Onward And Upward. Or At Least Onward...

EverQuest II's big mid-year update, Myths and Monoliths, went live earlier this week. I'm late reporting on it because I haven't been playing or paying attention to EQII lately. Truth be told, since Noah's Heart launched at the end of last month, I haven't played anything else at all. I might have logged into Chimeraland once...

It's not quite as bad as it sounds. It's summer and we're enjoying, if that's the right word, a protracted spell of very dry, very sunny, very hot weather. Early morning and late evening are the only times it gets cool enough to take Beryl the dog for a stroll and the rest of the day it's too hot for me to be comfortable sitiing in my upstairs, sun-facing study. 

I do anyway, of course, because it's Blaugust and these posts don't write themselves, unlike Tipa's. I really must get on with signing up for an Open AI API so I can get GPT-3 to write my posts for me when I don't have the time.

As several people have pointed out, Blaugust is, ironically, quite a poor time to be putting in a lot of effort. There are so many posts, no-one has time to read them all, far less comment. Especially on the long ones. 

It'd be better to stick to something short and pithy. Not really in my skill set, sadly. Only wish it was. 

One thing I do have going for me in trying to keep my coverage of the Myths and Magic update taut is I haven't been able to make much progress there, meaning nothing of note to report. I could do my usual trick of going through the press release line-by-line and offering commentary on everything last smidgeon of detail I can wring some sort of spurious interest out of, but does anyone have time for that? I don't.

The update does come with a very short, unimpressive video, if you'd like to see it. Of late the PR team have been doing a great job of selling a very old, graphically unimpressive game to a modern audience but there's only so much you can do with the material you're given and Kurn's Tower is basically a big, empty shaft with very poor lighting. Anyway, here it is, for what it's worth.

I did give it a look this morning, even though I knew perfectly well I wouldn't be able to down even the first boss. After I finished the Visions of Vetrovia storyline in July, I finally got around to trying the Merchant's Den instance that was added with the big Spring update. I couldn't kill the first boss in that one so the chances of me doing any better in the tougher follow-up have to be non-existent.

Over in EVE Online, all the talk right now seems to be about progression and how the lack of a clear upgrade path abrades motivation and engagement. I very much agree we need aspirational goals in mmorpgs to keep us coming back but progression in EQII these days seems to be on fast-forward. Even when I was playing regularly, I could barely keep up but take a few weeks off and everything seems to race ahead without me.

If you look at the pace, it's staggering. I'm only considering things from a soloist's perspective but I'm pretty sure the same curve is matched by the other progression paths - Heroic I and II and Raid. My best-equipped and upgraded character can now waltz through most of the solo content from the last expansion as though he's in a starter zone. The bosses in the instances struggle even to run their scripts before he has them down.

That expansion only came out eight months ago but it's already effectively outdated. As a solo player, my current upgrade path would be through the new summer holiday content and the two post-expansion content drops but given the imminent arrival of the next expansion in just four months, why would I even want to bother?

As for Overseer, one of the catch-up mechanics that's served me well in the past, that, too, has reached the limits of its usefulness for me. I might still do some missions for the rares and for gear to transmute for adorning mats but none of the gear is an upgrade any more and I have all the recipe books I want.

Even if I didn't, the M&M update added just about all the VoV advanced craft books to the Overseer vendor so I can just go buy them. I bought the handful I was missing this morning. It cost me about 200 platinum, which is the EQII equivalent of the invisible dust particles that cling to the lint that falls to the floor when you search your pockets for loose change.

There are some new collections, which is an excellent addition to the game, but I haven't done the old collections yet. That's one reason my characters aren't as powerful as they should be. Collections stopped being fluff years ago; now they're a significant upgrade path you really can't afford to ignore, along with mounts, mercs and familiars.

It's a lot of work just running to stay still but that is what veterans want. It's a tricky balance, trying to onboard returnees and new players without pissing off the regulars, many of whom howl at the thought of allocating valuable development time to anything that doesn't make them kill stuff faster.

The first hurdle to finding out just how weak I'd become was working out where the entrance was. Someone on the forums was bemoaning the way these new versions of old dungeons don't require the same access quests we had to do both ways in the snow back in the old days but luckily the devs just want everyone in there as fast as possible so there's no truck with all that nonsense. 

The entrance is a flashing, blue portal at Camp Naradasa in Svarni Expanse, the opening zone for VoV. It's the same camp where all the repeatable questgivers hang out so people are going to find it even if they're not looking. I made my way there, zoned in, looked around, saw what seemed to be the obvious way to go, took it and zoned straight out again.

Bleh! I'd forgotten it's a tower. Just like in the old days, when the mechanic was fairly new and still considered original, you have to climb up a huge, blank wall to get the first real room. The clue is all those scratch marks where others have scrambled up before you.

