And Relax!

This is going to be a very short post (Yes, really!) for the very simple reason there's no time left this evening to write a longer one. And the reason for that is I spent nearly six hours today playing EverQuest II.

That's probably the most I've played in a single day over the whole of the year. It wasn't exactly planned but it was a lot of fun and I wouldn't rule out doing it again sometime.

I only meant to play for an hour or two this morning. I was going to log in, run the next instance in the Renewal of Ro signature quest line, maybe finish a couple of side-quests and that was going to be all. I figured it would take an hour and a half, tops.

In the event, the instance alone took over two and a half hours. It wasn't that it was particularly long or difficult, although I did die half a dozen times, mostly through connection issues and some bad pulls. It took a long time mainly because of a particular mechanic that meant it was a bad idea to leave any trash mobs alive - and there were a lot of trash mobs.

It also turned out to be the final proper combat instance the main quest sequence, something I hadn't realised, which probably explains why it was obviously designed to take a while. I could tell I was closing in on the end of the storyline by the way some of the drops from the bosses were beginning to reach the level of some of the gear I was wearing, although nothing that dropped was an actual upgrade. 

I still had a considerable advantage, wearing mostly gear that I'd acquired from post-expansion content, but it wasn't such a great lead any more that I could just ignore all the mechanics and tank and spank every boss the way I'd done in the last couple of instances. I had a walkthrough up, of course and I read ahead on every boss but there were still a couple of surprises that caught me out.

Not so tough without your buffs, are you?

All things considered, though, I had a good time. Even though the instance ran long, I was never bored or frustrated. There were a lot of mobs to kill but individual kill times were quick. None of the boss fights were attritional. The mechanics I had to contend with were easy to follow and to execute.

Even so, by the time I finished and broke for lunch I was a little apprehensive about what might come next. If that was the penultimate - or even pre-penultimate instance, what would the finale be like? 

The bizarre but very welcome answer ------ Spoiler incoming ------- was that there were no more proper dungeons, just one instance where all I really had to do was watch Lord Nagafen having a tantrum and another where both the "boss fights" turned out to be scripted insta-kills.

So why, once I'd decided to carry on and get the thing done, did it take me another three hours and change? Because there was a lot of open-world questing to get out of the way first, that's why.  

EQII devs have always enjoyed making players play dress-up. I can't count the number of times I've had to disguise myself as an elf or an orc or, in one memorable case, a rat.

This time I had to get a whole shoping list of items to make my disguise and one of those came from the very end of another long quest chain. I spent the whole afternoon running around poisoning water supplies and barrels of fish, collecting driftwood, building a ballista... all the usual shenanigans. 

One of only a couple of on-rails flight paths. Could do with about a dozen more.

It was mostly good fun, especially since I was one- or two-shotting most mobs, but the zone in question, Sandstone Delta, like most latterday EQII zones, makes extensive use of the z-axis, making getting from anywhere to anywhere else a constant challenge. It's ironic in the extreme that every expansion now restricts the use of flying mounts until the completion of the zone storyline, when the time you really feel the need of a pair of wings is while you're doing the fricken' quests.

I got everything done and earned the right to fly in the final zone of the expansion at last. I was a little surprised that came before the end of the Signature Timeline itself but at least it made the very last couple of chapters zip by.

And yes, that does mean I have finally finished the Adventure version of the main questline from last year's expansion! Yay, me! I'm pretty sure that makes it the latest I have ever completed the Signature in an EQII expansion I bought at release. 

Leaving it this late has both positives and negatives. It's certainly easier and for me easier is almost always better. Very little slowed me down in the latter stages. I was able to rip through everything at a comfortable pace, frequently ignoring annoying mechanics and just getting on with it as I much prefer. 

That's not to say there was no challenge at all. The second half of the questline, the part I left until I was more powerful, mostly sat in that sweet spot where you know for sure you're going to win every fight but not so easily you don't still have to pay a modicum of attention. I don't think I had to attempt any boss more than twice and most went down on the first try, which is just about right for me.

Now that's what I call a promotion!

The downside, of course, is that most of the rewards and drops aren't much use. As I said, it was only at the very end that I started seeing gear as good as the weakest pieces I was wearing. More annoyingly, all of the quest rewards are No Trade so I can't even hand them down to other members of the team.

I did get a very nice Legendary Mercenary unlock as a drop, although it's a "Support" class, not the healer I need. Still, definitely worth having. Other than that it's mostly the ability to fly everywhere and the various Account-based unlocks that are worth having, along with the satisfaction of having "finished" the expansion.

Obviously, I haven't really finished it. For most players, the end of the main quest is where things begin not end, and for Renewal of Ro that's even more the case than usual. The expansion introduces a whole new set of Epic Spells for all classes. You have to have done the Signature line to start working on those and even then you first have to do another humungously long collection as well.

I had a brief look at it on the wiki and it doesn't actually look as bad as most Epics. I might give it a go sometime. Not yet a while, though.

For now I'm just going to bask in the satisfaction of having met my self-set goal in very good time; not just before the arrival of the next expansion but before it's even officially announced. Which should be any day now, I guess.

I'm ready when you are, Darkpaw!

Solid Gold Easy Action

Something I read in the patch notes for yesterday's EverQuest II update got me wondering. I don't remember any previous expansion labeling an instance in the Signature questline as anything other than "Solo" so I found the following a tad confusing:

"With their early involvement in the Signature quest, the following zones have been relabeled from [Solo] to [Signature], and no longer apply Oppressive Sands:

• Raj'Dur Plateaus: Blood and Sand
• Raj'Dur Plateaus: The Sultan's Dagger
• Buried Takish'Hiz: Terrene Threshold
• Buried Takish'Hiz: The Sacred Gift"

I infer from the mention of "Oppressive Sands" no longer being in effect that this change relates in some way to difficulty. Presumably the intent is to make the four instances easier. I didn't know what "Oppressive Sands" was until I did a bit of digging but from the name it's obviously some kind of debuff, so taking it away has to be beneficial. 

