This morning I finished the Signature Adventure Questline for EverQuest II's twenty-first expansion, Scars of Destruction. For a given value of "finished", anyway.
While SOD is a typical EQII expansion in most ways, in others I found it a little strange, both in the overall storyline and some of the structure. Almost all of the game's expansions for years have fallen into roughly the same shape but there are always variations and this one is no exception.
The story was perhaps the oddest part. There's usually a fairly clear existential threat to Norrath and some new land has been discovered. We always have to go stop one and explore the other.
This time the new territory plain enough but the threat never really became clear and not just to me, either. The whole storyline, which I've been saying I didn't entirely understand since the expansion was announced, ends wholly inconclusively, with some of the NPCs handing out the quests apparently as confused about what's been going on as I was.
The Adventure Timeline was also structurally peculiar in that it had at least three endings. There's the expected set-piece battle when you finally catch up with the Overlord and learn exactly what he's been up to. Thankfully, you don't have to fight him. That wouldn't have gone well and even if it had I'd have been uncomfortable with it. My ratonga would probably rather fight with Lucan than against him.
Once that's over and you think you're done, there's another emergency to deal with: a Behemoth has broken through from the Void and you, of course, are the only one available to send it back. I really thought I was done then but no, there's a coda to the coda.
There's an Aerykn who needs help and you'll want to give it to him, if you want to be able to fly in Western Wastes. Even if, like me, you did the short crafting timeline and you've been able to fly pretty much since you got there, you'll still want to carry on because this is the final quest that gets your I Finished the Scars Of Destruction Storyline badge and along with it a new self-buff that gives you truly massive stat boosts.
Despite rarely knowing what was going on, I mostly enjoyed the story, even if objectively it wasn't very good. It's very clearly only the beginning, though. I assume it will carry on in the next expansion, something that's not unusual in the game. Maybe it gets better. We can hope...
Luckily for me, if the story wasn't up to the usual standard, pretty much everything else was above par. I found the combat almost exactly to my liking for once and because I did the crafting questline first, I was able to fly for almost the whole of the time I was adventuring instead of not getting the ability to take to the skies until it was all over.
The crafting questline was every bit as incoherent as the adventure but mercifully much, much shorter. Once again, I enjoyed it well enough. The days of Domino's epic quests are long gone and great though those were I'm not complaining about being able to rip through the crafting timeline in a few sessions so I can fly when I do everything else.
Drops and quest rewards throughout were excellent. I was constantly upgrading as I went along. It felt very satisfying. I have a ton of gear stashed away now, for other characters to use, but since I largely tapped out of the previous expansion, all of them need to get another five levels before they can wear any of it. But that's a problem for another day.
The only new feature this time around was the Petamorph Ring, which I was very glad to have. Or I will be, when I play my Necromancer. Other than that I didn't notice any of those annoying changes to systems or mechanics that sometimes mean learning how to play your character again, almost from scratch.
These days, we get a level cap increase only every other expansion and the ones where the number next your character's name stays the same tend not to rock the boat too much. I have to say I'm glad of the rest. Things don't stay the same for long enough in my opinion.
I believe this sort of slow-rolling change is common to most long-running MMORPGs but it seems more extreme in EQII than most. Every expansion adds at least one new feature, often several, and only slightly less often than that there come wholesale changes to the way basic aspects of the game function. Occasionally these are welcome but usually they're received with all the enthusiasm that might greet the dumping of a bucket of piranhas into a kiddies' paddling pool.
What makes this tendency to change the rules particularly confusing and challenging for returning players (I'd add "and new" but I find it hard to believe EQII sees genuinely new players any more.) is that, unlike World of Warcraft, these things are rarely removed after the current expansion cyle ends. Instead, they build up, one upon another, forming a palimpsest, until eventually they decay and atrophy through neglect.
When EQII was more popular and populous than it is now, it was at least possible to check various external sources to see which systems were currently in favor, optional or obsolete but these days it's all but impossible to find up-to-date guides on anything other than quests. How long even quest details will continue to stay relevant is another, worrying, issue. I already can't find up-to-date walkthroughs for some of the solo instances.
Getting even a small thing wrong can result in serious problems, even for a regular player. I had a nasty reminder yesterday of just how important it is to retain at least a basic understanding of what's required of you in the modern EQII.
