Here Come The Pandas

It was more than four years ago that the first Days of Summer event arrived in EverQuest II. As I said back then, "It arrived without much of a fanfare" but the seemingly fluffy, inconsequential little quest series quickly became one of the cornerstones of the EQII year.  

There's a very simple explanation for that: the rewards are off the scale compared to any other event or questline anywhere close to being as accessible or easy to complete. All you have to do to get started is take a portal to a 100% guaranteed safe zone, chat to a panda and find out what you have to go collect or look at this week. 

Then you use the Fast Travel map or the spires or the bells to go to the relevant zone and fly to the right part of the map using the description in the quest. It usually includes the name of a point of interest which you can see on the map, assuming you're using the EQ2 Maps add-on, which virtually all regular players would be. Once there, you wander around looking for whatever it is you need to click on, which will almost always be glowing or sparkling or obvious in some way.

Most of the quests ask you to do that three times, sometimes in the same zone, sometimes in different zones. If you were having any difficulty at all EQ2 Traders always has the exact location in a walkthrough, including the locs, which you can copy and paste into the game to get a flashing map marker and a glowing trail to lead you right there.

Panda quests are about as foolproof as it's possible to make them. There's a new one each week for the duration of the event, which is always nine weeks long. In this case the nine weeks started yesterday and run until 23rd November. 

All the quests remain in game permanently so there's no rush. You could do like I do with TV shows if you want and wait 'til they're all available before bingeing on the lot. Indeed, very much like a long-running TV show, if you're just discovering it now you'll need to go back to the beginning and start there. You can't do the various annual quest sets out of sequence but you only have to do them once per account for all your character to reap the rewards.

When I say "reap" I really mean "shop." Every reward from the past four years plus this year's lot are on an undersized panda called Pas Yu, also known, appropriately, as "Carrier of Things".

Five years of assorted rewards can be hell to sift through so to save time I'll mention that this year's all have "Hua" somewhere in the name. Just search for that.

As I said, these are really very good rewards indeed. Not for raiders or Heroic dungeoneers perhaps, although there are all kinds of non-progression goodies like house items, prestige houses and cosmetics sprinkled in there, but for solo players and casuals all of all stripes. 

The question isn't why is the Hua such a slight upgrade, it's why am I wearing such low Resolve pieces in the first place?

 

The armor and weapons, of which there are all types for all classes, are only small improvements over the free stuff from last year's expansion and they'll almost certainly be rendered redundant by the freebies in the starter box from Visons of Vetrovia, but that's the nature of a gear progression based game. For now, they'll do a job for anyone who needs to play catch-up.

I spent some time last night looking through them and comparing stats. Even on my Berserker, my best-equipped character, there are a few Hua pieces I'll use, although mostly that's because I fell off the EQII wagon back at the start of the summer and stopped working on him before he was done.

As for my half-dozen other max levels, all of them could benefit hugely from the Hua gear. On the other hand, they aren't likely to get much playtime before the next expansion drops, so whether it's worth the bother is another question. I could probably stand to wait until then before taking the whole crew to wherever the expansion begins and fitting them all out in whatever's in the now-inevitable box on the floor next to the first questgiver.

This, however, is something I very much need.
I can't craft green Adorns and I've had
absolutely no luck getting any as drops for years.

Then there are the Adornments. Adornments are extremely important in EQII. Without the right sets you are going to have a very rough time of it in any at-level content. My Berserker is also a maxed-out Adorner with nearly all the recipes but not all Adorns are craftable and anyway it's a lot of time, effort and expense to make adorns for everyone. I'd rather use the ones the pandas hand out wherever possible.

The drawback is taking them in and out. It's easy to do but it takes a while, de-adorning and re-adorning an entire suit of armor plus accessories. I'm not sure I want to go through all that effort over the next nine weeks only to find that the VoV starter gear comes with better Adorns already fitted.

I'm thinking since I'm unlikely to be playing anyone other than my Berserker and my Necro before then I might just kit those two out and leave the rest until the expansion arrives. Either way, it's hardly a pressing issue right now.

