When Adam “Ferrel” Trzonkowski mentioned that he was writing a second book, this one about raiding, I was eager to read it and see what he had to share with everyone. He offered to send people a free copy with the understanding that we would write a review, whether it was good or bad. If you’ve never taken the time to sit down and actually think about raiding, or if you’re perhaps just getting started, then this book will have a lot of great information for you. If you have done any length of raiding in the past but want to brush up on some terminology then this book may also capture your fancy. While I didn’t personally learn anything new, I did appreciate having a different perspective about things. I spent most of the book realizing that guilds are incredibly different in the way that they handle raid situations, and Adam’s writing reflects this. I didn’t always see eye to eye on his discussions (especially Chapter 2.1 The Raid Leader) but I could appreciate where he was coming from. I do feel that the book is quite specific to the games that Adam has played and has experience with – for example only portions of this book would be useful if you were going to raid in EVE Online. A larger portion would be useful if you were raiding in EverQuest II, where the ‘trinity’ is used (tank, dps, healer). While it’s not exactly common to find games that swerve away from this method of game-play, it does happen some times. Raiding in Wurm is nothing like taking down an encounter in WoW, but in the end it’s all people coming together for a common goal, so there’s still information that pertains.

I appreciated the chapters dedicated to loot distribution, I think that raiders some time think their preferred way is the one right way, when in actuality there are many ways to handle this and they all have their up sides and down sides. It’s all unique to the sort of guild you’re in, too. Chapter 5 (The Tools of the Raider) was a fantastic overview that I wish every raider (old and new) would read. I think a lot can be learned from taking advantage of the items he lists – but again this is completely based on the idea that you want to “be the best raider you can be”. Raiding doesn’t have to be a second job, and if you’re not having fun then you may want to take another look at why you’re doing it (there’s a Chapter for that too).

Over all the book was easy to understand, and gave great insight to how a hardcore raider thinks which I think is much more valuable than the actual rules of raiding.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Amanda “HolyDust” Martin, and really adds a lot of character. You can find it in the amazon store as a kindle book if you’re interested in reading it yourself. Thank you Adam for giving me the opportunity to share your book with my readers, and I wish you all the best with its future!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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My beastlord is almost level 81 now, and yesterday she completed the ‘Goddess Rising’ world event. Sadly, none of the rewards were something that beastlords can use (a shield, and a bow) and the house item has the exact same graphic as the regular covered bow you get from The Shard of Love – but I did have a fantastic time with the story, and the zone was beautiful. I just wish there had of been more to do there. You enter the zone and collect 8 rocks (clickable boulders scattered throughout the zone) and then you kill 4 golems at the entrance until a piece you need drops. It’s a really beautiful zone that deserves a little more attention (imo). Ibeogur and I also ran through the regular shard of love instance and I was incredibly surprised. First of all, gear dropped. Actual PvE legendary gear. The zone has never dropped anything for me before aside from appearance stuff. I had to assume it was a bug. The fabled shield also dropped which I have never seen drop for me before, and I’ve ran this zone a LOT. At the end, the fabled wings dropped. It was a REALLY good run.

The last push from 80-90 is always a difficult one for me. First of all, beastlords don’t get to start their epics until level 90, so I can’t work on that which is something I would normally do early. I’m a bit too small for DoV, it’s best to head to the Great Divide at around 85-86. I haven’t done any of the TSO instances that scale with levels, so that’s probably where I’ll spend the majority of my time, completing the quests for those zones and dragging my mercenary along with me.

