Is It That Time Already?

It's probably about time for a quick update on how things are going in EverQuest II.. Past time, really. I'd normally have put up something about this Summer's Producer's Letter when it came out a week ago but as Wilhelm suggested in his post, there wasn't all that much to say.

There was the part about rolling another three expansions into the free-to-play offer. That surprised me a bit but only because I thought the whole thing already worked on a rolling "two expansions behind the current one" plan, whereby a new-old expansion opened up for F2P every time a new-new one went on sale. 

I suppose that would be far too simple and straightforward for a F2P plan; not just EQII's - anyone's. Ever since the concept of giving the game away then clawing the cash back somehow took over the genre, there's been a drive to make the whole process as fiddly, complicated and annoying as possible, for obvious reasons.

Four legs good, six legs better. My new Familiar

It's been a while since I played EQII for free. For years I was in the peculiar position of paying a subscription for an account that I rarely used while playing full-time as a F2Per on another. I won't rehash the convoluted chain of circumstances that led to such an  idiosyncratic, not to say idiotic, choice. Suffice to say I eventually swapped the sub over to the account I was actually using and managed for once not to mess it all up again. Well, on EQII, at least. Different story when I was playing EverQuest at the same time but we'll gloss over that...

Due to the way the both the game and I have changed over the years, it seems unlikely I'd ever go back to playing multiple accounts. I do still, very occasionally, log in on my old ex-sub account or even one of the half-dozen other F2P accounts I made for... reasons. My days of logging in multiple characters on multiple accounts just to get free items or do holiday events are (Almost certainly...) over.

That kind of behavior is and always has been a significant aspect of EQII culture, though. My handful of accounts and couple of dozen regularly-played characters were evidence of restraint and self-control by the prevailing standards of the playerbase at one time and I don't believe all that much has changed. I knew people who did all the new holiday content for every festival, every year, on every character, on multiple accounts. Some people had characters on every server and worked hard to keep all of them current. 

It still goes on, although the way the levelling path was narrowed to a single track a few years ago, making it mandatory to gain all of your xp from the main questline in the latest expansions, put a crimp in many peoples' desire to run a huge stable of adventuring alts. Nothing's really changed for crafters and decorators, though, and they were always the demographic most likely to run multiple accounts and play scores of characters.

Didn't I get this letter last year?

I'd like to think I'm well past my own dabbling with such behavior. Ironically, now I'm semi-retired I seem to find a lot less time to play video games. Not sure how that's happened. Still, I have been making time to work on the Summer Jubilee content, specifically the new Plume slot. 

The Scorched Sky Celebration holiday ends today and I just ran the repeatable Summer Jubilee dungeon again, right before I started this post. I'm not sure how many times I've done it but I must be closing in on the ten runs needed for the first Plume. I'll certainly finish that off when the third and final summer holiday, Oceansfull, arrives in August but I don't think there's much chance I'll get the twenty runs needed for the upgraded version.

There were a few other things I wanted to during Scorched Sky but I haven't gotten around to doing any
of them. I started the big, centerpiece dungeon but I didn't finish it and now I'd have to start again, which was never going to happen. I've done all of it before and anyway it'll be back next year, so my motivation is not the highest.

I've blown my chance for this year, anyway. The game is down for "Extended Maintenance" today, after which Scorched Sky will have gone. EQII usually  patches or resets on a Tuesday but this week it's Wednesday and instead of the usual couple of hours, it's going to be down all day. 

The extensive patch notes mostly cover a sweeping upgrade to the Epic abilities that were a cornerstone of last year's Renewal of Ro expansion. Needless to say, I haven't even glanced at those. I have no clue how you get them let alone what they were before the patch or why they needed to be improved. 

I'm increasingly of the opinion that trying to keep up to date as a solo player in EQII is a mug's game. It's rarely necessary for anything I do and even when it is I can't ever get ahead. New rungs get added to the vertical progression ladder so frequently it makes a lot of sense to skip one or two, then clamber up over them later. 

This is the first year for a good while that I haven't finished the main expansion Adventure quest and it's clarified something I'd been wondering about for a while. Every year we get the Panda quests that reward a full set of armor, weapons, accessories and augments that upgrade the main questline rewards from the previous expansion. Then, when the new expansion drops, now only a few weeks later, since the Panda quests got moved to Autumn, we get a full set of upgrades to the Panda stuff in the Tishan's Box next to the first questgiver.

This instance has been a great source of crafting books.

It never made much sense to me until now but I finally realize it allows sluggards like me to overgear and finish the solo content from the outgoing expansion before the incoming one arrives. There are a number of reasons why you might want to do that; rewards and perks other than gear, various flags set on your character for future content etc. etc. Plus it's just tidy to finish up the last one before starting the next.

Mostly, new expansions start clean, but there's always some crossover and the leg-up right at the end allows for a smoother transition. In previous years I haven't needed to think about that but this year it seems like something I'd appreciate. That's my current theory for why it's the way it is, anyway.

The patch notes had a few amusing lines I'm going to share. I always enjoy a good, snarky patch note.

Call to home now functions correctly for those that call a dirty cave in the ground their home "city".

I think that's a dig at Betrayal, the questline that allows you to change faction from Freeport to Qeynos or vice versa. I did it once, a very long time ago, and I seem to remember that for a while you are stateless and have to skulk in a hole with minimal facilites until you re-align with your new city-state. Or it could be Gorowyn. I never liked Gorowyn.

Corrected an issue where the Replica: Wanted Poster wanted to be a guild amenity, and would vanish from homes after being placed. It now wants to be where it is wanted, instead of where it wanted to want to be.

And now I want to know how you get a Replica: Wanted Poster. Going to have to look into that.

Newly created illusionists once again have a sharp pokey thing to stick into those that annoy them. Or do they? Maybe it's all a figment of your imagination?

I've never played an Illusionist past about level 30. Maybe that's something I ought to try. I like poking things with sticks.

Oh, yeah! I was going to do this one, too! Too late now.

Looking ahead, there's another major Update in September and I haven't even started the content from the last one. It was too tough so I gave up. My spirit animal is Bart Simpson. Also, see my earlier comments about the steepness of vertical progression in this game. I probably could give the instance from the last GU another try, now I have the gear from running the Summer Jubilee dungeon, which I'm very happily cheesing using the mentoring system. Shame that doesn't work for the regular instances.

And finally, there's all the great charity work EQII and Darkpaw do, namely Extra Life and Daybreak Games' Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiative. I know all the big gaming companies like us to know how socially aware they are but I find Daybreak and especially Darkpaw more convincing than most. Let's hope that doesn't come back to bite me...

There's probably more that I've forgotten but as Wilhelm said at the end of his post on the same topic, the world keeps on turning. We'll be back here again soon enough, talking about the Autumn/Winter Producer's Letter, by which time I'd expect us to know the name and theme of this year's expansion.

It'll be more desert. I'm calling that now.