!) chattered with one of my good friends on Najena and heard all about her boxing adventures with her husband. It was nice to catch up. On Vanguard, I did diplomacy. How do people get special bags to carry around all of their hearsay and evidence etc? I really need one. By the end of the evening I’d moved to 67 diplomacy (I think.. maybe I’m lower I can’t quite remember) and picked up a few copper in items, turned in a few hearsay items for some gear and sold some of the lower / older stuff. Banks need to be separated per sphere I think. I have my bank currently filled with crafting materials, harvested goods and powders from mobs, from T1-T2. Then I also have all this extra gear now from diplomacy, which takes up a good portion of my 10-slot bags, so I stash it in the bank when I’m not working diplomacy. Then there’s the crafting gear besides all those supplies I have. I can quickly see this becoming an issue. Blood mages got an invis spell, I’m liking that a lot. I also figured out how to extract the twitching muscle I needed in order to make the damage shield symbiotic piece - mob has to be affected by my root spell before I extract. The type of affliction on the mob will determine the sort of body part I get. Makes sense if you’re a blood mage, trust me. Still only level 20, and not planning on leveling any time soon, but it’s been fun to explore the other spheres. Splitting my time between EQ2 and VG hasn’t been that difficult. I just feel like there’s nothing really to do in EQ2, even with the new epic line in, and unrest, and the new L&L’s scattered around.

So. Station access is getting bumped up to $29.99 a month American. x 2 for my house. Ouch.

Converted over that’s almost $100 a month to play video games, and only two of those games are played to any extent, Vanguard and EverQuestII. Worth it? I’m beginning to think not. So the new decision I have to make, is which game am I giving up. There are good and bad points for each.

EverQuestII is still a lot of fun for me, I have three level 70 characters, two raid geared, fully mastered, and a bunch of crafters. The issue with that game for me, is lack of players on my server specifically, Lucan D’Lere. If it merged, I wouldn’t have so much of an issue. The down side, well obviously a lot of my friends have left for Vanguard. The game is lacking high end content. If you’ve been there and done it all, why bother any more?

Vanguard is also a lot of fun for me. My highest level character is 20, meaning I have a lot of work left (if I were to stay). The game unfortunately is very buggy. Not that it won’t get fixed over time I am sure, but do I want to be paying full price for a game still in beta? How many people are going to stay around in Vanguard once LoTR and WarHammer and Conan and all those other MMO’s come out? At least in EverQuestII I know there is some sort of a player base. It’s just relatively small. If I were to spend some money and move to a more populated server, would that solve my issues? Najena for example is still thriving. Lucan can barely support one ‘real’ raiding guild.

It’s a shame that they’ve decided to raise the price. I feel even worse for those who had station access due to the free adventure packs, as well as the extra character slots. Why would you pay TWICE as much as one monthly subscription if you only play EQ2. I’d be mighty pissed off if that were the case. They should allow you to keep your $24.99 price if all you’re after is the extra characters and the free adventure packs (splitpaw, the village of shin, etc). I think this was a very unwise business move. Not only will Sigil lose money from those who were only playing Vanguard due to station access and the ability to play both games at a discounted price, but SoE will lose money from those who decide to give up their station access fully and move to Vanguard. It will be interesting to see how (if any) affect this will have on the populations of both games. I know I’m tempted to just throw in the towel and go play WoW again, just to not deal with this any more.

The price change goes into affect April 2nd, so they’ve given one months warning. Unless Vanguard by some miracle fixes the numerous issues that players face every day, I won’t be renewing my subscription. If the situation on EQ2 doesn’t improve with the decline in players (and so many servers that we’re all spread over) then they also will no longer have my monthly business. Does SoE care? Of course not, I’m one small subscriber. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t make the slightest dent. If enough people do it though, they’ll see the change. I already know quite a few bloggers out there are talking about what they’ll be doing, which game they’ll be playing, and what’s next.

For further reading about the ideas and opinions out there, check out the following:

The Ancient Gaming Noob , CuppyCake , West Karana