Sands And Serpents : EverQuest II’s Latest Expansion Prelude Begins

Kicking off the prelude to an expansion without telling anyone what it's called or where it's set might be considered idiosyncratic at the very least. It would also, you'd imagine, be quite tricky, unless the plan was to have the prelude tell you nothing about the expansion at all, in which case things would shift from idiosyncratic to downright peculiar.

That, nevertheless, is what Darkpaw have chosen to do for the warm-up for this year's nineteenth expansion for EverQuest II. Oh, not the last bit, thank Tunare. They haven't just dumped a bunch of unrelated busywork in our laps and told us to get on with it and not ask questions. That's very much not how things are done in Norrath these days (Not that I'm saying they ever were...)

The prelude to the as-yet unnamed expansion does itself have a name: Secrets of the Sands. It takes place mostly in the Desert of Ro, specifically Sinking Sands and Rujarkian Cliffs, apart from the set-up and introduction, for which you need to go to the gates of whichever suburb used to home the Aerakyn race and a wholly unpredictable trip to the Barren Sky, something that really sent me for a loop until I relented and checked the walkthrough.

I reckon myself moderately well-educated in the ethnological history of Norrath but I confess I know almost nothing about the Aerakyn. Before looking into their background for this post I could have told you they had wings and that would pretty much have been it. 

This looks like the place!

The reason I've never paid any attention to the race is that it's one of the three purchaseable options that don't come free as standard. The other two are the vampiric Freeblood and the feline Vah Shir. 

I don't have any issues with races that have to be bought through the cash shop. As I mentioned the other day, I have more Daybreak Cash than I know what to do with just from my monthly All Access stipend. I used some of it to unlock the Vah Shir when they became available because I played a Vah Shir in the original EverQuest and had a pre-existing emotional involvement with the race. 

I've thought a few times about paying to unlock the Freeblood but I don't much like the way they look. Also, I would have to buy a character slot as well if I actually wanted to play one and I definitely don't care that much about being a vampire. As for the Aerakyn, I can't say I've thought about them even once since the day they were added to the game.

I think this might be a new model. I can't recall seeing it before. Not sure I want to see it again, either.

Reading their wiki page I'm reminded that I did once know that the Aerakyn, like the Drakkin in EverQuest and the soon-to-be Dracthyr in World of Warcraft, are of draconic heritage. I don't know what it is about dragon-people in mmorpgs but somehow they always look desperately unnapealing. 

None of the defining features of dragons - armor-plated scales, long, thrashing tails, vast, gaping jaws, gigantic size - translate well - or even at all - to a humanoid form. It's notable that in most fantasy tales involving dragons that I've ever read, if the dragon can take on human form it's either indistinguishable from an ordinary person or looks like some kind of golden, glowing godling.

In mmorpgs, draconic races just look like elves with bad skin. About the only supposedly dragonlike traits that carry over are wings and scales. On a humanoid frame that tends to look like some kind of diseased bat.

I remember that place! All sand and elves Do we have to go there?

So, the Aerakyn are either the spawn - or more likely the creation - of dragons. The wiki is unclear on the exact details. Actually, it doesn't mention them at all, saying only "Once the unwilling soldiers of the great Prismatic Dragon, Kerafyrm, the Aerakyn are now free from his thrall. Unable to return to their homelands. they seek to re-establish their culture on Norrath."

And that's the key to the new series of quests that arrived last week. It seems the Aerakyn can give up trying to fit in and start packing instead. They're going home. 

Things begin with a call to meet Faezoth, a representative of the race, outside the locked gates of Starcrest Commune in Qeynos (Or his counterpart, Silrena, in the equivalent spot in Freeport.) Faezoth explains that an opportunity may have arisen for the exiled Aerakyn to return to the nest, although he seems unclear on where that might actually be. 

It could be in the Desert of Ro or maybe Takish`Hiz, the legendary elven city long since lost to the sands but surprisingly the front-runner turns out to be the Serpent Spine Mountains, home of the aforementioned Drakkin and site of the 2006 expansion that sought to reboot the original game for a new audience. Not seen since the Cataclysm (Or maybe the Shattering. I always get those mixed up.), it looks odds-on that the Serpent's Spine will be the next rediscovery from Old Norrath and the location for the upcoming expansion. It would therefore follow that the Drakkin and the Aerakyn are connected in some manner.

It's always uncomfortable when your character knows more than you do.

I'm sure there was more in the dialog but even though I was paying attention at the time I can't recall the details. I took screenshots of a few of the interchanges between Faezoth and my bruiser but the two of them spent a lot of time talking. I'm bound to have missed a few plot points.

Like most quests in EQII, the writing is solid and detailed, clearly written both by and for people with a deep interest in the lore. I have a more-than-shallow interest myself but there is one holy hell of a lot of it and I can't begin to keep any but the major players straight without a scorecard.

In terms of mechanics, the new questline stays absolutely true to form. There's an introduction that's all talk, followed by a trip to talk some more with someone else in a different zone. After that you get to go to yet a third zone, where you have to find and kill some mobs for drops, which you bring back to the last person you spoke to, so they can do a magic thing. 

The magic points the way to the inevitable new instance which is, equally inevitably, a series of underground tunnels and caverns, this time in a hitherto-undiscovered part of the orc-infested Cliffs of Rujark called The Fractured Cache. Once inside, you have to clear out everything that gets in your way, including a couple of slightly tougher Named mobs, the death of which causes deeper parts of the complex to reveal themselves.

Enter the maguffin.

Finally you reach your destination, in this case a lost treasure, described somewhat unhelpfully as an "ancient crystal arca". It looks like a chest and it's heavily warded so you're forced to leave it where it stands and return to make your report. 

