Tag: EQ2

The call went out to 70-79, a live event was happening at the spires in Loping Plains. The Champion of Hate, an 84×2 epic had spawned just after the spires were completed. Little Willamina was too small at level 75 to help take this encounter down, but I watched eagerly on the edge of my seat while people gathered their forces together.

I love watching the server come together for an event like this. It’s not something that happens often in EQ2 as opposed to EQ where guide quests can have 100’s of players taking down encounters. The 12 people went and pulled – and a few seconds later everyone was dead except me, and the Champion of Hate.

The second try ended far better except that I went link dead just as the epic was about to die, guess I had my settings on too high. Figures!

It was still a lot of fun to watch and I hope everyone had a good time. I like events like these because they are encounters that are NOT taken down by your typical raider. They were a collected group of non-raiders who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Congratulations to those who got to partake!

Yesterday little ranger Willamina (pictured to the right sporting her seafury buccaneer cloak) managed to inch her way to level 72 thanks to the help of Shadowgeist and Hamal. Between instances like Crypt of Valdoon, zones like Mistmoore Catacombs and Castle Mistmoore, as well as a brief stint in Sebilis (which was ‘fun’ to get to at level 71 when I had no sokokar or druid rings completed) she gained her levels as well as a few aa.

It was time to finally put on that level 72 mastercrafted gear, as well as make her first few skills. I am slowly going broke again (alts always seem to eat up all my cash) but I know I’ll make it back once I start actually questing with her again. I still need to get a cloak, some charms, food drink arrows and 1 weapon for her, but she’s well on her way. It helps that I have crafters who can create everything – and Hamal made me my jewelery as well as my skills.

Now the slow grind to 80 begins, and I do think it will be quite slow. Considering the ranger only has 1 day and a few hours played, I can’t really complain.

I’m also making adept3 for my bruiser who is level locked at 15 – and her paladin friend who is locked at 15 as well. We haven’t done any quests yet, and I plan on completing a bunch of those before we raise the level cap to 20. Having some adept3 should help the process. Once we absolutely run out of things to do at level 15 we’ll decide on where to level next. I’m excited about it, for once not rushing to end game and being able to enjoy the game in a completely new and different way that I haven’t experienced in a while. I do tend to take my time through the newer content, but stuff that’s been around for a while  I have typically already done a million times.

While working on my claymore quest (with the mystic) I came across a large issue. I had picked up the quest while my character was a defiler, the quest differs from the Qeynos version. Mid way through I betrayed over to a mystic, and upon completion of my quest the NPC would no longer speak to me because I was not the right alignment.

I petitioned when this happened, and after a bit of a wait (longer then I am used to because there are exceptionally heavy load requests going on at the moment) a friendly GM contacted me and asked me to log over to her so they could help me out.

After five years of playing EQ2 I stick to my opinion that the GM’s in EQ2 are some of the BEST you will ever find, in any game. They may not always be as prompt as you would like but they certainly try to take care of absolutely any issue you may experience. As long as you’re not asking for something impossible, and you’re kind and polite when you do ask, they will try their hardest to help you out. I have contacted GM’s a large number of times about everything from deleted characters, to housing issues, name issues, lost items, selling things to merchants by mistake, quests, and pretty much anything else you could think of. Each time they were polite and helped me to the best of their abilities. This sort of service is something I really treasure, and a service that I think more people need to appreciate. Sure, if you ask for something off the wall they’re not going to be able to help you, but they’ll still try and answer.

What about you, have a story of in game customer support (doesn’t have to be EQ2 related) that you’d like to share? What are some of your best MMO related customer service stories? Comment below!

In the mean time, happy gaming and I’ll see you in Norrath!

With GU53 came the option for players to be able to convert their combat experience into alternate advancement experience, something we all saw in EverQuest and something I personally missed a LOT in EverQuest II. Before GU53 you would have to have been level 80 before your combat experience converted.

There are a lot of benefits to this new feature, one of which is visiting older content. In fact a lot of the features from GU53 has players returning to older content and I couldn’t be happier.

To the right is Ishbel, my new iksar bruiser. She leveled to 15 along with Feelix her trusted Kerra friend (paladin) and then both of them turned off their combat experience by setting aa to 100%.

Now, there are a few differences when you do this at a level lower then 80 – and you may actually want to stop gaining experience at level 79 so that you can take advantage of these.

First of all – turning your achievement bar to 100% takes certain factors into consideration. It’s not just that you’re gaining aa but that you’re gaining it based on what you would normally be gaining for combat experience. What do I mean by this? If you have vitality, that will add to the experience. If you use a combat experience potion, this will also add to it. If you have a bonus to experience based on the fact that you have other level 80’s on your account, this will also contribute as will any experience you gain while there are server events going on. Once you hit level 80 this is not the case. It doesn’t give you a bonus for anything aside from mentoring someone lower then yourself.