Speaking of, I claimed the warboar warder from the Age of Discovery collectors edition yesterday. He is GIGANTIC compared to my little ratonga (I shrunk him down in the screen shot) and plays the role of a tank. Although to be honest, I’m not sure how great a tank he is. I probably need some loyalty points and to actually spend his aa points. He couldn’t keep agro off of my beastlord yesterday, even though she’s wearing level 60 gear and has nothing but journeymen skills. I’m hoping to reach level 85 today, but it’s MUCH slower than it was getting 1-80 (which took less than 10 hours of game play) so we’ll see how it goes. In the mean time, I’m having fun completing the crafting apprentice quests each day, maybe I’ll get one of those reactants as a reward, they’re selling for 900-1400 plat at the moment, and the money sure would be nice.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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This post may come off a little negative, but that’s not how it’s intended. I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to why SWTOR didn’t grab me, or rather, it did, but couldn’t keep me. One of the major issues I had wasn’t really an issue at all, but is just how gamers perceive things. There are a lot of ‘things’ that I’m used to having in games, thanks to those who have been around for 5+ years. I realize it’s incredibly unfair to judge a game that releases today against a game that has been around for many years because after all that game has had time to grow – but – as a gamer, we are not interested in how things were 5 years ago, or how they will be 5 years from now. What we are interested in (and I use the term ‘we’ loosely here before someone throws a fit) is what is available NOW. At this exact moment that we are playing. If I can play a game that offers me 5 things that I really want from my video game, as opposed to a game that offers me 9 things that I really want from my video game, which game do you think I’m going to play? It doesn’t matter how old or how new a game is – in order to KEEP me playing, it’s going to have to appeal to those things on my list, and lets face it, the older games have had more time to work out what those ‘things’ are and to add them.

I feel very strongly that in order to actually compete with games that are 5-10 years old, games that are being released today need to take that progress into account. Dusty made a very good point yesterday regarding SWTOR – if you are leveling alts you can’t simply say “well, I leveled in Balmorra last time, so this time I’ll go to planet X instead.” There’s no alternate rout for you to bring your characters, where as (as an example) in EQ2 if you leveled in Thundering steppes last time, you’re more than welcome to head to Nektulos Forest. Or Butcherblock Mountains. Or do dungeons. In WoW you also have the choice of where to spend your time. In Rift? Not so much. SWTOR? Also not so much. Again this is an unfair comparison and I know it is, because the two later games are much newer, and thus haven’t had the time to add new content – but that’s simply how it is. In order to compete with games that are 5-10 years old, you must think of yourself as one of those games. I realize that there’s only so much manpower a company can dedicate to a game, and I also realize that this is pretty much an impossible task – but for us selfish gamers, that’s how we’re thinking. We’re going to constantly compare any new game to those we have played previously. Those older games have already gotten their hands on us, we’ve already got ties to them – new games need a way to get those hands on us in a MUCH faster way, so that we’ll stay.

When it comes down to it, that’s why SWTOR didn’t have the staying power required for me to keep playing. Were the stories amazing? Sure they were, I loved them. I loved having choices for my characters to make. I experienced very few bugs (personally, I know others have a long list of bugs), and datacrons and exploration were fun. The problem is (aside from the story lines and character choices) I can get those things in any other game on my list, plus more sandbox features which is key to me sticking around in any game. I play alts, they need choices that will be different from my mains. Sure, I can choose a different *story* for them, but they’re basically doing the exact same things (as long as we’re the same factions) as my main, minus the class quests. They’re visiting the same zones, collecting the same datacrons, and when I dislike a zone like Balmorra (those lifts.. that map.. OUCH) I have no alternate rout. Now, maybe game companies have given up on trying to retain players and instead are working to build up their first-time sales, which is completely fine if that’s the way they’re trying to operate. Obviously that’s not how I’d prefer things done but hey I’m not a gaming company trying to make money, I’m just a player.

Anyhow, those were just some of my thoughts on player retention. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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With help once more from Ibeogur (guild mate) my little level 10 beastlord set out into the wide world of Norrath, and when the dust cleared, she was level 63. Beastlords are interesting, they have two key aspects besides their warders that make them a bit more involved to play. Number one, at level 18 you’ll earn yourself an extra hotbar that you’ve probably never seen before. On it will go (automatically) skills that you can’t use unless you proc a beastlord specific spell. You’ll never forget when this proc goes off because a giant blue and yellow beastlord paw print will mark your screen and sounds will go off. A little annoying if you proc often. Later on as you level you’ll also gain a savagery bar (level 20). As you use the skills that can only be used when you proc, you’ll gain savagery, and then you’ll be able to use other skills that only work if you have a certain level of savagery. It’s less confusing than it sounds. It’s hard to proc savagery when you kill fast though, so I’d consider these to be more ‘grouping’ tools.

Warders are neat. They come in different categories, and you can ‘keep’ one warder of each category. So far I’ve collected Feline, Aquatic, and Avian warders. They each get their own aa tree that you can spend points in, and you’ll have to earn loyalty with each warder. Pictured above is ‘Crabby’. I know, I’m incredibly creative when it comes to naming my warders.