Other than that, I guess we're meant to assume that something labelled "Signature" is inherently less challenging than something labelled "Solo"? Does that track? I'm not sure it does.

The notes also mention that something has been added to Tishan's Lockbox, the stash of free catch-up gear you get with every expansion, nowadays:

"The Jubilant Familiar Infusion, Monolithic Mercenary Infusion, and Tolan's Darkwood Mount Infusion are now free from Tishan's Lockbox."

Since buffs from familiars and mounts are hugely important to player power these days and since solo players rely heavily on mercenaries, these changes once again imply a leg-up for those already struggling with the entry-level content in Renewal of Ro.

Finally, there was this:

"Removed the lore tag from many of Tishan's lockbox white adornments."

That's primarily a bug fix but it means players can now equip extra, free adornments, which is another increase in power. Taken all together. it's hard to avoid the conclusion that someone feels the new content is overtuned and needs toning down.

It wouldn't be the first time, only for once my experience has been very much the opposite. So far, I've had no significant difficulty with any of the content in the new expansion, either overland or in instances. I'm currently some way through the third instance, Buried Takish`Hiz: Terrene Threshold, having killed the first two bosses before I had to stop for lunch.

Yesterday I finished the whole of the second instance, Raj'Dur Plateaus: The Sultan's Dagger without a hitch and a few days ago I ran Raj'Dur Plateaus: Blood and Sand, which also gave me no trouble. Of course, only that last one did I do before the patch, so it's impossible for me to tell if the later instances would have given me pause without the notified nerf but the first one, which is included in the change list, I did before the patch... so make of that what you will.

Whatever, the tl:dr is that so far all the instances have been very straightforward. Several of the bosses have had some kind of script with special attacks at various points in the battle but I've just ignored them and carried on tanking and spanking with no obvious problems. Twice, my mercenary died, leaving me without outside healing and cures but still I prevailed. As yet, I haven't died once.

It probably helps that quite a few of the bosses seem to think calling for assistance is their best option. That might work on some classes but my Berserker actually thrives on chaotic battles with large numbers of opponents, thanks to the number of abilities we get that are designed for exactly that situation. The more the merrier might be his motto. Or his battlecry.

More importantly, the expansion so far has been gloriously free of those infuriating developer's fall-backs of recent years, massive power drain and invulnerability. It makes things so much more enjoyable when you can rely on your massive power pool and regenerative abilities to keep up your relentless barrage of attacks and when the mob you're fighting doesn't magically switch off all damage every couple of minutes, forcing you to go break something or click a switch somewhere, just so you can get back to the scheduled mindless violence.

Well, it makes it much more enjoyable for me, anyway. I appreciate there may be other opinions. I'm just happy it's my preferred playstyle that's getting the love for once. I'm sure it won't be for long.

In the expectation of things getting tougher ahead, I took time out from hacking and slashing to get my Alchemist working on Combat Art upgrades. I didn't play my Berserker much in Visions of Vetrovia, the previous expansion, other than to get him up to the level cap. Consequently, almost his abilities between Levels 121 and 125 were the lowest quality grade available, the free "Apprentice" versions you get automatically, when you ding.

That sounds bad but in fact he wasn't really using any of them. He had the Expert or better versions from the expansion before that, when he was favored character on the account. EQII's spell progression means that higher quality versions of lower level spells are generally better than their lower quality, higher level equivalents, at least until you leapfrog more than one level-cap cycle. 

Indeed, because I've been fairly dilligent in utilizing the free, time-gated upgrade system, some of the Berserker's favored attacks are now so far upgraded it's going to take a couple more expansions before even the crafted Expert replacements take over. It's just one example of the ferociously complex, nested, sometimes contradictory network of interlocking progression mechanics that make kitting a character out for current content in EQII such a daunting prospect.

For the moment, I feel like I'm on top of things. I'm playing a character whose armor and abilities are there or thereabouts par for the new course. I realise that most players will be breezing through fights that take me some concentration and effort but I'm winning, not losing, and that's really all that matters. 

Better yet, it's not taking me too long. None of those attritional twenty minute boss fights, so frustratingly common a few years ago. Everything seems much better-judged towards helping the solo player to have fun, which I am.

That's good because the story this time is really interesting. There's a lot of lore and flavor text and I'm reading every word with relish. One stage of a quest today asked me to read a book, which turned out to be twenty pages long, huge by in-game standards. I could just have flipped the pages to get quest credit but I read the whole thing with increasing fascination. I've always found the legend of Takis'Hiz curious and compelling so I'm happy to learn more about the history behind it.

I'm also always glad to meet old friends so it was a pleasure to re-acquaint myself with Firiona Vie. She and my Berserker have met many times before and I was delighted to find she remembered him and their greatest adventure together, the Battle of Ages End. Granted, I didn't play my part until several years after the original raid but who's counting?

Redbeard at Parallel Context was talking about power creep in (mmo)rpgs and how characters who once struggled to protect a farm from bandits can end up fighting Gods and winning. It's the kind of thing that used to worry me, too, although not so much these days. 

My change of heart is mostly due to the successful efforts of writers at ArenaNet and Daybreak in contextualizing these changes, acknowledging the events that brought them about and integrating that history into an ongoing narrative. Sometimes it's done awkwardly but the fact that it's done at all helps a lot. 

When it's done well, as it very much has been in the Renewal of Ro storyline so far, it creates a warm, pleasurable sense of belonging, something like walking down the main street of your home town and passing the time of day with people you know, at least by sight or reputation.

Whether the writers can keep it up for the whole of the expansion remains to be seen. At least, given the foundation laid by both the writers and designers, I can say I'm looking forward to finding out.

I Almost Didn't Recognise You With That Beard!

This afternoon, I made it to the first dungeon in the new EverQuest II expansion, Renewal of Ro. That makes it sound as though it was a bit of a trek but in fact the entrance was right there in the harbor. It's one of the first things that catches your eye as soon as you arrive.

I haven't been keeping an exact track of how long I've been playing since the expansion dropped. I know it probably hasn't been as much as other years. There seems to be more pressure on my time than usual right now, which seems odd, given I'm only working a couple of days a week. 

