Tag: EQ2

I wrote last year about the Festival of Discord, a player run event that takes place on Antonia Bayle. Checking out the eq2players front page, I learned that it’s returning this year. 

You can find a map of the festivities here, as well as a calendar of events. 

Antonia Bayle is one of two roleplay servers, and has an amazing community. I’ve also got a level 30 guild over there (I moved to Najena to be with friends, but still have a small number of characters over there) not that we’ll be purchasing a guild any time soon. 

Discord and it’s counterpart the Festival of Unity, are two amazing player run events that GM’s have gotten involved in over the years, adding decorations and a fair-like set up to the grounds in both Commonlands and Antonica. If you’ve never gone before I would HIGHLY suggest you check it out, I’ve gone to the festival of Unity twice now, and I went to the festival of Discord last year also. The passion and heart that these people put into their events is astounding. With the release of guildhalls even more so, there’s a ball and taverns set up as decorators frantically finish their designs for the public. 

Be sure to check out the offical forums for the festival here, you can get a clear idea of all the work that gets put into this, the guilds involved, and the times / locations of each event every day from October 12th to the 18th. 

Remember what I said about community being key in any mmo? This is why I game. It may not be every ones cup of tea, but for me, it’s everything.

Edit: Happy Turkey day or Columbus day or whatever you’re celebrating today!

First of all. Why is a skin care site ripping my Mmo blog posts? As far as I know it’s been years since I talked about the maintenance of high elf skin compared to that of a wood elf. Seriously. I forget whose site I was reading, but I noticed they had a little legal disclaimer at the end of their post, so that any bots trying to take the article would be taking that portion along with it and people would at least know there the original site was. I’d hate to have to do that, but I’m starting to think maybe it’s a good idea. 

Last night, for the first time in a very long time, I worked on RoK quests with Stargrace (who’s been in the 70’s forever now and I had no intentions of leveling her again since every time I did a quest it made me want to gouge out my eyes) and actually didn’t feel the urge to get sick. This is a huge deal to me, I was actually having fun working in Kunzar Jungle, and got some upgrades. I made a list of ‘easy to obtain’ upgrades that I’ll eventually have to get. I also splurged and bought a few masters that were relatively cheap. I’m not sure why I had the sudden urge to start playing her, but I’m happy none the less. 

I wandered around doing faction quests for Kunzar Jungle, trying to make the zone a little friendlier to me. I had also not gotten any of the sokokar posts, and couldn’t use the druid ring, so I got those taken care of. Have I mentioned yet how swell it is to have a druid porter in the guild hall? Well, it is. When we made the decision to get one of those rather then another craft item or a different transportation sort, it was specifically because the druid rings port you a wide variety of places compared to the other methods. There’s also a new druid ring in Darklight woods. There’s Antonica, Commonlands, Darklight Woods, Kelethin, Kylong Plains, Kunzar Jungle, Steamfont, and Butcherblock. The rings may not port to the overrealm, but the antonica druid portal is right beside the wizard spires. 

I noticed SOE snuck a few ‘changes’ into various encounters when they added GU49, and people are not too happy. For one, that last name in Veksar. He spawns two or three adds (I forget the exact number) in his encounter during the fight – and people typically used to mez those each time they spawned, because he also has a nasty AoE that goes off and needs curing RIGHT away. There’s plenty of damage going on in general. Well, now those adds can not be mez’d, and there were some saying they couldn’t be stunned, or rooted, or stifled either. Aside from that encounter, there’s a Veeshan’s Peak encounter that was changed significantly too. 

Re-learning an encounter is not that big of a deal – but not telling people the encounter has been changed is slightly frustraiting and a waste of time for those who didn’t know about it. You head to the encounter thinking everything is the same as always and then 10 seconds pass and you’re thinking to yourself, woah, something is different. 

Last night Najena also had some server issues, something I haven’t seen in quite some time. We crashed twice, and channels messed up for a while. No idea what the cause was, but it was fixed within the hour at least.

Safe travels and happy blogging to everyone, happy turkey day on Monday for those fellow Canadians celebrating too!

 

 

I needed to take a little break from the decorating madness. Guildhalls are not going anywhere, and there’s plenty of time to build up a fantastic looking hall. I’ve seen some of the work going on at the Norrathian Homeshow, and also heard some of the horror stories that I knew would be associated with this. Things like “anyone can resize and move any item placed in the hall if they belong to the guild” and there’s always that one prankster who doesn’t understand how difficult it was to place all of those books, who goes and changes it all. Then there’s the “my guild leader said *I* could decorate but when I went back they had changed everything!”

More reasons why I’m happy that Nostalgia is the size it is and as of yet we have not had any issues with decorating the hall. Even if we did, we’re a fairly open bunch and we’d just talk about it, like adults do, and throw furniture later. 

I have been feeling the urge to work down some older quest chains, the Peacock line and claymore in specific. Since Silhouette hasn’t been around for all that long, I never started Speak as a Dragon which is one of the major ‘access’ quests in game that’s actually still used today. 