Once I was done with the Beastlord for the day and put all of my items up for sale, I decided it would be a good idea to log in all 9 of my crafters one at a time in order to do their apprentice dailies. I didn’t get anything amazing, but I am researching some nice items. They’ll help for the ranger I’ve got level locked at 35, and any alts I make (although I already have 13, how many more do I possibly need).

I have three enchanters, and I’ve been looking at how to deal with that. All are on the same server, two are coercers. I’m thinking of deleting one of my coercers, but I need to level up another sage, first. One coercer is a 90 sage, the other a 90 carpenter (who has a lot of extra recipes that I don’t want to simply lose). I’m thinking that the warlock would make a great sage, and then I can delete that third enchanter that I really don’t need (all of the enchanters are level 90. I really like the class what can I say).

I’m enjoying myself in EQ2 this round which is nice. It’s a much more casual pace than last time I played, and Antonia Bayle is filled with players. I hope that the Free to Play model is kind to the game, although me and EQ2 have had our rough moments, and I’ve fallen out of ‘love’ with it a few times, it still seems to be the only game out there that can offer me EVERYTHING I want from an MMO. Robust crafting system, sandbox features (housing, achievements, shiny hunting, etc), solo and group content, a UI players can adjust (both in default and if you get a UI mod), a booming community, regular updates (even if the updates are not to my personal liking, at least they happen), guild features, and a few other little tidbits that we take for granted this day in age. While I still have some major issues with a few paths of the game (the reduction of stats down to players only requiring two, for example) doesn’t every game out there have issues?

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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My first attempt at a player made dungeon didn’t go that well. Sure it was fun, but I found it VERY difficult to solo and it threw me off the system completely. Last night I decided to give it another go, this time teaming up with Ibeogur from guild (who I dragged back into game specifically for this experiment). The dungeon went MUCH better, in fact it was just too easy for the two of us. The design was amazing though (the dungeon layout was Chardok) and I still had a lot of fun. I also ended up with roughly the same number of dungeon marks as I did in the first dungeon I attempted.

What I’m confused about is whether there is any other loot in these dungeons aside from the dungeon marks. From what I hear on channels some people actually get dungeon creation components to drop, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Is it only particular types of encounters that will have a chance for these drops? Am I missing something? Must you be in a 5 person group in order for this to happen?

Also, can players of any level team up to complete these together? What I’m wondering is if I can join lower level channels and see if anyone is looking for people to complete these dungeons with, and team up to do them. Obviously I’ve been away from game a bit, so I’m rusty on the mechanics. I was pleased to see the defiler spell that fills your inventory with crystallized essences has been fixed since my last run.

Before heading off to the dungeons Ibeogur and I went to Protector’s Realm and duo’d it (once again) for pocket change. I brought along a bard mercenary just to see how they were in combat, and was quite impressed. Since I play a defiler and Ibeogur plays a berzerker this was a perfect combination group for us. We each ended up with 50-70 plat, and a lot of items to transmute.

My bestlord is still only level 10, but I’m thinking of leveling her up. I have a steady 200% bonus to experience due to max level characters, which is nice, it’s like having vitality running constantly even when it has run out. I also have my ranger still comfortably sitting at level 35, she’s locked to that level while I obtain AA for her. I think I’d like to get her a nice set of gear, at the moment she’s not wearing anything special.

I’m also wondering how you get the new components found to craft the items on the new crafting apprentices. I know a quick google search will answer that for me, I just haven’t gotten around to it. I logged into WoW briefly to complete some Darkmoon Faire quests, and I managed a few achievements for cooking and fishing (finishing up the Ironforge series, finally). I also briefly logged in to SWTOR, but wasn’t really interested in playing, so I logged out.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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I am so incredibly happy to announce this months ‘Inspirational Girl Gamer’ – Emily (aka Domino). You may not recognize her in her Dalek form pictured above, but Emily has played an important role over the years in the development of EverQuest II, especially concerning tradeskills. Not only that, but this girl gamer has inspired many with her fantastic minecraft creations, book suggestions, and is just a plain ‘ol wonderful person. Of course I’m slightly bias since she’s also Canadian and we have to stick together. *grins* A huge thank you to Emily for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions for me, I hope everyone enjoys reading them as much as I did.  Without further wait here they are:

1. What was your first gaming experience, and how old were you?

I don’t even remember how old I was. I remember loading “Frogger” from a cassette tape at my aunt and uncle’s house; that’s got to be pretty long ago. But I’m not 100% sure if that was the earliest. I remember Pong, vaguely, but I don’t remember if it was the original arcade game or a later personal computer version. I do know I was absolutely fascinated by arcades when they appeared, and I’d spend hours (if allowed) just watching the bigger kids play things like Pac Man. The local laundromat had a game called Tutankhamun, and later Elevator Action, and I spent a LOT of quarters playing those.