Most of what slack there might have been seems to have been taken up by Beryl and her many daily walks; more than she'd probably choose for herself if she was in charge, to be honest. We really enjoy going out with her, even if the weather has been less than amenable. I'm clocking up three hours a day, more days than not and never less than two.

Dog walking hours, that is, not EQII playing. I'd guess EQII is getting about half that. Even allowing for the difference, progress seems to have been quite sedate, which is in no way a criticism. I'm taking my time to savor the atmosphere. I have yet to step beyond the first zone, although I believe that I have now at least opened the whole map. 

It's behind you!

I made a comment in an earlier post, suggesting the embargo on flying mounts didn't particularly matter due to the relative flatness of the terrain. With more experience, I need to revise that observation. It's true that the desert itself is easy to explore on foot but the expansion so far is unusual in its inclusion of what I can only describe as a number of jumping puzzle elements. 

There's nothing to ressemble the kind of formal set-pieces seen in games like Guild Wars 2 but several quests require you to find some way up cliffs or onto the tops of mesas. EQII has a fully-fledged climbing mechanic that's been much employed since it was introduced back in the game's first expansion, Desert of Flames, but even though we've returned to that same desert seventeen years later, this time around it seems we're expected to clamber and scramble our own way to the top, not follow in the scuffed bootprints of those who climbed before us.

I've been enjoying the challenge. EQII's movement mechanics don't really have the facility for finely tuned jumps but the game does have a couple of advantages othes lack. One is a peculiar, floaty adhesiveness to vertical surfaces that allows you to move forward while sliding along walls and the other is the ability to glide almost weightlessly by use of any item with the spell effect Featherfall, found mostly, if not exclusively, on magical cloaks.

If this was Noah's Heart I'd use my grappling hook.

In that fashion, I've so far been able to reach everything and go everywhere I've been asked. This afternoon I spent an enjoyable twenty miutes figuring out a workable glide path to get to a quest item on top of an otherwise inaccessable rock formation. I imagine some players find it irritating (A few comments in General chat have certainly suggested it.) but I have to say it's working for me. Sure, I'll be glad to get back to flying when the appropriate point in the narrative arrives but for now I'm having fun doing it the old-fashioned way.

Speaking of the narrative, the plot has held together quite well so far, in a slow-build, low-key kind of way. It makes a pleasant change from the end of the world scenarios we usually get. Yes, there are some bigger issues looming in the background that I'm sure we'll get to eventually but for now it's all about bandit attacks and Djinns with mysterious agendas. Standard desert fare and all the better for it.

For example, there's a lengthy sequence involving infiltration into a bandit camp while disgused as..., well, what would you disguise yourself as if you wanted bandits not to notice you? Another bandit, of course.

Who are you and what have you done with the boss?

Normally I have "Hide your illusion form" toggled on at all times because I'm proud to be a ratonga but there's a practical side to be considered, too. If you're not seeing yourself as others see you, sometimes you forget whether you've put your disguise on or not. Well, you do if you have a memory like mine.

Having been set upon by angry bandits one time too often, (Admiteddly, I do stand out rather as a ratonga. Desert bandit clans don't seem to practicethe kind of racial integration - or at least grudging acceptance - that's de rigeur almost everywhere else in Norrath) I flipped the switch so I could see my illusion and I have to say I found it rather fetching. I wouldn't generally go out dressed like that but I think the beard kind of suits me. Not to mention the turban.

The visuals in RoR are generally very pleasing. There's a quest where you have to wander in and out of tents playing the flute. When I "used" the flute, I was surprised to see and hear my character actually playing it. Also, there were musical notes floating in the air - but I think that might have been heatstroke. 

In retrospect, I wish I'd thought of hiding the illusion so I could see if the animation works for a ratonga. That'd be like the Pied Piper in reverse. Sadly, I didn't think of it until after I'd finished the quest and now I don't have the flute any more. I'll have to try and remember, if and when I do it again on my Bruiser.

That's great, Zel! Now we just need to find a good pitch and put down a hat and we'll soon be raking it in!

It's all been very entertaining so far and the difficulty level has been just about right for me. I've run into several more solo Named mobs on my travels and added a notch to my sword for each of them. No particularly good drops so far, although even the common drops are upgrades at this stage. 

I was apprehensive going into the new dungeon, actually an instanced version of the entire zone, now overrun by bandits. The last few expansions have been a bit hit and miss when it comes to solo difficulty in instanced content. By and large it's been fine but there have been occasional difficulty spikes, often right at the start.

I'm pleased to report that the regular mobs in the opening instance are very manageable. They don't take too long to clear and I never felt overwhelmed. The first Boss (Or "Named" as we Norrathians would have it.) posed no problem at all. I took him on without first reading up on tactics and although he had several tricks I was able to power through them all and treat him as a plain tank'n'spank. He didn't drop anything very special either but it's early days. 

I would have gone on to try the next Named but I foolishly clicked on the wrong X when I was trying to close the map and closed the whole game instead. Not the first time I've done that. I really shouldn't play in Windowed mode. It's asking for trouble.

Seeing I was at desktop anyway, I though I'd come here and write this, so here I am. Solo instances persist for three days in EQII and I'm not working until Sunday so I should have plenty of time to get through the whole dungeon before it time-expires. Wish me luck!

My Other Mount Is A Camel

One of the rarely-mentioned features of each new EverQuest II expansion is the intra-zone transportation. It always follows roughly the same format: a series of stations at which you can hop onto some kind of creature or device and find yourself being carried from one significant location to the next, quickly, safely and without having to dip into your pocket for so much as a copper piece. 

EQII has always offered the option of a safe ride anyone can afford. The addition to the game of the Griffins that served as flying taxis was one of the most memorable things that happened in beta. They were added close to launch and brought with them amazement and delight - when they worked. 

