Player run events are one of the great things about playing EQII! This weekend, January 31st and running all day, The Fellowship of the Endless Road will be holding a day long tournament. They’ll have several events throughout the day and there will be an awards ceremony in the evening with a certain dark elf playing the part of Queen Antonia. Visit them on Lucan D’Lere in their Antonica Guildhall to participate!
As I was happily traipsing through Sentinel’s Fate I stumbled upon some very interesting shards of art. What could they be? Could there be more of them out there? We have a mystery!
Click each image to see them full sized. These are called “Heroism” and “Agression”.
Love is in the air! Literally. The Swornlove siblings and the other disciples of Erollisi Marr have returned to Norrath. They’ll be reminding everyone how important love is from February 4th until February 16th.
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Kiara glared about her as she paced through the Commonlands. Those blasted Swornloves were back. It wasn’t that she had anything against love… It’s just that everyone got so sickly and sappily sweet during this time of year that it made her teeth hurt. All the same, Kiara went to greet the twins and the other disciples of Erollisi Marr and pay her respects. She made her way towards Annalisa, intending to slip in quietly and slip away again unnoticed. It was not to be. "Kiara! I need your help!" "Oh, Diana… I umm… Well, see, I was just heading to say hello to Anna…" "She can wait. I need you first. Come!" Kiara sighed and started praying. Don’t be matchmaking. Don’t be matchmaking. "What can I do for you, Diana?" "Well, I need you to help me fix up some young lovers." Kiara twitched. Of course. Matchmaking. After she finished helping to spread love throughout Norrath, the drooping dark elf headed back to visit with Annalisa. She stopped a moment to visit with some other disciples of Erollisi. There were the usual tasks and some rather interesting new items on the markets this year. As annoying as it was to see everyone in love and making cow eyes at each other, Kiara did enjoy some aspects of the Erollisi celebrations. While she was investigating the new items and chatting with the other disciples, Annalisa pulled Kiara to the side. "I’ve a special errand for you, friend!" Kiara arched an eyebrow. The Swornlove siblings tended to consider gathering flowers a special errand, ranking right up there with fetching candy. "What can I do for you, priestess?" "I need you to venture into Nektropos Castle…" The dark elf was intrigued. Nektropos Castle was deliciously haunted and not the usual sort of place that the Swornloves frequented. Perhaps this would be an Erollisi Day that Kiara could really appreciate!
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Finally! I got a little time to play this week.
Wednesday I had a short window of time and was able to run Emperor’s Athenaeum in Jarsath Wastes. As I’ve mentioned before, I really think this is a neat zone. I’m still enjoying it and the last fight is still cool as hell. It’s also one of the rare zones that I can still get an upgrade to drop for me, so there’s that too 
The group was just sick. Berserker, Illy, Coercer, Inq, Troub and Brigand. I felt really badly for the tank. He was a good tank and a good sport about it all, but we severely overgeared him and there was no way for him to hold aggro. The illusionist is a friend of mine, and a total bad ass, so there was some friendly competition with the parse. I won (barely) I was putting up 13k parses, which is good for me, although not my highest. That’s mainly because the freaking illusionist bogarted UT, asshole.
Last night, I actually had a nice long stretch of play time. Know what I did? I harvested! Yes, the whole night, I spent harvesting. Castillion’s skills are now all around the 320 range (including fishing omfg!). So, I should have them capped before the expansion and be able to meet that goal. I had a lot of fun just relaxing and chatting. It was kind of a nice break. (and thanks to Ysharros I did pick up the harvesting quest, thanks for the reminder!)
The work I had planned for tonight was postponed, so I was able to sign up for the raid after all and I was slotted again! It looks like they put me back in the MT group. My fun days, well fun day, in the mage group is over. Damn it! I was going to show them all tonight! I even put my 4 piece bonus on to help the other mage’s DPS! WHY DO YOU TEASE ME SO WOLF/DD/OTHERPEOPLEWHOHATEME?!? I need a moment while I sit quietly in the corner and sob.
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Of course I am kidding. The mage group IS fun, but the MT group is just as much fun and I really don’t care what group I’m in as long as I’m harassing these guys on the raid.
And um, hopefully we can get back into Kurns X2 this weekend, because I kind of let my instance expire and now I can’t take those screenshots of how to beat Sir Rouland like I promised. I’M SORRY, GOSH.