2. How many hours did it take you to complete your Halloween costume for this year, and by the way, WOW what a costume
I didn’t keep track of the hours, but it was an ongoing project for several months. The most time-consuming part was spray-painting all the foam hemispheres and then gluing them on. I did save a lot of time by starting with a dress I found at the Salvation Army and converted into the skirt, rather than sewing one from scratch. The top was likewise a corset purchased on ebay which I just sewed some silver ribbon onto. The headpiece was a bit fiddly too, as I actually did some soldering to get the central blue light to work.

3. What are your favorite types of video games to play?

I tend to prefer strategy and sim type games, although I do play others. Currently I’m obsessed with Minecraft, I also got almost all the remaining achievements in “Plants vs. Zombies” over the holidays. Alpha Centauri is also one of my favorite games ever (and IMO the best in the Civ series) and of course I played lots of Sim City and Populous way back in the day. I don’t like feeling forced down a particular plot track or into a particular gameplay style, and I love to explore and find new ways to entertain myself, so sandbox type games appeal to me quite strongly, as well as MMOs of course, which is why EverQuest and EverQuest II have drawn me in for years. That said, I was one of the Tetris champs in my college dorm; I actually used to be able to play left-handed or even play with my feet and still beat my boyfriend of the time (this didn’t go over too well).

4. How do you find balance in your day between all of the activities that you do?

To be honest, I’m not sure I do. It’s an ongoing effort. I guess it’s a hazard of loving what you do for work; it’s difficult to remember not to work way too much, and take time to do other things. My friends help to remind me of this, and playing things like Minecraft rather than the game I work on helps also. (Although I do also play the game I work on, these days I find it’s almost impossible to relax while doing so, and I usually end up with an email full of notes on things to improve or fix at the end of a play session, unfortunately.)

5. What is one of the most emotional moments in gaming you’ve ever experienced?

This is more of a moment in game development than pure gaming itself, but as tradeskill developer during EQII’s Destiny of Velious expansion, I created a new present-day version of the Coldain Prayer Shawl quest for tradeskill players. The original quest was a huge mark of crafting accomplishment in the original EQ, and I wanted the EQII version to make the player feel epic, and as if they had really affected the world. I did a ton of research and the new quest was tied very closely into the lore behind the original quests; to make a long story short, in the original EQ, after the events of the original quest, the ring wars between the coldain dwarves and the giants drew to a close with the giants advancing on the dwarven city of Thurgadin. Defenses crumbling, the desperate dwarves had only one last option remaining to them, their absolute last-ditch plan of last resort: they set explosives beside the waterfall above Thurgadin, blowing away the top of the mountain and unleashing the icy waters onto the battlefield. The floods of frigid waters and their cryomancers’ spells froze the torrents solid, encasing both giants and dwarves below in an icy tomb. This ended the ring wars for good and saved Thurgadin from the giant invasion, but it also meant the death of all the brave coldain warriors who were fighting on the battlefield that day. For hundreds of years thereafter the coldain in Thurgadin have had to live with the knowledge that they knowingly murdered their most brave defenders to save themselves; and worse still, the spirits of the dwarves (and giants) killed in that final battle have been somehow trapped, re-enacting the final battle over and over again as ghosts instead of proceeding the afterlife of feasting halls and dwarven revelry which all dwarves look forward to. The coldain have spent the years in fear and guilt that their ancestors have been trapped in this endless undead hell because they were killed by the hand of their own kin, and the dwarven god Brell Serilis has therefore rejected them from proceeding to the afterlife. In the new coldain prayer shawl quest, the player gradually learns this history and learns of the horrific burden of guilt that the coldain are suffering, and struggles to make contact with the ghostly warriors and the god Brell Serilis to try and free the trapped spirits. Without going into all the details, suffice it to say that the player manages to gain the assurance from Brell that the warriors are serving an essential purpose and will indeed proceed to their just rewards when that is completed, and to take this news back to the coldain dwarves of Thurgadin to at last relieve them of their incredible burden of centuries-old guilt. It’s a pretty epic story and I really hope the players who complete it feel their actions have had a real and fundamental effect on all of Thurgadin. I confess to tearing up a little while writing some of the dialog for the guilt-wracked, and then unimaginably relieved, coldain dwarves and imagining what extreme depths of emotion they must be feeling.