I was almost as amazed and delighted today, when I realised the on-rails rides in Renewal of Ro are provided by camels. I have no particular affection for camels in real life, although I did once ride one along a Turkish beach, an experience that lives with me still but in virtuality I think of camels with greart fondness. A camel is what what my Raki Disciple rode for most of the time I played Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

As I remember, he chose a camel not for aesthetic or role-playing reasons but because it was cheaper to buy than a horse. It was also slower and more cumbersome but it suited him very well. Later, when every race was given the option of a different species of mount to ride, he stuck with his trusty two-humper, although I'm ashamed to say that once he got his hands on the free flying reindeer SOE handed out when they knew the game didn't have too much longer to run, he stabled the poor, old camel without a second thought.

I don't think I've ridden a camel on any character in any game since then, so it was a real nostalgia trip to see my Ratonga Berserker bouncing over the deser sands, clinging to the back of a galumphing Bactrian. It also set me thinking about all those other rides I've taken in expansions of years gone by and I started to wonder how many I could remember.

Let's see how I do. I promise this is all entirely from memory.

• EQII Base Game: Griffins - You had to do a quest and find Griffin eggs to get access to them in some zones.
  
• Desert of Flames: Flying Carpets
• Kingdom of Sky: Clouds - You could get your own, independent Cloud mount through a lengthy quest, too, although the cloud didn't fly, or at least not yet.
  
• Echoes of Faydwer - Horses, surprisingly.
  
• Rise of Kunark - It started with the Sokokar - a weird thing whose species I never was quite sure of. There was a quest you had to do to for that one, which I remember being annoying but not why. What the other zones were I can't remember although the Iksar guards definitely rode rhinos.
• The Shadow Odyssey - An all-dungeon expansion, except for the one open-world zone, Moors of Ykesha, which had gnomish cannons and hot air balloons. 
  
• Sentinel's Fate: Hmm. Really should remember this one. I played it all the way through. It's another Islands in the Sky setting so it might have been something that flew. I suspect it might have been some form of magic teleport, though.
  
• Age of Discovery - Feature expansions, so, once again, none.
• Destiny of Velious - Introduced flying mounts but there were also fixed routes and I think those were serviced by Griffins again.
  
• Chains of Eternity - Not the least idea, even though I've played it all the way through. I imagine I was on a flying mount throughout.
• Tears of Veeshan - Ditto, although it was a dragoncentric expansion and I think it might have been wyverns?
• Altar of Malice - Nope. I got nothing. And I've played through the whole thing once and much of it several times more. I only remember flying. Maybe there wasn't anything?
• Terrors of Thalumbra - See Altar of Malice.
• Kunark Ascending - This is getting embarassing. I think I'd better stop now...

Some of that vagueness is my terrible memory but it's pretty clear to me that, while the introduction of flying mounts may not have put a stop to in-zone, on rails ground transport, they did render them so redundant I never really used them again, until we reached the stage in EQII's development when the developers decided flying had rendered too much of the content trivial and started making us work for it in each zone of every new expansion.

Again, without looking it up, I'm not sure exactly when that started. I know Altar of Malice made you do a quest before you could use your flying mount but it only affected the beginning of the first zone. The first time I remember having to do a whole zonal Signature line to earn flying retrospectively for the rest of my account was probably Blood of Luclin, in which I mostly used a cloak with Featherfall to get around by controlled gliding but in which I also flew about on some trained Shiknar, which always seemed like an accident waiting to happen.

It seems to me that even knowing you're going to be flying under your own power eventually (Or, rather, the power of your own flying mount.) drains the significance of whatever interim ground-based option the game provides in the meantime. For most of those earlier expansions I can even remember some of the routes, not just the mounts, whereas I couldn't with any conviction tell you anything at all about what I was sitting on in almost any of the expansions after Velious.

Except for this one. I'm going to remember the camels.

Getting Settled In

A sure way for me to tell if I'm genuinely excited to play a game or I'm just logging in because I think I might get a blog post out of it is whether I fire the game up right after breakfast, even when I have other things I should be doing instead. That's what happened this morning, so I guess I really am up for the latest EverQuest II expansion, Renewal of Ro, even if I had completely forgotten it was going to launch yesterday.

I did have other things on my mind, of course, not least my winter migration from the upstairs room where I usually play (and write this blog) to the one downstairswith the gas fire and the big window that gets the sun most of the day, making it much easier to heat and keep warm. 

With all the dire warnings of fuel charges escalating out of control plus the sudden change in the weather, meaning it actually feels like winter at last, not late spring, I decided it was no longer tenable to spend most of my time in what is indubitably the coldest, least insulated room in the house. Much of yesterday was spent relocating and reorganizing. 

I'm still not entirely settled in my winter palace. I'm not crazy about sitting with my back to the window, facing a wall, and the table I'm using instead of my computer desk, which is too much trouble to move, is a couple of inches too high for ergonomic perfection. It doesn't help that my ancient swivel chair, the one I inherited from my stepfather, who must have died at least fifteen years ago, while still generally sound and comfortable (The chair, not my deceased relative.), no longer goes up and down like a good computer chair should. 

There's also so much stuff under the table - around four thousand comic books I boxed up to sell years ago but then couldn't find anyone who wanted to buy them, or at least not at a price I was willing to accept - that I can't stretch my legs out straight. I'm probably going to have to come up with a better solution if I don't want to get cramp in the middle of a boss fight.

Then there's the issue of connectivity. Years ago, when we had a new router installed by our ISP, I got them to put it in the upstairs room I was using as a study at the time. That's now Mrs Bhagpuss's craft storage room. You can barely get in the door. It's also right at the front of the house, which means the wifi signal barely reaches the back of the house.

It didn't used to be a problem until I bought a smart TV a couple of months ago. Modern television sets are basically computers, something that had passed me by in the twenty years since I last owned a TV. I did a lot of research before I bought this one and still pretty much got it wrong, to the point that I'm now thinking of buying another. 

The one I bought is nothing much more than an oversized android tablet and like any tablet it needs an internet connection. I knew that when I got it but I didn't realise how inadequate my existing wifi would be for the task. I already had a booster but even that didn't make much difference, so I got a proper router to replace the infamously poor modem/router supplied by my ISP (I'm sure anyone in the UK will be able to guess immediately who that is.)

