What Do I Do Now? : EQ2

This is the post I planned to write yesterday, until my plans went awry and I ended up posting about how I don't plan ahead. You can see why.

Leveling up my Bruiser in EverQuest II these past couple of weeks has been a journey. Actually, several journeys. At around level 60 he started in Tenebrous Tangle, the beginner zone from 2006's Kingdom of Sky expansion. From there he moved on to Kylong Plains, the opening zone of 2007's Rise of Kunark. In doing so, he skipped an expansion entirely, Echoes of Faydwer. That too, almost unbelievably, also launched in 2006.

I often refer to the glory days, when EverQuest routinely released two full, boxed expansions per calendar year. EQ2 never quite matched that astonishing production rate but between September 2005 and November 2007 the game received four boxed expansions, any of which was easily large enough by modern standards to merit release as a standalone MMORPG.

For a while my Bruiser diligently followed the solo path the RoK designers intended. He scooped up all the quests at the dock - there are many - and finished them all. These opened quest hubs elsewhere in the zone. Some he happily cleared; others he began, then left hanging.

He visited the zone's main city, Teren's Grasp and got his Sokokar mount, a big moment back in the day when we didn't all have flying mounts of our own. He ventured into the opening dungeon, Karnor's Castle, where he found someone else already soloing the heroic mobs once meant only for full groups.

Didn't think to take any screenshots until much later. Here's one of the Bruiser posing in his fancy new raid gear.

By the time he'd made it to RoK's sophomore zone, Fens of Nathsar, and completed the opening faction quests, everything was once again turning green. In search of that sweet xp spot that comes from questing just ahead of the expected curve, he moved on to 2010's Sentinel's Fate expansion.

There he abandoned any pretense of following the plot. He flew around on his Patchwork Pegasus (a mount from a holiday event that allows anyone to fly long, long before the original level restriction of 86), swooping down to pick off named mobs as he saw them, cherry-picking a few, short quest chains I remembered with affection.

When he'd had enough of that he moved on to 2011's Destiny of Velious expansion, passing over the opening zone to start in Eastern Wastes. He jumped straight into the quest chain involving the Ry'Gorr orcs and by the time he'd wrapped that up it was time to move on.

At this point my Bruiser was at the very end of his eighties. Throughout the few brief sessions it had taken to get him there, experience had been coming so fast he'd barely scratched the surface of any of the expansions, which flicked past like the turning pages of a calendar in a 1940s movie.

At around this point I paused for a rethink. While everything continued to be very easy, it was clear that the Mercenary was doing all of the heavy lifting. Since it looked very much as though the Bruiser was going to promote himself into the front ranks of regularly-played characters, I thought he should sort himself out.

Cobalt Scar has spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

I checked the broker for upgrades. To my surprise there were plenty of Masters in the right level range on sale at very reasonable prices. I bought all of them. Then I filled out the few gaps with Adepts. For a few hundred platinum his spellbook was suddenly up to date.

Next I spent a while sorting out his AAs. I thought they'd been auto-allocating but they hadn't. He had around sixty unspent. That made a significant difference.

Finally I took him to the bank. As a counterpoint to levelling I'd been taking my max-level berserker around some old raid dungeons; Fabled gear had been raining down on him and all of it was Heirloom tagged, meaning anyone on the account could use it.

About half of it was Level 90, the rest 95. As soon as he hit 90 he slipped into his shiny raid gear and took the Griffon to Withered Lands.

He'd already popped over in the late 80s, only to find that the minimum level to get quests was 90. Withered Lands is the Velious zone that was added between expansions to take characters from 90 to 92. It was an irritating period, when SoE decided to slow leveling to a crawl, so that doing one level took as long as five.

Whatever code underpinned that design evidently persists. Xp did indeed slow down to a crawl. A relative crawl, that is. I remember completing Withering Lands when it was new. It has a long and meandering storyline and what feels like hundreds of quests.

By "intrusion" Malra means "altrusitic response to our duplicitous pleas for help". And by "proper guest", Allura means "someone who can't resist our coercive mind-controlling powers".

It took Mrs Bhagpuss and I, mostly duoing, several weeks to complete it all. My Bruiser knocked off a good chunk in a couple of days, taking him to 92. There was still plenty more to do there but at 92 he'd picked up the breadcrumb quest for what I believe to be one of the best zones in the game, Cobalt Scar, so off he went.

Cobalt Scar, gorgeous to look at, fascinating to explore, has a long, involving and very nearly coherent storyline. My Bruiser did all of it. It was both a pleasure and a revelation. Not only was the storyline as entertaining as I'd remembered but there turned out not only to be some parts that I'd forgotten but even some that I'd missed.

At the conclusion of the zone storyline there's a segue into a Signature quest involving the long-running Ages End prophecy that underpins a number of expansions. I'd started that with my Berserker, back when Cobalt Scar was current content, but never finished it.

When I started to hit content and cut scenes I was sure I'd never seen before, I had to log my Berserker in and check his completed quest log to try and figure out why. It transpires that he'd stopped at the point when the questline moves into an Advanced Solo dungeon. It had been simply too tough for him. He'd shelved it for later, then never gone back.

Ongoing power creep has made deep, structural changes to the game. It's highly significant that my Bruiser didn't falter at the point my Berserker balked. The boss fights were harder in the instances toward the end, it's true. He did have to Feign Death and wait for me to look up strategies on the wiki once or twice. In the end, though, he finished the whole thing at the first attempt.

Bildi! This is an important meeting for important people! Go away!

Over the years, the many, many years, EQ2's deep storyline involving Gods, Dragons, Mad Scientists, Vampires and Elemental Forces has seeped into my subconscious. I know so much without knowing what I know. The effect is that the appearance of certain characters or references to certain events triggers an emotional response even if I'm not entirely sure why.

The Ages End storyline, though I barely understand it and couldn't summarize even the main plot points if my life depended on it, always manages to wring some kind of reaction from me as it unfolds. The final movement of the Cobalt Scar sequence was no exception. I'm going to have to finish it now on my Berserker so I can see it from Freeport's perspective, my Bruiser being a quiche-eating Qeynosian.

