What Are You Complaining About? It Flies, Doesn't It?

With a truly ridiculous number of highly tempting choices vying for my attention all across summer and right into autumn this year, some of the old stand-bys have all but dropped off my gaming radar. I don't believe I logged into EverQuest II even once last month and if it hadn't been for my EQ25 series of posts, I doubt I'd have set foot in Norrath at all.

I've been so lax in attendance during this Year of Darkpaw that I haven't really noticed most of the special events, let alone taken part in any of them. I visited that big tower in EverQuest back in the spring and did one of the floors but I think I have to accept that I no longer play EQ with any real intent and most likely never will again. (Cue whole new series of posts where I suddenly start playing nothing but EQ for a month...)

Perhaps most surprisingly, I haven't even been bothering to check the marketplace to see what's being given away in EQII each month. I had actually forgotten that was going to be a thing for the whole year. It's not like me to miss free stuff. I must be slipping.

Neither had I pre-ordered the forthcoming expansion, even though I believe I said I had. I meant to, after I last posted about it, but then I just forgot. It shows how far down my list of priorities the game has fallen. I have now pre-ordered. For real this time.

At least my annual subscription has renewed. That's automatic, for which I'm very grateful because I would have forgotten otherwise. With the expansion, I've paid almost exactly a hundred pounds up front for my sporadic enjoyment of the two EverQuest titles (And DCUO, I guess.) going into late 2025. It seems like a pretty good deal to me, even though I could actually play all of them for nothing, since they're Free To Play.

This post was going to be all about the current giveaways and holiday events in EverQuest II but I can already feel it lurching off the rails so why fight it? If you want to skip a lengthy digression on spending money and the associated mental health issues you're welcome to drop out now and pick things up below, with the paragraph that starts "Getting back to the original point ..."

Anyone still with me? Okay, on we go. As I wrote that last paragraph, it occurred to me to wonder why it might be that I'd be willing to pay for enhanced access to one set of F2P games even though I play them only rarely or in fits and starts, while at the same time categorically refusing to pay anything at all for games I play far more often, sometimes almost obsessively.

I play a lot of F2P games that offer some kind of extra benefits you can pay for. The exact names and mechanics vary - Seasons, Membership, Bonus, whatever - but they all work much the same. Usually there's a monthly package of perks, sometimes with differing Tiers of cost and content. Always there's a cash shop for ad hoc, individual purchases. I never use any of them. 

I think that's literally true. I can't recall a single instance where I ever paid money for anything in any one of these games. The only money any of them ever got from me was for the game itself, if it was Buy To Play. Why is that? And does it make any sense?

Thinking about it, I believe I can pare the reasons down to three: miserliness, paranoia and inertia.

#1. Firstly, I really don't like spending money. If I don't have to, I don't and that doesn't apply only to games. I find it very easy to say no to anything that I don't feel I need. Just wanting something is no reason to buy it. What's more, I get considerable pleasure from being abstemious. Not buying things gives me almost as much pleasure as buying them. Possibly more. 

#2. Secondly, I have an irrational distrust of giving my credit card details to any company that doesn't have a physical presence in my local area. Somewhere, if necessary, I could go in and yell at someone if anything went wrong. Not that I ever do that but I like to imagine I could, if I needed to. As for my debit card details, I give those to no-one other than major utilities and financial institutions. I don't trust most businesses, even offline, and the smaller they are, the less I trust them. Not saying it's rational.

#3. Thirdly, I'm lazy and I hate filling in forms. Especially online forms. I force myself to make new accounts to see new games but I hate doing it more and more as time goes on and the least awkwardness or difficulty these days is enough to make me give up on the whole idea. Signing up for free to play access to some new game is generally just simple enough that I push through but the extra effort involved in setting up a paid account is too much to even think about.

#s 2 and 3 are alleviated considerably by Steam and PayPal. Having made the decision to trust them years ago and having taken the trouble to fill out all the paperwork already, I'm far more likely to try a game that can be purchased using one or the other than anything that requires a separate set-up.