It turned out to be one of those lucky mistakes. I'd been meaning to improve the wifi for a couple of years but it was always one of those "it'll do for now" situations. The TV brought things to a necessary head and just in time, too, because I really didn't want to have to run yet another 30m ethernet cable through the house. 

Instead, I just put the extender next to where I now sit downstairs and connected it to the PC with a regular, 2m ethernet cable because apparently my desktop PC doesn't do wifi. Of course, the connection it's using now is wireless until those final two meters. Don't tell my computer.

I was curious to see how well it would work compared to the wired connection I've always used until now. The surprising answer is very well indeed. As far as I can tell, it's exactly the same. I literally can't tell the difference. 

I played Noah's Heart last night and EQII this morning and they both felt smooth as butter. Lord of the Rings Online was laggy but when isn't it? Going back to LotRO recently has felt like going back in time a decade and a half, to when mmorpgs and internet latency were synonomous. Seriously, if Standing Stone is a part of Daybreak, can't they borrow some better servers from EverQuest or something? Or at least get some advice on how to fix the problem?

Anyway, I'm kind of getting there, although I still need to do some work before my new lair feels as cosy as it should. The main thing is, I'm warm now and it isn't costing us a fortune.

As for Renewal to Ro, so far it's exactly as expected. I've seen maybe two-thirds of the first zone, done a handful of quests, already replaced two of the items I only equipped earlier in the same session and generally had a very good time. 

Following the standard practice of recent expansions, flying is disabled until you reach a certain point in the Signature questline. There's a lore-apporopriate reason for that, which looks as if it'll feature in the story, somehow. The landscape is fairly flat, anyway, so travelling on foot hasn't presented any problems.

One major departure from the last expansion is that I was easily able to kill the first solo overland named I happened upon. That's something I'd always expected to be able to do - until Visions of Vetrovia, where I never managed to kill a single one. 

There were supposedly solo weekly quests in VoV for overland names -  or"major threats" as they're called - just like in every other expansion since 2014's Altar of Malice, but even by the end of the expansion cycle I still couldn't get any of them below half health before they either killed me or I had to retreat. I'd still love to know what that was all about...

I was so pleased with myself to have triumphed, I took three screenshots; one just before Tickrupt the giant tick bit the sand and two more after, both when the achievement popped and when my merc observed, somewhat sarcastically in the circumstances, "Your demise was the only conceivable outcome.". For once, he wasn't looking at me when he said it.

The real test of the solo-friendliness of the new expansion will come when I reach the point where I have to enter the first dungeon. That can sometimes come as a bit of a slap with a wet fish. I'm optimistic that it'll be fine this time, though. Everything so far seems well-tuned and expansions where the level cap doesn't change do tend to be easier.

Before then, I have a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do . It's only when a new expansion drops that I really realise just how far I've let things slip. It's time to stop hoarding all those rares I stockpiled last year and get on with crafting all the spell and combat art upgrades I never got around to making, for a start. I looked at my Necromancer this morning and realised she still has Apprentice level abilities right across the board.

And that's why it's the Berserker who gets to go first, yet again.

I'm Coming! I'm Coming! Just Give Me An Hour To Get Dressed...

 As Wilhelm noted, today marks the launch of EverQuest II's latest expansion, Renewal of Ro. It's just as well he mentioned it. I'd forgotten and, somewhat surprisingly, Daybreak don't seem to have sent me a reminder.

There was scheduled downtime lasting five hours before the servers opened on the new lands. I'm guessing it went to plan because by the time I finished walking Beryl, cooking her chicken and feeding it to her, it was half an hour past the appointed hour and there were three instances of the opening zone, Raj'Dur Plateaus already up and running.

For once, there was no frenzied scurrying, trying to find out how to get there. The Message of the Day gave clear instructions. All we had to do was find a magic carpet in one of the home cities and we'd be whisked away on our great adventure.

I had been planning on finishing the Panda quests first but it occured to me that, based on previous expansions, as soon as I got there I'd be junking pretty much everything in favor of the free catch-up gear lying on the ground next to the first questgiver.

That indeed proved to be the case. The stuff in the box is 390 Resolve, a huge upgrade from the 315 of the Hua Collector's gear, even though that's only a matter of weeks old. At this point, I really can't see the point of the Panda quests, or at least not of the equippable gear they reward. It's hard to see who would use it, except maybe people who don't buy the expansion but still play endgame from the last one. Does anyone really do that?

Of course, the Tishan's gear itself is only a stopgap. The rewards from the two quests I took at the docks are upgrades to it. Then again, if you don't equip the starting gear, good luck doing those first quests unless you're in full raid gear fron the last expansion!

Gearing up from the box is not a simple process, as I learned to my cost several expansions ago. There are numerous Adornments to check, fit and replace, some of which are Lore and clash with things you're probably already using. I imagine it's going to take me an hour to get myself sorted out and that's just doing the bare minimum.

I'm also beginning to get a little desperate for a new mercenary. My current one is from the expansion before last and while he's still keeping me upright, I think it might be asking a bit much of him to go one more round. I was excited to see this cheery-looking fellow hanging out his shingle in the dockland area but sadly he wouldn't do more than pass the time of day with me. I hope he'll be more communicative when I've done... something. Not sure what, yet.

Since an hour was about all I had, if I was going to get this post done before bed, I had to content myself with a quick explore around the harbor and a very tentative peek at the desert beyond. Again from experience, I know that without the new gear I'll be one-shotted by the first aggressive wildlife that spots me trying to sneak past.

The canyon at the back of the docks led to what looked remarkably like the open sea and was, disturbingly, strewn with dead sheep. When I cautiously poked my nose around the cliffs I found out what had been kiling them. Vultures.

And that's as far - and as close - as I got. I already have a quest to kill those vultures, along with some non-aggressive mites I passed on the sands, but both of them would very definitely be picking my bones within seconds if I was rash enough to take them on.

