I’ve been working on my Norrathian Museum for a few years now, and one of my favorite features (which is also relatively new) is my library of player-written books. Lots of players collect the lore books that are scattered throughout Norrath, but I really do pride myself on being able to collect books written by other players. It’s just one of those ‘things’ I do in game that makes the game more ‘me’ – does that make sense?

The collection as of today consists of 249 books, written by various authors from all over Norrath. I try to post a random story once a week to this site so I can share some of the pieces of work I’ve collected, and eventually I have high hopes of even posting every single one of them. We’ll see how that goes. Perhaps I’ll start a second smaller site where I can post them all.

The point is – every game needs something that pulls a player in, and some times playing with your friends really isn’t enough to keep you there. It’s with these little tiny unique customization options that developers add to their game that make a game feel like home, and EQ2 has that in spades. Being able to decorate your home to a ‘theme’ of your choosing, whether you’re a druid worshiping nature, or an ancient warlord who thrives on blood, or a necromancer who studies death in all its forms – that is an example of what makes a game a home.

What are some other examples of how games make players feel ‘at home’ within them?

Housing in Wizard 101 is something that I was very excited about when it first came out. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to afford a home any time soon but they come in two sizes and I knew I didn’t want to buy a small one. If I’m going to own a home why not own the biggest one! So, the day was going fairly well. I wasn’t even thinking about housing (much) and I was questing in Krokokust doing a dungeon – which I ran out of potions on and then died. Ugh! All that work down the drains. I’ve tried this dungeon a few times now and I never make it past the ice lake, or rather I make it slightly past the ice lake where I have to fight some keymaster and then I believe there’s another battle shortly after.

It frustrated me, and I decided to cheer myself up I would finally purchase that castle I had been eyeballing since housing went live. I headed to wizard city, found the nearest housing turtle I could find, and was happy to see that the forested mansion was a mere 15,000 gold – leaving me with 700 gold after the purchase.

Now, Angela doesn’t have a whole lot of house items, I’ve gathered together 20 or so and most of them have the Krokokust theme throughout. It doesn’t exactly go with the new theme of a castle. It will do for now though I suppose!

I even have my very own water fall to listen to, and birds and other creatures wander around. I emptied out my little dorm room which was getting very crowded and set my craft station up in the new house. Which reminds me, I need to harvest more supplies so I can finish that quest off one of these days. So many games and not enough time to play them all!

I set up a little bed room and a study area, planted a palm tree outside and added a flag and torch, but the rest is pretty empty. I even have my own stage, where I can be entertained.

It’s too close to dinner to do any more decorating right this moment, but I’m looking forward to yet another housing project. It doesn’t seem to matter what the game is, if there’s housing, I’m happy!

Yesterday was quiet – not a bad thing. I happily worked on the museum, adding tables to the library as well as chairs and some lighting. I always have issues getting the lighting right, it’s hard to figure out which house items will give what particular light I want. I added a few more books as well, and mailed off some blank ones to players. So far trying to get people to write for me has been like prying teeth but I expected no less on a non-rp server, and I enjoy the challenge. This way my library is also truely unique, I have one of a kind books that are not published anywhere.

Ultann and Wpus headed off to Pawbuster, but since the cat (as precious as she thinks she is) keeps waking me up at 5am every morning, I have been going to bed fairly early, unable to keep my eyes open any more. Honestly, does anyone have a suggestion on how to train a cat NOT to wake someone up? She will (and I kid you not) do anything within her power to wake me, including (but not limited to) screaming, biting, ripping apart books (my room is a disaster in the morning, I’ve had to give her specific books to chew so that she leaves my important ones alone), vaulting from the nightstand onto me (this is so very painful), she will walk up my body and stuff her nose in my eye and I can wake up to the sound of her heavy breathing, and numerous other acts of cat-ness. 5am is too dang early to be up and I’m one of those ‘once I’m up I’m up’ people, after she’s had her fill of attention for an hour she runs off to sleep. Of course, I’m up by then.

Kasul spent the evening questing, and I nodded off at the keyboard so I decided to get some sleep.

