A Pixel Nomad

(I put ‘sorta’ at the end of the title because I’ve calmed down some what with the prompt reply to the issue in my petition)

I tend to post the happy go lucky posts all the time, and that’s not to say that I don’t grow frustrated from time to time with MMO’s or my gaming experience. I figure that enough people out there already post complaints and issues and make fun of or discuss why they hate certain things, so I stay away from that sort of writing as often as possible. It’s typically not my style. 

However. Today I’m cranky. 

When EQ2 came out with the adventure packs, it was a two edged sword. New content = YES! But paying for it when we already pay a monthly subscription = BOO. When they were released, I (along with many others) purchased these little extra packs for $5.99 American. 

Now, when you upgrade your account to Station access, these little adventure packs became ‘free’. If you downgraded the account back to a regular account ($14.99 vs. $29.99), the adventure packs went poof — even if you had already previously paid for them. Which already happened to me in the past so I bought the adventure packs AGAIN.

Then RoK was released – and it was an all-in-one compilation of the adventure packs and all expansions already released. Great! Wonderful! Except last week my station access expired and I decided to stick with a regular account — 

And I no longer have access to these adventure packs AGAIN. Even though I’ve paid for them at least twice, and I own RoK (which I bought digitally from SOE at release). 

GAH!

I’m so frustrated. I petitioned in game because that’s the only available option right now (I know what the responce will be, get a hold of technical support edit: I was wrong here, they actually fixed the issue via petition, that was nice) and tried live chat support and email support – and for now I’ll sit here fuming because none of that is open for another hour and 10 minutes. *Eyeballs the clock*

Since RoK CAME WITH the adventure packs to begin with, there shouldn’t be any excuse at all for removing them from my account. What do you mean, no one goes there any more so why am I making a big deal? Well. Maybe it’s just one of those days where anything at all pisses me off, those have been known to happen once or twice. After promoting Sony and their games for so long though, something had to give.

 

Edit: 20 minutes after posting my petition (and this post as well) I received word from GM’s that they’ve added the adventure packs to my account (no idea if that’s been finished yet or not) but it’s nice the error was at least fixed promptly, even if it shouldn’t have happened to begin with.

I love the Everfrost charms – with one small annoyance that I realize is difficult to avoid. Well, ok perhaps two. Number one would be the mass of people in this zone working on the exact same quests. It has died down some, but there’s still 30-50 people in the zone at any given time, and while the zone is big it’s not THAT big. Most of the people running through are level 80’s either trying to get new house items, doing the charm quest, obtaining those few aa that they still need, or running baby alts through the zone. I took my monk over to get her charm item. In fact I believe every single one of my 7 characters (on my main account, only active one currently) have their charm item now. 

Aside from how crowded the zone is (the 2nd version of the zone only stayed up for one day) I dislike how this level 47 item is better then level 80 items. Or rather, level 77. Specifically the provisioner faction crafted items. I’m of course talking about the wishbone and chicken foot. This level 47 item is also better then the charm item that drops off of the contested Mayong in T7. I realize that when you revamp a zone the gear changes dramatically, but I wish it didn’t only rival but surpass greatly – the gear that is 30+ levels higher then it. There are rumors of gear obtaining diminishing returns eventually. That is to say – as you out level the gear, the stats on it will actually decrease, and make it worthless to wear. I think that this is a good idea (though I have personally seen no proof of it being implemented, for now it is just talk in my eyes) because it forces people to upgrade their gear. In EQ1 upgrading your gear is not exactly a big thing as gear has no levels. Well, actually these past few years gear has been given more of a “can not wear until level” and then a max stat level – but in the past gear had no levels. You had a stat cap for your level, so anything above and beyond was useless, but in the mean time you were free to wear whatever you wanted. 

EQ2 doesn’t work that way – every piece of gear has a minimum level you need in order to equip it. Which is why I think it’s important that players upgrade. One of the problems with this though of course is that when a zone gets revamped, or gear gets revamped, or new zones come to life – the items there are of course significantly better then previous areas, so it can draw players into it. 

