Some Other Views on the EQ2 Cash Kitty

As with most things with a $25 price tag, a number of other bloggers have chimed in with their opinion of the new EQ2 Marketplace Mounts.

• Arkenor delivers some insight on the subject and coined the name Copykats. (Pid likes this one)
• Syp thinks SOE is greedy … he may be in the minority here, but I highly doubt it.
• Gordon Predicts the era of “see how much we can gouge our subscribers.”
• Stillwater had a couple of quips.
• Kaozz just wishes she had more money to buy both the sparkle pony and the cats.
• Beau has a little video.
• NPNM talks about the greater scheme of things with cash shops.

What’s Good for the Goose…

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but in this case I would just chalk it up to greed. What do you do when the most prominent MMO in the world starts selling mounts in the cash shop for more than the monthly subscription fee? You offer three of them for your own game at the same price! Apparently SOE has learned from it’s younger, more prosperous brother WoW that people will pay an unreasonable amount of money to have the next shiny.

Enter the EQ2 Thunder Cats. Complete with a $25 price tag, 65% run speed boost, and three colors to choose from. I got an email about it today and thought, hey maybe I have something to spend those 500 points I received for buying Sentinel’s Fate…I was wrong. Even at $20 (with the 500 points I already have) there is no way I am going to spring for one of these. I guess I’ll be riding in the slow lane…I hope I remember to turn off my blinker. I hope Darren at CSG doesn’t blow a gasket!

-Pid

New Halas Prelude Quest

From the SOE site

Greetings Norrathians!

Halas Reborn is right around the corner. Seek out priests of Marr or harassed/tormented barbarians in your home towns to do the “A Vision of Valor” quest before the update! Once Halas Reborn comes to live servers, the quest will no longer be available.

Last night I heard that there was a strange barbarian on the shores of sinking sands via global chat. I was about to log off for the night, but decided to investigate anyway. I ventured to sinking sands to find a mob of players surrounding a GM in the guise of some dragon. The GM was doling out the “Vision of Valor” quest and randomly turning people into giants, dragons, giant crabs, etc.

After standing around for 5 minutes or so trying to figure out what I was supposed to do to get the quest as there was no tormented barbarian to be seen here, a quest window popped up and I received the vision of valor quest. I had to run back and forth between Commonlands and Everfrost a few times, but after a while I entered a dream sequence zone where Mithaniel Marr tells a story about how he and his twin have been neglecting Norrath for too long and that they are going to rebuild Halas. Honestly the quest was not all that interesting, but I did get a book out of it to put in my house and a neat little blue flower as well.

-Pid

The More I Learn, the Less I Know

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to join a guild in EQ2 and I have done so. I have joined the Halasian Empire on the Lucan D’Lere server which is composed of a bunch of bloggers and other good folk that like to craft, solo, and have a lot of fun. The guild is well established (circa 2004 or so) so I am well below the level of most of the folk in the guild at present. They have been quite cordial however and always say hi and add a helpful hint now and again when I am brave enough to ask.

In any event, I made my way to the guild hall for the first time since Stillwater showed me how to get there. I was curious what the place had to offer and I ventured into the basement. There is a full staff of NPC’s down there such as a broker, a banker, some folk that appear to harvest resources for you, a crafting trainer, and some crafting writ givers. I figured I’d craft a couple of spells before I had to go to work and I noticed that when you are crafting down there, the crafting materials are not deducted from your backpacks, but rather a guild crafting material cache. I felt like a jerk because I couldn’t figure out where to donate the materials that I had to the pool. I was on by myself and running all over the basement looking for an NPC that I could give this stuff to. Eventually a guildie logged in and showed me that I could donate to the pool via the chest next to the broker.

I haven’t played an MMO since EQ1 that I was at all interested in participating in the crafting aspect. The crafting in this game thus far is pretty grindy, though I hear it gets better at level 60 or so. The fact that I had to keep track of what tier of crafting mats I needed on each toon and how much of my shared bank it was taking up has now been eliminated. Hopefully I can grind through the crafting on my necro/sage and fury/provisioner so that I can finally start making some cash in the game!

It just goes to prove that the more I learn about this game, the more I realize there is sooooooo much that I don’t know about it. This is very daunting yet very interesting.

-Pid

Smelling Roses Again

A while back I mentioned that every once in a while, you have to stop and smell the roses in an MMORPG. I had another stop and smell the roses moment earlier today when I made the trek to Sinking Sands in EQ2. Pidd the necromancer armed with a new researcher granted Master tank pet trekked off to this new (at least to me) zone. I figured I’d take a screenshot since this was the first time I had been there, and as I was lining up the shot and trying to get the twin snake monoliths into focus, this massive airship flies by. I found myself just staring at it for a few seconds before I realized that I had to press the print screen button before it flew away. I have only run a few quests in this zone so far, but I am truly impressed with it. I only wished that I could have approached it from the sea rather than being ported there directly. As slow as the boat travel is in this game, it is pretty cool the first time you enter a zone from the fringe and slowly see the docks approaching.