Fan Faire starts really soon, so everyone has been preoccupied with getting that off the ground and I’m excited to see what happens this year. I wish I were going, but there’s always next year. Of course as I’ve mentioned before I’ll be following via twitter and every other device I possibly can, I hope everyone has an exceptional time (I’m sure I don’t even need to say that, it’s just a given).

I believe today the guild of three plus one are all home, so maybe we’ll get a chance to do some instances, summer months are a little more difficult to arrange for that sort of thing. Safe travels, and I hope everyone has an amazing Tuesday!

If you happen to be a housing buff (or even a quest-o-holic) then there is no doubt that you had heard about the 5 new grotto that (as of yesterday) appear in Norrath the 20th of every month for players to explore and quest in. If for some reason you were unable to partake in the event this month – don’t worry, there will be another one next month, same date. When I started working on these quests I had so many questions shot my way about it that I put all of the information I knew into a player-written book, made 10 copies of it, and sold it on the broker for others who did not want to spend the time to look it up. Surprisingly enough, I sold out. Of course I also advertised the books on the channels too.

The grotto appear in Antonica, Darklight Woods, Greater Faydark, Enchanted Lands, and Nektulos Forest. Each zone has a collection quest associated with it, as well as one regular quest (aside from Darklight Woods, which has two). Each zone has a merchant with 10-15 house items for sale that use the tokens you receive from completing the quests. If you do not collect the purple shiny in the zone, you will only have a 39 minute lock out and you can go back in and complete the zone again for another house item. I am not certain if this is intended. The 2 day 12 hour lock out only sets once you have collected the purple shiny.

I have never seen so many house items at once before that I wanted to have. They were absolutely beautiful. I ran through the quest on three of my characters for this month and decided that would be more then enough for me. I love the work that must have went into an event such as this, and the giggles of pleasure from watching everyone and their new house items. There were sea shells, coral, flowers, vines, trees, grass, illusions, 20 charges of temporary mounts (that lasted a day each, fantastic for those lowbie alts since the quests scaled and were quite simple). There were plushies of every shape and size, and all of it for a very limited time only, until next month. What a fantastic idea.

I don’t think people understand the scale of the content that gets added to EQ2 every single month (or two). We have huge massive updates on a steady basis that give players not only basic bug fixes and updates to things like graphics but incredible zones, house items, gear, and even the more unique like player-written books. I think a lot of us take advantage of the fact that we expect these updates to happen – but they should NOT be expected. We pay our monthly fee and while there are those who may say the developers of the game are obligated due to the fact that this is to keep subscriptions, it’s simply not true. This content is something that is extra, and done amazingly well in EverQuest II.

On that same note, there is also the guide program in EQ, EQ2, VG, and the EQ that’s on the mac (the name escapes me right now). How many other games have a guide program, where a group of volunteers are set to interact with the player base on a daily time frame, giving away goodies, providing role play opportunities, and other games that can reward players. The time and effort that goes into these games is astounding and every once in a while we all need to sit back and appreciate that effort. I know, I know, we pay $15/m and that’s a lot of money and we should be getting everything for free and how dare anything break in the game without us the players the game would be nothing. I’ve heard it all before. I even agree with certain aspects. That doesn’t mean we can’t be thankful and appreciate what we’re getting as a player base. I hear often on 70-79 players ranting about how no one listens to them, and about how they feel ’screwed over’. I think this opinion is slightly misguided, while individual players may feel as though no one listens to their specific set of unique problems, over all, things are not that bad.

Sorry, I got carried away there and started ranting. You certainly don’t have to agree with me, but if I’ve learned anything over the past five years it’s to be thankful, both in game and out.

The grotto quests are amazing. So amazing that I spent my time in game yesterday doing nothing but that, and decorating the museum I posted about yesterday. It was one of those nice calm relaxing days that are typically so rare. I ended up crawling into bed with a book at 9:30, and watched ‘Pretty Woman’ until I fell asleep. I couldn’t have thought of a more perfect way to spend my Saturday if I tried (except maybe down in San Diego, I’m so jealous of all of you who are headed to Fan Faire)!

Have a fantastic Father’s Day, everyone. I’ll see you in Norrath (and Telon)!