6. What is your favorite book?

Oh, very tough question – so hard to pick just one! You could ask me this question every day for a week and I could probably give you a different answer each day depending on my mood, but today I think I’ll nominate the novella “True Names And Other Dangers” by Vernor Vinge. This was written in 1981, pre-world-wide-web, pre-virtual reality, before William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” and before Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”. It’s probably the first recognizable description of cyberspace written, and when I read it in the early 90s it just blew my mind. When you consider that the internet as we know it was still well over a decade away from existence it’s simply amazing that he wrote this in 1981. I recommend it to anybody interested in cyberspace, cyberpunk, and SF in general (it’s currently available in the collection of essays “True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier”). Vinge’s later novel “Across Realtime” is also highly recommended! Other favorite authors include Pratchett, Bujold, Austen, Tepper, and Gaiman.

7. Any words of wisdom for people looking to get into the video game industry?

I joined the industry in a rather nonstandard way, so I don’t know if the specifics of my particular experience would be a lot of use to others. But in general I will say the following: learn Excel. Learn everything about it. Learn how to do vlookups and concatenations and substitution formulas and match formulas and nested if statements. Use it to write your Christmas cards and organize your book collection and calculate your D&D stats and anything else you can think of. Excel is a game designer’s best friend. Also, learn to write and communicate clearly and effectively. It doesn’t matter if you have the best ideas in the world if you can’t communicate them to other people (be they players or co-workers) both in words or in writing. And finally, be positive. Never criticize anything without also offering a solution to fix it; and preferably compliment a good point at the same time. This is true whether you’re a game player or a game designer; in fact it’s worth trying in all aspects of life both personal and professional, regardless of where you work or play.

8. What has been your geekiest moment to date?

Another question to which there are many, many possible answers! I could pick any number of occasions, but the first one that springs to mind this evening is spending Valentine’s day in 1996 sitting alone in the university computer lab learning how to make my first web page on the ancient unix-based mainframes. That was a pretty exciting evening, in terms of learning new stuff. But okay, maybe just a little bit geeky. In fact, one of the features of my brand new web page was a small stick figure comic called “geek girl”. I drew about 20 of them, I think, before retiring Geek Girl somewhere around 1997.

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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Even though there has been a significant decrease in the number of EQ2 posts I make, I do still find myself logging in once or twice a week like some poor addict. It’s hard to go cold turkey when you’ve spent practically every day for the last 7 years playing. So it was that I found myself staring at the dungeon maker tool that came out with Age of Discovery. I had yet to explore my way through any dungeons at all, and a friend suggested that I take a peek at theirs, so I did. Here are some very basic opinions about the new tool, starting with the bad points. Keep in mind these are personal to me and my experiences, and you may not have these issues.

• If you crash and are in a dungeon alone, you get kicked out and have to start over, without any rewards, no matter how far into the dungeon you were.
• There’s no indication at all whether a dungeon is made for solo play or group play unless the publisher mentions it in the title
• Some classes are significantly ‘better’ than other classes if you choose to solo. I was unable to complete this group dungeon as a level 50 guardian, but I did manage to solo it as a level 50 healer (remember, you do these in a pre-created character template, not your own character for now)
• If you’re a defiler there’s a very annoying bug with your crystallized essence spell. Your inventory will be absolutely full of the items unless you remove the spell before you use the character template
• What you actually DO with the dungeon marks you receive at the end is confusing. I would like to see vendors set up some place for everything you can purchase instead of the confusing maze of station cash sections. I saw gear you can purchase but it’s in no order at all and very annoying to search for in the station marketplace. You can also purchase dungeon bits, this was a little less difficult to figure out.
• Pathing and pulling. Unless you’re in a group and are able to handle large encounters, or you are VERY careful about pulling, you’ll probably always end up with entire room pulls. The pathing and agro radius of mobs in dungeons is very poorly done.

