The Angry Raider

My days of raiding in WoW have yet again drawn to a close. With only one raid zone available, things get boring fast. It became harder and harder to field a full raid, so my guild has shelved Ulduar raiding for the Summer.

This gives me a perfect opportunity to spend some quality time in my favorite MMO, EverQuest 2. I reactivated back in early April to play with some friends through Refer-a-Friend. They stopped playing for some reason, and I was once again left all alone in Norrath. Fortunately, my wife agreed to start a new account with Refer-A-Friend and after rolling several different characters, she settled on an Arasai dirge.

In the first play session, we leveled the dirge from 1 to 30. The next session saw her go from 30 to 45, and then from 45 to 60. She only has about 25 AA at the moment, but that’s fine for level 60; there are plenty of opportunities to mentor down and explore Runnyeye and the like. We’ve killed quite a few nameds, and we cleared most of the Clefts of Rujark. My shadowknight went from 74 to 76 through all of this, and his AOE capabilities definitely helped with the powerleveling.

While my wife isn’t particularly interested in the long-term for her dirge, I have considered switching over to it once my wife loses interest. I think that a dirge gives me the best chance of experiencing all that EverQuest 2 has to offer, mainly because dirges seem to always be in high demand. I’ll have to get used to playing a fairy.

The next zone we’ll start exploring for AA and grinding XP is Loping Plains. I really like Loping Plains and I won’t mind spending some quality time there. I also need to head to Lesser Faydark for discovery.

In other news, I completed the blue shiny goggles collection. I spent 40 plat on the missing pieces, which left me with 86 gold. I sold a bunch of Masters and Lore & Legend bits, bringing me back up to 75 plat. I need to save up 100p for the Mythical update for my new dirge!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I reactivated WoW to give it a try. Simply put, I hated it.

Hate is a strong word, so let me rephrase that: I didn’t have any fun at all and I logged in frustration. I think EQ2 has spoiled me on MMOs from here on.

In EQ2, there’s no global cooldown. Each combat art and spell has its own cooldown, and fighting isn’t as dependent on auto-attacks. Plus, you have a ton of abilities to choose from, to the point where you may fight two different mobs in two completely different ways.

Going from that back to WoW made my blood elf survival hunter feel slow and weak. I switched to my 64 shaman, and the combat was faster, but I only had a few abilities to use. Spells share cooldowns so if I use an Earth Shock, I have to wait for the spell family to finish its cooldown before I can use another shock spell. During that time, I just stand there auto-attacking.

I played WoW for a long time, so this playstyle isn’t new to me. In fact, EQ2’s hectic playstyle was a challenge for me when I first started playing it. The mobs in EQ2 are tougher than their WoW counterparts, so you can end up fighting them longer, but you have more things to do during combat. Plus, there’s a greater sense of danger in EQ2 combat. My ranger, for example, hits really hard with his arrows but I need to make sure that mob doesn’t get too close to me or I’ll have to start melee, and I didn’t spend my AA on melee: I’m an Archer, focused on ranged combat.

Conversely, on my WoW hunter, my pet took all the damage while I lobbed some arrows, most of which were autoshots. In fact, the only times I died in WoW during my brief return were when I fell to my death. There’s no sense of danger, no risk to worry about.

My return to and subsequent departure from WoW reminded me of why it’s such a popular game: there’s very little risk for quite a bit of reward, and the progression is linear. You start at level 1 and work your way to level 80, with gear upgrades making that process faster. Every mob you kill and quest you do is another step on the way to that level cap goal. So to that end, the game has to sort of stay out of your way, or you’ll give up. With no other objective than leveling, there’s nothing for Blizzard to gain by making you not want to play the game (i. e., difficulty). WoW didn’t use to be this way. The original 1-60 trip was challenging and fun.

My real reason for reactivating WoW was because my brother did the same. But once I subscribed, I never saw him on. Lacking a real reason to play WoW, there’s no point in maintaining the subscription.

And sadly, the same is becoming true of EQ2.

I’ve been having an incredible time in EverQuest II lately. Grabthar reached level 53 (just shy of 54). He’s wearing the level 42 Frostfell armor, which should hold him over until he reaches the upper 50s. I’ll start doing tier 7 dungeons when I’m 60 and get to the Kingdom of Sky content.

