EQ2 – Page 34 – A Pixel Nomad

From 0 to 135 #EQ2 #EverQuest2

This weekend found me (much to my surprise) in EQ2 when I wasn’t out enjoying the Tulip Festival and gallivanting around the city with the other half. After exploring a little DoV (I’ve barely set foot into this expansion) and doing enough quests to be on the daily portion of my flying mount, I decided that I wanted to play a lower level character. I really enjoying older content in EQ2 and I had a level 6 Freeblood character that I had created some time ago. Myself and Ibeogur teamed up (while chattering to Ultann in guild) and headed first to Wailing Caverns. Because this weekend was double experience the levels came incredibly quickly (not to mention I have 120% bonus due to max level characters, and I used a potion, and I had vitality). Before too long the ranger was level 35 – and I had gone from 0 aa to 135. I’ve spent what I can in the first two trees until level 70 (50 points in each), and made my way down the Shadows tree. I didn’t want to level too fast, because there are a lot of quests I enjoy doing. 35 is a comfortable level, and I’ve set myself to 100% aa for the next little while. I’ve played a few rangers before – one all the way to levle 90 but I ended up deleting her because she didn’t have the aa and I didn’t feel like grinding them at end game. Looking back I suppose it’s a little foolish of me to constantly delete my levle 90 characters, but I only get rid of those that I feel no emotional ties to – my main characters I try to keep around.

I actually had a lot of fun playing – a lot more then I thought I would. It’s been ages since I’ve played EQ2 on a serious level and having guild mates around made an enormous difference. Of course it also took some getting used to as well. I barely remember how to get from one place to another or what any of the acronyms mean in game. Channels were bustling (at least on the Antonia Bayle server) and I managed to pick up 10 (that’s right, TEN!) new player-written books to add to my museum. That brings my total up to around 433 player-written books. I’m pretty proud of that fact.

I hope everyone else had an amazing weekend no matter where you spent it. It’s a long weekend here in Ottawa (Victoria Day is today) so I’m going to spend it indoors gaming after spending most of my weekend outside in the sun (plus it’s cloudy and just gross outside today). As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

It’s Good To Be Back (Online) #EQ2 #EverQuest2

Ah, it’s good to be back. Things are slowly getting back to normal with SOE, and I managed to fit in a little time in EQ2 to go over my housing plans. Pictured above is the library of my Norrathian Museum (on the Antonia Bayle server, if you want to visit it’s a Mistmoore Craig Estate located in South Freeport under the name of Stargrace). I managed to track down five “new” (to me) player-written books, which puts my collection at 423 to date. I’m hoping that as things become even more settled players will find inspiration once again and I will be able to find even more books to add. Remember as always if you’d like to donate a book to my museum you can contact me directly in game and I will supply the blank books as well as some coin for your effort.

Most (but not all) SOE games are involved in a grand ‘welcome back’ program that is currently running. For EQ2 this includes the following for players:

From May 14th until May 23rd at 9am PDT players can enjoy double xp, double guild xp, a loot bonanza, all city festivals and moonlight enchantments, and the Aether races. Players will also get 45 days of free game time (for active and non-active subscriptions) and 500 station cash. They’ve extended any RAF accounts that were active during the outage, and are compensating any time that may have been lost from the research assistants. They’ve also covered rent for one month for guild homes and regular homes.

Some players are demanding more, and that this is not enough. Personally, I don’t blame SOE for the down time. Places get hacked and it was just incredibly unfortunate that this time it was a widely used platform. I think that they are taking a lot more heat for their lack of communication to players then anything else. For example we received no emails letting us know that things were back up and running. No explanation on what was really going on, or how long anything would take. I understand it’s a bit of a sensitive matter especially if there’s legalities involved with tracking down whoever did this – but alienating your customers just makes a sore spot even worse. You have to keep them as informed as you possibly can and I don’t feel that “sorry, we’re not coming back up today” is keeping anyone informed. Just my opinion, of course.

I am glad to see everyone back to their respective games, and incredibly thankful that I can get back to scratching that housing itch – especially since multi housing just released not that long ago.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Multi-Housing Excitement #EQ2 #EverQuest2

I’ve always thought it was important that games play upon their strong points. The strong points are what set them apart from other games, and cause them to be ‘unique’ even if the remainder of the game duplicates something else. In EverQuest 2 I feel that this is player housing. The latest update allows players to own up to 10 homes at one time, and if you own a prestige home you are able to link all of these together via portals. Prestige homes come in a variety of ways, you can earn them from veteran rewards and you can purchase them from the station cash store, as well as earn them through legends of Norrath.

I’m really excited about this feature even though I haven’t been playing that much EQ2. I have my Norrathian museum on the Antonia Bayle server and it takes up the entire 7-year veteran reward home that I own. Thanks to these linked portals I will be able to link a ‘regular’ house to the museum, allowing players (and myself of course) to tour each of them. Decorating homes and “owning” a piece of the game is a really big deal to some players (not all of them, there are always those who are simply not interested) and I think the fact that EQ2 is willing to explore and upgrade these features is fantastic. There is a LOT of housing available in the game, and a lot of housing items. In fact even if you don’t enjoy housing at all it’s almost impossible to avoid that potion of the game because you get housing rewards for numerous quests, there are vendors all over, and the station cash store is filled with awesome furniture you can purchase. Having an option of ‘something else’ to do in game aside from slaughter creatures is a really important ‘hook’ to keep people in game.