Buying things on Steam takes almost no effort and I've already trusted Valve and PayPal with my financial details. I figure if either of those get compromised it's going to be such a huge deal we're all screwed anyway so why not?

Even with paranoia and inertia out of the way, I'm still stymied by miserliness. No matter how amazing an outfit looks, it's very, very hard for me to convince myself to pay money for it. Not infrequently, I won't even be willing to spend in-game money on cosmetics so what chance is there for a cash shop to persuade me to open my wallet?

I might just possibly be able to convince myself that some practical function like inventory space or faster travel represented a justified expenditure in a game but that's a dangerous gamble for the developer to take. It's as likely I'll decide the game isn't worth playing at all, if you have to buy essentials to enjoy it. 

Kind of a Catch 22 from the developer's point of view. I won't buy cosmetics because I don't need them but I won't buy essentials because they ought to be included for free. How are they supposed to make money? Don't look at me. Not my problem.

In my more rational moments, I do see the logical flaws in most of these arguments. It's undeniable, even to me, that $5 or $10 spent on a really spiffy outfit for a character I may spend dozens of hours looking at and of whom I may take hundreds of screenshots I'll stare at as desktop backgrounds for months, would offer a much better return on investment than any number of similarly-priced real life purchases of supposedly practical items I think I need but then, having bought, never actually use. I could give examples but we'd be here all day. The house is full of them.

Given all of the above, why then do I not only feel it's fine to pay Daybreak almost £80 a year to play their F2P games but even thank them for taking my money without asking? That's... complicated.

For one thing, having an All Access account is part of my identity. I've had one since they were invented and before then I had an EverQuest account so in continuity terms I've been a member of that club for a quarter of a century. And everyone knows you pay your dues to be in a club so you can say you're in a club, not necessarily because you're going to use the facilities. That's such a widely-acknowledged experience, comedians base entire stand-up routines on it.

If I let my All Access account lapse it would suggest I'd become a different person and unless I was sure it was a kind of person I preferred to the old one, why would I want to do that? I know this isn't an outlying position among MMORPG players, either. I've read enough of people debating with themselves in public over whether or not to drop a subscription to World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV to recognize a common pattern.

Then there are the actual perks in All Access. I'm not going to go through them - I've done that before - but I will re-affirm that, when I'm playing EQII regularly, the benefits that come from being a member feel more than substantial and significant enough to justify the cost. I always thought it was a good offer and if anything I feel it may have gotten better still in recent years.

Of course, that only kicks in if I do, in fact, play the game(s). Which, as I said, right now I don't. But even when I'm not playing regularly, I'm still covered by the "it's part of my identity" clause so as you see it all makes perfect sense! 

I'm so glad we got that sorted out. I was worried for a moment there I was doing something crazy but now I see it was all perfectly rational all along...

Getting back to the original point of the post and in the unlikely event anyone's still reading after that lengthy and rather disturbing open-therapy session, we are now, at last, getting close to the EQII portion of the Year of Darkpaw, the part where we celebrate the junior game's twentieth anniversary. Twenty years is a one hell of a good run and it would be an even bigger deal if older sibling EverQuest hadn't just spent the last six months bigging up its twenty-fifth. 

You do have to feel a bit sorry for EQII, I guess, especially as it also has to share its 20th with its much better-known, more successful contemporary, WoW. It's not so much always the bridesmaid as always the usher...

Still, EQII is the one I play, when I'm playing any of them, which means free stuff in that game matters more, at least to me. And I do now wish I'd been paying more attention to the free stuff because it seems I might have missed quite a lot of it.

In that spirit, I'm pleased to say that this month's giveaway, which I am going to get, is a good one. Or it will be, when they've fixed it. This is really burying the lede but for what it's worth here it is anyway.

The giveaway in the Cash Shop this month is supposed to be a Griffin mount called Arisata the Noble. It looks great and apparently griffin mounts are relatively scarce so a lot of people would like this one, especially since it's not only free but available for every character on the account.

I wanted one. I logged in to get one. I was ready to log all my characters in so they could have one each and that's quite a lot of work, let me tell you, especially if the freebie applies to all accounts not just to members, which I've just checked and it does. That's like fifty characters on seven accounts if I logged them all in. It'd take all day.