Here, the usual script varies slightly. Since this is a pre-expansion event that has to run for a few weeks, if not months, Faezoth sends you back for another crack at the arca, thereby setting up a repeatable quest that can, according to the wiki, "be completed once per day" even though the instance itself  "has a three (3) day lockout". I'm not sure how that works but I think it's safe to say it's a daily.

Only 63,000 faction points to go!

The incentive to keep going back is faction with the Nomads of Ro, one of whom stands right next to Faezoth, hawking a wide range of new housing and appearance items. The conceit is that, as you keep trying to breach the wards around the arca, you clear out the invading orcs and return artefacts to the nomads, thereby raising your standing with them and encouraging them to sell you things they'd otherwise be loath to part with.

Each run nets you 3,500 faction. There are also three repeatable crating quest that reward a thousand faction per. You start at -10,000 and the top item on the list, Aerakyn wings that act as a flying mount, require 60,000. You do the math. I can't be bothered. 

Over the time the event is going to run (Until the as-yet unnanounced launch date of the as-yet unnamed expansion) it's clearly very achievable even for a casual player. All the areas are (Relatively) safe to reach even for a low-level character, everything scales to your character's level and the event is open to all, free-to-play included. 

Once you have the faction, everything is extremely cheap, priced from a few gold to just five platinum pieces for the wings. At this stage of the game's life, these aren't so much pocket-money prices as pocket lint.

Overall, it's a very nice pre-expansion package, better in my opinion than the last one or two have been. I was always interested to find out what the new expansion was going to be about, of course, but this has really whetted my appetite. 

I hope I'm right in thinking we're going back to the Serpent's Spine. It was one of the last expansions I played extensively on release with other people, primarily Mrs Bhagpuss but also a few others we met along the way, and I have fond memories of certain parts of it. I've also been back a few times since on my own. I know it fairly well.

If things progress at the usual pace, I'd expect to see full details, including pre-order information, in a very few weeks. I'll be signing up at the first opportunity.

Still Having A Great Time. Wish You Could Have Been There.

My Vetrovian journey continues, although according to the invaluable timeline on EQ2i it's nearing the end. I'm on step eleven of thirteen, the moment when we finally step inside Castle Vacrul, the ominous floating hulk that hangs over the mountains and yet somehow can't be seen by anyone but me.

It's difficult for me to talk about the story and the writing with any kind of objectivity. I worry that by any external standard it would properly be judged a farrago of fantastical nonsense but then so would most mmorpg stories so I'm not sure that's much of a concern.

Stylistically, there are certain problems. Questgivers make long speeches filled with incomprehensible, unpronounceable names, referring to abstruse and arcane events from the past as though quoting holy writ, which is in fact pretty much what they are doing, since as usual almost everyone involved is either a God, a demi-god or a would-be candidate for godhood.

When I'm not trying to unpick paragraph after paragraph of infodump, I'm groaning at bad puns or shaking my head at yet another self-indulgent in-joke. Quests are either humorous and inconsequential or sombre and self-important. Tonally, you can frequently hear the gears grinding as you move from one questgiver to another. 

Six fantasy names in a single paragraph. Not even close to the record!

 

It should be easy enough to sum all of this up as by-the-yard fantasy crossed with self-indulgent fan-fic and yet I fricken' love it! It's writing that understands exactly who the audience is and exactly what they want. I should know. I am that audience and it's exactly what I want.

After more than two decades soaking in the EverQuest ether I know this world as well as I know any, including my own. And by "as well" I mean partially, selectively and subjectively. 

I pick up on references that remind me of things I've done or seen or been told about. I recognize most of the names, even if I can't always remember where I heard them before. When certain, familiar characters emerge from the shadows of the plot I gasp just like I should.

It's like watching a new season of a favorite TV show, something low culture and high camp. It could feel cheap and shameful but instead it feel joyous and uplifting. Like anything that hangs around for long enough, after more than twenty years Norrathian lore has acquired the patina that comes with age. It's very easy to mistake that for gravitas.

As I've read through post after post about Endwalker, happily cracking open the spoilers for a story I know I'll never follow, it's occurred to me how unlikely it is that anyone reading anything I write about Visions of Vetrovia would ever care if I spoiled anything about the plot. I know some regulars here play EverQuest II and at least three people have mentioned buying the latest expansion but if any of them care a hoot about the lore they've mostly kept it to themselves.

Nerds, eh?

Even so, I'd still go out of my way to avoid spoiling any major plot twists or reveals... if there were any. There might be. I couldn't say. 

It might seem strange but even at this late stage of the plot I'm not entirely clear what's going on. I know Mayong Mistmoore is up to something but then Mayong's always up to something. 

He's a busy fellow, always has been. He's "up to something" in Terror of Luclin, the latest expansion for EverQuest, where he's been seen on the moon. The suspicion there is that he may be trying to usurp a god, which I think is what he's doing in Vetrovia half a millenium later. 

To be fair, it's what he's always doing. The idée fixe is one of the less-celebrated vampire tropes. I wonder if the reason Mayong so aspires to godhood is that true immortality, rather than mere undeath, would free his mind from the shackles of habit. Gods play dice. Vampires play chess.

I fear he may have, once again, bitten off more than he can suck. He seems to have set in motion a chain of events that could lead to a return to full godhood for Anashti Sul. 

Usually I'd have fact-checked that last paragraph before committing it to print. For all I know she's already got her Godcard back, if indeed I'm right in thinking she ever lost it. 

Recovered memories are tight!

 

I'm not entirely up to speed with Anashti Sul's history, as must be obvious. I think she's the god of the undead but I have a feeling she was also a major god of healing at one point. I also seem to remember we fought her or helped her or freed her or imprisoned her in some previous storyline. I know that this time around a lot of people stand back and gasp when her name is mentioned so I did too, although I couldn't really tell you why. 