Ishbel may only be level 15, but she’s got 35aa so far and counting. Her and Feelix headed to Wailing Caverns, Commonlands, Antonica, Blackburrow, and The Firemyst Gully (an instance in Antonica) to take down encounters. Now that Lore and Legend quests have changed (you no longer have to hunt down books, but simply examining a piece to the collection will grant you the starter quest) she also managed to finish off a few of those – which is something I’ve never actually completed while “on the go” before. L&L have always been something of an after thought, if I was near a book I may pick it up but other wise chances were that I would not be. While you may think to yourself “dang, this seems almost TOO easy now!” I think the motivation is a welcomed change.

Speaking of things being too easy – there are specific reasons these changes are coming. In February the game will raise by another 10 levels, which will mean 90 levels total. While people who are veterans of the game will have little trouble with gaining those levels there is also new players out there who will find 90 levels exceptionally daunting and may even see them as a deterrent to the game. By allowing some things to be ‘easier’ it opens the game up to those people. I tend to agree with people that some things may be a little too easy (like skill ups, I barely hit a mob and I raised my skills effortlessly) but I can also understand why these changes were put in place.

What do you think of the new alternate advancement slider? Have you taken advantage of it yet? Any plans to? Let me know below!

In the mean time, happy gaming and I will see you in Norrath!

This weekend was pretty intense. In fact it was so intense I didn’t take any screen shots, and I didn’t post on my blog at all. I’ve got a large handful of RL going on between family friends and work, but still managed to get a lot of gaming in over the weekend (knowing that the next two weeks I won’t be able to do that much).

The servers had a 40% bonus to experience, alternative advancement (formally achievement), and crafting – and while I would have loved to have gotten some crafting done it simply wasn’t in the plans.

I did manage to level my little Willamina (ranger) from 1-67 and I’ll have some roleplay posts about that later this week (or possibly next, I have deadlines coming up and things are a little hectic) and I also decided to turn aa experience on my little level 15 bruiser and reached 28 with her, which was fantastic.

I ran shard of love a few times, did a lot of instances, and everything was generally a blur. It was great. You know those happy gaming phases where you’re not concerned with anything else (for once).

Yesterday was also my first ‘official’ TSO raid run, as a recruit of Paradise Lost.

Let me tell you, TSO raids are *stressful* and basically as a healer you’re only ever doing one of a few things (because that’s all you have time to do). You’re either casting cures (which you do a LOT in TSO raids), not casting, or healing. We headed to Tomb of the Mad Crusader first, which I have been to quiet a few times now and have no issues healing in – oh except that I was experiencing (as were a few others) INSANE amounts of lag. The game may as well have been performing as a slide show. Now, I realize I don’t have a top of the line computer, but I rarely have as many issues with any other game as I do with EQ2 even playing on the lowest settings. I know I could improve my heals 100x if I could simply play the game properly without the handfuls of lag.

Once ToTMC was down it was time to head to Zerrakon, which I had never fought before. The encounter is pretty straight forward. There are two pools and a lot of debuffs and when you get hit with purple or red vision (which is more like black and the floor poofs with my settings) you have to run into one of the two pools or you wipe the raid. Not only do you wipe the raid but it calls out who has wiped the raid so everyone can laugh at you.

Of course, being my first time there it was me who wiped the raid. Lagging off the side of the red pool I fell to my death below instead of curing myself. Woopsie.

There are also annoying adds that spawn, per group, and you have to take them down or your group is unable to do anything with Zerrakon or anything at all outside of your own group. Very frustrating. Eventually we finished that raid (we do have a lot of recruits currently and things are a little wobbly) and headed off to Palace of the Ancient one, which I had only been to before once and that was on my troubador.

Palace is another raid zone where you’re constantly curing, and when you’re not doing that you’re healing and watching for debuffs where you’re not supposed to cure or you’re supposed to run through a portal or click on an item. These raids are VERY tedious and not fun what so ever. I don’t even get to watch anything going on because I’m constantly watching my group to cure and act on my detrimental window. The raids are nothing like the ‘fun’ raids of EoF or RoK.

I ended up getting two pieces of gear by the end of the night, my shoulders and my helm. That means my mystic is now wearing 5 pieces of T4 gear, critical mitigation went up a huge amount. My jewelery still absolutely sucks but that’s something that will come with time. She also has all of her master spells now, which I’m happy about.

This is the first time I’ve ever played a mystic on raids. The first time I’ve ever experienced TSO raids, and I’m fairly under geared since I also never did RoK raids with the character. Hopefully it will only take a time or two before I get used to it and start remembering the encounters and what I do on each of them.

What did everyone else spend their weekends doing? Anything exciting? I want to hear below!

Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath.