Archive for June, 2009

22
Jun

i do not want what i have not got

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: Raiding

Euripides at Critical QQ rants for a while about Tier 8 being made accessible to non-raiders in the next World of Warcraft patch. While I wouldn’t agree with his characterization of the whole thing as “elitism,” I see where he’s coming from. I wouldn’t characterize T8 as “free,” as Blizzard isn’t just dropping it in everyone’s bags. You still have to get the Emblems of Conquest, whether it’s through heroics or raiding.

My position on the whole thing is a lot less black-and-white. I don’t really care how people get Tier 8 in WoW. I do know that Blizzard has to keep their game alive, and they learned some very hard lessons from raid content back in “vanilla WoW” and Burning Crusade. And with the exodus of users from WoW to competing MMOs or console games, Blizzard has to make sure that the masses are appeased. They asked themselves, “Do we cater to the 1% of our userbase that will whine on our forums or do we cater to the 99% that will whine on our forums?”

That was a difficult decision, I’m sure.

You might be asking yourself, Why does someone want raid gear if they don’t raid? That’s a good question, but I think I know why: In WoW, gear is the only way to “complete” your character. It’s what defines you in endgame. If you’ve been level 80 for months and you’re still in blues and heroic epics, well, you suck. That’s the prevailing wisdom in Azeroth/Outlands/Northrend.

A similar statement is made in EverQuest II: why do you want your Mythical if you’re not a raider? On my server, at least, the answer is a bit different: you don’t get to raid if you don’t have your Mythical. Vicious circle, I know. Still, the argument is the same: if you’re level 80, and you want to feel completeness, you want your void shard armor. And if you’re rich, you buy the loot rights to whatever else it is that you want or need for that completeness. With that level of gear, you can do the difficult content if you want to. Makes sense.

In both cases, WoW and EQ2, the gear appeals to our basic desires to complete sets of things. That’s human nature. And for some of us, that desire for completion doesn’t justify the sacrifices necessary to be considered worthy of it all.

It remains to be seen whether SOE will make getting your Mythical via heroic content a possibility. Perhaps I’ll be one of the “QQing elitists” then.

17
Jun

grouping: the best and worst MMO feature

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

I’m a goal-oriented person. I like to set goals, work toward them, achieve the goals, and then do something else. When it comes to MMOs, this personality trait can be both enormously exciting and devastatingly frustrating.

Sometimes my goals are individually achievable. For example, if my goal is to get 140 AA, I can do that on my own. I don’t have to depend on anyone else.

Other goals require one or two other people. Grabthar’s tier 1 gear, for example, only required two other people: one person to mentor down to, and another to help clear the zone (he also made the gear).

And still other goals require five additional people, or 11 additional people, or 23 additional people. Those are the frustrating goals. Those goals have too many dependencies, too many avenues of failure caused by other people. My goal for Sedition, my fabled epic weapon, falls into this category.

As a rule, I like grouping with other people. Playing EQ2 long enough finally indoctrinated me into the groupthink (with apologies to Orwell). I like tanking, I like being a lynchpin, and I like the feeling of success.

What I don’t like is trying to bring those five people together, trying to make sure they are as committed to my goal as I am, and trying to make sure all five people will meet the expectations of everyone else in the group.

Perhaps I am too demanding of other people. In my day job, I work in a leadership capacity. I have deliverables. The people who work with me have to get their work done in a timely manner in order for us to ship software on time. Otherwise, we fail.

My last few grouping engagements in EQ2 have been very unsatisfying. In one case, the guy leading the group took a two hour afk to go eat dinner, right in the middle of the dungeon that he organized. This has happened more times than my razor-thin patience can deal with. So I don’t want to group with that guy anymore, which in itself is very unfortunate because he’s an otherwise awesome guy. I’m not the guy’s dad; I can’t make him schedule runs for after dinner or whatever. I’m at his mercy if he’s in my group.

The obvious solution is to find other people to group with, either within the guild, in another guild, or a pickup group. That starts the whole process over again. If I log in and I’m not making progress toward a goal, I don’t want to play. That’s just how I am.

That means I have to find another goal to work toward. In EverQuest II, that means playing my ranger, who dinged 56 last night. While I’m playing Ipswich, I’ll occasionally give a thought to Grabthar’s equipping Sedition.

Someday.

15
Jun

survival of the fad-dest

By angryraider 1 Comment
Categories: General

There has been quite a bit of discussion in the MMO blogosphere about hardcore vs. casual, difficult vs. easy, and what the next generation MMOs will have to do in order to compete. Quite a bit of this discussion was fueled by Blizzard’s further nerfing of Ulduar and the change in patch 3.2 to support faster travel on mounts.