Of course, way back when it used to be an epic quest to even get the starter, and now it’s been changed to heroic. I headed through lavastorm on the new graphic settings I have my computer at. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE the new dual core support? I’ve been playing on 2nd highest settings easily, sans lag. Even in Qeynos Harbor. I could probably play on the highest settings, but I didn’t want to push things too far. This game is absolutely beautiful, and it’s something I’ve missed seeing. Even the older zones are beautiful. Lavastorm and Everfrost with their particular hot / cold flavours are just breathtaking.  I took screen shots of me running past the Oracle Tower in Antonica, and it was inspiring. 

I wasn’t feeling well so I logged off shortly after picking up the quest starter, but hopefully today I can run around collecting runes. Having a recall to guildhall spell every 15 minutes, and a druid who will port me around, is of course very handy. Plus I can pick up the shrubs I’ve forgotten – and the new one that they added to Darklight Woods. 

I still haven’t done the new D.I.R.T.Y. quests yet in sinking sands, maybe that will be another goal for today. I’m also trying to decide who I want to ‘settle’ on playing once the expansion goes live in November. So far I’m torn. Not that I HAVE to settle down, but things are always easier to accomplish on one character first then they are to do on 10. We’ll just have to see!

While decorating, and listening to everyone else decorate, I’ve noticed a few things. How could I not. I feel that our (Nostalgia’s) guildhall should represent us, and I’m fairly certain everyone in the guild feels the same way. We’re not big and uber, but we’re filled with passion. So our guildhall for the most part has been fairly simplistic, with some creative and passionate aspects thrown in. I actually feel lucky that we’re small because were we any larger no doubt we’d have huge decorating disagreements and pillows / beds / other various house items would go flying. So far it’s been easy. 

Each craft station within the hall has it’s own little area. The craft room is huge, and I like that guild members can personalize this space. Tipa added some neat little (literally) bits to her tailor section, Kasul with his jewelcrafting, and I turned the provisioner area into… well. You can see the screen shots for yourself. 

The smaller shots don’t do it justice, so please feel free to stop by.

We did it.

Yesterday morning Nostalgia was 100% away from level 30, the lowest guild level needed in order to buy a guildhall. Writs (tier8 crafter) were rewarding .5% experience at 15,000 stauts a shot. I figured it would take us a week to grind out that final level, but Nostalgia came together (as I’ve seen the band of folks do before) and by 5:30pm EST we had finished getting the entire level. 

200 writs later..

Honestly, yesterday was probably the best day I’ve ever had in EQ2, minus taking down Chel’Drak for the first time where I also screamed on vent once we’d accomplished it. Hey, it was a big deal way back when. I kept my sanity grinding writs by spamming twitter and the few people who were following that, a huge thank you to Tay and Tipa for the entertainment and putting up with my comments every few minutes while I tried not to just throw the whole computer out the window. 

Getting to level 30 was a big deal for us. We’re a really small guild I’ve said that a lot. Most of us play other games and it’s rare to see any more then 3-4 of us on at once and that’s pretty much the entire guild right there. The guild was formed in May, so we haven’t been around a long time either. We’re not raiders (if anything we’re crafters at heart). I was so very proud of everyone, I just can’t even express the feeling, please believe me when I stress the amount of work that went into this.

Aside from reaching level 30, we had 125p saved up so we could buy the hall + amenities, and we had donations of over 24,000,000 status into escrow. 

We had discussed on the guild forums where the hall would be – Gorowyn so that everyone could get there easily. We also discussed which 5 amenities we’d be purchasing. 5 is really not enough. We have a banker, rush order writs, the recall to guildhall statue, a fuel merchant, and druid rings. We don’t have a broker, or a merchant who we can sell to. We can’t make all of our npc wear the same uniform, or change that uniform. We can rename them all with cute little names though. Our banker is Mini Tipa (halfling, of course) and we have a mini Kasul giving out rush writs. 

The hall itself is huge and beautiful and a vast representation of everything we worked towards. No, it’s not the T3 or even the T2 hall but I take far more pride in what my small guild accomplished together then any other guild I’ve been in, and I’ve been in a lot. 

Now of course, the decorating begins. We wandered around together as a guild and planned out rooms. A crafting room (thank you for the machine donations!), library, and bedrooms for members down below where there’s more freedom for people to ‘do whatever’ with the space (and where I’ll try not to let my decorating sense tingle too much, I wanted everyone to have their own area to call theirs). I’ll be building Nostalgia a stage and music themed area much like the one located in Tipa’s house already. We’re all artisans of some sort, crafters, musicians, writers. 

So, that was my night last night. I didn’t actually do any decorating. I started to build a kitchen and it wasn’t working out so I decided to leave it be for now and I’d go back to it today. 

For anyone wandering around Najena who wants to come visit, please feel free. At the moment the guild is on visitor status, open to the public. I’ve also set our druid rings, writ giver, and fuel merchant to public status for now. We’ll see how it goes. For more Nostalgia fun be sure to check out Tipa’s post about the whole thing too!