So far I've just tried with my Berserker on my main account and there is indeed a free mount in the Cash Shop waiting there for him. A really nice one. 

It's just not the one that was advertised. It's not Arisata the Noble, the griffin. It's Stratos Aralez Skyvoyager, a mount from the current Ballads of Zimara expansion who looks kinda griffinny to me but since the forum is full of people either saying they already have a griffin so they'd like to keep this mount even if it's the wrong one or that they don't want it because they've already got it and they'd rather have the griffin they were promised, I have to assume whatever Stratos' species might be it's not Griffin. Or Gryphon for that matter.

As it happens, I don't already have Stratos. I believe that requires more progress in the storyline than I've managed, or more research, or possibly both. I'm quite happy to take him (Her. Them. It. Where Stratos is concerned, the appropriate pronouns remain, like the species, uncertain. Also, it's really hard to construct an elegant sentence about not knowing what pronouns to use while also not using pronouns.) 

Whatever and whoever Stratos may be, one thing I do know is that there are other ways to get the mount. I just need to get on and finish the damn expansion. I'd rather have the Griffin, please and thank you, since that one's entirely new as far as I can tell, so I'm holding fire for now.

How long it will be until the issue is addressed is hard to say. There's a thread about it on the forums, to which the estimable Ttoby has replied, saying he'll bring the issue to the notice of the relevant people, so presumably it will get resolved eventually, but that was last Friday and no other dev has popped into the thread to confirm anything's being done as yet. Until I hear news, I am not claiming the mount on any of my characters, so that's a couple of hours of my time I'll get back today. I think I'll use it playing more Once Human.

I did take the trouble to log in one of my several unsubscribed accounts just to check if free players also get the giveaways and I'm happy to confirm that they do. I can also let anyone who might be thinking "Oh, I used to play EQII - maybe if I can remember my password I'll log in and grab that sweet free ride." (Because I know that's how you all talk...) know to give it a day or two. Your character needs to be level 126 before they can even equip Stratos Aralez Skyvoyager and if you haven't played for a while they're not going to qualify so if you take that one and they never swap it out you'll be lumbered with a duff mount you can't even sit on to pose for pictures.

Hopefully, the griffin, when it finally arrives, will have a much more lenient level requirement. In the meantime, we'll all have to content ourselves with the other freebie for November .Yes, there's another. Did I not say? It's a statue of Wuoshi, the infamous dragon from original EverQuest, the one who used to guard the portal to Wakening Lands and who I was at one time so scared of meeting I parked a character I didn't much care about at the druid ring so I could log him to check if Wuoshi was up before porting in someone who mattered.

Or rather it's a statue of Woushi, a Wuoshi tribute act who presumably had to spell her name differently after the real Wuoshi's legal team sent her a Cease and Desist notice. That has to be the explanation, right? It couldn't just be that whoever was given the job of designing the statue didn't know how to spell the name of one of the most iconic NPCs in the entire franchise? 

Nah. Couldn't be that.

Whover the statue is of, it looks great in my Berserker's Mara Village home. Goes beautifully with the architectural style. Even if it may not be such a great fit for a Qeynos inn room, I'll probably pick one up for everyone, all the same. 

I mean, I may as well. I'll be logging them all in for the mount anyway, so why not?

PS: It took me so long to finish this post (Started before nine this morning, typing this at just before seven in the evening.) that there have now been corrections to the announcement and the correct mount will be available after the weekly update tomorrow. So that was all a complete waste of time...

Every Picture Tells A Story - If You Know How To Read It

I was going to give posting a miss today, after I spent all morning filling out my stupid performance review form. You'd think I wouldn't need one with my retirement date less than a year away but no...

Anyway, as I was about to log in to EverQuest II I noticed they'd published a readable version of the roadmap on the forums. I'm not going to talk about that, either, or at least not right now, except to say it looks a lot more like a list of things that always happen than things we need to know about.