I don’t play WoW anymore, but all of this got me thinking about EverQuest II a bit. Game Update 52 comes out tomorrow and adds some controversial additions. First, spell ranks are changed. Gone are the days of App4 and Ad3 and M1. Now there are Journeyman (formerly Apprentice 1-4), Adept (formerly Adept 1), Expert (formerly Adept III), and Master. Second, research assistants are being added to the game. They will take one spell and upgrade it to its next rank. So your Expert rank of Nefarious Sacrament can be upgraded to Master without you having to buy the spell on the broker. Supposedly it takes about a month for the research assistant to upgrade a level 80 Ad3 to its M1 equivalent.

These changes were added to make EverQuest II a bit easier for all the new folks who are coming from WoW, WAR, AoC, and so on. The old system of spell ranks and new names for upgraded spells was very confusing for new players. And getting a Master was either an exercise in frustration (farming for it) or a very expensive proposition. SOE solved the problems by redesigning the spell system and making the spell upgrade process a bit less daunting.

Longtime EQ2 “hardcores” cried foul, understandably. They don’t want the game ‘dumbed down,’ and they worked hard for their spell upgrades. Further, they feel that people don’t even need their masters if they don’t raid. And so on and so forth.

In my opinion, whatever gets more people to try the game—and stick with it—is more important to me than placating the people who want things to stay the same. I do understand where they are coming from: change is difficult to deal with, the time we spend on these games is enormous and it feels like something is lost, and EQ2 specifically has a great community that the players don’t want tarnished by kids coming from WoW.

But in order to ensure the survival of EQ2, Sony has to adapt. They have to adapt to the rules that WoW has implicitly enforced on MMOs. Thankfully, if EQ2 is no longer to your liking, there are other hardcore MMOs like Vanguard or EVE. And if EQ2 is still too hard for the new players, they’ll stick with Runes of Magic or the old standby, World of Warcraft.

My only hope is that SOE remains agile enough to backpedal on a change that ends up bad, like the fighter hate changes they rolled back a few months ago. I am willing to try new things, support the changes that SOE is putting in, and help new players get into the (IMHO) best MMO on the market.

As one of my guildies recently said, “It’s really a good thing that EQ2 is good enough and popular enough for people to get upset about it.”

11
Jun

just another ding post

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Something amazing happened last night. I witnessed an instant transformation, a transition from young and weak to mature and powerful; it was as if suddenly I was imbued with power and tradition, and I was seemingly unstoppable.

Grabthar dinged 80.

This is my first level 80 character in EverQuest II. It’s been quite a journey. Even though I’ve been playing EQ2 for less time overall than World of Warcraft, I feel more emotionally invested in my EQ2 characters. It’s so much easier to get attached to them. It’s as if they live their own lives when I’m logged off.

This is, of course, mostly to SOE’s credit. The game itself completely supports as little or as much immersion as you want. If you just want to hunt monsters and upgrade your gear, have at it. If you want to have a home, and stuff to put in it, you can do that without killing anything. And everything in between.

Beyond what SOE provides for us in the game, there’s the community that has built up around it. EverQuest II simply has one of the most dynamic and involved communities I’ve personally seen in an MMO. Sure, public chat has its fair share of discussions about politics, and other games. It’s when you group with others that the game really seems to take on an identity wholly different from World of Warcraft.

I’m not even sure how to explain it, and I don’t really know the source of it, as I’m still learning, even after four and a half years of owning the game. All I can say is that last night, I tanked Sebilis for the first time, at level 79, and the people in my group (three from the guild and two not) were so patient and helpful as I effectively learned how to tank in EQ2. Our templar was in Sebilis for the last update for his epic, and even he was patient. We were all in voice chat—another big difference from WoW, where I never even used its voice chat—and they offered tips, advice, and criticism as we moved through it.

I dinged 80 around midway through. It got pretty late, and things started to get sloppy here and there, so we called it with the intention to finish it tonight. I recalled to the guild hall and the guild master made me five pieces of T1 with my void shards as well as a belt, so already I have substantially better gear for tanking Sebilis tonight.

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

09
Jun

shard run rundowns

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: Everquest

Shard runs in EQ2 are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in an MMO. I’ve been running the shard instances on Grabthar the past few nights, and I’m up to 19 shards. The runs are pretty fun, and I get a nice chunk of XP and AA from each one, but I have to wonder: what are these like when done level-appropriate?

