This is barely even going to be a placeholder post so don't expect too much. Or much at all. It's only here because if it wasn't there'd be a gap where a post should be and there's been altogether too much of that sort of thing lately.
What I'm about to talk about wouldn't normally merit a whole post of its own, either, but I'm going to see if I can eke it into one, somehow. It's a topic I'd most likely have given a couple of paragraphs to in a "What I'm Playing" post. Just a little oddity that struck me as curious enough to mention, since I'd happened upon it.
It came across it while I was playing EverQuest II on Sunday. After hitting the cap I decided, as I often do on such occasions, that it was probably about time I sorted my bags. It's not as if I keep them tidy at the best of times but in a leveling frenzy I tend to let anything and everything fall into inventory, to be sorted out later. After a while it turns into a problem that can't be ignored.
One nice feature that came with the Rage of Cthurath expansion was the Illusion Keyring. Even more useful than the Petamorph Keyring we got with the expansion before that, I guess, because everyone can use illusions but only pet classes use Petamorph wands. (Probably. Don't quote me on that. Cf the rest of this post.)
But of course I never do use them because it would take me an hour to find any of the ones I wanted. Even the thought makes me not want to bother, so I don't.
The exact same thing used to happen with Petamorph wands. At best I'd keep one on hand and make do with that but unless I had a particularly annoying pet, I wouldn't even do that much. I'd just put up with whatever dumb-looking undead or elemental or beast my current best-in-class spell gave me, however hideous to look at or annoying to listen to it was.
Actually, that's not 100% true. There's another mechanic that was added who knows how long ago, whereby you can set any of the appearances attached to any of the pet spells to which you have access to be the look of the one you're actually using. I used to do that, long ago, but when I picked up with Mordita again last year, it'd been a while since I played a pet class and until I started typing this paragraph I'd completely forgotten it was a thing you could do. (Cf the rest of this post.)
And it needs to be a thing because some of the pets you get are blimmin' annoying!. Some of them are so big you can barely see what they're fighting, for a start. I hate that.
Again, you get a spell to do something about it - Shrink Pet or some such - but I've been forgetting to use that one, too. There was a time when I'd cast it automatically every time I summoned a pet but that was a long time ago. Use your skills, folks, or you will lose them!
More annoying than being too big is being too noisy. Or too flappy. Or both. Pets of all kinds in EQII, cosmetic or combat, come with a full set of animations and behaviors, which is great for authenticity and ambience, sure, but also fricken' annoying, when you have to listen to them grunt or whinny or bark for the ten thousandth time or when they're flying around your head, making a noise like a broken umbrella in a thunderstorm and getting in your line of sight every two seconds.
Mordita's best tank pet is hideously ugly and it's asthmatic. It groans and wheezes all the time. You wouldn't want it anywhere near you if you had the choice, which you don't. All pets of every stripe in EQII love to cling to you as closely as they can, shuffling around to be near to you every time you move. I had a cat like that once and I had to give it away to someone who appreciated the attention.
Having Petamorph wands on a Keyring means I have all the ones I own, ready to hand and easy to find. Granted, I still have to mouse over them to see what they are but at least they're all in the same place. Before the Keyring, I tried doing something similar by keeping them all in one backpack but I begrudged the space and anyway they always ended up in the wrong place no matter how I tried to keep them together.
So, anyway, to get back to the point, back in the last expansion, the arrival of the Petamorph Keyring meant I suddenly got interested in Petamorph Wands in a way I never had been before. I went through everyone's inventory, sent them all to Mordita and I even did some holiday quests just to get new ones. Mord hooked them onto her keyring and now she uses them all the time, swapping from one sort of pet to another as the mood takes her.
The addition of the Illusion Keyring means I'm just beginning to do the same thing with all the illusion items I've picked up over the years. And there are a lot, not least because it seems every quest that includes a bit where you have to pretend to be something other than yourself leaves the item in your inventory to keep forever.
I went through Mord's bags and added all the ones I could find in there, then I went through the shared bank looking for the good ones I'd left for everyone on the team to grab, which of course none of them ever did...
And about now, I'm betting you're thinking this is a post about appearance items, aren't you? Yes, well, it probably would have been, if I'd thought of that at the start, but I didn't. This is just some scene-setting aside that got out of hand.