There'd be no question of my not doing the panda quests even if I didn't want any of the gear. They're some of the most enjoyable, relaxing quests in the game. I'd do them if the only rewards were a smile and a thank-you from the pandas themselves. 

There are other reasons, too. This year, like every year, there are some very appealing non-combat choices. I have my eye on the captain's hat and the 44-slot backpack that displays as a papoose with two panda cubs. There's also an ant ground mount I want. I don't think we've ever been able to ride ants before.

I like the way the whole thing has morphed from a Summer seasonal to a quasi-holiday centered on panda culture. Moving it into the autumn and renaming it Panda Panda Panda seems like a good move. I'd be up for it turning into a full holiday one day. We could do with something on the calendar between Tinkerfest and Nights of Dead.

That's about all I have to say. It's a simple event but a very good one. It shows you don't have to over-elaborate to give people something they'll both look forward to and appreciate. All you need to do is make it fun and worthwhile.

You wouldn't think it was that hard, would you?

Twenty Something

I had been planning for my panda Monk to finish her trip to the free trial cap of Level 20 in Dun Morogh but somehow she ended up in Goldshire instead. Thinking ahead to Classic, where my Dwarf Hunter will most definitely be starting in the snows around Ironforge, I figured it might be better to avoid doing the same content twice in such a short time so I stayed where I was.

Wilhelm has been talking about how very much he just wants to get on with Classic already. I'm not quite that gung ho but I am looking forward to it. So, it appears, are lots of people, if what I saw in Goldshire and Westfall are any indication.

I wasn't too surprised to find the area around the Goldshire Inn teeming with ne'er-do-wells talking trash, riding their culturally inappropriate mounts and dueling. That's how it mostly is in the armpit of the WoW universe.

What set me aback was the sheer number of players out questing and levelling up. Everywhere I went, every quest I took on, I was shoulder to shoulder with two or three other characters, sometimes more. There were crowds at every quest hub and player characters travelling in all directions.

I know this is one of the most popular starter areas in the game but I've played through it a couple of times in recent years on trial characters and I can't recall seeing it like this. I wonder if people are giving themselves a little pre-Classic reminder of what things are like now so they can better appreciate the change. Or maybe the general buzz has just raised all boats and even non-Classic fans are out for a little nostalgia. Then again, maybe it's always this busy now Blizzard has tweaked servers so they come in clusters.

Whatever the reason I was able to appreciate some of the changes that have come to the game unnoticed by me. I hadn't realised that WoW now has open kill-and quest-sharing  like Guild Wars 2, for a start.

So long as I put in a hit or two on a mob someone else was fighting I got full credit and loot, including any quest items. That made a huge difference to the community feel, turning much of what I was doing into co-operation not competition.

Then there were the quest rewards. I had two green rewards upgrade themselves to blue when I selected them. I don't remember that feature but it's very welcome.

I also ran into several wandering vendors. I do remember these but there seemed to be a lot more of them. One was a boy selling kittens. I bought myself one. A very nice little addition to my pet collection.

As for the supposed heart of the game, combat, it was really quite challenging at times back in the Pandaren starting area but it has become very much easier. Mostly, I think, as a function of the hugely improved gear I'm now wearing. For a game like modern WoW, so famously unchallenging at low levels, the design of racial starter areas seems out of step.

My monk went fifteen levels with virtually no quest rewards above Common. Her weapons hit like wet noodles and her armor didn't seem to do a lot to protect her. She had hardly any fighting abilities and the mobs were in most cases as powerful or more so than her plus they came in packs.

How that makes for a suitable introduction to the game for new players beats me. It seems almost intended to put them off.

It's going to be interesting to see how hard the first few levels seem in Classic compared to that. I definitely don't remember dying as much when I levelled up to fifteen in Wrath of the Lich King.

From the moment of arrival in Goldshire, however, the famous casual-friendly pace has been very much the norm, apart from a couple of oddities. One such occurred when I was working my way, yet again, through the mystery of the Furlbrow murders.

I was sent to get clues from Murlocs and Gnolls. The gnolls gave their clue up in a handful of kills but I was the best part of half an hour prying one out of the dead claws of a murloc. I had to wait on several full respawns of the little village, which took what seemed like five minutes each time.

