I haven’t played to much EQ2 lately. It is just the solo grind that is getting to me. From what I am reading the Kunark expansion was very heavily geared to solo play. Then there is all the time sinks that I am hitting. I was going to play a little Saturday night but when I sat down and thought about how many zones I would have to go through just to get to Fens I decided to watch a movie instead.

 I tend to log out on the Butcher Block dock that seems to be the best place to me. I can use my “Call of Ro” and sell faction items in the Court of Blades. Then pop down and over to Butcher Block and hit the mender, broker and banker. So when I log in I am on the docks and can check the broker and my mail. So to get to Fens I have to go through SS, NQ, Ant… (Wait on the boat), Kylong and then Fens. SO that is 5 zones with a boat wait and a bird ride to get to the area I need to quest in to level. That is around 20 min of just zoning, waiting and flying.

So I log in Sunday going to work on trying to get half a level before the raid. I spend my 20 mins getting to Fens. Pull up my journal and head to do a quest turn in. Then to my surprise bam I have to have a high enough faction to complete the quest. Ok so lets get to some faction grinding but wait I don’t speek the language of the quest giver. So at this point I am pushing 45 min of game time just to find out I need to go back and get some language quest done.  So I call to Kelethin and head to Steamfont. Once there I get the quest which is a level 35 quest so ne exp for this one.  I spend 2hrs killing gray mobs getting updates just so I can go get more grinding quests.

After that I logged and thought what a waste of a Sunday morning.  With this slump it could take me a while to get to 80.

Well I didn’t manage to get into DDO Tuesday like I had planed. But I have decided to take Tayln and Ustice’s advice and play the game for a few months. So having this weekend off I should be able to get in and do some group action. I have also been trying to talk the guys from my old table top days into giving the game a go.

I do have a good reason for not making it though I decided to get level 75 on Amirah my Illusionist in EQ2. Only 5 more long levels. Once I do get to 80 I will have all kinds of things to do at that point. Most of if involves working on my epic weapon quest line. I did get a new hat in the Tuesday night raid. It was a nice upgrade for me but the graphic is just awful.  So don’t plan on seeing me run around game with it displayed.

Well over the past week I took advantage of the DDO 10 day free trial. I still have 2 day left on the trial and I am still deciding if I want to buy the game or not. Now the game is only $15 but the question is “is there enough there for the $15 a month fee”. I guess I will keep thinking it over tomorrow and then decide Wednesday.

Tomorrow I plan on put my lfg tag and see what the group action looks like. The dungeons are really nice and the traps are great. I don’t know how many times I jumped when I would suddenly see fire shooting out of the wall.  I guess the deciding factor for me will be how looking for a group goes.

 Kill Ten Rats was the only blogger to post the other day recognizing SWG’s 5^th birthday.  It suppresses me a little that no one else bothered to mention it. It seems to me that SWG is the only game out that at release was truly a 3^rd generation MMO. SWG was a game that was really ahead of its time. I can not think of a single game that has even tried to implement some of the original components of SWG. I wanted to take a moment to look back and think of some of the things that where in SWG that I would like to see implemented in MMO’s to come.

                 Can you say NO levels. Now SWG was the first MMO I ever played and EQ2 was the second. So after 2 years of playing SWG (I left before the infamies NGE patch) and going in to EQ2 at launch. Image my surprise when I had levels and needed to run back to town every level just to get my spells upgraded. So why after 5 years do we still see games following in the same old path?  I for one loved the skill tree system. Was it perfect NO but there sure is a lot of potential in a system without levels. The community interaction of just people training other people was great.

                Everything in the game was player made. There was no camping mobs’ waiting for a drop. There where was no questing for an item.  You ran missions those missions paid you credits and you took those credits and bought your gear. So imagine my surprise when in EQ2 I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t high enough level for a mace. Not that I couldn’t use maces I just wasn’t high enough to use that mace yet.

                Personal Vendors it is the only game that took the idea behind selling goods and made it into a class. You had your own personal NPC that would stand around and sell your wears. Later they added tents that you could set up around Player Cities to have your NPC merchants sell your goods. Now the vendors do not just stand there heck no if you where high enough up the merchant tree you could make them talk to passerbies. With everything in the game player made vendors where extremely important and if you where a good crafter and kept your vender stocked up people would travel a long way to buy from you. I made many runs across Rori just to get stem pack A’s.

                 Can you say dancers anyone. How about that a class based just on people standing around talking to people. One of my fondest memories is when BKB decided to have a party and Stryker paid a group of master entertainers 250k just to come at and play. What a great experience I just wish I still had that screenshot.