I'm not being twee about that, by the way. I was sitting down, so I didn't actually stand back, but the first time an NPC pointed out whose altar I'd just been messing with, I echoed the name out loud in a tone of exaggerated surprise.

It wasn't even the first time I'd exclaimed out loud at a reveal. It happened close to the start, when I correctly identified Tserrina Syl`Tor in the first instance before anyone said her name. I'm easily excited.

This is the kind of immersion you can't just buy. You can just buy the expansion, sure, but the immersion, that you have to bring with you. That's how serial fiction works and mmorpgs are serial fiction.

In standalone games, just as in novels or movies, it's possible to generate all the necessary emotions to lose yourself in the imagined lives of others in just one, concentrated experience. Long-running TV shows, like comics and series novels, rely on an accretive process for their success. So do mmorpgs.

Some genuinely fascinting implications for the game, should Mayong succeed. He won't, of course.

It's been very noticeable how many bloggers, writing about Endwalker, have referred to the expansion as the culmination of a decade of storytelling. For all that everyone praises the story as something that exemplifies the best of what the genre has so far been able to produce, no-one seems to be suggesting any new player should start there.

Without at least some knowledge of what has gone before, even the finest installment of an ongoing narrative can't hope to have the same emotional impact. No matter how detailed and comprehensive the "Previously on...", there's no substitute for having been there.

Even if you can barely remember what happened. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you can't. There's not going to be a test. All that counts is that you know enough to feel inside the story rather than outside. That's all immersion means, in the end.

For good or ill, I'm inside Norrath's story now. Any judgments I offer are going to be relative.

It's bloody good, though!

I Go, I Come Back: Questing In New World And Why There Might Be More To It Than You Imagine.

It's probably best to consider this a placeholder for a post I may or may not get around to writing. As I said in a reply to Naithin's comment, I spent so long playing New World today I haven't left myself time to write the post I was working on in my mind as I played. I suspect that's going to be the way it goes for a while.

Here's the premise, together with just a handful of examples to illustrate my thesis. There seems to be a general consensus, based on almost every mention of the topic I've seen, that quests in New World are perfunctory, pedestrian and unimaginative, that the mechanics are well-worn, there's a great deal of repetition and, as Naithin says, that the quests are bland and colorless. 

That isn't all entirely outside my experience. There are some filler quests, as there are in every mmorpg, and it's certainly the case that, mechanically, there's very little that feels unique, original or even unusual. 

Almost every quest can be boiled down to "Go to a place, do a thing, come back". That, however, sums up the very great majority of all the quests in all the mmorpgs I've ever played. In no significant part, it's what I like about the genre. 

I am and have always been a serious, unironic lover of kill ten rats and fetch quests and I quite strongly prefer "tasks" to "quests" as the staple diet of my gameplay. To my way of thinking, objecting to those aspects of the genre is like complaining tennis involves far too much hitting a ball over a net.

It's true, then, that I would most likely be quite happy if that was all the quests in New World had to offer. It's not, though. 

What the quests do, very successfully for me, at least, is add accretive, incremental detail to the aspect of New World I'm already finding the most absorbing and satisfying - the worldbuilding. Take, for example, the lengthy quest sequence I did yesterday and today, in which, unfortunately, I was so absorbed I neglected to take any screenshots or make any notes.

Here it is as I rememeber it. There's a somewhat self-satisfied chap in Everfall, who fancies himself a scientist of sorts. I suspect he's entirely self-taught but maybe I missed the part where he tells us his qualifications. 

He has a theory relating to the mysterious obelisks that, quite honestly, I couldn't follow but it sounded convincing while he was explaining it. One of the things he mentions early on is that the builders of the obelisks must have had technology we can't understand but he knows (somehow, I forget how) that they used astrolabes and he wants to examine them.

This leads to a prolonged sequence of fetch quests, where the player character has to visit a set of three named obelisks, fight a bunch of skeletal guardians, grab an astrolabe and bring it back to town. I forget exactly how many sets of three he made me visit but I'm pretty sure I went to at least a dozen towers.

Every time I brought back a set of astrolabes he speculated further on the obelisks and the civilization that made them. At no point did I ever think he really knew what he was talking about. He was smug and self-satisfied and very patronizing to my character. 

All of that served to increase my own curiosity about the very things he was investigating. Far from feeling I was being sent on a series of busy-work, cookie-cutter quests put to gether cut-and-paste style by some hapless intern, I felt as though I was involved in something really quite significant. I also felt as though my character was using the questgiver to further her own ends, playing him as he clearly believed he was playing her. 

As a player, not just as a character, my experience was satisfying and interesting. I already wanted to visit all the obelisks. I want to visit all of the massive, ancient structures. I find them fascinating as objects and intriguing as mysteries. The quest series offered me a systematic process for doing that, together with a narrative rationale to support it.

As with the majority of the quests I've seen, I thought the dialog was well-written by the standards of the genre. I find the characterization of most of the questgivers is quite distinct. Some of them are nuanced and subtle, others drawn in very broad strokes but whatever the stylistic choice, all of them have definable personalities. 

They all also work to build an understanding, for the player-character and for the player, of the world they inhabit. The bulk of the lore in New World, as I said before, comes in the form of found objects - letters, journals, diaries, notes - but the quests almost without exception have their contributions to make as well.

It's through the quests, more so even than the lore items, that I believe I'm beginning to understand the difference between the various kinds of... what should we call them? Monsters? Undead? Creatures?

There are more kinds than I realized at first, but for now let's stick to the two main types, the Lost and the Corrupted. At first I didn't really see the difference between them. I thought they were just different names for the same thing. We'd call them zombies in other games, I guess. As I listened to questgivers talking, though, I began to realize how little I knew. And how little I still know, for that matter. But I'm learning.

I learned two very significant things today, both from quests. I learned it's possible to become Corrupted through conscious choice and that it's possible to become Lost through despair. 