If you are into housing, don’t forget to /join antonia_bayle.homeshow for great discussions with other designers. Have you decided what you’re going to do with this new feature yet? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

A Good (Bad) Freeblood #EQ2

Thanks to the Velious rewards I received my Freeblood race once DoV went live in February. I held off on creating the new character because I really had no interest in yet another alt – not to mention I wasn’t really playing that much EQ2, and when I did play I already had 10 characters to choose from. Of course sooner or later the itch to level something up – This time I decided upon a ranger. I had no idea that Freeblood could be ‘good’ aligned (as well as evil), but I’m a ranger starting in Halas – a very ‘good’ city. I’m sure the guards never noticed why some of their citizens were a little more pale then others, or why some went missing. Besides, I swear Kameeko (the ‘good’ ranger) had nothing to do with those things. Well. I’m almost convinced. I decided to go all out and also purchased the Freeblood lair when station cash was having a sale – the problem with this purchase is that it’s a one time use tied to the character. Not an issue for the average player perhaps but I’ve been known to delete level 90 characters (bye bye dirge) and re-create all of my characters minus a very small handful that I just can’t part with. This creates an issue for me on a few levels. Did I REALLY want a ranger? Well. I’ve had one before but again she was deleted some time back. I WANT to like the ranger, I just couldn’t create any sort of tie between me and the character, and in order to feel that (for lack of better word) longing, to play one – well. That bond has to be there.

I’ll give it another shot (haha, ranger, shot, see what I did there!) and maybe this time fall in love with the character – as long as she stays in her ‘natural’ state and doesn’t transform into the hideously ugly old lady that every vampire female seems to transform into at the click of a button. It’s gross, trust me.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Talk Housing #EQ2

I (and many others) have been eagerly waiting the changes that are coming to the housing system in EQ2. In EQ1 you can already purchase multiple homes (2) and while there are not quite as many options (smaller lots, etc) you can also purchase guild neighbourhoods from the station marketplace. Without getting into the RMT discussion, it’s at least nice to see that there are options out there. Lets face it, these days it’s not just hack and slash that is drawing us to games – it’s also the amount of personality we can interject into our characters and how much we can personalize them and their “life”.

Housing in EQ2 has grown by leaps and bounds over the years, but the next update will really take it to the next level. If you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps playing that other game) and haven’t been listening to what the new updates will encompass, here’s a few questions answered:

Q: While you are putting in the ability to own more than one home, could you please also add in the ability to share homes with other characters?

A: Prestige Homes allow this already. Add each character to the others’ trustee lists, then link the homes together via portals. Voila! Now your homes are linked and you can edit them freely.

Q: Change *Guild Port Doors* to be heirloom/attunable (heirloom selfishly because my main character buys all the doors for my other girls) rather than no-trade and let the location of our attuned guild port door be where the “Guild Portal to Player Housing” sends us to. This would allow us to use the “Guild Portal to Player Housing” to load in to whichever of our multiple housings we choose, or even into a home where we are trustee if that is what we desire.

A: More good news. This already works! You can place your Prestige Home portals in your Guild Hall directly, *and* the current “Member Housing” amenity now allows you to travel to any house that is linked in your home network. This can be a large amount of houses if you have lots of links and friends.

Q: Multiple Character Housing: Add the feature “Tenant” to the house window’s access tab. When the owner of a house flags a character as “tenant” on the access tab, an option will unlock at the bottom of the house’s access tab for that trustee to “purchase room”. Any time thereafter that the trustee visits that house, they can open the house’s access tab and click on the “Purchase Room” button at the bottom of the screen.

A: So basically, [you want to] allow automation of the current thing you could do by making that player a trustee of that house and requiring rent to prevent you from turning off the Trustee flag on them? (RL landlords could only dream of having such an easy eviction process. I can see how that could make the system safer for “renters” by preventing easy landlord lockouts.

The attraction to the decorator is obvious. And we have a feature coming up that would allow easy advertisement of the properties, so yeah…this might work. I’ll jaw it over with the team.

Q: The limit to the number of displayed vending boxes should be removed all together, but if that is not possible, you should at least increase the number of displayed vending boxes allowed in the home by number of tenants (ie if a house can have 10 active displayed vending boxes placed within the home, each tenant added to the home should increase this number by, at the very least, the number of broker slots the house allows).

A: We might consider something like this in a future update. It’s a decent idea. Needs some considering. The current house vendor system is only marginally successful. There’s definitely room for improvement.

I am incredibly excited about the multi-housing feature, and all of the neat goodies that will go along with it (including some guild hall amenities). My museum currently fills one 7-year veteran reward estate, and I’ll be so happy to move Stargrace to an actual home, with like – a bedroom. She’s getting a sore back sleeping with all of those books pictured above. Housing is always the one feature about EQ2 that I simple adore (and this goes for EQ2, EQ, and Vanguard) and I still wish more games looked at it as a valuable part of game-play. It’s a great way to wind down after doing some adventuring, and gives players a location to just hang out and do their thing. Maybe some day in the future we’ll see more dedication towards it.

In the mean time, happy gaming. No matter where you find yourself!