Other people were also trying for the clues. Things got very competetive for a while, at least for me, because kill-sharing is quite hard to achieve when you have no ranged attack whatsoever. All in all it felt like an oddly nostalgic episode but not in a particularly good way.

After an hour or two, hoovering up every quest I saw, which was many, I finally dinged twenty on the hand-in for a mission for SI:7. That puts a full stop to the Monk's journey for now. I can still play her, make money, get drops, complete quests and so on but her experience bar will stay firmly closed.

It's been a very nice run. Now I have to think about subbing. With clear pressure on the announced servers as signified by the rush to reserve names I might get my credit card out a little earlier than I planned. That way, I could make a character for Classic and also carry on with my Monk until it starts.

Going to have to give that some thought.

Good Things Come: EQ2, GW2, City of Steam

I'm all for deferred gratification but sometimes you can not have too much of a good thing. What with all the the kerfuffle over the Guild Wars 2 pre-purchase I was kind of expecting something more from ArenaNet than tumbleweed rolling past. It seems lax marketing not to have hammered home the advisability of pre-purchase with at least the announcement of a date for a first beta weekend, if not an actual schedule or, god forbid, a release date.

Ravious at Kill Ten Rats says "ArenaNet promises that there will be a Beta Weekend Event at the end of April" in his recent piece (which I linked last time ). He doesn't provide a source for that but he was in the Press Beta so maybe he has seen a schedule. Posters on the Guild Wars 2 Guru forums also seem to take it as read that if there's no beta this weekend there certainly will be next. I have no idea where they are getting any of this from.

Where it all began...

Eager though I am to point my mouse at a GW2 icon I'm happy enough to wait until next weekend because this week is all about the dragons. As I write this, EQ2's servers are all down in preparation for GU63, the Skyshrine update. Kaozz isn't best pleased  about SOE's new Must Be This High To Ride rule, which arguably takes the Theme Park allegory a bit too literally. There's a 280AA gate to pass before Level 90s can begin earning xp towards 91 and adding Prestige Points (not Prestige Classes, which turned out to be a slip of the tongue by now-you-see-her, now-you-don't newish EQ2 Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale).

As far as I know (and I have done a modicum of fact-checking up to and including reading some stuff here and there and getting on a Griffin on Test to fly to the first quest hub in Withering Lands) current 90s can access all the new content regardless of how many AAs they don't have. Crafters, of course, don't need any AAs at all to get their two extra levels. Slackers.

I've been slavering for this update for weeks. I hate the phrase "I can't wait" because, well clearly I not only can but will. It's not like I have a time-machine (and if I did I seriously doubt I'd be using it to skip ahead to an EQ2 update, but as usual I digress). Not only do we get a new overland zone to explore and one of my favorite Everquest zones, Skyshrine, to hang out in but we're promised solo/duo versions of group dungeons, something I would very much like to encourage in all MMOs.

And most importantly of all, we get a huge gear upgrade. Yep, we just had one but that was almost a year ago. Nine months then... The solo quest rewards from Withering Lands, obtainable and useable at 90, look to be on a par with current near-top-end raid gear. Welfare epics FTW ! Even without the extra two levels that's going to open up a whole swathe of older content for current non-raiders with max-level characters. Assuming they like to do content the rewards for which are inferior to what they already have, of course. I do, but I'm funny that way.

You want it warmed up, luv?

Another thing I've been waiting on is the City of Steam alpha. No hint yet when it might appear but there have been some very intriguing additions to the website. If you're the sort that loves to absorb lore and background history for worlds that not only don't exist but don't don't exist yet, the COS team is beginning to put some casing over the cogs in the World section, but the part that caught my attention was this on housing.

I didn't even realize City of Steam was going to have housing, so the news that it won't be fully implemented in Alpha didn't come as a crushing disappointment for me. More "Wow! There's housing?!" They hardly need to apologize for not having it fully implemented in Alpha, but then I'm not convinced Mechanist Games know what an alpha test is. I went on at some length  about how impressed I was with their "Sneak Peak" and their version of alpha sounds a lot more like a fairly advanced beta to me. I wish they'd open it up and build it around us rather than try to get it just-so at this stage.