No, what moved me to come here and post after all was the big Year of Darkpaw picture you see at the top of the page. You can get it in poster form if you want although it's a pretty small poster by the way I reckon these things.

I think it would also be really weird to have hanging on your wall. Take a good look at those characters. Leave aside the peculiarly goofy poses - is that Dark Elf skipping? - and concentrate on the faces. 

I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere in the PR I've read but surely those are all the faces of actual people? Well, okay, not the Froglok, the Sarnak or the Vah Shir (Or is it a Kerran?) I'll give you that, but all the rest. I mean, that gnome is not any kind of gnome I ever saw in game. 

There's supposed to be an Easter Egg hidden in the picture. It can't be that those are all portraits of the devs, can it?

A picture I like a lot more is this splash screen from EverQuest's most recent expansion, Laurion's Song. I'm not saying I'd actually want it on my wall but I'd have it there a lot soooner than the other one.

I hadn't looked at it closely until I was logging in to EQ yesterday, when it was right there in front of me. As I studied it, one thing particularly jumped - that cat, sitting on the barrel.

Now, as I intimated above, I've never been all that clear on the precise, physical differences between Norrath's two, playable feline races, the Vah Shir and the Kerrans, but I can tell you that is neither.

I mean, I wish it was. Just look at it. That's a proper cat, by which I mean a house cat. It doesn't have the extended muzzle of the big cats we're used to seeing, walking on their hind legs, wearing armor and sitting on thrones in the game.

I would love to be able to make a character of whatever sub-species of Kerran or Vah Shir that's supposed to be. I'd buy a Race Pack in the store to get one.

Add that to the Roadmap, Darkpaw!

A Towering Presence Above The Sands

Wilhelm was kind enough to draw my attention, both to the appearance of a strange, new tower, floating above the sands of the Desert of Ro in EverQuest and also to the release of some extremely detailed, year-long roadmaps for both the elder game and its sequel, EverQuest II, as they each approach their respective, significant anniversaries. Somewhat unexpectedly, Darkpaw have given PCGamer the exclusive on the roadmaps, about which more later, but anyone with an active account can log in and check out the tower, which is just what I did this morning.

It was an exceptionally easy and very enjoyable visit. As has been mentioned countless times, both here and on many other blogs, returning to an MMORPG you haven't played in a while can be a disorienting, frustrating experience. It hasn't been an age since I last played EQ but it has been over a year. 

I've posted about the game a few times since but the last time I actually played EQ was about eighteen months ago, when I got my mid-60s druid out to take a look at a holiday event in Lavastorm. She's my go-to character for checking out new event or holiday content simply because she has the ports to get  to wherever something might be happening in a matter of minutes rather than what can often feel like several hours. 

The druid got the call this morning to go see what was happening over in the desert. I logged in, expecting a lengthy wait as my client caught up with all those patches from the last year and a half but amazingly the whole thing took less than a minute to update. EG7 really should send someone from the Darkpaw team over to Standing Stone to show them how to do it.

My druid was still idling where I'd left her in Lavastorm. I cleared a spell slot, loaded Circle of Ro, cast it and arrived in the very southernmost tip of the Ro desert in a matter of seconds. Naturally, the tower was in the far north but I had Spirit of Wolf and Levitate up so it only took me a couple of minutes to get there. Druid is the way to go, when you need to travel. 

Unlike some MMORPGs I've gone back to after even shorter breaks, I had no immediate issues with remembering how thinks worked. I'm sure if I was going to play seriously, as in fight things that can fight back, I'd need a refresher course but outside of combat, returning to EverQuest feels like slipping on a comfortable pair of slippers.

I was also very favorably impressed by how things looked. The whole of the eastern side of Antonica, including all of the Desert of Ro got a visual revamp, back when Sony Online Entertainment was running the show and there was money for that kind of thing, so the graphics aren't quite as ancient as they would be on the other side of the continent but even that "updating" was more than a decade and a half ago. For a game about to celebrate a quarter of a century of continuous operation, it looks amazing.

