I was fooling around on Antonia Bayle server last night when I saw a raid looking for people to fill up its two group Kurns Tower run. They wanted a mythical weapon and preferably T4 armor – the very best and most uber raid gear.
It’s this kind of achiever-based thinking that keeps casual players away from EverQuest EQ2, and it tears me up. There’s so much to do in these games, but if you listen to the chat channels, you’d think that unless you have max EVERYTHING, you might as well not even show up. Raids used to make allowances for my relatively poor gear because all a bard needs to do in a raid is play a couple of buffs, but I’ve gone roleplay so people can’t see my class. I’m tired of explaining that I don’t have T3+ armor and I can’t play their UT song. Soon, one bard will be enough for a whole raid, and that sort of opportunistic ninja-inviting will be done with forever.
But! EQ2 has plenty of stuff for casual players! It’s true!
Erollisi Marr’s Shard of Love was new with the latest update. It’s a casual zone meant for a small group or talented soloers. I’ve been wanting to go there since it opened but never bothered to do the access quest and give it a shot. Now that I had finished Dragon Age, I suddenly seemed to have a lot of extra free time, so I loaded up Tipa and Etha (my level 54 defiler) and went on a world-spanning mission to gain access to the Shard of Love that seemed to almost require a druid… or a lot of running and tricks with the guild teleporter.
The Shard of Love, a splinter of the Plane of Love, is a desolate, despondent, depressed place. There is no love since the Queen of Love, Erollisi Marr, was killed by trickery spawned from the Plane of Hate. The adventurer’s job is to learn the story of her betrayal and to help bring some closure to the denizens and her mourning brother, Mithaniel Marr.
I mentored Tipa down to Etha’s level and we headed in from the portal on Everfrost’s docks. Everything was blue. That’s good! But it kicked our butts. That’s bad! So I unmentored and everything was gray and easy to kill. That’s good! Except no loot and no quest completions for Etha. That’s bad! So I went to Taymar’s excellent site and read up on Chronomagic. That’s good! And I set Tipa’s level to 60, which made the zone doable, but still give xp and complete quests. That’s also good! But I couldn’t help overpulling those ring events. That’s bad! But, remembering a raid trick, Etha’s dog could go valiantly sacrifice his life and pull just one group of mobs from a crowd! That’s good (except for the dog).
We completed the five quests to open the final encounter – Mithaniel Marr, who was clearly so upset over losing his sister that he just really needed to kill us. So he tried, but after about five minutes of trading blows, he gave up the fight, set his sister’s spirit free, and flew the coop. He left behind only his completed quest and a two handed hammer appearance weapon that nobody could use.
Though I easily two-boxed the zone, there was at least one person looking for a Shard of Love group that I could have invited. But, I’m pretty tired of people telling me what I can’t do or being asked to play their favorite selection of songs. I’m really over people treating bards like buff-bots.
The night was still relatively young, so I checked back with the Chronomage to see what else he had to offer. Last night’s daily quest was to travel to the Acadechism in Crushbone Keep and take down the upstart so-called “Emperor” D’Vinn. Since this zone does NOT scale, I couldn’t take Etha. Her spot was taken by my 80 Inquisitor, Dera. Both Dera and I used Chronomagic to set our levels to 75, and off we went to one of the most fun of Echoes of Faydwer’s single-group dungeons.
The parts that were all grayed out were easy. When I got to the parts that were still green – OOPS. Time to be careful. Body pulling one group at a time to the hallway for killing. Trying to keep the healer alive while I killed stuff. Inquisitors aren’t too shabby at the killing, either – and if I’d just brought one character, and it had been the inq, I still might have won without the bard at all.
The final fight against D’Vinn and his cronies is a fight in waves which I only dimly remembered. You fight some named, and then D’Vinn, and then Shadows of D’Vinn, and then that repeats a few times…. I thought I remembered a break in all that somewhere, but we didn’t get any. It was a chaotic, messy, fun win that left us with our daily quest completed and some legendary fighter gloves nobody could use.
Etha gained two levels, to 56. Tipa gained an AA point. I’m not sure if Dera got anything out of it aside from blood on her shiny black Halloween appearance armor…. but it was a fun night nonetheless.