Those were my major issues. Had I done the dungeon with a group I may have felt a little different, but I feel that there should be a way for dungeon creators to ‘rank’ them as either solo play or group play. As an adventurer you should assume all dungeons are made for groups unless it is specified in the title by the creator. The mobs are not technically meant to be solo friendly. I suppose this makes sense, as dungeons have been group content in the past, but AoD needs to add solo content as well as group content. Now for the good points.

• Creativity. This specific dungeon I chose to do was great, they had a large selection of player-written books filled with their own stories scattered throughout. I took the time to read them all, and it was just amazing to see the amount of thought put into a creation like this. The dungeon maker decides what mobs will say, and can develop a theme accordingly. I loved it. Of course anyone who reads this site will already know that I’ve been a long time advocate of user generated content.
• Fun. It was a lot of fun because I had no idea what I was going to be up against. In one section of this specific dungeon the encounter I reached consisted of enchanters who mesmerized and stunned me. I had been making my way along easily enough but this encounter was not friendly for a priest template at all. I died after defeating a few of them. I love not knowing what is going to happen next.
• I think the idea behind the dungeon marks is a great idea. I love that you can not only purchase gear with them, but purchase other bits for your own dungeons.
• Promoting group play. I think if you’re playing with a steady group of friends player made dungeons are fantastic. It’s an evening of doing something new, in a zone none of you have been to before. It’s a new dungeon every day, which is nice because you (the developer) help stave off the “we’ve been there before” feeling that players get after they’ve run the same dungeon a million times.

Overall I feel that the player made dungeons are an amazing concept but still have a lot of glitches and bugs that need to be worked out. A lot of how you may ‘feel’ about them also depends on the creator, I saw a lot of dungeons simply titled “solo token grind” which doesn’t leave me feeling that they’ve invested any creativity into them at all. BUT. You do always have the choice to simply not go there.

I’d love to see a LFG tool that also involved the player-made dungeons (to my knowledge EQ2 doesn’t employ a feature like this yet). It would pick a random dungeon, and since you’re using a template it doesn’t matter who gets put together for a group. I think it would be a great way to promote the dungeons randomly without players selecting one, and a fantastic way to promote a grouping feature since it technically does not matter what anyone has for gear or what they play as a class. They can simply select one of the templates.

Have you been using the dungeon maker at all? What are your thoughts about it? What would you like to see changed/added/fixed in the future? Let me know in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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Hard to believe that today is already December 15th – where does the time go! My apologies for those who may have been trying to access MmoQuests these past few days. My host was hacked and so the site has been less-than-stable while they resolved issues. It looks like everything is a-go now, so I should be able to get back to posting here on a regular basis, so long as something shiny doesn’t come along and distract me along the way.

There are numerous holiday festivals taking place in MMOs this time of year, and I love hearing about them all. A few of my favorites happen in Guild Wars, Wizard 101, EverQuest 2, Rift, and of course World of Warcraft. That by no means lists all of the events out there though, so make sure you take a peek into your GoC (game of choice) and take part in the yearly events (if there are any, not all games have these).

Dragon Flight (my Argent Dawn alliance based guild) managed to take down a few more encounters in some Outlands raids last week. This was quite a feat for us because we’re still only three people (actually, now we’re five, but two of them are too small to participate in these raids). We’ve been doing them for appearance gear and my shaman won herself a pair of neat shoulders that have a graphic of glowing broken up molten infused rocks.

Aside from that I’ve been working on leveling both a DeathKnight and a Druid. The druid managed to grasp on to level 62 tonight, and the DK is 61. I do have a recruit a friend account, so they’ve only got a few hours played if that. While getting to ‘end game’ is not everything, I’ve taken my time and enjoyed the ride on a handful of alts and this time I just wanted to get to Cataclysm content.

In true nomadic gamer style I haven’t really settled on a ‘main’ although I tend to play my shaman more than my other characters. I also spent some time playing Plants vs. Zombie, and Skyrim. The majority of my friends are all playing SWTOR – and it’s been really hard to hold out and not just pre-order the game for myself. In fact, there is a copy in the house, belongs to my other half. He’ll be playing and I can make a character on his account and play while he’s at work to see if the story actually does suck me in as everyone says it will. A few friends have pointed out that Star Wars has very little to do with ‘space’ and has far more to do with fantasy and magic, which is a big point in its favor (for me at least). I even sat down to try to watch the Star Wars movies today, so who knows, give it some time and perhaps that will be my GoC.