And finally there's that beta with pandas. What's that one called again? Oh yes, Eligium. I've downloaded it twice and installed it several times on various drives and it's never worked. I got as far as patching it last night, which was a first, but my virus checker was convinced it was malware. Getting past that, the client finally attempted to open the game, only to crash repeatedly on the loading screen with a memory error.

Some things are worth waiting for and some aren't. I'll have those 3GB back now, thanks Eligium. I'll be needing them in a week or two when that beta weekend comes around.

This Is What I Think Of When I Think Of Wow: WoW

 This.

I started replying to Brian over at Psychochild's Blog and my reply grew so long I thought I'd move it over here. He's mulling over the various reveals from Blizzcon and it got me thinking about my own non-relationship with Blizzard.

I find the whole Blizzard cult a bit strange. I'd been playing MMOs for several years before I ever even heard the name and when I did it was in the context of people in Everquest chat channels talking very disparagingly about Diablo, which seemed to be some game that thought it was an MMO but really wasn't.

Ski Lift Other Side

I picked up the impression that it was very much a second-rate entertainment compared to EQ or DAOC and largely forgot about it. I have only the vaguest memories of hearing about WoW before it was released. Again, I'd never even heard of Warcraft, let alone played it. Only a couple of people in my then quite extensive circle of EQ guildmates and channel buddies had any interest in it. It barely got mentioned. All the talk was about EQ2.

I did the EQ2 beta, played there from launch for six months and pretty much didn't notice WoW was even happening. It was only when EQ2 was in freefall and almost everyone I knew had given up on it that I began to hear that some of the people who'd left had gone to try this new MMO, World of Warcraft. I didn't, though. I went back to Everquest for another year.

Never leave a goblin in charge of your boat

After a while it became impossible not to be aware of WoW, even if you didn't play MMOs. I picked up a lot of background information on Blizzard and the games they'd made because now all of that was constantly referenced whenever people discussed MMOs. I began to understand the significance of their move into the genre in a way I hadn't done at the time. But I still had no desire to play any of their games.

It wasn't until 2009 that Mrs Bhagpuss and I finally downloaded the trial and stepped out into Azeroth. We'd run through just about every other MMO we could think of and were in a lull. WoW was pretty much the last AAA MMO we hadn't tried at that point and frankly we weren't expecting much.

So was a very pleasant surprise to discover that we liked WoW a lot. Great art direction, a big, interesting explorable world, amusing characters, smooth, enjoyable gameplay. We had fun for three or four months, and then we were done. Neither of us ever reached the level cap. Burning Crusade and WotLK content wasn't a patch on Vanilla content and the prospect of end-game was utterly unappealing. Still, a very nice MMO while it lasted.

Took me the best part of a week to get this shot!

I guess I still don't really know much about the Blizzard Universe even now. I'm quite surprised by the fuss these pandas have caused. Panda monks are hardly a new concept, after all. You don't even have to go outside the genre to find them; EQ2's had pandas for a couple of years now, although not as a playable race. I don't like pandas much. Not the real ones in their evolutionary dead-end nor imaginary ones in Chinese hats. They are pretty dull animals and the fictional versions are generally dull too, but I can't see why they'd send anyone into such a lather he'd delete all his characters and put the video on YouTube.

Why Pandas should be any more a jump the shark moment than space goats mystifies me. When I first played WoW the single weirdest part were the Tauren. Bipedal dairy cows as a playable race? Really? But I didn't grow up with the lore. I guess it's like boiling a frog except this time someone at Blizard turned the heat up just that bit too fast and some of the frogs jumped out of the pot.

Even now that I've played WoW and have a clearer idea how deeply enmeshed in PC gaming culture Blizzard's worlds are, I still don't have that vital emotional connection. I'm curious to see Titan, of course. Anyone interested in MMOs would have to be. But I'm more interested in the ripples in the pond after Blizzard tosses in a boulder than I am in the boulder itself.

And I won't be playing Diablo III.