I’ve been working on my ‘Norrathian Museum‘ off and on for quite some time. The screen shots don’t do it justice, so if you’re on the kithicor server please feel free to stop by the Magical Academy Housing in North Freeport. Character name is Ellithia. It’s in the mage tower, bottom floor. I’ve worked really hard on this and I’m exceptionally pleased with how it’s turning out.

Ideally, the library will be filled with a combination of player-written books and ones that I’ve quested for. It’s a little bare right now, but it gives me a goal. If there is anyone who wants to add some of their writing to my library, please don’t hesitate to make a character on Kithicor and mail me with your name, I’ll send you a notebook and some coin in return, then all you need to do is mail it back to me when the story is complete, you can delete the character right after.

It is still a work in progress, but the main floor is completed now, and the majority of the upper floor. I want to add tables and chairs to the library area, as well as a living space downstairs for Ellithia (the owner of the home, my mystic). She has a little bedroom tucked away, didn’t need much space for that, but I’d like a little kitchen, and perhaps a bath, we’ll see.

The garden picture was taken at night so it’s really hard to see, and looks far better in the day light. With the new grotto quest rewards (which I’ll go into more detail about tomorrow) the outdoors in any home will lack for nothing.

A silly way to spend my time? Maybe, but I had an absolute blast decorating.

When player-written books first came out, I had grand hopes of putting together a library in my Norrathian Museum (a work in progress) that was filled with player-created books instead of the usual ones that everyone finds (aside from a few select volumes). The books have only been out a few days now, but so far only one other person aside from my guild mates has placed any books for sale on the Kithicor server. Whether this is because people are just shy with sharing their work, or it is because they’re saving it all up for some big boom, I’ve no idea. There are 17 pages of blank books for sale, and 2 written books, both from my guild mates (one pictured above).

Now take a look on the Antonia Bayle server – which I realize also happens to be the most popular server, but it’s got pages and pages of user created books for sale. I would LOVE to be able to fill my library with these books, so if anyone is interested in creating a character on Kithicor and penning a book for me to add to my library, I will pay for the blank notebook.

I would also (no idea if this is feasible, it’s probably not) LOVE to have some unique one of a kind books penned by our resident community team members (I’m looking at you Kiara!) to add to this library. People of note from the game, friends, anyone I can possibly find to add to this library. It’s more or less for sentimental value to me, but I would really appreciate it. If you happen to pen a book, or want to pen a book for me to use in the library, you can find me in game as Ellithia or Arysh – and if you don’t currently see me on, send me some mail and I’ll send you a blank book in return that you can mail back to me. You don’t have to actually level the character, and you’re welcome to delete afterward, but I would really love a user generated library with unique stories.

Last night we attempted Mistmyr Manor for the first time (the first time all together, that is, and the first time over all for me) but Ultann was feeling ill so just before we hit the library we had to call it a night. I picked up a nice cloak for Goudia (she was needing one badly) and a piece (or two) of vampire bane gear for the coercer. Even though the stats are not that great I do love being able to proc against them. Especially since I always put the mystic buff that increases proc chance on my coercer. The joys of boxing!

This weekend should be fairly quiet. I’m crafting a lot of the new hex dolls and bandoliers in order to be able to make some future purchases. I haven’t any masters for sale and I pretty much transmute everything else I get, so this should help out a little bit. Of course, not creating so many alts would also help out. Ah well!

Time to see if the Grotto event is in game yet! Safe travels, and see you in Norrath!

That’s right, I happen to be one of THOSE gamers. I’m not a huge fan of blood and guts, shooting and killing. While there have been some comments in the past that say this is because I’m (gasp) a female gamer, I prefer to think it’s because I’m just not into those sorts of things. I don’t believe that they’re the sort of game that appeals only to men or only to women. I enjoy pvp (though I rarely delve into it these days) and I’d rather do something I personally find more creative and constructive with my time then just grind it away battling creatures. I typically do this via: crafting, decorating, and other creative outlets, especially those involving design. I can’t exactly be too creative when I’m doing nothing but smacking mobs – though that is a wonderful pass time too, it’s just not the end all be all of my gaming persona. Anyhow!