The only reason I mentioned it was to put a bit of context on why I was going through Mordita's stuff so carefully in the first place. I was clearing her bags, as I said, and one reason I tend to avoid doing it for far too long is that it means examining every single item and making an assessment of its worth and usefulness. It's fun for about an hour and then it's progressively less fun and unfortunately an hour barely clears a couple of bags these days. Bags in EQII are big.
After a while, I was done with the illusion items and I'd moved on to checking for gear upgrades. I'd picked up a few things before I dinged that you had to be 135 to use, so there were some good ones. Most of the decision were very straightforward: check the Resolve. If it's higher, swap it in.
As I was going through them all, though, I came across a couple of items that seemed slightly unusual. They had an extra line of description for a start. It read
"An upgraded version of this item can be purchased from the Norrathian Armory Merchant Sirius".
And it had a passive effect. Sick Star II, that adds 32.5 Fervor.
It's called the Norrathian Armory and there was a press release about it at the time. It explains the whole thing. The tl:dr is that it's a cash shop deal that lets you share specific items across the account. You buy a token from the cash shop and then your alts can use it to buy any of the items you've found as a drop.
Bloody stupid idea if you ask me. It's Heirloom items you have to pay real money for, as far as I can see. Granted, the items are better than Heirloom items would be but even so...
My point, though, isn't to moan on about Darkpaw trying to screw a few extra dollars out of the hardcore. This isn't the official forums. That's the name of the game when the name of your game is EverQuest II, anyway; when most of your money comes from the same few thousand people.
No, my point is how very complicated older MMORPGs become and how very easy it is for even regular players to miss whole features and mechanics. You just have look away for a minute and there you are, out of touch.
It's lack of knowledge of these kinds of systems that puts new and returning players at such a huge disadvantage. Hard to know what you don't know. And even when you do know it, hard to know if it's worth knowing.
Here's another one I found while going through my loot. Several pieces of armor in my bags that were upgrades for me came with the note
"This item may be converted to an alternate version using Matter Mallea".
Really? Converted to what alternate version? And what is Matter Mallea? None of it meant anything to me but apparently it's a feature that came with the Rage of Cthurath expansion. As per the wiki, it exists "primarily to allow players to convert excess blue stat Critical Bonus into much-needed additional orange stat Critical Bonus Overcap".
Riight...
As for the Matter Mallea itself, it's "crafted by players, from uncommon recipes that drop from the Cthurath-era Invaders of The Unknown Public Quests scattered across lvl 110+ Norrath zones (and The Unknown) ". I guess if I'd done any PQs in this expansion, I'd probably have known that.
The idea seems to be that committed players will have hit the cap on Crit Bonus and will be willing to pay in cash to convert the wasted points to Crit Bonus Overcap. That raises a whole load of awkward questions for me, like for example, how many non-hardcore players even know there is a cap on Crit Bonus, let alone what the cap is? And more importantly, why even have a cap if you're then going to create another stat that raises it? Why not just raise the cap?
It's no wonder returning players tend to bounce. And it's no wonder the most popular server is Anashti Sul, the Origins server. The quasi-Classic ruleset there is so much easier to understand. Everything makes more sense. And there's a lot less catching-up to do.
The other side of that coin, of course, is that on Anashti Sul, a casual player most likely has to work harder and take more care just to do regular content. As I've been saying, on Live, at least as a Necromancer, nothing puts up much of a challenge even when you aren't especially well-geared, even as a soloist. Those complicated systems and mechanics designed to min-max your combat efficiency don't really mean all that much when you're winning all the fights easily already.
The main effect unfamiliar mechanics have on me is to make me curious. I don't like people writing mysterious messages on my boots. I want to know what they mean. Over the years I've invested quite a lot of time, learning how to use systems that I probably could have quite safely ignored. It's fun learning but a lot less fun using what I've learned.
The evidence is right there in my thousands of storage slots - all those arcane materials and devices I used to think I needed but never quite got around to using. I threw a few of them out on Sunday but then I decided better safe than sorry so I woke up someone I hadn't seen for a while and told her to store them for me. In the end, that always seems like the easier option and EQII gives you so much storage space.
Speaking of which, Mordita has over two hundred free slots in her inventory now. Should be good for a couple of weeks before she needs another clear-out. There's no knowing what she might find then...
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