It’s been a long week and I am really looking forward to a nice relaxing night of virtually slaughtering all who dare oppose me. I don’t have anger issues, really I don’t.
Until next time, there will always be that one time.
There was a small patch this morning that brought the following changes in an attempt to alleviate some lag:
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There have been several discussions of these changes on the forums, join in!
That’s right folks! Battlegrounds are coming to EQII. On February 16th, when Sentinel’s Fate opens for the headstart, Battlegrounds will also be open for players to test their mettle against other players. It’s totally optional and folks will be able to group cross server, although not cross region. At launch it will be open to levels 80-90 with other tiers opening up in later game updates! For more information please head over to the Battlegrounds website: www.eq2battlegrounds.com
Desktoppy Goodness!
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I haven’t played yet this week, just been too busy. I also won’t be able to raid on Friday as I am scheduled to work, so this is going to be a pretty quiet week I guess. I’m a little bummed as all I’ve really wanted to do this week is turn the lights off, sit in the dark, and play on the computer for a few hours/days. Alas, ’tis not to be.
There was a rather titillating announcement from SOE yesterday. The EQ2 pvp battlegrounds was officially officially announced and will be included in the expansion. I’m of two minds about this whole thing, and it’s possibly because I really don’t know much about the pvp/battlegrounds implementation or how it will affect the pve side of EQ2.
One one hand, I really enjoyed battlegrounds in WoW. In fact, it’s about all I enjoyed and pretty much how I spent my time in that game after I leveled up, and I took several long breaks from leveling at the top of each bracket just to hit the battlegrounds. I loved capture the flag in Warsong Gulch, and I even had fun in Arathi Basin. Then again, I didn’t really get into the rest of WoW, so that may be why I enjoyed battlegrounds so much there. Also, pvp was always a part of WoW to me. There was always pvp gear to strive for and the ability to run into open world pvp at any given time. The fights were generally fun.
On the other hand, pvp was never something I searched out in EQ2. The extent of my pvp experience in EQ2 has consisted of duels (since I’m on a pve server) and duels in EQ2 last about 3 seconds as a coercer. Either I stun lock/debuff you and you are dead before you even get close to me, or you are immune/can cure my stun/mez effects and you smear me (hellooo Crusaders). 3 second fights are really not fun, and they really don’t qualify as “real” pvp to me. I can only assume they will put some damage adjustments in that lower damage in pvp and outlaw some abilities in pvp. I am just not sure how exactly it will work yet, I just hope they do something to make the zones fun.
Fun. That’s another thing that concerns me. I’d like the battlegrounds to be fun….but not required, or even beneficial, for the pve side of the game. I don’t want to have to grind battlegrounds to get some item that I need for my character to be more successful in raids or pve groups. Appearance armor? Titles? House Items? great! Wand of Uber Striking that increases a classes DPS by 300 in raid X? No, thank you, no. I am fine with getting rewards that are only useful in battlegrounds, but I think in the long run that may discourage people from casually participating in the battlegrounds when they know they’ll be facing people wearing “pvp armor” and will not be able to compete with them. I don’t know what the right balance is, but I do know that I don’t really want battlegrounds to taint/color the great pve game EQ2 is.
I’m also concerned about class balance. I am concerned that SOE will begin to “balance” classes based upon their performance in battlegrounds and those balancing acts will affect our characters in pve. WoW is/was guilty of this when I played. I don’t know what SOE’s official stance on this is, but I hope that they keep the pvp gear, balancing, and whatever else, in the pvp zones. PvP was always an afterthought in EQ2, you couldn’t even duel at release. I, personally, don’t want an afterthought to start coloring what EQ2 has done very successfully for 5 years now.
Then again, what do I know about EQ2 pvp? Exactly nothing. I have been a carebear my entire time in this game.
I guess my general feeling of the battlegrounds is that they will be a fun diversion as long as they are segregated from the rest of the “real” game. I’m cautiously optimistic and look forward to reliving the fun I had in Warsong Gulch. I guess maybe I’ll be leveling the Pally to 90 after all, because crusaders will be monster flag carriers!
Would you really try to take a flag from him?
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PvP (Player vs Player) has become a big part of MMOG gaming and EverQuest 2 isn’t about to pass up the chance to let players try to kill each other.
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