Saying Goodbye (to Kithicor) Hello Antonia Bayle!

Yesterday was a busy day. The guild of three plus one on Kithicor had to pack up the entire guild, as well as our shared banks and brokers and we began the long move over to Antonia Bayle. Our kithicor guild was level 51, we worked really hard on it. So in remembrance we placed mannequin in the entry of our (now empty) hall, with a book written by each of us. The mannequins on the far left and right are my two characters, the mystic and coercer. My book was fairly short, it explained how I came to kithicor, and why I was leaving.

The coercer moved over with no problems, but my mystic for some odd reason couldn’t even see the ‘services’ tab on the station market. Turns out there’s another small bug – if you use gift cards your account is flagged as “pending” and not “active” – to remedy this all you have to do is add a credit card to the end of your subscription (it won’t charge you anything until the gift card runs out) and it will be flagged as active again.

Once I’d done that the mystic moved over with no issues. Since neither character had to change their name, both of their homes remained intact, thankfully because Ellithia owns my Norrathian Museum and I had nightmares of having to rebuild the entire thing. That’s one house I’ve spent countless hours on.

Speaking of my museum, I spent the better part of the afternoon purchasing player-written books to add to my library. There are 33 (that’s right) pages of player written books on Antonia Bayle. On Kithicor there was 1 page, and most of those were my fellow guild mates. The prices of the books are very reasonable, and I bought up everything I could, happily.

Now, one person in particular has uh, some.. Pornographic books that are selling. So if you do purchase books from the broker, or your children are about to, be careful if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. For the most part I’ve been exceptionally pleased with the books I have found, and it looks like my library is coming along very nicely. I’ll have to make a list of what I own so that I can keep track and avoid doubles.

Now I need to betray my 2nd coercer back over to an illusionist, Calreth has offered to help out with spells and since I’ve already got the illusionist epic completed there won’t be too much work to do at least. Then I’ll have an illusionist, coercer, and mystic on Antonia Bayle instead of two coercers.

Hopefully Kasul and Wpus will be able to move over today, I see research assistants are fixed – NOTE – when you move servers the RA is set back to zero, so if you have spells in the works get them BEFORE you transfer. Unless you don’t really care about the spell of course. Then it doesn’t really matter.

Thank goodness it’s Friday! I hope everyone has a fantastic day. I’m off to my upper gi and hopefully we’ll finally get to the bottom of these health issues.

Home Sweet (new) Home

The screen shot is taken from Evernight Abby which my guild tackled last night happily. We didn’t get anything of use to drop but honestly that’s not a big surprise for us, and we’re quite used to it. We were having a few issues with heals on the final fight since I was not boxing my mystic and just playing the coercer, but I logged in Ellithia and we downed the final named without too many issues. The first time through we forgot to get the spell that casts holy water to prevent the massive AOE that pretty much one shot my poor enchanter.

Ultann managed to get his mythical last night – which means that TODAY we will be packing our bags and leaving Kithicor for good, moving to Antonia Bayle, a server I have always loved. I’m excited about it, eager to join friends and set down new roots. Hopefully we can find an alliance or two to raid with, and make some new friends along with the old. I will be moving my coercer from Najena along with the mystic from Kithicor, and then when I can afford it, I’ll move over my other coercer and (gasp) probably betray her to an illusionist so that I have one of each again. We’ll see. I haven’t figured it all out quite yet.

Aside from Evernight Abby we also did Obelisk of Ahkzul, no the shield did not drop, again. I think I’ve stopped wondering if it will. At least the zone is fairly fast, and we do get a shard from the final named. I still need to finish off the set gear on the coercer, and since I’m moving over a different coercer, she’s going to need her set, as she doesn’t have any of it at all. I started playing on Kithicor before I really got into TSO at all with any of my Najena characters.

Today is going to be busy, packing up and moving characters over, making sure nothing important is left behind. Hopefully it goes well. Fingers crossed!

Character Transfer Potions are a Go

Yesterday the LONG awaited character transfer tokens were implemented in game, and I can only imagine how much money SOE will be making off of those. The automatic transfer that we used to be able to do from the web site has been down since last September, they attempted to move it to a petitioned system which didn’t work out and for the past few months the only way you could transfer a character was to call San Diego during business hours and request a transfer. The price at the time was also $50 which was dropped down to $25, a VERY smart move in my opinion. Especially given how much people like to play with their friends (at least the people I know do).

Myself, I’ll be moving to Antonia Bayle along with Kasul, Wpus, and Ultann all from Kithicor. We’ve made no secret of the fact that Kithicor is a particularly horrid server with very low tolerance for anything that’s not up to standards. It makes finding groups and meeting people hard, and none of us enjoy it very much. We’ve kept to ourselves for the most part, and we’re (as far as I know) all looking forward to the change.

Tipa also moved to Antonia Bayle, where Malfi, Cuppy, and Calreth already are. I have actually played on AB before a few years ago and enjoyed the server, but moved to Najena to be with friends (who eventually moved some place else). I’m hoping this will be the last time I transfer characters anywhere, but I’m not holding my breath, stuff happens.

To start off I’ll be moving my 80 mystic and 80 coercer. I’ll be waiting until Monday as Sunday is the day Ultann will be getting his mythical updates (paid) and I wouldn’t want him have to give that up.

In the mean time we’ve got to pack up the halls on both Najena and Kithicor, and make sure everyone is well situated before the moves. Hopefully it goes nice and smooth, I’m not expecting too much trouble. The potions are VERY easy to use, and tell you of any errors you may experience along the way.