All of that put my Bruiser into the mid-90s (not unlike that quiche reference). I scratched my head a bit on where to go next but as it happened the game had its own ideas. On my way to visit Queen Antonia Bayle for a de-briefing session, no fewer than three NPCs stopped me in the streets of Qeynos to offer me lead-ins to  Signature questlines I'd missed.

That led to a confusing few minutes, where I visited Antonia three times in quick succession to talk about important events, some of which were already over even though they hadn't happened yet. MMORPGs are like that. It was nice to see her Palace from the inside, anyway. And of course I took a selfie next to the Queen!

On his sporadic returns to EQ2, Wilhelm often expresses some confusion about where to level next. It can be a problem. Because of the way EQ2 has grown over a decade and a half, with expansions often overlapping in level range and between-expansion updates filling in the gaps, there's a huge variety of options available at most level ranges.

Alas, poor Yelinak.

Not only is there no specific place you should be at most levels, the aforementioned power creep means that if you just play normally you stand little to no chance of completing a whole zone before you outlevel it.

EQ2 has some excellent tools to fix that particular issue if it's a problem for you. It's never been a problem for me, not being any kind of completionist. There's an XP/AA slider, for example, or Chronomentoring, but if you did decide to use those to do all the zones in order you'd probably be Level 100 before you got as far as Kunark - or possibly Faydwer. (Hmm... that could be an interesting project...)

The options don't really narrow very much until you hit 100, at which point they suddenly coalesce to a single point. That can feel like hitting a brick wall if you don't know what's happening.

A couple of expansions back, Daybreak finally lost patience with one of the partiularly egregious, inured habits of bitter veterans. A cadre of players would spend the first few days of each expansion cycle grinding to the new level cap by soloing old dungeons, complaining bitterly all the while about how bored they were and how SoE (later DBG) made them do it.

DBG fixed that by upping the experience needed for the ten levels from 101 to 110 by orders of magnitude, then attaching that xp to the quests in the new zones. From 101 onwards you can solo the old stuff for hour after hour and never see your xp bar move a nanometer.

Say what you like about sirens; they do know how to decorate a grotto.

My Bruiser is currently sitting in the middle of level 98. He cleaned up a few old quests, mainly for status, then he went to Tranquil Sea and did all the quests in the Isle of Refuge starting area.

I already have another character running those at 100, though, so rather than burn myself out, repeating the same content, I took him to some dungeons where the mobs were green and blue. The xp there is okay but the draw once again is that this is stuff I have never seen before, even if I thought I had.

It seems I never really explored The Hole, for example. There are a lot of dungeon instances in the Sentinel's Fate expansion and I thought that over the years I'd been through all of them. I was wrong.

It is a shame to think that as we move forward we probably won't see this kind of diversity any more. Both the new design aesthetic and DBG's reduced resources mean that there's likely to be only one road ahead from now on. That's assuming there's a road at all. I think it's odds on that EQ2's seen its last expansion.

If this extremely enjoyable last couple of weeks, running through old content, has taught me anything, though, it's that there's always something fresh to discover. EQ2 is just unfeasibly huge. If someone can manage to keep a server up I plan to keep playing forever.

Then again, what did I say about making plans?

I Think I'm Going Back : EQ2

It's ironic. Just as we're in danger of being swept away by a tidal wave of fresh content (expansions, events, holidays, alphas, betas, Steam releases, early access MMOs we never even imagined...) all eyes are focused on the past.

Yes, okay, not all eyes. Some eyes. But, as Soothsayer SynCaine says in his predictions for next year, "The big one... is going to be the release of WoW Classic in the summer". It seems we can't get enough of what we've already had, especially when it's re-packaged and sold back to us "as new".

I've been at it, too; drifting into the past, ceaselessly borne back by the weight of all that water under the bridge. Or, to get to the point (About time! Ed.) I've been futzing about in EverQuest II, soloing old raids and leveling a ratonga Bruiser through Kunark.

I never meant to do it. I was playing my max-level Berserker, trundling happily though the main story quest in the new expansion, when I happened to notice we had Double XP. (We still do. I still don't know why).

As Wilhelm says in the comments to another post on a similar topic, "I have been so conditioned by games over the years to consider advancement as a primary concern that it is hard for me to fight that notion.". Yes, well, me too.

I'm sorry, Firiona, you're just not my type. Actually, you're not even my species.

In fact, it niggles, knowing there's free xp and I'm not getting any. Of course, I could have played my Necromancer from 100 to 110, which would have been far more useful, but the current design ethos at EQII means there's only one way to do that and I've taken three characters through Plane of Magic in the last year already. I'm not ready yet for trip number four.

So I got on the Bruiser, checked his options, plumped for Kylong Plains and got on with it. I was imagining a level or two. So far I've done more than a dozen.

Even though I've leveled through the Rise of Kunark expansion many times, I always forget just how big it is. It's vast! It was the last time we got four overland zones until Chaos Descending arrived a month ago but, even though the CD zones feel substantial and open, you could probably fit all four of them into Kylong and still have room for Teren's Grasp.

As for the quests, there seem to be hundreds. Even when it was current content there were more than you needed to level but now, with my 60% bonus for having three max-level characters, the mysterious 100% server bonus, ten per cent from some item I'm not sure what it is and full vitality for yet another 100% I found myself outleveling the zone before I got to the third quest hub.

I'll hold your coat, Roehn.

I have been doing all the quests, though, which must be the first time for years. It's so easy now, which makes it so much more enjoyable. When my bruiser left the docks the lowest mobs were yellow to him, but I just hoovered up every quest and piled into the nearest drachnid.

Despite being dressed in a ragtag assortment of drops and quest gear, mostly twenty or thirty levels too low, and even with all his combat arts at apprentice, it was a breeze. The mobs barely touched him and his Dirge Mercenary one-shotted them, when she remembered to use a fighting song instead of buffing.

Every quest reward and every drop was an upgrade, which is a great feeling. Well, it is now. Ironically, when Kunark was new and Mrs Bhagpuss and I found every blue quest item upgrading our hard-won Legendary and Fabled gear, I was so annoyed I led us both back to EverQuest for six months in a fit of pique.