See, I’m doing what are called speed runs. You get the level 80 void shard quest (doable starting at level 75), mentor down to a 50-something in your group, zone into the instance, and unmentor. This means you can complete the quest by killing level 50ish mobs in your full level 75-80 glory. It sounds like cheating, but SOE says it’s kosher.

The interesting thing is, it almost seems mandatory. The TSO zones are very hard. Most groups won’t even take you unless you have void shard gear (known as Tier 1 and Tier 2). How do you get shard gear without doing shard runs, unless you speed run? I don’t know, but I’ll leave that discussion to the folks on EQ2Flames.

Once I ding 80 and put on my nice shiny new (but ugly) Legendary tier 1 armor, I’ll be ready to, well, run those same dungeons over and over for Tier 2. But at least I’ll get nice gear upgrades and AA from the names, since the mobs will no longer be gray. And on the plus side, I’ve learned how a lot of the encounters work, so I won’t be flying completely blind on day one.

Meanwhile, Grabthar is 78 with 15% to go, which means I’ll hit 79 tonight and hopefully 80 by this weekend. Last night I completed an interesting timeline in Kunzar Jungle that netted me a Legendary tank ring, so I am seeing some nice gear improvements. Tonight my plan is to get to level 79, finish my Jinisk faction, and then head to Jarsath Wastes!

08
Jun

the road to sedition

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: General

Yesterday I did some mentored shard runs on Grabthar (I’m up to 12 now) and dinged 78 in the process. Seeing 80 right there on the horizon, I decided to work on the grind over the next few days, achieving 35% XP toward level 79. I have been doing this in Kunzar Jungle.

Why Kunzar Jungle? One reason: City of Jinisk rep for my epic weapon timeline. I have already farmed up the Teren’s Grasp rep, I completed the Dragoon K’Nae heritage quest, and I learned the Sathirian language via the Mysterious Black Tome. Now all I “need” for the prerequisites to my epic timeline is the 40,000 rep with Jinisk. I’m presently at about 12k, so I don’t have much farther to go.

Of course, this is just stuff I need to get out of the way. The actual timeline is much more intense, with several heroic dungeon runs, lots of names to kill, and various mobs to farm. I’m actually very excited about kicking off the quest when I ding 80. The timeline doesn’t look too difficult, and it’s nowhere near as groan-inducing as the ranger epic quest.

I’m generally a goal-oriented person. I set goals for myself and I work toward them. This is true both in real life and in MMOs. In MMOs, my goals are usually something special to me and my character, such as getting 700 agility for my no-raid hunter in World of Warcraft (pre 3.1). I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Grabthar, but I’ve finally realized (and accepted) that he’s my main, he’s fun to play, and I’ve already succeeded in so many ways with him that I should go the distance.

Thus begins my travel down the road to Sedition.

03
Jun

The party’s over

By angryraider 1 Comment
Categories: Everquest

Joining a guild is like dating someone new. In the beginning, you’re enamored with them, you’re happy, and it feels like the world is your oyster. Indeed, these are the salad days.

But after a few days, things start to go south, and you realize that all is not what it seems.

I joined a new guild last week and blogged about it here. I was pretty happy. We got the guild to 30, bought the guild hall, and started making plans for the future. But once my experience with the guild expanded to the rest of its members, most of them newer than me, I started to get a bad taste in my mouth. Little things like a 12-year-old boy insisting he’s my “leader” and turning the guild hall into the most inhospitable and ugly place I’ve ever seen. Or logging in only to be deluged with tells from guildies begging me to level them. Or perhaps worst of all, the guild leader organizing a raid but completely failing at running it.

So as it is, Grabthar returns to his old guild, where he belongs, and I finish the 2.5 level grind to 80.

I continue to waffle on my shadowknight’s long-term playability. Now that my wife is into her dirge, I don’t have the option to take over that character. I still have my beloved ranger, who is 53 and holding, but there’s something missing when I play him. I can’t put my finger on it. I think it’s the overall slowness of the class. It’s like, I sling a whole bunch of arrows and then I either stand there and autoattack, or run up to the mob and melee. I haven’t figured it out yet. From what I hear, the ranger gets more fun as you level, so perhaps the investment is worth it.

I also have a low-level illusionist that is pretty cool. I really like the animations of his spellcasts. I’ve also never played a caster in EQ2, so maybe I should devote some quality time to leveling him up.

Tonight I’m going to play Ipswich for a while and work on leveling Wyrmtail, the illusionist, to 20. I’m still planning on farming void shards on Grabthar, but I’ll put them in my bank to use on whichever character I enjoy more. And I need to run a few HQs to help the wife get enough status to buy her 5 room Qeynos home. So much to do, so little time!