It didn't take me long to find the tower. It was exactly where I imagined it would be from the screenshot Wilhelm imcluded in his post. There were a couple of other unfamiliar structures close by, which may or may not be connected, but I went straight to the stone platform with the eerie, ethereal blue glow and clicked on it.

Next thing I knew I was inside the tower, looking around a large room filled with boxes, paintings and other players. There was a vendor by the name of Miacallie Herlsas, currently selling nothing but a silver-plated roboboar mount, for which she only accepts a currency called "Timeless Tokens". You can earn those by exploring the eleven floors of the tower and defeating the monsters hiding behind the huge, armored doors.

From what I gather by reading the comments following the announcement on the forums, the event involves both a scavenger hunt around Norrath to find the key to each floor and a dungeon crawl to explore what you find behind each door the keys open. The floors will become available month by month and Miacallie will increase her stock as the year turns. 

It looks as though the floors will scale to your level, will be soloable (Possibly requiring the aid of a mercenary for the less solo-capable classes, if there still are any left in modern EQ.) and, at least according to reports from the Test Server, won't be all that challenging. I'm already intrigued. If it's as easy as reported, I'll definitely give it a go.

For now, though, I'm more than happy to have had the chance to explore the whole tower from outside the doors. It's beautifully designed and decorated, with a wide, spral staircase that's easy to navigate and a central shaft with a teleport system that allows you to move upwards three floors at a time if you're in a hurry.

At the top, the tower opens onto a flat roof, with a dragon statue and a book on a pedestal in the middle and a high wall all around. I was hoping to be able to get up onto the parapet and look down on the desert below but that doesn't seem possible. By turning the camera I was able to peer over the edge but all I could see was grey mist so I suspect the tower doesn't exist in the same dimensional space as the rest of Ro. Well, it wouldn't. It's in an instance.

The very best part about the whole thing, though, is the art on the walls. The press release talks about it being "resplendent with artwork from around Norrath" and they are not kidding. There's a different painting on every wall in the atrium and two paintings on each landing all the way up the tower. I make it twenty-eight in all but I wasn't actually counting as I took screenshots of them all. 

The standard of the illustration is extremely high. Almost every picture would look great as a poster, not just in my in-game house but in my actual house, where I'm sitting typing this. I can just about make out in the extremely small print of those 2024 roadmaps something about "Swag Stores", the virtual storefronts Darkpaw recently introduced for both games to sell physical merchandise to the faithful. I hope some of the new swag involves these paintings.

And that brings me neatly back to the PC Gamer exclusive I mentioned at the top of the post. I was a little surprised to find a) that Darkpaw would offer an exclusive to a specific third-party website and b) that a general gaming site like PCGamer would be interested enoough in couple of ancient MMORPGs to take them up on it but, having looked at the post, I think I can see what's going on here.

The article was penned by Russell Adderson, who seems not just to be generally enthusiastic about the anniiversaries but to have considerable form as a player and a fan of the franchise. I clicked through his name to see what else he'd written and found he'd authored a lengthy piece back in October of last year in which he introduced the PCGamer readership to the murky world of EQ Private Servers outside of the legally-sanctioned Project 1999.

As well as discussing the new Quarm server, a private Progression server aiming to cap out at the Planes of Power expansion, reckoned by some metathesiaphobes to be the high-water mark of EverQuest's twenty-five year run, Adderson also makes his case for "the original, 1999 version" being one of the best MMORPGs to play today. On the face of it, you might think that would be an invitation for Jenn Chan to call Legal but instead she seems to have chosen to treat it as an opportunity to get this evident super-fan inside the tent, facing out.

What with NCSoft's recent about-face on the City of Heroes rogue-no-more server, Homecoming, it does seem like a spirit of pragmatism may finally have reached the corporate offices - and not before time! 

Anyway, if nothing else, it seems the Anniversary Event and the publicity around it have prompted both Wilhelm and myself to log back into EverQuest once again. We'll see how many more times it happens this year.

2024 20/25

Yesterday I forced myself to play EverQuest II. It wasn't, you understand, that I didn't want to. It's just that I wanted to play Once Human more. Really, quite a lot more.

