EverQuest

Tomb of Thuuga. The boss fight is hard to take screenshots of because of positioning. Yes, yes, I know I don’t have time for raiding, nor the desire to have some group of strangers have control over how I spend my evenings. Hardcore raid guilds have always seemed at odds with modern life. You mean, you actually raid seven days a week? You seriously expect that every single night of their lives, people will want nothing better than to sit in front of the computer and ...

Well, first of all, I’m not playing WAR because I’m at work. But even when not working, I have a bunch of games I’m already playing. And its exciting stuff for all of them! EverQuest – Nostalgia FTW. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had an official group xp night in the same zone twice. The only time we revisited a place was Sol B and Permafrost when we were farming the dragons. And we have still only seen a small fraction of the zones in the game. Friday, we grouped in Plane of Storms, Warslik Woods and Dagnor’s Cauldron for various things – all new zones for us on a group night. Small fraction of total zones. It’s wild how big EQ is. ...

Oy vey, this post is late! From our weekly group almost a week ago. It’s just been a bad week, what with another trip to Rhode Island last week which took way more time than I’d expected, a full weekend and then… Spore… Well, enough excuses. The worst thing about being late for this was that it was actually a REALLY GOOD NIGHT! I think this is likely the first xp group since Gloomingdeep Mines where everyone actually got a lot of experience. And for that, I am deeply indebted to everyone that came! ...

Nostalgia guildmate Davic brings news of the latest patch notes from EverQuest! I knew the EQ2 GU48 stuff was coming, but I was totally blindsided by THESE! – Voice chat now in EQ, same as it is in EQ2 (and can we chat between EQ and EQ2?) – Groups can automatically merge if there is room. I have three spots free in my group, so do you, I invite you, one group all together! ...

I guess I know what I’ll be doing tonight… VEKSAR! Though now that I have capped out my AAs, part of me doesn’t want to finish any more quests or explore any new zones because, heck, I have 60 AAs to earn pretty soon. But yeah… **VEKSAR! VEKSAR! VEKSAR was a city I mean, it was a ruined city or maybe it was just ruins but it was still VEKSAR! ...

My sister Hillary and her husband just bought a condo in Boston. They were supposed to move in weeks ago, but the workmen just haven’t been able to get it finished on time. She still hasn’t been able to move in. It’s all about choosing the right contractors. Stargrace finished building a theater in my spare room in just (!) six hours. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I saw it. When I logged off to go to work in the morning, it was just some curtains and the start of a stage. When i got back… it had been transformed into the kind of place a bard would entertain dinner guests with songs of her many adventurers or the latest news of the battles the gods wage high above Norrath’s racing clouds. ...

The regular Friday group was postponed this week because of the Labor Day holiday, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to have any EQ action this week. Sejal, still reeling from the horrible news that cruising through the Plane of Justice Execution trial no longer flags you to enter the Planes of Storms and Valor. Apparently there’s still some level 55 barrier in place… Nobody ever thinks of us poor mid-levels! ...

I was writing a new Stout Henry story last night, when I got the idea to try and model him with the character creators from all the MMOs I had which could actually make unique characters. That left out EverQuest and World of Warcraft right off the bat; neither one has many character choices and people generally look a lot like other people of their race and gender. I started off with City of Heroes, because its character creator is legendary. Unfortunately, the options are not tuned so much for a medieval adventurer wearing simple clothes and wielding a staff. Still, after a couple of tries, it didn’t come out too bad… but it wasn’t Stout Henry. ...

I didn’t just play Guild Wars this weekend. I stopped into Wizard 101 a little, and, oh, finally got around to moving Dina from Befallen to Najena, where she happily joined Nostalgia. Almost as soon as I got transferred and reset my AAs, I got a group invite to Runnyeye 2. Who was going to be the enchanter for the run? Me. Yup, troub mezzes were going to be the only thing between us and total annihilation. It got a little nervewracking on the final epic x2 mob, since the usual strat is to mez all the adds, kill the boss, then kill the adds. Well, I can only keep two locked down. Three with no resists, but that’s iffy. The group leader figured out a strat where only two needed to be mezzed at a time, we did it, and we won. ...

The plan was to help everyone get to level 60 so we can start doing some of the two group raids in Kunark, Velious and Luclin – things like Velketor the Sorcerer, Trakanon, Venril Sathir and such. What better way, than through the hot zones? The hot zone for our level was (was) Riwwi in Gates of Discord. Not the best place in the world, but we made plans to go. ...