Every Picture Tells A Story - If You Know How To Read It

I was going to give posting a miss today, after I spent all morning filling out my stupid performance review form. You'd think I wouldn't need one with my retirement date less than a year away but no...

Anyway, as I was about to log in to EverQuest II I noticed they'd published a readable version of the roadmap on the forums. I'm not going to talk about that, either, or at least not right now, except to say it looks a lot more like a list of things that always happen than things we need to know about.

No, what moved me to come here and post after all was the big Year of Darkpaw picture you see at the top of the page. You can get it in poster form if you want although it's a pretty small poster by the way I reckon these things.

I think it would also be really weird to have hanging on your wall. Take a good look at those characters. Leave aside the peculiarly goofy poses - is that Dark Elf skipping? - and concentrate on the faces. 

I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere in the PR I've read but surely those are all the faces of actual people? Well, okay, not the Froglok, the Sarnak or the Vah Shir (Or is it a Kerran?) I'll give you that, but all the rest. I mean, that gnome is not any kind of gnome I ever saw in game. 

There's supposed to be an Easter Egg hidden in the picture. It can't be that those are all portraits of the devs, can it?

A picture I like a lot more is this splash screen from EverQuest's most recent expansion, Laurion's Song. I'm not saying I'd actually want it on my wall but I'd have it there a lot soooner than the other one.

I hadn't looked at it closely until I was logging in to EQ yesterday, when it was right there in front of me. As I studied it, one thing particularly jumped - that cat, sitting on the barrel.

Now, as I intimated above, I've never been all that clear on the precise, physical differences between Norrath's two, playable feline races, the Vah Shir and the Kerrans, but I can tell you that is neither.

I mean, I wish it was. Just look at it. That's a proper cat, by which I mean a house cat. It doesn't have the extended muzzle of the big cats we're used to seeing, walking on their hind legs, wearing armor and sitting on thrones in the game.

I would love to be able to make a character of whatever sub-species of Kerran or Vah Shir that's supposed to be. I'd buy a Race Pack in the store to get one.

Add that to the Roadmap, Darkpaw!