I was playing my Berserker, the character who used to be my "main" until my Bruiser somehow took over earlier in the year. He's still fairly up to speed for a soloist so I thought I'd let him have a try, mostly just to see what the gap was between him and his successor.

The first trash pull felt like a boss fight. The second was touch-and-go, too. We went slowly around the room, clearing each group of skeletons carefully, just like old times. I was pleasantly surprised how well he did.  

The Berserker was in DPS mode so he didn't have his full complement of death saves to rely on. The one he is allowed in that mode fired more than once so we were up to the wire and past it. When he accidentally pulled two encounters at once it was time for the merc to fumble through his book for a rez. 

Somehow, to my surprise, we made it all the way round the room. All the skeletons were dead(er) except the Named, who'd been wandering around the whole time, paying us no attention. Since we'd come all that way, I thought we might as well give it the old Freeport Militia try - shoot him in the back then run away if he looked like he might know what he was doing.

Again, it went better than I expected. Oh, there was not the remotest chance of us winning. God, no! At one point the boss dropped to 97% health but that was the best we could manage. He had a leech he kept casting which, for once, was clearly explained in game. My Berserker did manage to joust out of it each time so the boss couldn't steal his health but unfortunately his merc wasn't so smart. That's the problem with NPCs. They can be astoundingly dim-witted.

It was plain nothing was going change. We could have been there for hours, days even. The Berserker didn't die (Much.) or even look in a great deal of danger. No doubt some new one-shot mechanic would have kicked in at 75% or 50%, if we'd been able to get there, but in the nineties it was stalemate.

So we ran away. All the way round the room until we found the hole then down in a scramble and out the same way we came in. Turns out that false entry was a dry run after all. No experience is ever wasted.

I could have left it at that but after the stand-in's sturdy performance I wanted to find out how the main act would do. Badly, is how. 

I got the Bruiser over, took him in, pulled the first trash encounter and he promptly died. The merc rezzed him and he died again. I got the encounter down on the third attempt, pulled a second and died once more. 

Seems my best-geared character is weaker on this particular content than my second-best. It's a fair comparison, too; they're both tanks in DPS stance. Odd.

I withdrew to think it over. As things stand, with my interest focused on another game and a new expansion due in four months, I can't see doing the necessary research or making the appropriate effort to get either of them into a fit state to climb that tower. I do want to see it but I'll be happy to do it later, when the tides of general progression have lifted me comfortably over the breakwater.

If I'm honest, the only reason I logged in at all was to get some background for this post, which I felt I ought to write because I always do posts on EQII updates. I'd rather have been playing - and writing about - Noah's Heart.

As I said in response to Syp's post about the secret benefit of having a gaming blog, sometimes it's not so much a benefit as a curse. I'm not really complaining, of course. I needed to get back to EQII and having a post to write was the spur I needed. I've never wanted to be all about the One Game - it's just so easy to get obsessed with something new, especially if it's really shiny.

Speaking of which, there's this, too. Where does it all end?

Return To Kurns!

I read Jenn Chan's latest Producer's Letter for EverQuest II a few days ago but for once I wasn't planning on mentioning it here. Although I do appear to have fallen into the habit of posting about them as they appear, this particular example didn't seem to have an awful lot in it that merited comment let alone analysis.

Even so, I found myself thinking about it. The fact that it didn't say much felt strangely interesting in itself. Was it because of a lack of upcoming content in the game? Were we about to enter a period of stagnation after what had seemed like a whirlwind of activity?

This morning, I went back and re-read the Letter, along with the forum thread that follows (Always a risk.) It made me realize I might have missed a few things first time around. Or maybe not "missed", exactly. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I might have, unconsciously, allowed the tone and tenor of the announcement to mislead me.

Since she took over as Head of Studio for Darkpaw following Holly "Windstalker" Longdale's sudden departure for supposedly better things at Blizzard (Better-paid, at least, I'm sure, although given the timing of the move she may well feel that's about all.) I've been very impressed with Jenn Chan's approach. She comes across as friendly, self-aware, competent and clear-sighted, all of which, from time to time, have been qualities embarassingly absent in some of her predecessors other than Holly.

If Chann has an obvious flaw it might be diffidence. Coming, as I believe she does, from a more technical background than some previous holders of the post, her style, while affable and confident, tends a little toward the practical.  

Kurn's Tower as seen in game, all spooky purple filters and fog.

She's very good at laying out what's going to happen, complete with roadmaps and bullet points, then reviewing progress as it's made but she tends not to go in for the kind of "Hey!! Look at us!! Aren't we great!?!" self-aggrandizement that marked (Or marred.) the mid-late SoE era. It was an always uncomfortable, occasionally odious attitude that reached its nadir in the cringe-inducing EQNext years, when certain public faces of the company appeared more interested in furthering their potential careers as stand-up comedians or drive-time DJs than in telling the paying customers anything worth knowing.