The level 40-50 items in Everfrost rival a lot of the gear that my level 61 necromancer was wearing. The charm item rivals level 80 gear. I don’t like that ‘balance’. I think that the stats could have been reduced – and leave off the crit chances. In the end game those crit chances are bread and butter of pretty much every class out there, and highly sought after. Aside from raid obtained charms – no charms even HAVE crit chances besides these level 47 charms. 

Goudia finally hit level 40 alchemist yesterday. Thankfully I have supplies saved up, I’m hoping to at least surpass my Monk’s levels so that I can make her a few skills should the need every arise. Maybe her stances at least. We’ll see. 

On a completely unrelated note – happy birthday to my Mom! She’s my best friend, and I hope she has a fantastic day, I love her with all of my heart.

It’s around this time of year (every year) where I get utterly bored with whatever it is I happen to be playing (EQ2 for the past four years almost five now) and decide I suddenly want to play other games, only to stumble back to the comfort of EQ2. This year is slightly different. I have no real interest in playing any other games on a serious level (aside from my brief forays into Guild Wars which is also slow, and infrequent I know) so I doubt I’ll go down that path. Instead I’ve been logging into EQ2 briefly, to help a friend with a quest, or some leveling, then logging off almost right away once those are completed. I know I should be concerned with obtaining more guild status for Nostalgia, but it’s really tough with only a few of us working on it. My restlessness is nothing new, and I don’t take it too seriously.

I spent some time with my monk (level 44 now level 45) in Ruins of Varsoon, wandering around with three good friends. Nothing much dropped but it is 20% bonus exp weekend this weekend (not announced, but it is on the exp bar if you mouse over it) and I took good advantage of it. Mentoring and receiving 75% less experience then normal, I still managed to hit 45. I’ll have to shop for gear some time, the poor monk is level 45 wearing level 2 jewelery and level 32 gear. The new quests in Everfrost may be something I can do – if the locals don’t just shun me and chase me from the zone on entrance due to my gimp-ness, we’ll see! I also spent some time wandering around Fallen Gate with these same three friends. I died, twice. Apparently my monk is not as uber as she likes to think she is. Go figure.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the DAZ Studio bit lately. Creating some images for friends, making a few signatures, that sort of thing. Nothing exceptionally fancy, but it keeps me out of trouble (for now).

Sorry that the blog posts have been quite lacking lately, hopefully I’ll feel more inspired in the upcoming week!

Finally, after doing the harvesting quest 30 times – Silhouette obtained her title. I don’t expect to wear it that often, it’s horribly long, but having accomplished it was nice enough. I had not done a single one of the quests yesterday, and that was my goal. It was easy enough to get the first 20 done, after all the reward of house items is always great. I got my scroll, and then my dragon – and decided to push for the last 10 rounds I needed for the title. I finally settled that I would do the evil version on one character, and then the good version on Arysh.

Nostalgia is sitting at part way through 26 currently. I’ll be away a portion of this weekend, and won’t have too much time to grind writs. I’ve been waiting for some crafting vitality to build up as well – and I’ll need to harvest more supplies. With 5 of my crafters at level 80, I of course have little motivation to actually want to craft. I have two sitting at level 40, and one at level 20. Those levels are so low that it’s difficult to want to grind out writs – status barely trickles as it is.

New member joined the guild last night, someone from splitpaw who had heard about our goals of reaching 30. Splitpaw is a EU server, so I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see them online much, but I’m always glad to have more members.

Other then repeating quests (over and over) things are fairly quiet. I keep hearing everyone talking about Spore, and WAR, and it’s making me itch a little (as in, want to play) but not quite enough yet to actually draw me into them fully. We’ll see how it goes!

Only 14 more days until Issue 15 of Beckett MOG is released – I am SUPER excited about this, no doubt people will be hearing much more in future posts.