I was young and idealistic then, stiff-backed in the arrested adolescence of my forties. Now I've reverted all the way to my second childhood, I don't ride my horses so high, nor look them too closely in the mouth.

If the improved TTK makes the whole thing trot along in sprightly fashion, the addition of flying mounts turns a canter into a gallop. As I mentioned, these zones are massive. They're also sprawling, convoluted and densely populated.

If I liked The Waterboys I'd make some reference here to the Whole of the Moon. But I don't.

Worse, the quest design of the era seemed determined to have you criss-crossing the continent as often as possible. There's an awful lot of of going out and coming back. Often several times. There's also a delight in stationing questgivers atop towers that have to be climbed, or on cliffs or inside trees.

I remember the traveling getting us down. I don't think we even had mounts back then. I certainly don't recall what mine was if we did. Hang on, let's fact-check that...

Okay, the base game had horses and that was about all we had (other than the infamous "flying" carpets) until Echoes of Faydwer added Wargs. After that the variations multiplied but it wasn't until 2011that the whole system was revamped, adding Leaping, Gliding and Flying mounts and increasing the run speed of regular ground mounts from a barely-noticeable 65% to 130-150%.

In short, changes to the way the game's underlying systems works has turned Kunark from a killing ground into a playground. Which suits me very well. I'm sure that if you wanted to recreate the original experience you'd get pretty close by making a new account with no accrued benefits, leveling up to sixty and then setting out on foot across Kunark, alone, with no mercenary. And good luck to you. I'll be sure to wave as I fly past on my pegasus.

We goin' raidin', boss? Are we? Are we ?!

While it's often magical to go through tough and challenging content the first time round, it seems to me that the essence of repeatability isn't coming up with ways to keep it as hard as it was but in doing exactly the opposite. Tearing gaping holes in what once felt like armor plate but now rips like tinfoil is immensely satisfying. Well, it satisifies me.

There's also the enormous attraction of being able to handle with poise the things that once were flat-out impossible. To that end, rather than pushing on through the moderately challenging (very moderately, mostly) solo content of Chaos Descending, my Berserker has been testing himself against old Raid zones.

It started when I realised that, with over fifty million hit points and all his stats doubled or trebled since last time he tried, he might be able to finish the final quest from the Tears of Veeshan expansion. It's one of those annoying questline's that switches from solo to Raid at the final stage - the last time EQ2 pulled that trick, I think.

I've tried it several times and while I've been able to kill the mobs, there were some mechanics I couldn't quite get to grips with. This time it was a breeze, mainly because I was able to stand there and soak up the damage for long enough to read the tool-tips on the new abilities I'd been given so I could use them before I was dead.

Is it my imagination or are the pictures better in raids?

I'm glad I did it. Age's End is a spectacular conclusion, with Luclin remade and Kerafyrm banished. The strange part is that you, the character, end up a mere spectator as Roehn Theer, the Godslayer, battles the great world-ending dragon. It must have been even stranger when there were two dozen players standing about like a greek chorus with no lines.

Emboldened by that success I tried several more raids I'd not seen. The problem is always mechanics. Particularly instant death spells and incurable curses. If you're the only one there, there's not much you can do about those.

Still, I was amazed to find I could make progress even through some of the 24-person raids from Altar of Malice, the expansion that raised the cap to 100. The mobs there still con green or blue at 110 so it just shows how insane the power creep has been.

As we move into the holiday period I foresee more of this self-imposed retro-gaming. It's so relaxing. During my busiest work-period of the year a combination of holiday eventing (Frostfell and Wintersday), easy-mode leveling and beating up on the loot pinatas of yesteryear sounds just about perfect.

Enemy Of My Enemy: Some Thoughts On Faction In Kunark And Elsewhere : EQ2

Telwyn at GamingSF has a thought-provoking post up called "Kunark factions and character loyalties". It chimes with some things I've been thinking about this week as I've been playing through the Adventure and Tradeskill Signature questlines in Kunark Ascending. The two tracks run in parallel for the most part but there are moments when you can almost see the sparks fly as the two streams cross.

It's not uncommon, when playing MMOs, to find that what your character is being asked to do doesn't fit seamlessly with your conception of that character's motivations or personality, but when you run up against something so out of synch that it triggers a burst of cognitive dissonance it can be disconcerting. As I've mentioned a couple of times, the whole Greenmist storyline doesn't sit well with my (mostly) loyal Lucan-supporting, naturalized Freeport citizen ratonga.

That narrative strand, which goes back to EQ2's original Kunark-based expansion "Rise of Kunark" and forms the spine of the Adventure questline in the new expansion, is difficult enough to reconcile with his understanding of himself. Add in the complex, nested set of deceptions and intrigue between the ruling elites of Freeport, Neriak and Maldura that underpin both the current expansion and the previous one, Terrors of Thalumbra, and I confess both my character's motivations and moral compass seem to have swung wildly askew.

When you find yourself nodding in agreement with a lecture on morality given by a goblin, you know you're in trouble.

Not unmanageably so, however. I'm comfortable playing characters caught up in events so large and complex that the demands and rigors of political intrigue behind them go well beyond their pay grades let alone their ability to resist.

And there's an exceptionally demanding requirement for "suspension of disbelief"  in playing any MMO in the first place. Almost any aspect of any MMO you care to name will be incapable of sustaining even a superficial logic check. If you can't sustain a little doublethink then MMOs are probably not the genre for you.

All the same, there are limits.

The "Faction" mechanic used widely throughout the EverQuest franchise, an analog of which can commonly be found among many first and second generation MMOs, is in part an attempt to manage the cognitive dissonance caused simply by playing these games. Ironically perhaps, it's a mechanic over which I've been two in minds since the beginning.

I love faction work as a game activity. I find the slow process by which my characters incrementally improve their standing with a particular race, city, organization or other grouping within the game both relaxing and satisfying. It's always there in the background, something you can pick up and lay down as the mood takes you. Something to do when you can't think of something to do. I miss it in modern MMOs that don't use it.

What I don't like, however, and have never liked, is the formulaic, rote implementation. The way a player can adjust the standing of a character with faction one simply by culling another. What this has always meant in practice is that faction is impermanent and malleable to such a degree that it generally represents no barrier at all. If you want to have all the benefits of allying first to one faction, then later to that faction's sworn enemy, all you need is time and patience.