For the reasons given in yesterday's post, however, I'm increasingly of a mind that spending every available play-hour in a beta that's going to close down and wipe in about three weeks' time (Presumably, although who knows? Hard information on the beta itself is ridiculously hard to find.) isn't the greatest idea I ever had.

Anyway, I'm starting to wean myself off the ephemeral and onto the eternal, which certainly seems like a fair description of EQII these days. The old warhorse is closing in on twenty years' service, which still leaves it lumbering along behind its better-known, more successful elder sibling, EverQuest itself. 

The original will reach a quarter of a century of continuous operation in just a few months. EQII has to wait a while longer but the two landmark (Oops! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it...) anniversaries landing in the same calendar year has prompted Daybreak Games to declare 2024 The Year of Darkpaw. 

Based on the information they've released so far, I suspect it's going to be hard for anyone other than the faithful to keep up with the details of everything happening in both games but fortunately we have The EverQuest Show to do that for us. I'm hoping I can get away with linking to their coverage, rather than doing any original research, like I just did. That's my plan, anyway.

Realistically, I'm only going to involve myself directly with the EQII celebrations, anyway. A while back I would have tried to do something in both games but these days it's as much as I can do to play one MMORPG at a time. 

The other reason is that, somewhat atypically, I suspect, I'm finding that the older I get, the more I want to see, hear and play new things rather than revisit old favorites. I swear I was more nostalgic about the pleasures of my youth when I started playing EverQuest in 1999 than I am now.

So far, Darkpaw are being understandably cagey about what they have in store for the franchise in this momentous, celebratory year. For EQII, there's a framework but not so much in the way of detail. One thing we do know is that the Gods are coming to play. 

Okay, not the actual Gods. As far as I can recall, we never get to kill the real pantheon. It's always their Avatars, those quasi-autonomous, self-aware constructs the true Gods like to send out to take a kicking for them. Or something. Honestly, who pays attention to this stuff?

Raiders, that's who. Avatar battles were a big thing for them in EQII at one time so I imagine the news that 2024 is going to be All Avatars All The Time comes as great news to a certain demographic.

It doesn't mean an awful lot to me. I read the official press release with interest but very little understanding. It seems this time we don't even get to interact with the Avatars right away. First, we have to go through the Heralds. It's a bit like talking to a receptionist to make an appointment to see a  PA, with a view to setting up a meeting with the General Manager, all while the mysterious, never-to-be-seen CEO watches the whole thing on a screen in the C-Suite, stroking a white cat and chuckling. Sinisterly.

It seems we'll be meeting and beating some godly Avatars we've fought before, along with some new ones we've yet to crush. The Norrathian pantheon is stacked with deities so there are plenty to choose from. I imagine they're lining up for the privelige.

First up is Tarew Marr, aka the Fathom Lord. He's quite senior as these things go, being "the first member of the Triumvirate of Water, the third creation of The Nameless". I could go into a lot more detail but I won't. If you're interested I recommend following the link.

Tarew Marr's Herald, a louche-looking nereid with scales in a fetching shade of blue, can be found lounging on the banks of an island at the heart of Mystic Lake, the second zone in the Fallen Dynasty, the long-forgotten Adventure Pack from 2006. It's somewhere most players probably haven't seen in a decade and change, if ever. Fortunately, I go there not that infrequently - for reasons - so I had no trouble finding her.

Since I was on my Level 126 Berserker, I got the high-level version of her quest, the one she gives to everyone over Level 125. According to The EverQuest Show's write-up "The Herald has a rotation of 6 different quests which can be completed every three hours." I got the one that asks you to "Assist in gathering energy rerserves for the avatar's summoning rituals", which seems to mean killing Named mobs in the current expansion.

That sounds like the short straw to me. Apparently there are six quests and you can do one every three hours. I might try taking them and deleting them to see what they all are, then cherry-picking whichever looks easiest. I'm pretty sure the gathering one is going to be quicker - and certainly easier - than killing a bunch of bosses.