That's going to have to wait until tomorrow, after I've sorted out my gear and done the dozen other necessary things one always has to do at the start of a new expansion, the first of which is going to be deciding who to take through the Signature line first. I'm leaning towards my Necromancer. It's been far too long since I played a pet class in EQII.

Then again, my Berserker's already there...

Shadow Of Renewal

EG7 or Daybreak if you prefer, since they seem to be pretty much interchangeable at this point, seems to be doing rather well right now. Yesterday, MassivelyOP reported an 11% bump in "monthly active players" over the same period as last year for Lord of the Rings Online, an increase the company rather self-effacingly ascribes to the impact of Amazon’s Rings of Power TV series.

As I think I may have mentioned in a previous post, I watched the first episode of the Amazon show, which I described, unenthusiastically, as "alright". I went on to say that a week had passed since then and I hadn't gotten around to watching episode two. I still haven't.

I haven't even bothered to find out whether the show has been either a commercial or a critical success but I did chat about it, briefly, while I was having a birthday lunch with a friend earlier this week. She'd asked me to get her an expensive boxed set of the books and it turned out part of her reason for doing that now rather than any other time in the last quarter century or so was not unconnected with the show. 

Grey and yellow wouldn't be my choice
for a promo.

As she put it, a lot of fans seem to be reinforcing their interest in the source material as a tangential result of what have been seen as controversial choices made by the makers of the new series. As with the desire to return to the Classic era in World of Warcraft, it's not so much open hostility to the new stuff (Although it can be that.) as a re-ignited affection for the way things used to be.

Put like that, I guess LotRO, fifteen years old and famously stolid in its reverance for the source material, qualifies as a safe haven for anyone looking to rekindle old fires. It would be interesting to know how many of the 11% are brand new to the game and how many are prodigals returning to the fold.

I suspect Standing Stone (And by implication Daybreak Games and by further implication EG7.) are about to add a percentage point or two to that enviable uptick. This morning I received two emails from the EG7 stable, one of which I'll get to later, the other asking me if I'd be interested in the new expansion, Before the Shadow.

I've never bought an expansion for LotRO. Indeed, other than the base game and a few months' subscription, I've never bought anything from Turbine or SSG at all. I hadn't been thinking of starting now, either, until I read Wilhelm's recent post. 

As Wilhelm says, $20, is a pretty reasonable price, even for a mini-expansion. It sounds even better in sterling, where it comes in at just £15.29. Even so, I wouldn't be considering it if it wasn't for one thing; the new levelling experience. 

I do like the low-level game in LotRO. It's solid, entertaining and old-school in the best way. It might be fun to start a new character and play them up through whatever the new zone or zones are - some sort of hobbitty-shire experience I think it is. Not only would it be interesting in its own right, it would also make for a convenient fresh start in a game where my other characters are mired in previous poor decisions and lumbered with bags full of items, the use of which I no longer understand nor care to learn.

I'd have to say this looks a lot more appealing.

As always, the real question is "If I buy it, will I play it?" I'm leaning heavily towards "Yes, I will", on
the fairly solid grounds that LotRO is free-to-play, I always have it installed and I've been back for brief visits many times over the years. Also, playing through something that other people are also playing and talking about is always a bonus for the blog.

Mitigating against the idea is the other email I received, this one directly from Daybreak, wearing their Darkpaw hat. I was somewhat surprised to receive notice this morning that the new EverQuest II expansion, Renewal of Ro, now has a firm launch date and it's less than two weeks away.

As the website has it, "The next expansion for EverQuest II, Renewal of Ro, is set to launch on November 30, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. PST". That is pretty much when you'd expect but I was on the beta forums only a couple of days ago and I had the impression things were lagging a little this year. Then again, when aren't they? I'm sure it'll be fine.

I've already bought this one, of course. The only question is when I start playing. The 30th is a Wednesday, which should give me a couple of days to get started before my working weekend. Then again, based on prior experience, I'll probably be doing myself a favor if I wait a week until everything's working properly.

It's nice to have something to look forward to, anyway. I might not be able to join in with the frenzy when Dragonflight lands (Any date for that, yet? Oh, yeah...) but I should at least have something to talk about.

Renewal Of Ro Renews My Interest In EQII

I was going to post a couple of Next Fest reviews today but then Darkpaw raised the curtain on this year's EverQuest II expansion and I thought it might be more timely to take a quick look at what we have to look forward to there. It's a tasty teaser.

Wilhelm posted a run-through of the basics yesterday. I don't want to repeat what he said word for word but there are a few duplications that can't really be avoided, like the name, the price and what the expansion's about. Let's get those out of the way right now.

Name: Renewal of Ro

Cost: Standard; $34.99 Collector's; $69.99 Premium; $139.99 Family and Friends; $249.99

Location: "...the brutal island of Ro... the southern half of the flaming desert..."

Features:

•  New Solo, Heroic I and Heroic II Dungeons
•  All New Achievements
•  New House Items and Recipe Books
•  Powerful Weapons and Armor
•  Epic Spells
•  New Collections
•  New Signature Quests

Those bullet points are from the official expansion reveal page. Pretty much covers the bases but there are a few new wrinkles in there, plus one rather surprising omission, all of which I'll get to later, .

Before then, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the marketing. It's top class! Really, Daybreak in general and Darkpaw in particular have upped their marketing game an order of magnitude over the last year or two. I'm genuinely impressed.

It's not like things were terrible before but they were very staid and static. There was a distinctly elderly feel to the way things looked a lot of the time. Speaking specifically to EQII, promotions tended to plod a little. They told you the facts, sure, but they didn't really zazz them up in the way other, newer games might.

These days, things just feel that bit zingier. There's an energy that wasn't there before. There's some sparkle. In the case of the signature illustration for Renewal of Ro there's actual sparkle. Look!

I did once work in marketing. It wasn't for very long and it was for an insurance company but I still like to think I have some residual appreciation for a job well done. This is one.