This can lead to the kind of cynical, self-serving or merely pragmatic decision-making that is the antithesis of the "role-playing" mindset for which the MMO genre is, probably erroneously, named. In the conflicting Adventure and Crafting storylines of Kunark Ascending, I'm currently stymied by my refusal to kill the same goblins, while wearing my Adventurer hat, that I just spent several evenings befriending as a Crafter.

In gaming terms there is no issue. I just need to kill half a dozen goblins for a single quest and not even a core quest at that. The faction drop that would create (even assuming there is a faction drop for killing them, which, since I haven't killed any yet, I can only surmise) would be trivial compared to the thousands of points of faction my Weaponsmith can accrue from a few dailies taking a few minutes to complete.

In role-playing terms, however, the gap is unbridgeable. These aren't wandering goblins he could pick off, furtively, out of sight, in another part of the forest. (He is, at least nominally, "Evil" after all). The goblins in question are right in the middle of Twark, the goblin settlement, in clear view of all the named goblins with whom I've taken time and trouble to establish my good intentions until now.

This is not an unusual situation for an MMO but over the years the effort made by game designers to avoid this kind of open conflict of interest has diminished almost to nothing. Gone are the days of carefully finding a corner of Freeport, where no guards path, then luring your target into the alleyway for a mugging. Now you can slaughter citizens to your black heart's content right in the town square and provided you're careful with your open AEs no-one will bat an eyelid.

All of this doesn't spoil my enjoyment, or not too much, anyway. Times change. It does mean that sometimes there are quests I won't do, even though I would like the reward. That's fine.

Less fine are the times when one of these emotional roadblocks lies squarely in the path of the progress of a lengthy narrative. When you're several hours in and committed it becomes that much harder to hold to principles that are, after all, notional in a virtual world. Easier to say "it's just a game", swallow the sour taste and do whatever needs to be done to keep moving forward.

Every time that happens, though, a thread pulls loose and the tapestry frays a little more. The big picture is made up of fine details. Keep blurring the view and one day you won't be able to tell what you're looking at any more.

There is a self-imposed solution to all this. More than one. You can keep conflicting content for different characters. You can roleplay a narcissistic sociopath. You can get over yourself.

As MMOs move further and further away from their origins in Pen and Paper roleplaying so the number of people who care about any of this, players and developers alike, diminishes. In an environment where most players don't even read the quest text or watch the cut scenes it may well be that the average player not only doesn't care but doesn't even notice.

I do, though, and it itches a little.

Feast and Famine : EQ2, GW2

I'd been hoping, expecting even, that Tuesday's bi-weekly update to GW2 would include a new Current Event. Last time we got one the storyline, if that's what you call it, was teetering on the brink of becoming interesting.

We didn't get anything like that this time. Instead we got a bizarre Schrodinger's Cat option for previewing the contents of unopened boxes, along with an unheralded extension of the Halloween event for a further week, a decision that struck me as offering altogether more than we needed of a thing that wasn't all that good in the first place.

This longueur coincided with a particularly lackluster period in WvW. Neither players nor developers seem to know what they want or how to achieve it if they find out. Meanwhile, over in EQ2, preparations for the expansion move on apace, with bonus xp, bonus loot and two more events on  the ever-busy calendar.

Hey, I did another two levels of Inquisitor and thirty of Carpenter but no-one cares about that, right? No, it's all about the rats. Always it's all about the rats.

Consequently this last week must be the first time in a year or so that I've spent more time in Norrath than Tyria. As well as the regular late evening post-GW2 sessions, I've been working on all kinds of things at every opportunity I can find. Right now I have more aspirations and goals in EQ2 than I can comfortably manage, whereas in GW2 I struggle to think of anything to do after my dailies are out of the way. The most satisfying thing I did in GW2 all last week was a major clear-out of my bank vaults.

By contrast, there's so much going on in EQ2 right now I hardly know where to start. It seems busier than I've seen it for while, too. Heroes Festival has loads of people out and about, running the repeatable quests and beating on the patchwork pinatas. The rewards are very good - especially so for anyone conditioned to austerity by four years of GW2 - and it's one of the most relaxed, easy-going of all Norrath's many holidays. It's also short so there's no time to hang about, especially if you want a lot of the goodies on offer.

All levels welcome. These bosses don't hit back.

Norrathian Hop doesn't have the same ring to it.

This year the Festival is also live on the Time Limited server Stormhold. I wasn't planning to go there but then there was 12th anniversary mount that flies at Level 35. On Stormhold it only leaps but even so... My SK ended up doing some crafting as well and next thing you know he'd added five levels of Alchemist and two of Shadowknight to his resumé. I foresee more TLE fun in his future.

Stormhold was strikingly busy with players everwhere I went  but even on Skyfire, my regular server, things are bustling. It's very evident that plenty of people are working through the same check-list of pre-expansion requirements as I am. Criss-crossing Kunark at the behest of Cazic-Thule I repeatedly ran into others doing the same.

I hope it all made more sense for them than it did for me. The lore, or perhaps I should say the logic, behind this Heritage Quest is baffling. Why would a ratongan citizen of Freeport, who worships Rallos Zek, spend hours of his time helping an Iksar rebel rally resistance to Venril Sathir with the intention of re-instating Cazic Thule's primacy and kickstarting another wave of Iksar expansionism?

Is this the part where I wake up?

That would be, shall we say, shortsighted but when the conclusion of the questline turns out to be facilitating a full-scale Iksar naval attack on East Freeport, any sense of who my character might be goes right out the window. This is one of the rare situations when I really would have liked some dialog options that actually branched, rather than the hand-wringing "Lucan's really not going to like this" dithering that was the only response on offer. In the end, of course, I did as I was told, but unless I missed some crucial plot point along the way my Berserker is now simultaneously one of Lucan's most trusted, loyal citizens and an openly declared rebel and traitor.

It would bother me more but I do have a get-out. The whole farrago began when my Berserker touched an idol of Cazic Thule and came over all peculiar. From then on, as far as I'm concerned, Cazic was driving the car. Anything I did was his fault and if Lucan doesn't like it he can take it up with The God of Fear. I wouldn't put it past him at that.