-Pid

The Life Aquatic with Pid

I logged into EQ2 last night with the intention of doing some questing in Lavastorm. I saw one of my guildies pop online and said hi. He asked me what I was up to and I mentioned that I was trying to figure out Lavastorm. They replied “good luck with that, I never liked that place.” I asked if there was a better place and they mentioned that in a couple of levels I could go to Sinking Sands but for now Everfrost might be a little more reasonable. After wandering around confused in Lavastorm for a bit I decided, “what the heck” and headed to Everfrost. There I found a few quest givers on the initial island and started hunting sharks. They didn’t have any laser beams, so I made it through okay!

I finished up the few quests on the starter island and one of the quest lines pointed me in the direction of the next hub. Makes sense, no? So what is the deal with Lavastorm? I thought the previous area was a little too high level-wise when I had gotten there, but at least the Gnomeland Defense area was a big quest hub. Wasn’t Lavastorm just revamped an expansion or so ago? Why would you lead new EQ2 gamers (i.e. ME) there? I realize the Golden Path is a work in progress, but why not pick Everfrost? I understand it is an old zone, but it works! Anyway, if the devs are looking for feedback…there you have mine…make Lavastorm more user friendly…and put a big sign at the beginning that says “Hey Lowbee, don’t go left!”

-Pid

Reader Spike

I am a very casual blogger. I mean maybe I get a post a week. Typically if I get 15 hits in any given day that’s pretty good. What can I say, either people don’t know about my blog, or they just don’t care. Either way, I am fine with that. I blog mainly as a creative outlet for my gaming life. For whatever reason my wife has very little interest in it. Anyway, I digress.

I am a very casual blogger. (Is there an echo in here?) So you can imagine my surprise to log into the WordPress dashboard and see that one of my posts has more hits in two days than my blog typically gets in a couple weeks. I was puzzled. Did I accidentally tag the post as “free porn” or something? So I did a little sleuthing and saw that there were a bunch of hits coming from the SOE Station site. I click on the link and scroll down and there in the middle of the website is a link to my post on making it to level 42! Some of you veteran bloggers out there might think of this as no big deal or old hat, but it is pretty exciting to me. Anyway, thanks to someone at SOE for noticing my silly ol’ blog.

-Pid

Color Me Intel

Pid is a happy.

Why?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so rather than type it, lookie see what came in the mail today!

and…

Now I have been a long time AMD guy, but after my last chip (which they stopped making because it was a 64 -bit chip that caused all sorts of problems when used in a 64-bit OS) I have decided to go main stream and ride the core-i7 wave. I am just hoping I can get more than 22 FPS in EQ2 and not have to wait 5 months for a zone to load in DA:O anymore.

The mother board is still en route, so no fun building ’til this weekend. Thanks to robbiebit for shipping me a new mother board GRATIS!

-Pid

/Ding 42 in EQ2

I managed to reach the lofty level of 42 the other day in EQ2 and met the requirement to continue traveling down the Golden Path. I talked to the quest NPC and he gave me this song and dance about why I needed to head to the new zone … blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he told me to head to Lavastorm, and thus I obliged. I arrived at the Lavastorm dock area and I must say that it was about what I would expect a volcanic zone to look like (not remotely what it looked like in EQ1).

I really hope the horseshoes on the mount can handle this place! Anyway I am starting to learn my way around this area and dying here and there. I walked one way and the mobs were level 45 and yellow. I walked the other way there were red con level 80+ mobs all over the place. I experienced my first one hit kill today. It was refreshing! It looks like I have another ten levels to go before I can advance the golden path quest, so I might just want to figger this place out!

-Pid

GPS on the Dark Side

Now this is cool…or lame…I don’t know which. I think I am going to side with the geek in me and call it cool!

Check this out!

Now you can have Lord Vader himself give you suggestions on which route is the best to get to grandma’s house. I wonder what his response is if you miss a turn. Maybe he force chokes you into oblivion!

Speaking of Star Wars, I was thinking today about how to pronounce SW: TOR in a manner like WoW, WAR, or LotRO. I think I am going to pronounce it “sweater.” I don’t know weather it will be a warm cozy sweater or a scratchy irritating sweater yet, but if I make a bad joke about TOR and wool or a cardigan you will know where it came from. You have officially been warned!

-Pid

Picture sources:

starwars.tomtom.com/voices/

nolensvolensknitting.blogspot.com