                To sum it all up lets not forget the creature handler. How many pet Rancors did you have? There where also player cities, player housing, dynamic based pvp, and PA halls aka guild halls. So while the SWG we have to day is far from the game it was at release we have to ask why things like this have not been tried in other games.  SWG didn’t fail because of its launch it failed because SOE didn’t want to listen to there player base.

                And it did teach the industry a on big lesson.  You have to listen to your player base.

I guess like your high school sweet hart, your first car and your first job you never forget your first MMO.

Last night while I was typing up my post Tobold had posted about guild hopping. I am really glad he did I missed this topic last time around.

Gratuities links to follow

Journeys with Jaye

Massively

PotShot

Ok so here is the way I see it. It all depends on they way you look at your guild. Is your guild a tool or a group of friends? If it is a tool then you bet you are going to see lots of guild jumping. People are always going to want the right tool for the job. That is not to say that it is all on the players there are guilds that look at there members as tools also. If you are a high end raiding guild you most likely are not going to take people that are at the low end of the scale. You are going to want people that help your guild advance to the next level.

I on the other hand look at my guild as more of a group of friends. I have been playing MMO’s for about 5 years now. I know it has been around 5 years because I started in the SWG beta. Now in that time besides when me and 5 buddies decided to make are own guild I have been in 3 guilds. Three that’s it three. I have never changed guilds in a game. Each guild was always a group of friends. It was about more than just raiding. It was about people helping people out. There where always guild groups going on. I have never really had to really on my lfg tag to find a group. Now I have had to use the social window to pick up people to fill out a group. That was more as a recruiting tool than anything else.

I just have this to add if you are in a guild with a lot of people that come and go ask your self is your guild just a tool and are you just a tool for your guild.

My guild is a guild of friends I started on the Guk server with Revelry and Honor and will die on the Guk server with RnH.

Ok it has been a long time. I figure if I can not keep up with it this time around I will most likely give up on my own blog. I have my google reader all set up with my favorite blogs so no more trying to keep up with everyone. I love google. There is also this nice little option in google reader that lets you download all your blogs so you can read them when you are offline. So know more getting hundreds of blog post behind. For example I see that as I am typing this up Tobold just made another new post at 3am my time. 

This may sound a little silly but I even started another blog The Newb Experience.   I have decided to go exploring so to speak.  I really haven’t played a lot of MMO’s I can count them all on one hand.  While I am still going to be playing EQ2 as my main game I am also going to check out a new game every few months. Instead of trying to compare it to other games that are out I am really going to try and look at it from a newbie’s point of view. If nothing else it should be a great experience checking out new games and filling my shelf with boxes.

I got an email the other day from my on BKB guild. It appears that they are going to reform in AoC. Now I have talked about BKB before and while they are a great group of players I really hadn’t looked thought about playing AoC. Some of my real life friends will also be picking up AoC and playing with BKB again. Now I never really looked at the game before. I was happy in Vanguard and I am happy in EQ II. RnH has been a great guild to be in with a lot of great players. I do have to say thanks to

• Keen and Graev’s

• Random Battle

• PotShot

While I am sure lots of people will be getting AoC just by looking at the preorder numbers. I have come to the conclusion that the game isn’t for me. Not that I think it is a bad game or anything. But I am just not into the whole PvP thing. Doest that mean I will never play not at all. If for some reason I start to look for something else to play and BKB is still active in AoC then that will be one of the first things I look at.

I hope all the best to my old BKB brothers in AoC. I am sure they will have a premium player city and take many battle keeps.

Just another fun pic this week. This is one big Owl Bear.

First off is a very strange window that popped up on my yesterday.

Now my favorite LoN loot card ever.

Congratulations I see it all the time in guild chat. Ding level 23 grats, ding AA point number 36 grats, Congratulations you just did the same rush order for the 20^th time in a row. I wounder has the congratulations just gone overboard. Now I am as excited as everyone else is to see some one ding a level or do a work order. The more people ding the closer we all get to doing the higher end raids. More work orders means more statues for the guild and the closer we get to being a level 80 guild.

But really do I need to say grats in guild chat every time. I understand a new player being very excited about seeing lots of fast levels. But I really don’t think Everquest II has a lot of new players coming to the game. I figure most low level toons are alts of people with high level toons on Guk or on another server. They have all been through the process before and are just playing something different.  So I have decided for myself to just give a blanket shout to everyone in the guild when I log to say Congratulations for all the hard work everyone did that day.