I'd been trundling, very comfortably and pleasurably, through the solo timeline, encountering no significant difficulties with any of it. Even the bosses in the solo dungeons were easy enough to be entertaining rather than annoying.
I'd finished the final fight in which --- Spoiler! --- Overlord Lucan d'Lere gets away with his dastardly plot. All that was left was the fight with the Behemoth. As I was flying to the instance, I was expecting the same level of difficulty as in every solo dungeon so far. I got something very different.
When I zoned in and pulled the first trash mob, it took as long to kill as a boss. Every mob was like that until I got to the first actual boss, which was ten times harder. It took me maybe fifteen minutes to kill, a flashback to the unpleasant era a few years back, when mana drain meant attritional boss fights that could last anything up to half an hour.
This mob wasn't draining my mana. It didn't need to. I was managing that quite well on my own. It just seemed to have a vast health pool and it could heal itself. The nightmare combo.
Eventually I killed it and then I had to fight another, almost identical. That took just as long.
After that there was a third, same again, only this one also summoned endless adds. By the time I finally died - and I lasted a lot longer than I expected to - I literally couldn't see the boss for the swarm of summoned monsters packed around me like ice on a sardine.
That fight lasted far, far too long and eventually I lost. I decided to stop for a while. I had a feeling something was wrong but I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just a bastard hard final instance some sadistic dev though would be a "fun" way to end the questline, which had, it must be said, been something of a doddle up to then.
Before I got to that solo boss, though, I ran across a regular, overland mob I needed for another quest. I thought I'd just knock that off as I was passing. I'd killed plenty of them before. They only took a few seconds to kill.
This one took a few minutes. It was easily as tough as the mobs in the dungeon had been. Proof there was something wrong.
I abandoned any idea of tackling the solo boss and tried re-logging, something that often fixes unexplained glitches in every game. It made no difference. I flew back to the lower-level part of the zone, where I knew the mobs were easier, and tried one of those. It was not easier. Not at all.
I had some ideas on what to do next but there was a server reboot due in a matter of minutes so I thought I'd leave things until after, in case it was some server issue that would fix itself with the update. I didn't log in again until this morning, when the first thing I did was pull one of the weaker mobs to test if things had returned to normal.
They had not. Clearly the problem was with my character, not the server.
And I have had this happen before or something like it. In the past it's been the wrong adornments or the wrong buffs. On one embarrassing occasion it turned out I didn't have a weapon in my hand. I wasn't aware of having changed anything but I play so sporadically these days I might have moved something around and forgotten about it.
I was going to go through all my gear, check the stats, maybe take it all off and put it on again, which has fixed glitches in the past, but before I started doing any of that I noticed the green, fuzzy, glowing ball of light that often gets in the way when I'm taking a screenshot was nowhere to be seen.
That glowy thing is my familiar. I forget what kind of creature it is but it looks like a Willowisp that's somehow managed to get candyfloss stuck all over itself. I didn't think not having a familiar up could make that much difference but boy, was I wrong. I resummoned it and pulled another of the mobs I'd just taken about two minutes to kill. This time it went down in two seconds.
And that was that. I went back to the instance and blitzed through the remaining four bosses in less time than it had taken me to kill one the day before. It would have been even faster if I'd been able to time my interrupts to stop them healing themselves but that's a skill issue, not a fault of the game.
That is just one small example of how a single misstep in equipping or building a character in EQII can lead to disaster these days. Anyone coming back after more than a few months away is going to need to do a lot of research or risk having a very hard time of it.
I play relatively regularly and I really have only the most perfunctory conception of what an acceptable build is these days. There are lots of systems I hardly know exist let alone know how to use.
The cave in Western Wastes where all the daily and weekly questgivers hang out is stuffed with vendors willing to sell or trade me much better gear than I'm wearing but they want all kinds of tokens and currencies and account flags I don't even recognize, much less have. When I say I've "finished" the main questline for Scars of Destruction, what I mean is I've come to the end of the story. I've only just arrived at the start of the gear upgrade ladder for this expansion cycle.
I don't plan on doing any of it just now, not even the many remaining non-storyline quests. I might even save those so I can do them after the level cap goes up with this year's expansion. It seems a shame to waste the xp.
And of course I don't really need to upgrade my gear. I've finished the story. I'm not likely to do anything much more challenging than some holiday events until the first of the year's two major updates. On that basis and on my terms, I've "finished" the expansion.
I'd give it a B+.
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