I think what I love the most about playing EQ2 is the fact that I’m a complete and total newb. I still have so much to learn about the game: the lingo, the mechanics, my new spells and combat arts, the zones, the dungeons, itemization, quest lines, raiding, my epic quest chain, my class armor, my role in x2 and x4 groups, and so much more. In World of Warcraft, which I’ve been playing for 4 years, I know all this stuff already. I can min/max just about every class in WoW, I know all the powers everyone should be using for every encounter, and I know exactly what gear everyone should be using for their spec. I’m not making a boast about my vast intellect when it comes to WoW; the fact is, four years and thousands of hours spent doing anything will make you an expert in it.

I should have gotten a master’s degree instead.

Last night my brother (52 warden) and I did the carpet quest in Sinking Sands. We didn’t expect to finish it, but a 63 necro guildie came and helped us finish off the last two 54 ^^^ bosses. Getting the carpet was a watershed moment for us. It’s the first “high level” thing we’ve done, we spent several hours farming the mobs in Sinking Sands and thus got tons of great drops, and riding around on that carpet feels like we’ve made a huge accomplishment, even though for most EQ2 players it’s old hat. And that’s what makes it so great: even though the quest is 3+ years old and everyone’s done it on all their alts, it was new to us. There’s still so much “old” content that’s brand spanking new to us, and since everyone who plays loves the game so much, they’re just as excited as we are when we do the content.

I know I’m rambling a bit in this post but what can I say, I’m having a blast. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

I love back stories for characters. Whether they’re short-and-sweet to describe the motivation of a character, or long and detailed with complex relationships, I love them. I write back stories for all my characters, and I often write them for other people’s characters as well. In fact, when I played City of Heroes, people paid me in Influence for writing their character stories.

One of my favorite backstories belongs to Avenger Grabthar Thrakazog the Treasure-Hunter of Freeport, aka my shadowknight in EverQuest 2. His biography is short and sweet, borrowing heavily from the style used in the Conan books:

The trials of Grabthar’s life can be found in the scars and bones of those to whom he has laid waste. Come and sit quietly while he regales you with stories of destruction and devastation. If he deems you so fortunate, perhaps you’ll live to share his tale!

This biography is viewable to other characters and it’s also on the character profile page at the EQ2 site. Grabthar doesn’t have a complex back story like my other characters do; instead, I let the reader of his bio infer what has happened in Grabthar’s relatively young life.

I don’t like to describe a character. Instead, I let the character do the talking, or as in Grabthar’s case, a narrator who has intimate knowledge of the goings-on. I have a fire/fire tanker in City of Heroes named Choking Hazard. This is a rough recreation (from memory) of Choking Hazard’s original back story, which I wrote when I created her:

Choking Hazard was just a normal girl in a normal town until a freak accident infused her with the power to control fire. Realizing that she had a unique capability and a responsibility to her fellow citizens in Paragon City, Choking Hazard decided to leave behind her party girl past and dedicate her life to protecting those in need.

As soon as I completed the intro zone, I rewrote her bio:

Gah, being a super hero is soooo hard. I shouldn’t have let those guys at the bar buy me all those drinks. Who knew one of them would be a Vahzilok scientist! I take a shot of one little weird glowy drink and bam, now I can control fire. So my sister gets all up in my face about “you have a responsibility” and “the things you blah blah blah.” I saw that movie too, you know! Sigh. Well, here I am, saving all of you, wondering exactly what you mean when you say I’m hot.

That’s quite a difference. The first bio gets the point across nicely, but it’s as generic as any other description of a super hero. The second bio is more interesting and shows the personality of the character, breathing life into just another avatar.

World of Warcraft doesn’t have a facility for sharing character biographies or back stories, but that doesn’t stop me from writing them. I’m more true to the source material with WoW (and EQ2), since I prefer my fantasy to be less lighthearted, leaning more to the dark and sinister, which fits in with WoW’s lore:

I slept for ages. I sought neverending solace and peace with my own people. I did not support aiding the humans and their plight. In our time on Azeroth, we stood alone for eons. The humans were merely one tiny piece of an eternity; they would extinguish themselves as quickly as they had arrived.

Wicker’s story is in my head. It doesn’t infuse his activities as much as I would like (I don’t play on an RP server), but sometimes I try to do what Wicker would want rather than what I want for him. That way, the other players on my server can only speculate as to my motivation. Will I kill that tauren druid? Or let him go? Will I help humans in need or watch them die? Will I target orcs as much as possible?

Of course, how my character acts in the game is completely under my control, so if I do something socially rude–watch your human die as you try to fend off multiple mobs–I will most likely be called (reportable) names. The key is finding the balance between what you want for your character and respecting the other people playing the same game as you.