Moving on to the expansion itself, as a long-time player I find the lore and the storyline very intriguing. I spoke before about the history of Takish`Hiz and how little has been revealed. I'm keen to learn more. 

It's confirmed that we will be delving into "what is left of the Elddar Empire's cursed city, the long Buried Takish'Hiz" but we'll also get to explore the parts of the Desert of Ro we haven't been able to access since the Cataclysm and the Shattering. Since that means a trip to the southern half of the desert, I can only assume the areas we already know from the game's first expansion, Desert of Flames, must be what used to be known as "North Ro".

In the original EverQuest, the Desert of Ro was split into three discrete zones, popularly known as North Ro, South Ro and Oasis. Of the three, Oasis was by far the most popular with players, including as it did a number of extremely high-traffic, low-level camps like Orc Highway and the crocodiles along the water. There were also several camps of interest to mid-and high levels, either looking to make cash killing the wealthy Sand Giants or after drops and experience from the very dangerous Specters and Aqua Goblins. 

Sinking Sands, the first zone in the Desert of Flames expansion, is clearly Oasis. Not only does it have have not one but two oases slap in the middle, the orcs still march along a stretch of sand next to the Clefts of Rujark, sand giants stomp across the dunes and the specters still swirl around their tower.  

 

The next zone, Pillars of Flame, doesn't seem quite as obviously keyed to an earlier era, feeling much more like an original creation. Where the astonishing flying city of Maj`Dul fits in is anyone's guess. There's clearly a lot of lost territory still to be re-discovered. I'm very keen to find out what's been going on in Lost Ro these last five hundred or so years.

Just the list of creatures we're set to encounter in the new expansion all but started my mouth watering: "Raj'Dur bandits, cursed Elddar, Dunetooth goblins, the Mhyt-moo school of Yha-lei, the Stormfury and Swordfury cyclops clans, the Ortallians zealots of Ro..." The web page for Renewal of Ro contains a wealth of hard information on the geography of the region, not all of which appears to gibe with my own analysis. I'm excited to get out there for some observations in the field so I can put all the pieces together, not least how the Serpent's Spine Mountains fit into the picture. I thought they were on the other side of the continent!

All of this is designed to appeal to students of Norrathian history but that's a particular niche among the playerbase. A lot of potential customers are going to be much more interested in what's going to make their characters more powerful. Mmorpgs really are a "One Louder" culture, something developers ignore at their peril.

Daybreak never forget where their core audience lives: in the numbers. As well as the horizontal content for the game's broader audience of explorers, homemakers and collectors, there are a couple very significant power-ups to be had from RoR. This being an odd numbered expansion, there's no level cap increase but we are getting five new Ascension Levels. 

 

That news really floored me when I saw it. I was sure we were done with the whole Ascension mechanic, which hasn't seen any real attention since 2018's Chaos Descending. The system effectively turns all classes into casters, melees included, and was never all that popular, although it had its supporters. 

I always believed the main reason it was introduced was to ameliorate the serious technical  problems caused by raids using dozens of fast-casting abilities over short timescales, causing huge lag throughout the game. Having everyone use a much smaller number of much longer-casting abilities was a stop-gap fix to a long-running issue that has arguably now been improved by more deep-seated, technological solutions. Whether the shift of focus back to Ascension suggests a resurgence of the problem or whether it just seemed like a good way to hand out power between level-cap expansions is unclear.

Personally, I like Ascension abilities. I still use some of mine every time I do more challenging content, even though the once-superior damage capabilities of Ascension spells have begun to wilt in comparison to the newer class abilities. It remains to be seen what route RoR will take with the upgrades, something that has changed a number of times in the past. I just hope it doesn't involve the irritating mechanic that had me flying back to a cave in Kunark to talk to Najena every time I wanted to change my Ascension Class.

As well as Ascension we're also getting "Epic Spells". From the information on the web page, these would seem to be a spell-oriented version of the familiar "Epic Weapon" feature: "Epic Spell Quests - Embark on an adventure to discover and upgrade an all new powerful epic spell for your class." I'm less than enthusiastic about this one, having rigorously avoided almost all previous "Epic" quests in both versions of EQ. I can't stand long, complicated quests, especially ones that involve really tough fights. I'll defer a final judgment until I see exactly how "Epic" these quests are. I'm not sure the word carries the same weight of inconvenience and frustration it once did. 

 

Other than that, everything looks just peachy. All the usual fun and games of an EQII expansion, present and correct. I'll be pre-ordering just as soon as I finish writing this post. I'm even tempted to go for the Collector's Edition, which would be a first. I could do with the Mercenary and the Prestige Home looks good. Also, I note you need at least the Collector's Edition to get the Overseer quests for Ro.

Other than the now-inevitable level boost potion, the only freebie that comes with the Standard edition is the admittedly spectacular Takish`Hiz Peafowl Pet, as seen in all its glory at the top of this post. That's going to cause no end of issues in the East Freeport bank. 

I was amused to note the name. I imagine they chose to go with "Peafowl" rather then the much more obvious "Peacock" for the very sound reason that the latter would be blocked by the in-game bad language filter, something that regularly caused problems in the original Ro expansion, when people were asking for help and advice on the long and complicated "Peacock Club" questline. Nice to see someone thinking ahead.

I'll probably be too mean to stump up the extra cash for the Collector's Edition, especially since I can always change my mind later and pay for the upgrade option. Beta access comes with the pre-order, so once I've made my mind up I could also log in and see for myself just how everything fits together. 

I'm not going to do that. My days of playing through unpolished, unfinished beta content just so I can say I saw it first are over. These days, I rarely even have the enthusiasm to play through the live version more than once. That's no fault of the content, which I think is better than ever. It's purely the accumulated ennui of more than two decades spent playing variations of the same game, by which I mean not just EQII or the EverQuest titles but the entire mmorpg genre.

I'm still very much up for one more run, all the same. I find the combination of familiarity and novelty inherent in these expansions almost tailor-made to whet my enthusiasm for more. It really is a case of "Give the punters what they want" and that suits me perfectly.

Roll on launch day!