I’ve been a long time sim fan. I played sim city, and all of the regular sims growing up. I loved building homes, creating lives. I loved designing my own clothing, creating textures and building elaborate yards – or even simple ones. When Sims 2 came out it was amazing, but I barely got a chance to play it because my youngest brother ‘borrowed’ the cd and that was the last I ever saw of it. I even spent some time playing The Sims Online when that came out, I used to DJ on a radio station going by the name “April Love” – four hours every day. It was a great experience even if the game wasn’t all it could have been. I played just before I started with EQ, and just after I had gotten more then my fill of MUDS. I used to take requests and played a lot of songs for people while they wandered around the Sim world.

Sims 3 is beautiful. They’ve made some changes and so far I’ve had a very enjoyable experience. I started out with a fully furnished home (my choice) for $15,000 or so. You start out with $16,000 so you don’t get a lot left over. Character creation was great, I loved the fact that I didn’t have to be some super skinny woman if I didn’t want to. Ages start as young as babies and go up to elderly. You pick five traits that can be negative or positive and as far as simple creativity goes, I adore it.

Sure, I’m just playing a virtual life, and I’ve already got a real life (hah) so you may wonder why this would even be appealing, but it’s great to pretend, and fantastic to invent and create.

One addition to Sims 3 is the RMT factor, they have an online store where you can purchase more styles of hair, clothing, furniture and other goodies. I checked out the furniture. It reminds me of SOE’s station cash, where it’s $20 for a full house set, and cheaper for bits and pieces. For pre-ordering the game on direct2drive I snagged $10 (1,000) worth of points to put towards future purchases – if I want. I didn’t see anything that interested me quite yet, but we’ll see. My only issue with this is the same issue I have in EQ2, that there’s less of a push to release really awesome looking content for free because you can just charge for all of the neat looking things. Aside from that one small little blip, I’m having a great time taking a break from Norrath and Telon (and whatever other virtual worlds I happen to wander through this week) to spend some quiet time playing the game. So far I’ve enjoyed the little quests they’ve sent me on. My sim (named Stargrace, go figure) is a young adult, working her way for $28/h as a podium polisher, mon-fri 9-3. The first weekend that came around she took some writing and art classes, and cooked some fantastic hot dogs for some fine gentleman that she may (or may not) have her eyes on. The life of a sim is less complicated then real life and I think that’s part of the charm – plus if I remove all the doors to the house in a moment of pure frustration it’s fun to see what happens next. Not, that I would do that. *grins*

Still just taking it easy while I try to recuperate, yesterday was ok until after dinner. In the mean time all I want to do is feel better and it’s been a pretty long week. Hopefully that will happen before too long.

I did play a little EQ2 in the afternoon, I started my thuuga quest on both the mystic and the illusionist. Got as far as the Fens of Nathsar quest that sends you out looking for named before I called it.

You may have also noticed that I have added a small 2 line advertisement to the “relic gems” page of this site at the top. It’s not flashy or too intrusive (I hope) and the ad pays for 6 years of this site. If for s0me reason you do find it intrusive and annoying, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. I’ve never wanted to have google ads or anything of the sort on MmoQuests, and I’ve declined more then my fair share of requests in the past. This one was different in the way it was presented to me as more of a ’sponsorship’ then a full blown ad. I don’t want people to feel as though I’ll be covering the site with ads now, or that it is something common for me. I’ve enjoyed running my site ad-free for the last four years, but of course there is a cost (and bills) to be paid. This is just a tiny method for me to be able to continue. Edit: That ad is only staying up for 6 months, as well.

Moving on!

I did explore around more of Wizard 101 last night, my little life / storm wizard inched her way to level 19 and part way to 20. I managed to earn a few more house items (pictured above) including a palm tree and a scroll that I placed on my desk.

One thing I love about wizard 101 is their subscription plan. I don’t get a chance to play that often so I declined getting the $10/m subscription. What I can do is purchase crowns and then use those to unlock the zones for my account that I need, when I need them. Since it could potentially be months before I need a new zone this works out better for me personally in the long run. If you do end up spending a lot of time in Wizard 101, then I can certainly see how adding a subscription is a better idea, especially if you go with their family plan and you play with your children or even if you just want to have two accounts.

