Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

I seem to have fallen seriously off the EverQuest II wagon of late. Back in the winter and early spring I was logging in several times a week. Now I'm barely managing to remember to pick up my monthly All Access stipend of 500 DBC. I even found myself wondering this morning if it was really worth renewing my annual All Access subscription when it falls due in a few weeks.

The Summer Jubilee, a sequence of holiday events that ties Tinkerfest, Scorched Skies and Oceansfull into one coherent package, has been running for months but I think I managed one session in Oceansfull and that was about all. And now summer's almost over, it's time for the next big ticket item: Game Update 126, otherwise known as The Immeasurable Menagerie.

It was only when I saw a couple of posts about it on MMO Bomb and MassivelyOP that I realised the update had already gone live. Truth be told, I hadn't thought much about it since it was announced because the GUs are generally focused on at-cap content and for the first time in years I don't have a single max level character.

Another game you might have heard of also added some new content this week. The War Within is the latest expansion for World of Warcraft (Sorry, I'm sounding like an AI now. I'll have to start being more sarcastic.) and from what I'm reading it seems like it's going down pretty well so far. Not that you'd necessarily know it from what Blizzard are saying about their own game.

As many have pointed out, this means the people who paid for the head start got to go hog wild, while everyone coming along behind gets to pay for their exuberance. It also means leveling alts will be slower and almost certainly that newer, less well-geared characters will be at a significant disadvantage.

This feels like a faint echo of what happened in EQII when the most recent expansion, Ballads of Zimarra, dropped late last year. For quite a while, EQII players have become used to expansions that raise the level cap coming with hugely accelerated xp rewards for questing. So huge that it had become the norm for characters to hit the new cap long before reaching the end of the expansion's main questline.

BoZ changed all that. Quest xp reverted back to something not dissimilar to how it was a decade or more ago, only this time there was no alternative leveling strategy. In the good old days, anyone who didn't much fancy trudging through the new content as an under-leveled peon could go back to earlier expansions and solo some dungeons to get much faster xp.

That, apparently, was deemed to be Not Playing The Game The Right Way and a stop was put to it. Annoyingly paternalistic though that was, the effect was at least mitigated by the rapid ramping up of xp in the new expansions, so I for one was happy enough to accept the trade.

Now, however, we are left with the most unsatisfactory of compromises, where xp in new content has been scythed to the ground without any other options being offered as a sop to hurt feelings. Worse, we're being told it's all for our own good, an explanation that always goes down well with the disgruntled masses.

I find it interesting that the enhanced leveling speed in new EQII expansions began and flourished while Holly "Windstalker" Longdale was in overall control and that it's happening again, albeit to a lesser degree, now she's gotten her hands on WoW. Meanwhile, back in Norrath, almost as soon as she was out of the door (Okay, not quite that quickly.) things changed back to how they'd been before she was calling the shots. Probably just a co-incidence, right?

If that comes across a criticism of Holly, it's not. I strongly preferred the fast xp we were getting. I would much rather go through the new content with my extra levels and new spells and abilities than without. 

In fact, given that questing in the latest expansion is now the only way to gain enough xp to get those last five levels, I'd as soon we all started at the new level cap because the whole concept of leveling becomes meaningless when you have no real choice other than to follow a linear storyline to do it. In the old days, when you could do any number of things and see the xp rolling in, leveling could be fun in and of itself. Now it's just a fairly obvious set of weights attached to your boots to make you go slower.

At least, that's the effect it's had on me. It's made me go so much slower that after eight months I've still only managed to do three and a half of the five levels that came with the expansion. It's looking very unlikely that I'll be level 130 when the next expansion arrives in a couple of months and I have pretty much decided not even to try. I'll just use the level boost that comes with the expansion, always assuming there is one.

That's why I wasn't all that excited about the new update. I figured it would probably be too tough for me, although now I come to think of it the last one was OK, so maybe I didn't really think that through. Either way, I wasn't planning on making the effort to log in for the update until I noticed it also included this year's Expansion Prelude.

Now, unless there's been another big change, you can generally assume the pre-expansion events are going to be very easy. No tough bosses, no long, complicated quest chains, nothing to get anyone over-excited, at least not in a bad way. 

For about as long as I can remember these events have either been a carousel of public quests and world boss fights in which the rewards shower down like rain as the strong carry the weak or a short questline with some simple fights, followed by two months of optional grinding for currency to spend on trivia. This year's is the latter.

But it's fun! At least, the questline and the instances are. I did the whole thing this morning. It took me maybe a couple of hours, probably less. I wasn't timing it. 

It all kicks off in Butcherblock for no reason that's ever explained. A new bunch of do-gooders and busybodies called Open Hand are recruiting adventurers to Busy Their Bodies and Do Good and they're doing it in such a ridiculously unconvincing fashion I initially thought it had to be some kind of scam and they were going to turn out to be the baddies.

I don't think that any more. Now I just think someone at Darkpaw, having written one too many of these things, is subtly taking the piss out of the whole concept. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. It's probably me that's danced this dance one time too many.

Whatever, the fighting is very satisfying because as usual, even though the instances scale to your level, everything dies in one hit. I'm aware that isn't everyone's idea of fun, let alone satisfaction (Hi, Blizzard!) but it absolutely is mine. I enjoy questing so much more when any combat is trivial. If the quest dialog is entertaining and the rewards are decent, who needs "good" fights?

There are also some intriguing hints towards the new expansion, although it's quite hard to see how any of what happens could have much to do with it. There are two apparently unrelated storylines, one involving some dark elves giving the Krulkiel bugbears magic they shouldn't have, the other featuring a crazed gnome (Is there any other kind?) who seems to believe Freeport dictator Overlord Lucan d'Lere stole his mysterious invention for unknown but almost certainly nefarious reasons. 

The whole thing left me none the wiser as to where we might be going in the next expansion but it certainly did pique my curiosity, so job well done, I'd say.

For once, I'm not going to make any bold claims about how I'm going to be logging in more and doing this nice, new content over and over. I've made promises like that far too often and I never keep any of them. In this case, it's highly unlikely I'll bother to grind out any of the crafting quests for the currency the vendor takes if only because, having looked through what's for sale, I don't really want any of it.

I might take a look at the new update after all, though. I imagine that will require some proper fighting in which I have to pay attention so I'll need to be in the mood but it could happen.

And if anyone from Darkpaw reads this, they'll probably be pleased to hear that I have decided to renew my annual All Access sub after all. I was always going to get the expansion and, thinking about it, it hardly seems worth interrupting the process for such a short payment holiday. 

Add to that, as today has proved yet again, whenever I remember to log in, I always have a good time and there really doesn't seem to be any reason not go on as always have. If nothing else, I have to find out what Lucan is up to this time!