The gnomes seem to have gussied these things up a little since last time I flew the course.

With Greenmist completed I've done all the necessary adventuring tasks ahead of Kunark Rising other than, y'know, actually having an Epic or Mythical weapon. I was never planning on going that far - I just didn't want to be locked out of the Signature questline.

When it comes to crafting, which has it's own Signature, then I'm more interested in going all the way, even if I'm somewhat less prepared. But only somewhat. As I mentioned in my reply to Topauz in the comments after the last post, it turns out I have done almost all of the very lengthy pre-reqs for the upcoming expansion's Crafting content after all. What's more I did them on the character I'll be playing. Great news for me if somewhat worrying for the state of my memory.

I wonder if they have Patchwork Trakanon on the Race To Trakanon server? I guess that wouldn't be much of a race...

I just need to find someone to make all the items for the final step, which shouldn't be all that hard. I can make two of them myself and I am fairly sure Mrs Bhagpuss can make the rest. The hard part might be persuading her to log in and do it since she hasn't played EQ2 since we moved to Tyria four years ago.

At the moment I have to say I'm enjoying EQ2 a lot more than GW2. Much more seems to happen in Norrath, or happen faster. In GW2 we're glad for any crumbs of content whereas in EQ2 there's feast after feast.

This view is alive with sparkling motes and shimmering mist. Not that you can tell from this postcard.

Also - and this is surprising, even confounding - EQ2 often looks better these days. I have no idea why this is and frustratingly it can't be borne out by screenshots, which reliably fail to look much like the vibrant, deep-focus in-game views they purport to represent.

For whatever reason, possibly my more powerful PC and GPU, which by now approximate a decent gaming rig from two or three years ago, even older zones look fresh and remarkable, while newer ones are positively eye-popping. Tyria, on the other hand, suffers from over-familiarity, its astonishing watercolor vistas dulled from too many commutes.

In Norrath we really know how to hold a feast. And get down off the table!

With almost every other major MMO dropping or threatening to drop some form of Expansion or Expansion-like update before the end of the year, you'd think the endless, informationless drift towards the unnamed XPack #2 that we're told lies somewhere beyond GW2's event horizon would hurt the game's attendance and retention figures, but it seems not. Everything just trundles on much the same as always. I can't say the servers seem any less busy now than a year or two ago. Apparently cash shop sales are holding up nicely.

With Wintersday due in just a few weeks I'm not holding my breath for any substantive new content like, say, the next chapter of Living Story 3, this side of 2017. Fortunately I have other eggs and other baskets.

Back to Norrath it is.

Here's One I Didn't Make Earlier : EQ2, EverQuest

Just when I thought I was almost ready for the arrival of Kunark Ascending Niami Denmother popped up a "quick warning" that the crafting questline in the forthcoming expansion presupposes you will have completed the erstwhile "crafter's epic", Earring of the Solstice.

This celebrated and somewhat feared quest was added to the game back in February 2008 and I can't say with any certainty whether I ever did it or not. You'd think with it being such a landmark in any EQ2 player's crafting career that I'd know but after all this time it's all a bit muddled and for good reason.

The EQ2 Solstice Earring was created as a call-back to the original EverQuest crafting "epic", the magnificently-named "Protection of the Cabbage". I very definitely did that one, which didn't in fact require any crafting at all, or at least not by the player who completed it, since every one of the nine required components is tradeable. I bought all of mine apart from the ones Mrs Bhagpuss made for me.

When the quest was re-imagined for EQ2 that shortcut was partially removed. All of the equivalent items are No Trade. Since any character in EQ2 can max out only a single tradeskill that would appear to make the quest an impossibility to complete, which is where the Commission System comes in.

Everything happens at once!

The Commission System allows a crafter to make an item and have it deposited on creation directly into the inventory of another player. You both have to be in the same virtual physical space, standing next to each other, with a UI window open between you. It's the very essence of MMO gameplay, condensed down to a mechanic.

When EQ2 was a busier game than it is today it was commonplace to hear people asking  on the trading or crafting or auction channels for crafters willing to make some (or often nearly all) of the required items "on commission". My Berserker, who has also always been a max-level Weaponsmith, has taken the Bell to Mara a few times in order to knock up a quick Mistletoe Cutting Sickle for someone.

I've also helped Mrs Bhagpuss get the earring on more than one character and helped guildmates to do the same, back in the day when there were other people in our guild who still played. Consequently I'm really not sure whether I ever did the whole thing myself or not. (Edit: I checked; I didn't.)

Spoiler Alert - The Necro didn't do it.

If I did, though, it would very definitely have been on my Necromancer and once-maxed Sage on Test, not on my Berserker on Skyfire (née Freeport). I know that for certain because she's the only character I have who ever ground her way through the lengthy and tedious process of gaining the required faction with the Sarnaks of Bathezid's Watch.

Whereas the original EQ version was gated only by EQ's arduous, time-consuming and nail-bitingly tense crafting process itself, something entirely avoidable if you had sufficient platinum pieces to spray around, the EQ2 quest is a genuine Epic. It comes in five parts, all of which require a daunting amount of running around, foraging, crafting, currying favor and generally fulfilling the kind of busywork requirements that put some people off MMOs for life.

Yesterday's post touched on the predilection of MMO developers to cater to a supposed "hardcore" of players willing to put in the time and effort, making them worthy of attention. EQ2 started with very much that attitude, only to be forced to row back from it when the hardcore audience failed to show up and the casuals jumped ship en masse for what was then seen as the very much more casual-friendly World of Warcraft.

I swear I'm gonna kill that kid...

From Scott Hartsman's appearance until John Smedley's departure the story of EQ2 has been one of a game continually trying to broaden its appeal by removing barriers to entry. From F2P to quest markers on the map, the direction of travel has always pointed towards inclusivity and ease of access.

With the consolidation of new ownership under Columbus Nova and new management under Russel Shanks, that longstanding trend has not just halted, it's been thrown into reverse. The coming expansion, like the last, will eschew quest markers. It also comes, for the first time I can remember, with a basket of pre-reqs for any character hoping to complete either of the Signature questlines, Adventure or Tradeskill.