I’m still saving up for my first house, drooling over all of the items out there both merchant sold and dropped. I’ve been having fun adding to my collection and I don’t have the slightest idea what sort of home I want to own. Since I only have two worlds open to me right now (and I’m not even sure where the housing turtles are) my choices are limited. I may just hang tight until I can buy one of the REALLY big homes, or just buy a smaller one. I’m still trying to decide.

This weekend is one I’ll be spending inside (sighs) again. I hope everyone has a great Mother’s Day tomorrow – and before I forget if you’re playing Free Realms and are interested in cool items you can claim then don’t forget to take a peek over at Free Realms Insider who have all sorts of awesome codes that you can enter for free goodies. This weekend they’ll be giving away codes for roses in celebration of Mother’s Day, and there are all sorts of other neat items that you can claim.

After a 7 hour visit to first my local clinic and then the emergency ward of the hospital (in which they decided they have no idea what is wrong with me and sent me back home with the same persistent condition I went in with) I was in no real mood to game last night, so I ducked into EQ2 for a quick CoA (Crypt of Agony) run and then decided to tuck myself into bed with the laptop and watch some Harry Potter while I played around in Wizard 101.

I’ve been exceptionally excited about the Castle and Lands update, of course being a great fan of housing, an even bigger fan of going out and discovering items to place. I also love the new quest helper that was added, so I am not wandering all over the place clueless. There are a few bugs with it (ie: I’ll be looking for Triton Way and if I’m in Unicorn Ally the arrow cursor ends up dragging me off to the middle of no where for a bit) but if you know where Triton Way is you can start heading in that direction and ignore the arrow and it will eventually right itself as you get closer to your destination. Not that big of a deal.

As I was saying, yesterday I decided to do a little exploring through wizard city and see if I couldn’t come up with any house items. I had a few older quests on me that I’d all but neglected – one of them was to kill the – er, brain not working. Kraken? I believe, the purple guy that everyone seems to camp, constantly. I had the quest on me to spawn him but the instant I was ported downstairs about 20 other players were already there.

So I hung around in the center of the game board for a bit waiting for a chance to get my update. I hate being ‘that’ person but I just wanted to kill him once for my quest and move on my way. Eventually hanging around paid off and I was ported to the playing field. Completing the quest rewarded me my first house item, though I can’t remember exactly which one it was, I believe it was the blue rug pictured above.

My second house item came from the Harvest Lord, there was an open book on the floor of his room that I was able to collect, and then the stack of books came from yet another instanced encounter in wizard city. I can’t afford a really nice home yet (I’m about 3,000 short of the 8,000 home) but I imagine I’ll get one eventually.

My little life wizard also managed to make it to level 18, almost 19. Which reminds me I’m supposed to go see my trainer and I completely forgot.

It was a nice quiet night and I went to bed fairly early after that. I find that Wizard 101 is a little more relaxed even then Free Realms, though I enjoy both games a great deal. It’s nice to take a night off and do something quiet from time to time.

Safe travels, and see you in Norrath!

So far I’ve managed to stave off the lure of the station marketplace. There’s only a few items I glance at here and there and really wouldn’t mind owning. I was thinking of buying $20 worth just so I had a little coin – the cowboy hat comes to mind for my hair-less characters (since it looks great with fur but makes you bald other wise). 

Then they rolled out the house item on the right hand side – and what’s more it comes in an 8 piece SET. Which looks absolutely amazing. You can check out the pieces over on SOE’s web site. Now, if ever there was something that would draw me to purchase station cash, house items are the way to go. 

I’m torn! On one side I really want the house items, because – they’re house items! I love decorating! They look amazing! On the other hand I REALLY wish they were QUESTED items and not something that people can only own if they fork out a bunch of cash. I can see this becoming a VERY expensive hobby to get all of the items that may come out in the marketplace. Which of course is the point, and I understand that but dang. I dislike how all of the ‘best’ fluff items are now things we have to purchase and the items are not something that people can obtain through any other means. I get that it’s not essential to the game, but I still feel like there’s a lot of ‘double dipping’ going on having both a $15/m subscription and all of these items in the marketplace.