One quest deals with a powerful man. The questgiver hints he may have bolstered his reputation on the back of the efforts of others. That man, faced with the growing threat to the people for whom he felt responsible, chose to allow himself to become Corrupted so as to gain strength to deal with the threat. Needless to say, from the perspective of those who didn't follow him, it didn't work.

That, though, is just their perspective. By the time I ran across that quest, I'd already begun to wonder just how bad a time of it the Corrupted were really having. In some ways they seemed like they might be doing better than the colonists themselves. 

It's easy to think of the Corrupted as some kind of automatons. Cogs in a machine, albeit a functioning machine. The Lost look like zombies, the Corrupted like demons but neither is either of those cliches, or not exactly.

There are frequent references in quest dialog and lore to the ability of the Corrupted to work together. They have cooks, they eat meals, they have differentiated functions within what is clearly a working society. There's mention of some kind of controlling intelligence in the way the workers synchronize their efforts.

A hive mind? Domination? Demonic possession? Who knows. Not me but I want to. 

The Lost are in some ways more disturbing than the Corrupted. I know that now I've met the woman who wanted to become one so she could be with her lost, Lost lover again. 

In a very good quest with a somewhat bathetic ending, I learned the Lost are those who can't take it any more. They're the ones who gave up. The ones who couldn't take the strain, the fear, the endless dying and waking up again, not dead after all.

I have yet another post brewing about the way New World addresses the genre trope of resurrection. It's not the first game to acknowledge it but in my experience it's the only one to examine it closely and clear-mindedly, considering what such an existence might actually entail and how the human mind might cope, or fail to.

There's plenty of detail on that topic in the notes and journals but by their nature those stories are once removed. In quests it's first-hand experience. When despair becomes the substance of a quest, when your character realizes the import of what she's being tasked with doing and the possible consequences, it makes everything feel more immediate. More personal. 

Those simple, mechanical things - going to a place, doing a thing, coming back - none of them seem quite so simple, so mechanical, any more.

With all stories, it's as much about what you bring as what you find. For all that, imagination needs something to work with. I'd contend that in New World the quests come with plenty of fuel for the imagination included. 

More, maybe, than at first it may appear.

New World: The Good, The Bad And The UI

One of the paradoxes of blogging about mmorpgs is that, when you have plenty of time to write, it probably means you don't have much to say and when you have plenty to say, it probably means you don't have much time to write. That's because ideas for posts about mmorpgs come thickest and fastest when the games are fresh and exciting but mmorpg gameplay is compulsive and time-consuming, both by nature and design.

I have a ton of ideas for posts about New World but, as with Valheim (Not an mmorpg.) earlier this year I begrudge the time it takes to think them through, fact-check the details and turn them into coherent essays that make some kind of point. Instead I find myself bashing out slice-of-life diary entries or op-ed pieces because I can get them done in half the time, then get back to what I really want to do, which is play the damn game.

And they still take way too long! Which is why today I'm going even further and putting up what are basically some notes I made over the last few days with a little bit of commentary tacked on. 

I'd have liked to be able to post my considered opinion, with supporting examples, on why the narrative in New World is actually one of the game's strengths rather than, as seems to be the accepted opinion already, one of it's weaknesses. That, however, would take me most of the rest of the day and I have Standing to grind, if I want that two-storey house in Everfall, so bring on the bullet points!

Some Things I Like About New World

• Landmarks - Such a clean, intelligent way to integrate higher and lower level content within the same region. Reminds me strongly of original EverQuest design, spruced up for a modern audience. The level range of some zones is broad enough that mobs suited for the start of the spread would one-shot players at the end but the Landmark system makes it clear when you're stepping out of your comfort zone without actually telling you you can't.
  

• Mob Tethering and Animations - Falls into the sweet spot between old school mmorpgs, where the mobs hit instantly and chase you forever and what we've grown used to in recent years, where mobs take so long to wind up you're ten meters past them before they strike and if they chase you at all, they give up in seconds. In New World the animations are long enough to give you a chance to move past but not for you to dither and gawp and the tethers stretch just to that point where you start to doubt the mob will ever back off... and then it does. Very immersive when you travel cross-country.

• Distance - Which is just as well because there's a lot of cross-country travel. I've seen a number of comments about the supposed smallish size of the world and it's true the map, opened wide, doesn't look huge but just you try running across it. With only the most limited of fast travel options and just a single basic run speed, getting from one place to another becomes a large part of the gameplay. It's lucky there's so much to do along the way.

• Resources - Like gathering the endless resources that crop up everywhere. Literally everywhere, since you can break the rocks and chop down the trees. The quantity, distribution and variety of things you can gather or mine or harvest or just flat-out steal is deeply satisfying but the best thing about the whole system is how those resources present visually.

• Big Nodes- Oh, there are so many and they look so good. Those resources I just talked about - in other games they're little things, hard to see and when you find them and take them there's no sign they ever were there. In Aeternum you can see a vein of iron ore from the next mountain over. Magical plants stand shoulder high and glow with arcane light or spit like faulty neon signs. Even mundane crops like hemp stand out against sky from three fields away. It makes the tracking on the HUD almost superflous. And even when you've taken all there is to take, some residue remains so the next person passing by knows what was there and will be again.
  

• Tracking - As I level up and my skinning and gathering and mining skills rise, I learn how to spot things from very far away. In other games tracking is a separate interface but here it's just a continuation of the directional indicators I'm alreading using. The difference when I learned how to track rabbits was palpable, as good as learning a new spell might be for a magic user.

