EverQuest

Wonder what’s through here? :)

A feature of mine about good games that DON’T have Warcraft in their names and could use some well-deserved love is up on Massively. Check it out, let me know what you think :)

It’s been a little over a week since I started blogging over at Massively, and while I am really enjoying myself, I think I still have a lot to learn about story ideas. It’s all about the page views, right, and what brings in the eyeballs better than our dear old friend, porn. So I suggested this to the editors, and they pretty much informed me that they already had plenty of Second Life coverage, and maybe I could work on this piece about “Shoulder armor through the ages – how high is too high?”. ...

Mythos, still in closed beta, has completely relaunched. No more beta codes to give out (sorry), but if you have been a beta tester, you will have to uninstall your current client and download the new one. I did this this morning; things look shinier. Expect a new look at Mythos soon. Bristlebane’s Day (apparently) goes live today. The revelers are in North Qeynos at the Claymore, and West Freeport outside the Executioner’s Pit. I have no idea if there are quests associated with them; I couldn’t get a word out of them on the Test server. ...

I haven’t done even a tenth of the gaming I usually do in a given week. Between my sister Hillary getting hitched in Boston; my sister Genjer and niece Jazzmin coming up from NYC to spend Easter weekend here in Connecticut; and the siren’s call of Rock Band demanding the return of the (in)famous Buzzkillaz, well, that was pretty much it. But though I didn’t get much gaming done, I did get a lot of writing done. I am absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve been hired on at Massively to do what I can to make Massively the number one destination for hot news and features about every single game in existence. I’ve patched Test and re-installed EQ1 because I can think immediately of three or four games which could use a lot more coverage, and I aim to see they get it. ...

Here’s the contest (no prize except everlasting eternal fame… you know, if you’re into that kind of thing). Each day, go to the US Patent and Trademark Office website. From the menu on the left, click “Trademarks” and from the popup menu, choose “Search TM database (TESS)” Select “Freeform Search” Enter “Sony Online Entertainment”[ON] AND “Everquest II”[WM] into the search field and Submit Query. Look for an expansion aside from RoK, KoS and EoF. Desert of Flames apparently was not trademarked. ...

I had the pleasure of being on SUWT #22 this weekend. I was first on SUWT #12, so I guess I’ll get another chance to mix it up with the crew on SUWT #32! The fights, the yelling, the smashed windows, the death threats and broken relationships that make podcasts fun, are all here. Our souls laid bare. Tune in and listen to the terror that inevitably occurs whenever someone lets me get too close to a microphone. ...

One of the dubious advantages of moving from one guild to another is learning new ways of defeating old encounters. Delusions of Grandeur kills Venril Sathir and the Overking in entirely different ways than did Clan of Shadows, and I had to suppress my urge to shout “you’re DOING it wrong!” because, hey, DoG gets results. So I shouldn’t have been all that shocked when we got to Leviathan, the Tier 3 raid that is the gateway to Veeshan’s Peak, and the leaders decided on something different than the slow range game that CoS did while I was with them. ...

Nothing screams “fun!” like a crowd of drunken dwarves heaving up their (presumably liquid) dinners in front of a Mysteriously Glowing Portal (a MGP, as pro MMOGites say). Hey, I mean that. I come from the family that kept Milwaukee’s Best in business. So naturally, I headed right in – to Brell’s Bar, the drinking establishment of the God of Below himself. The place was HOPPING! Bardo and the Burglars were in town for Brell’s Day; I put on my best dress, got up there, and danced a couple of tunes with Bardo himself. I wonder what he looks like under that mask… heck, I wonder if he wonders what I look like under MY mask…! Well, he had a show to do and I had some brew to make. ...

Massively has been running a feature on newly-discovered EQ2 lore dealing with that famous EQ1 dungeon, Guk, the ancient home of the Frogloks. Guk was just off the troll newbie grounds in EQ1, and was one of the two high level dungeons in the original EverQuest, the other being Nagafen’s Lair, AKA Sol B. EQ2 lore tells us that the frogloks, ogres and trolls were driven from South Antonica during the Age of Turmoil and bombarded during the Shattering, leaving only The Feerrott behind. Guk, Innothule Swamp, Lake Rathetear, and the Rathe Mountains were erased. What remains of the Plains of Karana now are part of the Thundering Steppes. ...