There's no rush. The thing to remember is... this is going on all year. I'm assuming the Avatars are going to be sequential, with each new Herald replacing the previous one, but maybe they'll stack. Once they're up, perhaps they're up for good, or at least until the Miraculous Year is over. I guess we'll find out soon enough. I wasn't really planning on fighting any of them anyway, at least not if it requires a formal raid. If it turns out they're Public Quests, then I'm in.

The whole event looks to be tailored to meet the requirements of both very committed players and casuals alike. With each episode operating independently, you can obviously drop in and out as and when you find the time. On the other hand, with the whole cavalcade going on non-stop for twelve months, there should be enough to keep the hardcore logging in and grinding until they're begging for it all to end.

It's not just an event for high levels, either. If you turn up in Mystic Lake with your low-level character, the Herald will still find you something to do. There's a big "Book of Deeds" on a pedestal you can click on. It has multiple, straightforward tasks that anyone can do. 

Of course you have to get to the island first. It's in the middle of Mystic Lake, a zone in which flying doesn't work, a zone that's full of aggressive mobs, all in the mid fifties and sixties. Added to that, the the island is only accessible by way of a single path that goes directly through a disorienting maze of tunnels, filled with vivious mobs, some of them Heroics. There are even a couple of Nameds in there. Good luck doing that on your level 20.

There's no instant map travel there, either, although, if you do make it, you can at least buy a teleport ability from the vendor that means you'll never have to do it again. I should have done that last night but I forgot. Now I'll have to walk!

The main reason I forgot was that I rushed off to take a look at the other new event already in place for the celebrations. Someone was asking about it in general chat and I thought it sounded interesting. 

It's a scavenger hunt or a rather a Collection. A series of Collections, in fact. I do like a Collection in EQII, which is just as well because there are many hundreds of them by now. Thousands, probably.

The new ones they've added for the Year of Darkpaw (They get their own category in the Collection tab under that name.) are cut&pastes of old ones that have been arbitrarily ramped up to Fabled quality. I imagine that saved a lot of time although it certainly doesn't make them any quicker to do. 

I started off flying around Antonica and in a few minutes I'd picked up random examples of four out of the five available collections. It's always great at the start, when everything you find fills a slot, but pretty soon it's going to be a dozen "Gots" for every "Want".

Luckily, the shinies are tradable. I didn't check but I imagine there's already a booming market for swaps. Might be a good money-making opportunity. These things often are.

The reward for all the quests and collections is an event currency to spend at the event vendor. When I have some Year of Darkpaw Doubloons to spend, I'll go check out what I can get for them. I'm in no hurry. 

While I was on, I also checked out the new Frostfell quest. I'd heard there was one and I didn't want to miss it. I found it easily enough. Then it took me about two minutes to finish it.

Well, it was actually more like ten but nearly all of that was clearing out my bags so I'd have space to pick up all the presents. In keeping with most holiday "quests" of the last year or two, this one's actually a Collection. 

As you gather the presents that lie scattered all across Frostfell's Wonderland Village, all of them filled with crafting mats as usual, you might occasionally come across an unusual and highly unseasonal Empty Gallows Reed Basket. This is your starter.

With that duly clicked, a quest installs itself in your journal and as you carry on gathering presents, several more unpleasant artifacts appear among the ribbons and glitter. When you have them all, it's off to the Feerrott where the Ogre who the gifts are for (His name's on them.) is happy to take them and give you back the basket.

Frostfell ends a little early this year, on the 6th of January, so if you'd like a wicker basket filled with skulls and candy canes, you still have a few days. Then you have the rest of the month to collect what promises to be the first in a year-long series of cash shop giveaways. This month it's a cute vanity pet, Maxembert the Feisty, who does look a lot cuter in game than in the pictures. 

It's all in the animations, for which I imagine we have EQII's star animator Ttobey to thank. Ttobey is the GOAT as the kids probably don't say any more.

That was all I managed to get done last night but now I've re-introduced myself to the game I was happily invested in just a few weeks ago, I'll most definitely be back, hopefully every day. Novelty is great but there's a lot to be said for familiarity and this Year of Darkpaw promises to combine the two.