• The UI - That compass, with all that goes on along the top line, is just one exemplar of the excellent, ergonomic, intuitive interface that already feels as natural as any I've ever used. The hallmark of a great UI is that it does just what you need it to do without you noticing it's doing it and that's this one to a tee. I particularly like the positioning of all the elements. Even with what is, potentially, a slew of screen clutter (The quest journal alone is very big and bright.) it always feels as though I'm looking directly into the world with a clear, unobstructed view.

• Counters - Everyone mentions how New World makes numbers go up and why that's the reason people like it but no-one mentions another set of numbers; the tiny counter on every harvest. Of course the game tells you just how many logs you picked up when you chopped down that last tree - every mmorpg does that - but it also gives you the running total of how many you're carrying altogether. I've wished for that in so many other games. In some, when it's been possible, I've pulled the stack onto a hot key so I can follow the count there. In most games I just have to keep opening my bags to check. New World puts it there in front of me, exactly when I need it.

• Interruption Memory- File this under things I never thought I needed. When I'm hacking away at a rock in other games and a wolf chooses that exact moment to take a chunk out of my thigh, after I've broken off to break his skull and turned back to my task I have to start all over again. Even though I might have hit the rock a dozen times, now it's as though we'd never met. In New World the rocks remember. If the circle was half-turned when I stopped, it's still half-turned when I start up again. So much energy saved, so much stress removed.
  

• Mystery - At the other extreme from all this pragmatic praxis comes the ineffable. Time, history, frozen in stone, mysterious, enigmatic, unknowable. Strange, bifurcated statues, pristine obelisks, shattered acqueducts. The architecture of the arcane is everywhere. My absolute favorite thing, visually, in the all the game I've seen so far, arrives early: those gigantic stone spheres that dot the landscape around one of the first settlements. Windsward, I think it is. I can't help but stop and climb onto them whenever I pass, just to stand there and wonder. It always makes me think of Tales From The Loop. I like to be reminded of things I like.
  

• Lore - As I said, there's a much more thoughtful post than this to be written about the way New World handles narrative, story and lore. In case I never get around to writing that post, I'll just mention here how although much of the story is there in the world itself, carved in stone, it's the letters and notes and journals, scattered far and wide, that really tell the tales. They're better-written than such things in many mmorpgs and more purposeful. They don't just add color to the game, they inform and define it. In narrative terms, working out what happened before we arrived and how it might affect us in the future makes up the thrust of the gameplay. That's what the game's about and that's what driving my engagement, outside of those ever-increasing numbers. 

I could go on eulogizing but that would make it sound as though I think New World's some all-but-perfect game. Far from it. It's good but it's not that. Let's finish up with

Some Things I Don't Like About New World

• Caps - I hate them. Can't do this, can't do that, got to wait until such and such to do so and so. Why? Why give us freedom then take it away? If I'm good enough to get to the place where the quest begins then give me the quest when I get there! If I'm not good enough to finish it, let me fail. And if if I do finish a quest, give me what you promised! If you said I'd get Azoth then give me Azoth, don't flush it down the drain because I'm "At My Azoth Cap". Hold it in escrow if you must but I earned that blue stuff! Give it me!

• Counters That Don't Clear - Remember how much I liked those counters? And the tracking? I know I didn't mention it then but I also love all the quest indicators that let me know what's where and how far and how many and all the good stuff like that. And just like I loved the big gathering nodes you can see from far away, I love how quest objectives glow bright blue so you can't miss them. Only why don't they stop? When I've put poison in five barrels, why do all the other barrellight up? Can you not code it so they switch off when my quest counter hits cap? I mean, you like caps, right?

• Sprint, Lack Of - I said nice things about the distances. I said nice things about how mobs attack and chase. I'd say nicer things still if you'd just let me kick away and run for a while. I'd love to be able to gain some distance on those wolves rather than have them snapping at my heels. I'd like to be able to jog a bit faster on the slow stretches, make up a few seconds here and there. I can't remember the last mmorpg I played that had absolutely no means of increasing run speed at all. I keep thinking maybe there's something and I've missed it. If there is, someone please tell me.

• Too Much Of A Good Thing - Inventory space is generous and the ways to make it stretch are ingenious and satisfying but it would be better yet if less stuff dropped. Yes, I know, we all like a good drop but this is Guild Wars 2 all over again and that's a loot model no-one needs to copy. I don't need to come back laden down with magic weapons and armor from every last little trip. I get that all we're meant to do with most of them is salvage them for parts but if that's all they're good for then why not just have the mobs drop repair parts in the first place? Sometimes less really is more, y'know.

And that's about all I had written down. Guess I'd better stop and go play some more until I think of something else.

That's my excuse and it's the only one I've got. It'll just have to do.

A Crow Will Remember Your Face : EQ2

This afternoon I finished A Stitch in Time, the Signature Tradeskill questline from Planes of Prophecy. The entire affair ended up being easier, shorter and more enjoyable than I had expected. I didn't time it but I'd estimate it took me somewhere between six and eight hours, all told. The story made just a tad more sense than the Adventure line, Legacy of Power. I thought the finale was a little more dramatic and scary, even though it didn't involve any combat - or indeed risk.

Speaking as we were of difficulty, it seems to me that whoever worked on the crafting questline took a deal of trouble to make sure it would feel solid, satisfying and sufficiently challenging. At the same time there was a clear and welcome understanding that those who invest the most time in tradeskills aren't necessarily the most digitally dextrous of players, ironic though that may be.

One good example of the care that had obviously been taken to make sure things remained inclusive was the way the quest offered a choice between either jumping across chasms or crafting a device to bridge them. Since it was clear that jumping was going to be faster I tried that first and found that, at least to someone used to GW2's jumping puzzles, the leaps were very easy indeed.

Roll out the red carpet.

What's more, the first chasm had a fall of a mere few feet and a teleport device where you landed to send you back for another go. What happened if you fell after that I can't say because I was as sure-footed as a cat (hem, hem...) but I'm sure there would have been no major penalty beyond a few dings in your armor and a slight delay as you re-oriented yourself back at the start of the zone.