Expansions, Pandas, Events... It's All Happening In EQII

So, we know the name of the next EverQuest II expansion at last. It's Renewal of Ro. Jenn Chan slipped it in at the end of her latest Producer's Letter.  

Darkpaw seems to be developing some kind of slow release, drip feed for expansion news, a technique I find rather effective. There's just enough new information each time to keep the appetite piqued and it takes several bites out of the news cycle. Like most things Daybreak is doing these days, it feels like a solid, competent effort from a significantly more focused marketing department than we've been used to seeing in the past.

There's still very little detail on the exact setting or storyline for EQII's nineteenth expansion, other than the hint hidden in the very last sentence - if you can call something hidden that's been both bolded and italicized. "Get ready to Tack on your best gear and establish yourself as one of the greatest of spelunkers in hiztory". Jenn does love her puns.

You could engrave everything I know about Takish Hiz on the head of a pin - if you were a gnome with one of those sets of magnifying goggles they all seem to wear. I have a passable grounding in Norrathian lore, myth and history but the first I ever remember hearing of the legendary home of the elves was in 2003's Lost Dungeons of Norrath, the sixth (And in my opinion one of the best.) expansions to the original EverQuest.

Takish Hiz was one of the LDoN dungeons, where I spent a great deal of time in the six months before the next bi-annual expansion suddenly made getting groups to go there all but impossible. I remember it clearly as a complex of marble halls and corridors entombed beneath the desert sands. Of the sylvan forests so dear to the elves who once ruled Norrath during the eponymous Takish Age, there was no sign at all.

How long Takish Hiz has lain beneath the sands I'm not sure but by the time Renewal of Ro drops it has to have been a millennium at least. EQII is set five hundred years after EverQuest. EverQuest Online Adventures, the iteration of Norrath created for Playstation 2, was set five hundred years before. Much to my regret, I never played EQOA but from the wiki I can see that Takish Hiz was a zone in that game and the pictures and descriptions clearly show it long abandoned, the desert already in the process of reclaiming a land left empty by the vanished forests of the elves.

I have to say I am very interested by the choice of location for this year's expansion. While I do like to see and explore brand new places, I feel one of EQII's strongest cards is its connection with EQ . Every time we're offered the chance to re-visit old haunts there's a powerful emotional charge freighted in that frisson of familiarity, combined with curiosity. 

It's subtly different from pure nostalgia, more like the odd, disconcerting sensation that comes from seeing how things have changed when you go back to a place you once knew well, after a long time away. I find that feeling compelling in the real world and it's no less energizing in virtuality.

Added to that, the EQII expansion which the new one references, Prophecy of Ro, was very good indeed. It had a truly huge amount of content, much of which I've completed more than once, and it had a strong, consistent theme that held everything together. I had many good times there and still do, whenever I go back.

The last expansion, Visions of Vetrovia, was lots of fun. It ticked all the expected boxes for an EQII expansion and I got several months of quality entertainment from it but perhaps the only thing I felt a little unsatisfied by was the supposed connection with the troubled EQ expansions Gates of Discord and Omens of War. I was looking forward to revisiting some of those locations - Wall of Slaughter maybe, Natimbi certainly, but in the end there was barely a namecheck for any of the places I knew.

Takish Hiz is much more of an unknown quantity. It was already lost in the mists of history the first time around. The Desert of Ro, on the other hand, has already had its day in the sun in PoR. I'm very curious to know just what the balance between new, old and new-old will be this time around.

Before the expansion arrives I probably need to do some work on whichever characters I intend to take through it first. I haven't been neglecting the game entirely but these last few months my activity there has tailed off a lot. I'm substantially further behind than I have been for a couple of years.

One way I've been able to benchmark is by the new gear available from 2022's Panda, Panda, Panda! event, which was patched into the game earlier this week. The event itself was always on the schedule, but it hadn't been entirely clear whether there would be a new set of quests this time.

There will. Nine weeks of quests, just like usual. This year they take the format of Creature Catalogs, a very smart way of reducing the workload for the team, while still giving players a similar experience to previous years.

This morning I did the first, a series of identifications around Kylong Plains in Kunark. With instant travel, flight and a surprisingly accurate memory for the exact locations of all the creatures needed, the whole thing took me about five minutes. If you did it old school and weren't familiar with the area I'd guess it might take fifteen or twenty.

Either way, it's a very good return on time invested. The first tier of rewards includes weapons which, at 315 resolve, will be upgrades for all but one of my characters. Browsing through the very large selection of gear, augments and sundry items available from the full sequence of nine quests, I can see that I'll need to pick up most of what's on offer, even for my best-equipped character.

Last year, for the first time, most of the Panda gear wasn't really an upgrade for the character I was planning on taking into Visions of Vetorvia so it shows how much I've let things slip. Of course, these days, the panda gear itself tends to be made obsolete by the hand-outs from the box on the floor next to the first questgiver in a new expansion, so it's a moot point whether I really need to take this short-term, interim upgrade. Since I'm going to be doing the quests for the fun of it anyway, it would be crazy not to pick up the rewards.

There's also a huge number of housing items to be had, all of which you'll be able to see at EQ2Traders as the event progresses. Niami Denmother also always has the best walkthroughs for the panda quests, should you need any handholding.

As well as the pandas there's also the other "get you ready for the expansion" event that always runs alongside it: Gear Up, Level Up. It comes in three phases and this time its available on all servers (Emphasized as "yes, all servers".

The schedule, should you need it, is as follows:

• September 27 – October 10 = Double Loot
• October 11 – October 17 = Mount Training Drops
• October 18 – October 24 = Spell Research Drops

I don't usually bother with Gear Up, Level Up but I might this year. Spell research boosts are always the most souhgt-after but to take full advantage I really need to get on and make all those Expert spells I've been avoiding.

Mount training boosts I already have in abundance, thanks to Overseer, but unusually, there's still content I haven't finished in the last expansion. Those double drops from instance bosses might have some things I want, even if I don't techically need them at this stage.

Either way, it's great to have options. Now all I have to do is find some time to excercise them.