DBG has clearly abandoned all hope of attracting any significant number of new players. They've been playing the nostalgia card for a while now and the imminent return to Kunark, along with the revisiting of the Epic adventure and crafting questlines that came with the first Kunark expansion is another expression of the belief that the future of Norrath lies in its past.

At this stage it surely makes commercial sense. If there are any new players curious to try EQ2 - and there's always a trickle of those - they are beyond amply served already by the generous F2P offer and the overwhelming breadth and depth of extremely casual-friendly content it contains. Those fresh players aren't going to need or want any paid-for expansions for a good while so it's entirely understandable that the focus on selling and selling up for the three tiers of digital download coming in a couple of weeks is on the committed, experienced core.

Donkey, donkey, don't you stop.

And in truth I'm in two minds about all this. I wasn't expecting to have to do pre-course reading let alone to take an exam but then I really have been meaning to do To Speak Like A Dragon for a decade now, yet I always found some excuse to dodge actually doing it. Ditto the final (so far) part of A Gathering Obsession, which I didn't have to do for Kunark Ascending but ended up doing anyway because all the prep-work put me in the right frame of mind.

My Berserker can now speak Draconic and has a pack pony that can gather rare and holiday harvests. That is undeniably satisfying and very materially contributes to his development as a character. I can't say I'm looking forward to doing the lengthy series of quests in Kunark that will eventually net him the Earing of the Solstice, but I am very sure that I'll be glad to have the earring in the end and to have the quest tucked neatly in the "Completed" chapter of my journal.

Perhaps the thing to remember is that this isn't a race. There's no timer running. The "pre" in pre-req doesn't mean pre-launch. This expansion is here to last us all a year at least. There's nothing that's needed that can't be picked away at, casually, over time.

So, my Weaponsmith will be starting out to do the crafting epic he probably should have finished years ago but he's going to take his time about it. First he has to finish the Greenmist Heritage Quest and that's going to take a while. One thing is for certain - I'm not about to find myself short of things to do this Autumn.

I guess, when you come down to it, there's a little hardcore in us all. It just takes more bringing out in some than others.

Shades On : GW2, EQ2, EQ

October is likely to be a quiet month here at Inventory Full. At the start of the month my posting routine, such as it is, was somewhat disrupted by an annual event at work that requires a change in shift patterns and now, much more enjoyably, this week we're going on holiday.

I'm taking my dual-boot tablet with me, which means that at least in theory I could both play MMOs and blog about them while we're away. It's an excellent device. The inbuilt graphics can handle full-blown PC games like WoW and Allods under Windows and there's Celtic Heroes and AdventureQuest 3D on Android.

From experience, though, I tend to forget about gaming while I'm traveling. It's true that in October there will be dark evenings to occupy but it's a lot more likely we'll pass them chatting, watching movies and reading than playing MMOs on a 10" screen.

As for posting, I really don't fancy knocking out a thousand words with my thumbs. I need to feel the impact of the keys - it's a tactile thing. I'm also far too disorganized to schedule pre-written posts to pop up automagically - and anyway for that I'd actually need to have written some...

Of course, by taking the trouble to pre-empt the silence with this announcement I'm almost guaranteeing I will end up posting something, just because that's how the universe works. Maybe if it rains.

If the tablet would run GW2, which it won't - I've tried -  things might be different. The next bi-weekly update will drop while we're away and that should move the Current Events and associated plotline forward. I'd clear an evening for that. Also I don't think I'd be able to resist a little WvW action, not while everything is so vibrant and so volatile.

I'll have to content myself with following the fortunes of Yaks Bend on the invaluable mos.millennium.org page and maybe on the forums once in a while. It looks like we're back in Tier 1 again and likely to stick there for a bit. I was hoping for an extended berth in Tier 2, where there tends to be less hysteria but when you're hot, you're hot I guess.

We'll also miss out on the part of the first of the "Gear up, Level Up" events over at EQ2, although that's no loss. It's already been running for a few days and I haven't felt the need to log in yet. It's a Triple Ethereal Coins event, which is a very big deal for people proposing to perform effectively at the true end-game but of marginal interest to anyone else. I've managed to get by just fine with no Ethereal items at all so far.

Chances are the next one will kick off while we're away, though, and if it involves enhanced xp then I'd normally want to take advantage. I'd be a lot more interested in a bonus xp event for EverQuest itself. That's where my characters - my level 92 Magician, specifically,  - need all the help they can get.

It's harder to come by reminders for things happening in the older version of EQ since it has no real equivalent of EQ2Wire. I look at EQ Resource when I remember and I see from there that there's currently a two week long double rare spawns and double faction bonanza going on, which again I can very easily stand to miss.

By the time we return we should be approaching the final countdown for the launch of expansions for both flavors of EQ, each of which features a return to Kunark. As soon as I finish this post I'm going to pre-order the standard edition of EQ2's Kunark Ascending, which looks outstanding.

I'm particularly excited about the new Wardrobe feature, not least because of the bank space it will free up. I have a whole load of boxes labelled "Dressing Up" that I'll be clearing out as soon as the expansion goes live.

I'm also very intrigued by the four new "Ascension Classes". I'm hoping they will be similar to the Elite Specializations that came with GW2's Heart of Thorns, which I thought were one of the most enjoyable and satisfying aspects of that particular expansion.

That carpet's got to go...

Being still a dozen levels adrift of the cap in EQ, and each level taking me around a month of somewhat repetitive hotzone grinding to burn through solo, I don't feel any need to buy the EQ expansion, which seems light on features other than new things for max levels to do. A "Familiar Keyring" is not something of which I've ever felt the lack until now, to be honest.

I'll skip that one as I have the last nine or ten. I think the last one I paid money for directly was Secrets of Faydwer in 2007. Of course, since EQ and EQ2 went F2P, you get every expansion for nothing in the end, albeit at a slight delay. I'm only about four years adrift in terms of content I can actually use!

A date hasn't been officially announced yet, or if it has I've missed it, but I'm guessing that when we get back The Mad King will be up to his usual, rather faded tricks again. I'm not a huge Halloween fan in general but MMOs love it and at least it's something to do. Also - 20 slot bags for cheap. Not to be sniffed at.