When the final "battle" arrived it had all the chaos and drama of a big set-piece combat event but none of the danger. Even so, I found the whole experience of being yelled at by thirty foot tall gods while their ten foot tall minions barged me out of the way and bounced me from hither to yon quite exciting enough, thank you!

As I mentioned in another post, I have found the interactions between my character and the gods that he's grown up either worshipping, fearing or trying to pretend aren't real, to be surprisngly affecting. I only found out Ulkoruuk existed a week ago but I was still sufficiently impressed that when he appeared I found myself exclaiming out loud "Wow, that's Ulkoruuk!".

Yes, I know who that is. It's you I'm not so sure about.

Also I found out Ulkoruuk's not a him. He's a her. The Lady of Insurrection in fact. Saryrn, Mistress of Torment, also showed up to send a shiver down my spine. I already knew her name and gender. I remember her from EverQuest, or, more specificaly, I remember her ravens. I met them in Plane of Torment, one of the handful of second tier Planes I saw when the original PoP expansion was current. They were the first creatures ever to cast silence on my cleric, which was something many groups he was in probably wished they could do.

As for Innoruuk himself, I've been scared of him for twenty years, nigh on, so I really didn't need any of his progeny telling me what a reckless fool I was for bringing him back. Speaking directly to him after I'd restored him to something like his full pomp was one of the creepiest and most disturbing things I've ever done in an MMORPG.

All told, the whole thing did the number on me that it was meant to do. I certainly feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of this expansion and then some.

Will it now? We'll see about that.

Of course there's plenty more to do - mostly a lot of grinding to upgrade gear, combat arts, ascension spells and so on. If EQ2 was my main MMO, getting everything up to standard would most likely keep me occupied until the next expansion arrives.

It isn't, though, so I'll just pick away at things here and there until November. I considered getting an Alchemist up to 110 to make Expert CAs for my Berserker but then I checked the cost of buying them from the broker as against the value of the rares it takes to make them and decided I might as well buy some instead and save myself weeks of effort. So I did.

More player-controlled difficulty there, when you think about it. That's one of the pros of having a balanced and/or stable economy in an MMO. You can divert your effort to things you enjoy and buy your way out of things you don't. Although since I enjoy crafting I'm not sure that logic entirely holds in this case, other than recognizing it's definitely possible to have too much of a quite pleasant thing.

You've heard the expression "A cat can look at a king?" Well this is like that. Only more so.

Now I just have to take my Inquisitor through the rest of the Adventure line and my Warlock/Sage through both and I really will be done. I might, at a push, take my Necro through the Adventure stuff as well, if only to get the extra XP bonus for the account but I think that might be a few repeatable faction quests too far.

With the last one largely behind me, I'm looking forward to some news about this year's expansion, especially since we've had it confirmed already there's going to be one. Druzzil Ro dropped a few ominous hints about the ramifications of what we've done so I'm betting it's going to involve Innoruuk in some fashion.

I just hope he remembers who put him where he is today. Then again, come to think of it, maybe I'm better off if he doesn't...

To Be Continued : EQ2

Somehow, I managed to post about finishing the second chapter of EQ2's most recent tradeskill signature quest, A Stitch in Time, then look forward to doing the third and fourth parts to finish it up, all the while remaining blissfully unaware that it is, in point of fact, a five-part questline. Given that a) I read the walkthroughs for all five parts back when it released and b) I had the wiki page open in front of me as I was both doing the quest and writing the post, it suggests either an extreme lack of attention or the onset of some form of age-related mental impairment.

I didn't even realize my mistake as I was working through parts three and four this morning. It took me around three hours and the time positively flew. The quests are perfectly judged for non-combat, managing to retain interest and maintain tension throughout, offering plenty of variety, yet never requiring a crafter to behave out of character.

The dialog is sometimes a little peculiar. EQ2 quest writing has always had a particular tone that sits somewhere between polite formality and casual conversation, not always comfortably. Of late, that balance has tipped slightly towards the informal, as though the current writer is younger and possibly less well-versed in the conservative social etiquette of the 1950s, which has always seemed to me to be Norrath's spiritual touchstone.

No combat doesn't mean no action.

There was even a Facebook joke at one point, albeit indirect. That was unsettling. Mostly, though, the questline was able to pull off that exceptionally difficult sleight of hand whereby your character is able to converse with Gods on something close to equal terms without the whole thing descending into bathos or self-parody.

It's a very difficult trick to master. Most MMO writers struggle with it. I particularly notice the way it paramountly fails to work in GW2, where game design credits each character with every Living Story benchmark anyone on the account has ever hit. For someone who sees all the characters as indiiduals it's jarring to hear every one of them referred to as "Commander" or "Boss" or greeted as old friends by NPCs they're meeting for the first time.

Even though I'm no fan of the "Player Character as Hero" trope, in EQ2 I find the conceit a lot easier to swallow. Because I have played through every stage of the seemingly never-ending soap opera that passes for a narrative throughline on the same character it seems quite reasonable when people I worked with to stave off the apocalypse-before-last credit me with sufficent initiative to make myself useful saving the world one more time. And that they remember my name.

Just one of the Gods.

What's more, because I've been playing versions of EverQuest since the turn of the century, I remember a lot of their names, too. And who they are and why I should be fond or afraid of them. When the plot suggests I might have to bring Inoruuk, the God of Hate, back from whatever well-deserved deific hell his daughter Lanys T'Vyl sent him to in a previous instalment, I don't need Varig Ro to tell me what a bad idea it is. I already know.