In sadder news, Beckett MOG shut its doors today. For those who don’t know I’ve been writing MMO related articles for them for a number of years now, as well as moderating their forums and writing news articles for the web site. They just weren’t pulling in enough money (or so I assume) and in this age of digital media, it’s not a big surprise. I hope that everyone who is now searching for new work (I’m looking at you, Jason) finds the job of their dreams, and I personally am incredibly thankful for the experience I’ve gained while working there.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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Age of Discovery released yesterday after a late start, and while there were some issues for people, my account was standing and all characters counted for. Nothing was locked (I have a gold membership) and I had access to my regular characters as well as my EQ2X characters. I promptly created a ratonga beastlord and she meandered her way to level 10 by killing solo mobs in Halas, the starter zone was nice an empty as players moved on to ‘better’ leveling grounds. Veteran rewards were broken for the day but I do have a 200% bonus from max level characters which helped out a huge amount.

The new Freeport is looking pretty nice. I don’t find it too confusing because it’s basically all of the Freeport sections combined into one zone. The items in South Freeport are still there in the southern portion, the places in North Freeport in the northern section. I did have a bit of difficulty trying to find the mercenary NPC’s to hire, I think sony could have done a better job with explaining where to find each one. As it was I had to use a guide that ZAM created in order to learn how they work and the commands to even open the mercenary screen. If you use a guard to search for ‘mercenary’ you end up with some NPC up in the citadel tower, and not the hired ones you’re looking for.

I didn’t play with the dungeon creator tool yet, and I still don’t see all that much for level 90 characters to do in game aside from work on the extra 20 aa that were granted. I started working with a tradeskill apprentice, but was called away so that will have to wait until another post.

I love the fact that the game is now free to play, and I really hope that brings fresh blood to the game. Did you purchase AoD? If so how are you finding the new content? What have you spent your time in game working on? Let me know in comments!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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By now I’m sure that everyone has heard the news that EQ2 is going free to play, following the success of their Freeport server. While I’ve personally already said that I think the announcement comes at a bad time I do feel that long term this is probably the best thing for the game to do to extend the life until EQ Next releases. I feel it comes at a bad time because it is a lot to take in for loyal long term customers. Not only have there been an incredible amount of class and gear changes this year, there’s also the fact that we’re getting an expansion that doesn’t follow the ‘norm’ of previous expansions. It’s a lot of change all at once. I would have much rather seen the entire game go F2P when the announcement about the Freeport server was first put forth. Alas, the past is what it is, and we can’t go back there (yet).

I do have one character on the current EQ2X server that I paid $35 to copy over, and I’m a bit sat that I copied her now since it didn’t include any of her house items 0r coin. I’ve enjoyed how populated the server has been with people in every level range and I’m really hoping that this change draws in fresh blood even if they’re not paying for a monthly subscription. I think seeing an active populace will entice others to pay for the monthly sub to stick around. We’ll just have to see.

I was a little less enthralled with the announcement of the pricing for next EQ2 expansion, Age of Discovery. It’s mostly because I’ve already got 12 level 90 characters who are also level 90 crafters and this expansion isn’t going to give me much to do on my level 90s. In fact I’m not even sure I’ll get to keep them all when the game goes F2P, I may have to trim the fat. I really have no need for mercenary, I tend to group to get things done and when I want to solo I haven’t had any issues. I’m not a fan of monster missions which is what the DYOD will be (design your own dungeon) and I honestly have no idea where I would spend any extra aa on my main character. Beastlords are always neat but with so many characters I would have to delete someone in order to play one, and everyone and their goat is going to be doing that.

This AoD expansion also does not include any previous expansions, something that has been the norm for some time now. If you’re thinking of giving F2P EQ2 a try you’ll be able to access all content except for DoV (the previous expansion) or AoD. You’ll need to purchase both of them if you want the content from them. On the plus side DoV content is mostly for players 85+ so you won’t need DoV for quite some time, unlike AoD which is aimed for new players and those who haven’t reached the level cap yet. As always I’ll want to poke around the content first before coming to any firm conclusion, these are just opinions off the top of my head without anything to back them up. I may or may not be participating in the beta over the next little while to be able to form some firmer conclusions.

What do you think of all the announcements over this last little while? Or are you too busy playing Skyrim to have really noticed them….

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

©2012 MmoQuests.com. All Rights Reserved.

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