I find the current, low-key, informative pitch hugely more accessible, especially for an aging, niche title like EQII but as I found this time around, that can lead to a slight sense of disengagement, which probably isn't exactly what the PR department was hoping for. The news that next month's mid-year game update will include not one but two Fabled dungeons, for example, slips by almost unnoticed in a single paragraph buried in the middle of the Letter.

Fabled dungeons are remakes of existing instances, re-imagined and most importantly re-itemised for current max-level players. It sounds like a cut-price way of adding new content but in practice it's far from that, sometimes involving a new questline and new encounters as well as offering multi-tiered access where previously there was none.

August's Game Update 120, Myths and Monoliths, doesn't just come with two Fabled dungeons, either. They're two absolute classics.  

Veeshan's Peak, once the be-all and end-all of raid challenges in EverQuest, was introduced to EQII as the climax of what many still regard as the game's finest expansion, Rise of Kunark. At the time it was a X4 raid, meaning it required four full groups, meaning most people playing back then probably never set foot inside the dragons' den. 

And as it looks with the filters off. You can see why the filters got added. RoK may have a stellar rep as an expansion but it wasn't for the way it looked, that's for sure.

The Producer's Letter makes no specific mention of the intended difficulty rating for the Fabled version, leading me to believe it may well once again be intended for raiders. Such is the formidable reputation of VP, just the suggestion of converting it to an adventure fit for mere groups or - surely unthinkable - allowing people to solo the mighty dragons that live there would be more than enough to cause apoplexy among the more conservative veterans of the game, which is to say most of them.

The other upcoming Fabled dungeon, however, is almost as well-remembered and comes with no such caveats. Kurn's Tower was once one of the key dungeons in both iterations of EverQuest, for solos, duos and groups. A massive, multi-storey edifice teeming with undead, it offered hours of satisfying dungeoneering to all-comers for several years before the ever-moving level-cap rendered it irrelevant.

The Fabled version arrives in three flavors: "heroic, solo and x2". I believe that X2, in the jargon, means meant for a two-group raid rather than a duo, something which would be described, I think, as "Advanced Solo". It's hard to keep up, sometimes.

The focus from my point of view is the solo version. I would love to do Kurn's again at level although I suspect that it'll be tough. As a relatively grubby casual, it's always touch and go whether I can do new solo dungeon content on launch day and Fabled dungeons tend to be overtuned until a couple of patches later.

There's an open beta for GU120 beginning tomorrow but my days of beta-testing content I'm going to play "live" in a matter of weeks are long gone. I will keep an eye on the beta forums, though, just to see how it's all going. It's not as if I'm in a tearing hurry for new-to-me content in EQII anyway; I've yet to set foot in the big dungeon from GU119, Coffers and Coffins. I really should get on with that first, now I've finally finished the Visions of Vetrovia Signature questline that gives access to it.

Probably explains why it's so dark inside, too. I'm looking forward to seeing the revamp - the tools the art team has to work with are so much better these days.

The rest of the Producer's Letter is mostly concerned with Good Works, including a $5k pledge to the San Diego LGBT Community Center as part of Daybreak's commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and November's Extra Life event, about which we'll be told more nearer the time. It is a bit early - it's only July!

There's also mention of the next expansion, which is apparently set in "some fantastic new lands and some that have been re-imagined", which doesn't give an awful lot away since that could describe pretty much 90% of all EQII expansions. On the subject of where we might be going, Jenn Chan does close with one of her frequent (And frequently terrible.) puns - "Be sure you have all your ducks in a Ro.". A return trip to the setting of the first-ever EQII expansion, Desert of Flames? I hope so. That was a good one.

Finally, there seems to have been a little confusion over the Panda, Panda, Panda event. A player named Chienne-Guk notes in the forum thread that although the event itself is still included, the line about new quests has disappeared. Caith, a well-known dev name, pops into the thread later to clarify: "Yun Zi may be out of Quests, but will still probably offer "perilous opportunities for personal growth and reflection". Not sure exactly what that might mean but the "probably" qualifier rings alarms.

I don't know, though. Maybe it is about time Yun Zi settled back to enjoy the notoriety he's achieved among his fellow pandas as a result of all of our efforts these past few years. What with a new Overseer season and two Game Updates between expansions these days, all offering catch-up gear to casuals and returnees, plus the now-obligatory box of starter gear that comes with the expansions themselves, it's hard to see where the once-essential panda gear fits into the program. Last year I don't think I even equipped most of it before VoV made it irrelevant.

Perhaps someone's had a better idea for this year. I guess we'll find out come September. Until then, here's looking forward to my Return to Kurns! 

I can't believe they didn't call the update that.