That reminds me - Nights of the Dead has already started in EQ2. It runs into the first week of November so plenty of time left to get the goodies. Not much has been added this year by SOE/DBG standards, just a lot of new housing items -some crafted, some vendor-bought, all rather desirable - and a new collection with a must-have baby bone dragon pet

Lots to look forward to, lots to be getting on with. Do I even have time to go away?

Fall Of Kunark : EQ, EQ2

At long last some information has appeared about the forthcoming expansions for EverQuest and EQ2. Wilhelm, as linked, posted about both yesterday so I won't go over the details, such as they are.

Actually, what details? There aren't any. In total, what we know so far is that both expansions are set on the continent of Kunark, and...that's about it. Oh, there's a new Sarnak model for EQ (see above) and "new zones like Scorched Woods, Chardok: War March, Lceanium, Droga, Kor’Sha, new monsters, armor, weapons, items and more!"

I'm guessing "Lceanium" is a typo, something becoming increasingly and worryingly common in press releases from Daybreak Games, although even if, as I suspect, it's meant to read "Lyceanium", that's hardly any better. Maybe it's just rendered phonetically from the original Sarnak. Also, they're really missing a trick going with "Scorched "  over "Burned" for the new "Woods" zone.

Classic box art

 Holly "Windstalker" Longdale's Producer's Letter for EQ2 is even lighter on detail than the one she wrote for the elder game (and I'd forgotten she's now Franchise Producer for both). The animated gif features an as-yet unnamed monster that I'm guessing is some kind of goblin. If you want to  see it move, and the Sarnak above, you'll have to visit the official pages. I'm not sure it's worth making a special trip.

Apart from plug-ugly up there all the information we're getting so far is that "Danger awaits you in the Crypt of Dalnir, Kaesora, Warslik’s Wood and more!" We have to wait until October for anything concrete like how many zones we're getting, whether there's a level -cap increase, any new features added to the game...

Which is fine. As Wilhelm points out, neither SOE nor DBG have ever really made much of a meal out of the run-up to expansions, the way many other MMO companies do. They prefer to, y'know, actually produce expansions. Twice a year for many years.

What's more, in the maturity (I use the term with conscious irony) of the EQ Franchise, the contents of expansions have become increasingly codified. Some might say calcified.

Looking at EQ2, The last time SOE attempted to depart substantially from the pattern was with Age of Discovery back in 2011, an expansion that was all features and no content. I liked it but I was in something of a minority and even I would admit the features it contained would have been better suited to being split up and sold individually through the Station Store.

 No, for a long time now EQ2 expansions have remained reasonably consistent. We get one -  occasionally two - open zones, suitable for solo players, a half dozen or more instanced zones that do double service for both Group and Advanced Solo (read duo or player-plus-NPC-Mercenary), a few Raid instances and sometimes an open, "Contested" dungeon for good luck.

Approximately every other expansion there's a level cap increase, these days pared down to five levels rather than the traditional ten. Bundled in there will often be some significant quality of life change or a new type of content entirely - a new class, a deity system, Public Quests...

Then, of course, there's a new "Signature" storyline, a whole bunch of new quests, including the ever-popular Heritage series, and all the general item, gear and skill power creep everyone complains about but complains even more bitterly if it's not there.

In other words, by now EQ2 players know just what to expect. I don't believe I've bought an EQ expansion since Secrets of Faydwer back in 2007 but I'm fairly sure they, too, follow a similar, set pattern.

Not so much...

Reaction is always somewhat negative because both EQ and EQ2 players tend to be curmudgeonly, grumpy and set in their ways. In the end, though, almost everyone who plays at the level cap buys each expansion as soon as it becomes available because what else are they going to do? Meanwhile, anyone like myself in EQ, lagging behind the cap, thinks "I'll skip this one" and carries on with whatever they were doing.

The opportunities for DBG to do a Blizzard each time the expansion rolls around are limited. The regularity, reliabilty and frequency of the expansions makes them less of an event, certainly for anyone not currently playing. The separation between endgame and potential returning players is immense, especially in EverQuest, and even offering a Heroic leg-up to somewhere close to the cap can backfire.

This is perhaps why we find ourselves returning to Kunark. As one of the most popular settings in both games and the home of two of the most successful expansions either game has ever had, the name Kunark carries a lot of weight with current and lapsed players alike. Just having "Kunark" in the title of both expansions is probably worth more in sales than a month of frenzied ANet-style promotion for some new location we've never heard of before.

If there's one thing DBG have proved they understand much, much better than SOE ever did it's how to bottle nostalgia. The former management recognized the potential but seemed to be almost ashamed of exploiting it. No such scruples for DBG, thankfully.

So, I'm looking forward to yet another trip back to Kunark. The last two didn't go as well as they might have done - I actually quit EQ2 for six months as a direct result of things I didn't like about 2007's "Rise of Kunark" expansion - but on balance my interest in and affection for the jungle continent remains  strong.

I'm particularly looking forward to seeing what they do with Warslik's Wood, a zone where I spent many happy hours camping the Forest Giant fort and hunting goblins. Anyway, I'll be buying it. Honestly, they had me at "expansion".

The Low Level Life : WoW, EverQuest, EQ2

It didn't take long for MMORPGs to develop a reputation for being all about the "end game". I'll have been neck-deep in the hobby seventeen years come November but the only brief respite I ever had from the bitter knowledge that everything happens at cap came way back at the turn of the 21st Century.

For the first six weeks or so that I played EverQuest I played with the /ooc channel switched off. Back then I had this quaint idea that I was involved in some kind of role-playing experience, living a vicarious life in a virtual world. Conversations about sports or current affairs or even just general chit-chat were immersion-breakers I could do without so I did without them. For a while.

As the weeks drifted on and the initial, overwhelming wonder began to bleed out into a less intense yet more urgent need to know, so the research phase began. I discovered EQAtlas, Allakhazam, Caster's Realm, The Newbie Zone. And I switched the /ooc channel back on.