The ONE bug I heard about yesterday involves player housing. If you transfer servers and a name change is required, there was a bug yesterday that prevented the items from within your house from moving with you, because the ownership names did not change along with the character name. This meant if you moved from server A to server B and changed names the house items were still under character A and did NOT move even though the house was now owned under character name B. Very frustrating and I hope there is a solution to that in the works, I’d hate to think of how many players lost the items from their homes yesterday.

Wednesday! I hope it’s a fantastic one and everyone is happy. No doubt I’ll be seeing you all in Norrath! If you’re on Antonia Bayle I look forward to meeting some new friends next week, and reuniting with old ones.

Trivial Matters

One of the things I have been struggling with (a little) is the fact that I know in February the level cap will be going up by 10 – thus making all of the gear I work for now pretty much obsolete. Coupled with the fact that (if it goes through at least) gear will become “grey” to the person wearing it if they out level it, thus reducing its effectiveness. That means at level 90 I’m not going to be wearing a single piece of gear from TSO (unless it was upgraded of course) because it will be ‘grey’ to my character and weaker then a piece of gear that is level 81+

With that being said, spells will also be upgraded making the spells I have now pretty much useless though you could argue the fact that you’ll want the best of the best in the mean time in order to blast through the content of the new expansion. The problem is – the new expansion is still 7 months away. This is a horribly early time to start thinking about how before too long everything will be trivial.

Then there’s also the fact that I am eagerly awaiting server transfers to come down in price so that I can get settled in a new (but old since I’ve been there before) server. I’m not moving the same characters that I’m currently playing on Kithicor (aside from the mystic) and that makes whatever I do on my current coercer and dirge / troub a little meaningless to me – since I’ll be playing someone else. I realize that probably only makes sense to myself, but that’s where things are standing right now.

Yesterday! The guild got together (minus one Kasul who was still at work) and managed to inch our way back to Obelisk of Ahkzul which was the mission of the day (or the daily double for those of you not familiar with Kithicor’s way of terming it). This is the quest given to you in the Moors that rewards 2 void shards and a plat. The zone is simple, and we cleared it without too much trouble. We did lose Ultann on the ‘bounce’ room because he fell through the world, but Burny (Wpus’ mage pet) tanked just fine while we pinged off the magical orbs.

No, the shield didn’t drop. I am fairly sure that thing is a myth, we’ve seen every single other drop numerous times now and no shield. My mystic is getting mighty tired of the RoK one she’s wearing (it’s a really bad shield) but even the void crafted ones offer very little to healers. They have no heal crit on them, low power (only 100) and no other admerable traits aside from their spiffy graphics that would convince me to want one.

The 20th of the month is coming around quickly again and that means the grotto events will be back in Norrath! I’m looking forward to adding some more house items to my collection and getting the aa’s on characters who have not done it yet. I’ve put a few for sale on Kithicor and they’ve been going for 5-10p per piece, which is just neat (and weird). It’s nice to be able to make a little coin.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Tuesday, and I’ll see you in Norrath!

Still So Much To See

One of the reasons I have kept my love affair with EverQuest II for so long is the simple fact that there is SO much to see and do – even after all of this time. When I play other MMOs I mention from time to time that I get bored because I don’t want to always pvp, I don’t want to always craft, I don’t want to always group, or always solo. What I want is to be able to do whatever I feel like doing at that exact moment, and move from there. EQ2 is one of the few games that allows me to do this on a daily basis.

There are days when I want to go quest-crazy, and complete as many quests as I can, and there are a LOT of quests in EQ2. In fact looking at the EQ2 Questlist there are 6184 quests total recorded. Some of those are of course class specific quests, and ones that were removed from game or were only around for a limited time, but they still count. If you’re a fan of shiny collections (and lets face it, who isn’t?!) there are 421 shiny collections in game. I have barely completed 200 on any one of my characters. That’s a lot of shinies to work towards! Then of course there are days I would rather not go near quests at all, typically after one of my binges, hehe.

While no game has involved crafting into the actual game play as much as I would have personally liked, EQ2 comes the closest by adding crafter orientated quests to the game that players can complete without too much difficulty no matter their adventure level. It’s not perfect by any means but it sure comes close. If I feel like grinding out a few crafting levels while watching a movie it’s a perfectly viable option.

There is a fair selection of group and solo content – and if I run out of solo content I can always go back and do the group content that I may have out leveled (thus making it easier for me) and I’ll still get achievement points for doing so. I’m really looking forward to the update that will allow players to mentor to a specific level and thus complete content as level appropriate without having to always have a lowbie in group. It will be nice to complete old raids, be able to farm masters that may not get upgrades (enraging demeanor anyone?) and just pretend to be a lower level for once.

In fact how many times have you started playing a game your friends were on only to have to play alone while they play their mains – or have to constantly play ‘catch up’ before you could actually play together. I think the mentor system that EQ2 has is something that a lot of people over look. The ability to play with your friends no matter what level they may be is something that I really cherish. It doesn’t matter if I have 100 level 80 characters (scary thought) I can at least help out on my main character and not have to re-create a lowbie.

I spent this weekend cleaning up my two EQ2 accounts a little. I deleted three characters (including an 80 sage but we won’t talk about that!) that I had very little interest in playing any more (my 58 swashbuckler, 61 necromancer, and 61 bruiser). It freed up a little space on my second account should an urge ever overcome me again to create another alt (and of course it will) and trimmed down a little so I can actually clearly tell what level 80’s I have. On my main account I have 7 level 80’s as well as my level 74 paladin – a full account in other words. On my second account I only have 1 level 80 (the mystic) but hey I suppose there’s a goal to work the other 6 up. Of course when the next EQ2 expansion comes out I’ll have 10 levels to try to gain on everyone including new gear and new spells, but maybe by then I’ll settle down with a ‘main’ and turn all those into crafters.

Hah. Right.

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, here’s hoping it’s also a fantastic week!