In GW2, when Palawa Joko returns from wherever he's been, it doesn't have anything like the same effect. I don't have either the recognition or the feels to support the impact the writers expect. I played some original Guild Wars but not nearly enough for it to matter. Ironically, because I was there for her inception, lived through her rise, her reign of terror and her fall, just the mention of Scarlet Briar's name, let alone any slight hint that she might be coming back, pushes all my buttons.

I'm not a strong supporter of narrative or story for MMORPGs. I'm not opposed to it; it can have a place, but I tend to find it presents more problems than solutions. Lore, however, I believe to be absolutely crucial.

I confess I didn't quite follow this part. I did a lot of work to bring this Phoenix to life and then I just left without intereacting with it in any way. Maybe I missed something...

Where the boundary lies between them is uncertain. The tradeskill quest I'm doing does have a story but it's mostly fluff. Supposedly I'm crafting some device to prevent one of Meldrath's malfuctioning devices having some kind of apocalyptic effect on Norrath. I can't say I've been paying attention. I know it doesn't matter because nothing is going to happen to Norrath even if I never finish the quest.

What I have been paying full attention to is the way the quest elaborates on and opens up the relationships between various members of the Norrathian pantheon. To learn that Varrig Ro has carried a lifelong torch for Errollisi Marr, or that there's an even less desirable contender for the Throne of Hate, going by the even less pronounceable name of Ullkorruuk, adds far more to my appreciation for and understanding of the game than any plotline could hope to do.

I'm not alone in finding the lore far more appealing than the plot. Wilhelmina, the longsuffering European equivalent of Niami Denmother, who was once almost driven from the game by Smed's odious deal with PSS1 but who's now, thankfully, restored to her rightful domain, was sufficiently involved to record the entire dialog for the whole questline.

They also serve who only hide in corners until it's safe then run out and scrape up mephit vomit.

 Wilhelmina's website is in French but the dialogue is available in the English version at EQ2Traders and is well worth a read for anyone interested in the study of Norrathian comparative religion. Even for anyone who's done the questline itself, it's useful to be able to read it all back at lesiure. Some of those conversations took place in circumstances where it may not have been easy to concentrate on the nuance!

It was only as I approached the end of Part 4 that I began to wonder if I'd missed something. It was starting to feel very much like that moment near the end of a book when you realise what you're reading must not be a standalone novel after all but the first volume of a trilogy. Having constructed all my various devices, eavesdropped on the Mistresses of Hate, located Innoruuk's earthly vessel and prevailed on Varrig Ro to change his mind, it was apparent that  I was at least a chapter short of a denoument, and so it proved.

I had been hoping - expecting even - to finish the Stitch in Time questline today but three hours is about my outer limit these days. A closer reading of the wiki revealed that there was indeed a fifth chapter. What's more it looked substantial, as a climax should be. I decided to leave it for another day.

I'm looking forward to coming back to it later in the week, suitably refreshed. The rewards are fantastic but best of all, if the first four parts are anything to go by, it's going to be tremendous fun.

I Know My Way Down The Side Streets Now : GW2

I wasn't all that impressed with GW2's Living World Season Three and after Path of Fire's somewhat perfunctory narrative I'm not building my hopes up for Season Four either. The best thing I can say about the current central storyline is that at least the fighting's not as painful as it used to be.

That doesn't mean that I'm not invested in the storyline or the characters. It's a soap opera. I know it's rubbish but I still want to know what happens next.

I don't really care all that much about the ultimate fate of Tyria, but I do want to know if Jory and Kas are going to continue on their downward spiral towards some kind of abusive, dysfunctional personal hell. I want to find out whether Braham's ever going to grow up and, more than anything, I want to know whether Zoja's going to recover.

Forget Gods and Dragons. This is my GW2. I know those people. I've spent five years with them. I mourn and miss the ones who've gone. Well, some.

I miss Scarlet. When she appeared as a Memory in The Domain of the Lost it was like unexpectedly meeting an old friend. One you'd thought had died.

I miss her enough to imagine things. Enough to imagine that maybe she might not be dead after all. It's not such a stretch. As I expounded at length a while back, no-one ever really dies in Tyria. Why should Scarlet be the exception?

My fantasy didn't come from nothing. Not this time. There's something mysterious afoot.

For some while now GW2's best storytelling has been happening in the shadows, on the sidelines, left of center, off of the strip. The apologetically labelled "Side Stories" have given us more to chew on than the main course, at least if you're feasting on speculation and puzzlement. I still don't know what my Krait Oil's good for but I'm hanging on to it.

It was disappointing not to find one of the single line throwaway hints buried in the last Update Notes but it transpires that there are some stories too obscure even for that. It was by sheer chance, as I was idly flipping through the forums, that I came across this.

Naturally I dropped everything to investigate. First I went to Godlost Swamp and ran around. Didn't find anything new although I did have a number of post-ironic conversations with various god-botherers who don't seem to have updated their theology since launch day.

Tapping out in the swamp I waypointed to Lornar's Pass and flew my griffon down to Reaver's Gate. I had more luck there. The corpse was cold (and bald) but the trail was still warm.

I went through the dead priest's pockets and found a journal. Isn't there always a journal? In the interests of science and to scratch that itch I opened it.

A red lady, speaking in dreams, seeking allies...could that be...? Well, doesn't it fit the pattern? Wasn't she always about the alliances?

I knelt to Grenth's statue, which still seems able to dispense buffs even though Grenth himself has taken the last train to the coast. With some prompting from the forums I took several screenshots in which you can faintly see the shapes of New Krytan text but what it means or whether it's new I have no idea.

The forums also told me that what I wanted in Godslost I could only find when the Shadow Behemoth makes his two-hourly showing. He was near due so I ported back there and waited. And it might have been a long wait if I hadn't gone and done the pres myself - no-one else was bothering.

When he did arrive he brought with him several "Mysterious Skeletons". They weren't attackable. They just stood there, surrounded by black fuzz like fungus on a log. They are indisputably new but their inscrutability gives nothing away.