From my foreshortened perspective down in the twenties much of the conversation was hard to parse but it was impossible any longer to ignore that Norrath, like every other society, had its clades and hierarchies. This was still a couple of months before the release of EverQuest's first expansion, Ruins of Kunark, the expansion Wilhelm likes to refer to as "the best MMO expansion ever and the mood was one of impatient expectation.

My Nightmare

Until RoK arrived in March the cap remained at the launch level of 50. The out of character chat channel revealed to me a whole dissident world; discontented, fractious, self-identifying as "bored". These were the Level Fifties, tired of Lower Guk, done with Nagafen's Lair, already looking past The Plane of Hate toward the jungle coasts of Kunark.

The pecking order was well established. At the apex, the ten percent: proto-raiders, developing DKP and strats. Below them the rest of the Fifties, running the treadmill handful of high-level dungeons over and again, complaining all the while. Then came the Dungeoneers in their Trinities, pushing to the cap as fast as the merciless mechanics allowed.

These three groups appointed themselves the Royalty, Aristocracy and Nobility of Norrath. The Commonality, making up the great bulk of the ever-growing population, toiled away in overland camps and semi-open dungeons from The Commonlands to The Karanas. Many of those commoners would gain enough confidence to become Dungeoneers in time. Others toiled all the way to the top under open skies, making do with the lesser xp, all the while attempting to shrug off the contempt of their peers.

On the fringes mavericks and malcontents soloed, some with arrogance, some with self-loathing. Druids, bards and wizards and most especially necromancers, they camped static spawns, killed guards, kited. Verant/SOE's official position, as expressed by a series of deeply unpopular Community Managers, particularly Abashi and Absor, seemed to suggest soloing was a necessary evil, not something to be encouraged. Bottom-feeders was one of the more polite descriptions.

I'm sorry, that was just a noise.

Regardless of the status of your clique there was an expectation so ingrained it never needed to be articulated: everyone was heading, however slowly, to the top. When the Ogres began launching their terrifying barrel rafts towards The Overthere every player clinging to the rigging knew Kunark meant the future. Only in Kunark could you hope to break the statistical ceiling and soar, or scrabble, to Level 60.

And yet, Kunark did not arrive as a neatly packaged new ten levels to bolt on to your existing game. Kunark came as a continent. A whole New World. It brought a new playable race, the Iksar, with their great city Cabilis and their four (count 'em - four!) starting zones.

My initial Kunark experience, once I'd recovered from the loss of half a level and an unrecoverable corpse for my mid-20s druid, who retired to The Karanas to rethink her options, consisted of leveling an Iksar Shadowknight from Level One. When Scars of Velious, the second expansion, followed just nine months later (believe it!) there was no longer a logjam at the top.

Phat Lewts!

Kunark was vast. Velious arrived long before most people were done with it. New hierarchies had barely had time to establish themselves before the paradigm changed again. Some would say it was a Golden Age. From there the train rolled on through a total of twenty-two expansions and counting but only twice more did an expansion amount to a complete reboot.

Shadows of Luclin, the much-maligned but loved by me third expansion added not just a new continent but an entire new world. Cats on the moon and another new start, this time one that took. My Iksar SK is still somewhere in the high teens or low twenties but for a long time my Vah'Shir Beastlord was my highest EQ character, topping out at 84 before the Heroic Boost saw my Magician hurdle her and push on into the nineties.

SOE's last shot at starting over came five years later with The Serpent's Spine, an expansion that had its moments but proved to be the death-note for growing the base. For the following decade everything has been about keeping the established order onside, about adding more storeys to the teetering top of the skyscraper.

And that, by and large, has become the model for every MMO, for the genre. The base game establishes the setting and the world, sets the criteria for success. Most every subsequent expansion, update or DLC adds content at the cap.

Even Guild Wars 2, the supposedly level-neutral poster child for horizontal progression, has settled into a penthouse life. When Living Story 3 debuts later today you will be required to have a Level 80 to follow the plot. Of course, ANet have removed any need for you to go through the tedious process of leveling one. To play through LS3 you also must have the Heart of Thorns expansion and that comes with a Level 80 character boost ready to pop.

I bet they have better weather at the cap.

 Legion, when it appears at the end of next month, adds another ten levels to Azeroth. Ten levels appears to be the industry standard for building on top these days although some games scrape by with five. Once again, with the box comes the option to skip the tedious chore of getting there. One hundred levels of content you don't need any more.

Except that it turns out some of us do. I do. Playing EQ2 and WoW through again as I am right now I find it is, after all, this low-level and mid-level path that I want to follow. It seems I can indeed go home again and, what's more, find a welcome equal to any I've had before.

Playing through the low levels in MMORPGs is fun. Not for everyone, that's apparent, but for me. I enjoy high level content. I enjoy new content. I like novelty and I enjoy a sense of achievement. In the end, though, I have to accept the evidence: by choice I return, over and over, to begin again at the bottom.

There really is nothing to match the satisfaction, the involvement, yes, the immersion. Stepping out in rags with a rusty sword or a knobbled stick, making your way in a hard, harsh world, being useful, helpful and always, of course, violent. Learning a craft, finding a path, seeing your rags turn to riches or at least to leathers.

Sure Kyle, only some of us have other plans...

Taming pets, earning mounts, flourishing your first cloak. Seeing your reputation rise. Watching the world open up around you. Making space to stash the treasures you find. Paying the rent on your first home and laying down the pelt of that great bear you slew, in front of a roaring fire you made all on your own.

At the cap the explosions are louder, the colors brighter, the numbers bigger but somehow the magic dries out. Not always, not inevitably, but often. Sometimes it can all go a bit Nigel Tufnel.

I miss the days when we had it all. When expansions meant both much more to do for the ennui-ridden capped and a new start for the dilettantes at the bottom. When the expectation was that new players would want to jump in at the beginning, would grab a fresh opportunity with all claws. I miss the days when developers were able to look out on occasion, not always in.

Yes, I miss those days and it would be so fine to have them back but the world doesn't turn the other way, not even for Superman. Wishing doesn't make it true but luckily, for me, it doesn't need to. Recent events prove to my satisfaction that all the old magic is still there, just waiting on a click of  the character create button.

If MMO developers are determined to keep adding to the top I'll just keep diving to the bottom. It's funny but I find I can breathe much better down there.