The Behemoth eventually fell. I was ready for what came next but had I not been pre-warned I doubt I'd have spotted it. A small, orange-red "Mysterious Spirit" spawned and shot off across the swamp. I gave chase, wildly snapping my camera in its general direction until it came to a halt beside another dead body.

There's a necromancer who lives in a hut nearby so I went to ask him if he knew anything. He did, a little. More necromancy. Something about a call. It didn't help much.

For now that seems to be all there is but you can feel it in the wind. Something's coming.

I just hope it's Her.

Punishment of Luxury: GW2

There are five new overland maps in GW2's second expansion, Plane of Fire. All of them are visually stunning but the most breathtaking of them all is both furthest in and farthest out - Domain of Vabbi.

Vabbi is part of the empire of Palawa Joko, an undead lich (is there any other kind?) of immense power. Joko has a long and convoluted history, none of which means much to me, but his grandiose and absurd posturings, coupled with a predilection for grim and grisly sadism, are all too familiar from any number of real-world analogues.

It would be hard not to notice just how deeply the whole expansion draws from recent real-world history but Vabbi hammers the point home with a determined lack of subtlety, just in case you were missing it. I'm enjoying that aspect of PoF a lot although I'm not sure how well the liberal-leaning politics will sit with everyone.

I particularly liked the lengthy briefing on the current political situation in Vabbi given immediately on entering the map by Agent Hamma of the Order of Shadows. She hails you and then lectures you at some length on the complexities of handling an indigenous population under the indoctrinating influence of a dictator. She places great emphasis on the damage you could do if you just charge in and attempt to "fix" things by force of arms, reminding you that reconstruction is every bit as important as regime change.

As you stand there, taking it on the chin, you may hear the echoing, unnatural voice of the Awakened Affirmation System. This Orwellian device regularly booms out across the landscape to exhort and encourage both the living and the dead, adding considerable weight to Agent Hamma's words. It's chilling and amusing all at once, typical of the black humor that runs through all of Vabbi and much of Path of Fire itself.

The wiki entry for Vabbi tells us that "the province boasted ornate and lavish architecture, fashion and decor in its settled areas before Palawa Joko's return". It still does - and then some. ArenaNet's superlative art department evidently pay no heed to the maxim "less is more". For them it seems more can never be enough.

There is a small problem with this approach, or there is for me, at least. My sense of wonder can only respond so many times to this kind of over-stimulation before the safety switches begin to trip. After a while one glorious sight begins to run into another in the kind of art-gallery burnout often seen in crowds hurrying past each masterpiece to get to the next.

As it happens, Vabbi does have an actual art gallery. I stumbled across it entirely by accident while I was wandering through the confusing halls of the Vehtendi Academy. The Academy is where cadets train for service in Joko's living administration (as opposed to his undead one, The Awakened, where no doubt they will go on to serve in due course, for a very great deal longer and without any further need for pay or benefits).

The dialog between cadets is extensive and often amusing, as it is throughout the new expansion. This aspect of the original game - lengthy and well-written exchanges between background NPCs that add depth and texture to the world rather than further a particular storyline - was sadly lacking in Heart of Thorns but here it's back in full force.

There's an opportunity to talk to some of the cadets about the history they're being taught. Unsurprisingly it bears little relation to reality but good luck trying to convince the heavily indoctrinated faithful otherwise.

In a way you can hardly blame them for laughing at you when you try to explain that Palawa Joko did not defeat Zhaitan or Mordremoth in single combat. Coming from a midget in a playsuit, the claim that you and your friends did both of those things is more likely to inspire a pat on the head and a discreet call for nursie than any change of world-view.

There are other travelers around who might back you up but they have troubles of their own. I was standing staring up at a massive painting in the gallery when I was unexpectedly joined by Explorer Mora.  She began to explain the context of the painting we were looking at, to my considerable interest, but she made the mistake of using her lecture-hall voice.

Apparently, loudly and openly questioning the authenticity of Palawa Joko's many achievements, even if merely displayed in oils, attracts the attention of the Awakened. Very unfavorably so. When Mora deciphered the meaning of the painting we were admiring to be Joko Giving The Gift Of Magic To The World it was definitely unwise of her to be so openly skeptical.

Hard though I tried, I was unable to keep her alive through the relentless assault by the guardians of the gallery that followed. I mopped the remainder of their forces up afterwards but it was too late for the rest of the tour to continue. Mora was gone.

As a dynamic event it was perhaps a tad overtuned, shall we say, but conceptually it shone. I would very much like to hear Mora's interpretations of the rest of the paintings and I fully intend to try again. I fear, though, that it may take a fully-armed tour group to keep her upright long enough to get round them all. Maybe I could recruit a cadre of sufficiently militant art-lovers via LFG.

If not, then onward: Vabbi is stuffed with wonders. There's the Garden of Sebhorin, where effete nobles engage in louche and lubricious repartee even as Kralkatorrik's Branded stalk the upper terraces. I spent a long time wandering the halls, admiring the fountains and killing the intruders. Mostly I was looking for the waypoint. Never found it.

I only passed by the great Kodash Bazaar at a distance but I strolled around the huge Necropolis for some time. The Awakened there seem happy in their work. I watched a mummy sorting organs for the canopic jars and listened to him cheerfully muttering to himself.

You don't often hear the undead being so cheerily, pragmatically positive about, well, anything. Certainly neither the Risen of Orr nor Ascalon's Ghosts ever sound like they're having much fun. Watching the mummies, happy in their work, you can see why the living might aspire to an eternal afterlife as part of Palawa Joko's undead civil service.

There's still a great chunk in the middle of the map I haven't opened yet. More wonders await. The question is, how many more can I take?

Oh go on, then. Just a little one.