EverQuest

Saturday was an off-day for the guild, so I figured I’d get going with the whole crafting biz. I have to get Dorah, my jeweler, to 40,000 faction with her tradeskill society, and to level 80 jewelcraft so she can make Dina’s spells. No problem, thinks I. I drag her to Gorowyn because there’s no possible way I can find my way out of that confusing place (Mission: Find the mender in thirty minutes or left, starting… NOW!), grab some writs from Mister Hi I’m The Guy Who Stands Here Night And Day Just In Case You Came Buy, and set off, whistling merrily, Dina’s mind wandering as she finds herself being Dorah’s mana battery. Because, you know, bards = power song. ...

In the morning, I deguilded from Eternal Chaos. I didn’t ninja deguild. I wrote a letter to the guild leader, and I explained to the people online at the time that I was leaving, and why. Being guildless gives you a certain kind of freedom. Spend the day crafting? Why not! Join pickup groups? Sure! Pickup raids? Definitely! Back in EQ1, guildless people (or more commonly, people in small, non-raiding guilds) were more famous and respected than the top players in the top raiding guilds. Raiders grouped only with each other. Groupers grouped with everyone, and the best groupers were known by their skill. ...

2007 has been an amazingly full year, considering some of the major games we were hoping to play (Gods & Heroes, Age of Conan) were canceled or delayed. In January, I was still living in San Diego, still hoping that Sigil or SOE would finally read one of my resumes… on the 8th, the company in Carlsbad where I worked downsized their IT department from two people to one, and I was on the street. I found nearly immediately that spammers have taken over the job search websites as well as everything else on the Internet, and learned some hard lessons about telling real opportunities from spam opportunities (which aren’t opportunities at all, of course). Gaming suffered, since I had to spend all my time preparing cover letters, arranging interviews and so on. I was very much getting into the Star Trek Online community, and looking forward to Lord of the Rings Online, which I had pre-ordered. ...

I was sick and went to bed early last night; too early, and I woke up at 3:30 AM desperate to get just… one… more… level. I finished the Worker’s Sledgemallet quest but was still 10% from 80, but my body decided I needed more sleep after all, so it had to wait until tonight. All I had left were the repeatable Stormshield hunter quests outside Danak, so what the heck, I loaded up on those and went out to hunt. Two sets later, and ding! ...

It’s about time to look into the adventures, once again, of Dina and Dera, Adventurers at Large. It’s kind of embarrassing all around that Dera, a priestess, didn’t worship any god in particular. Sure, she’d started on the Brell quest, but she and old candle-head just didn’t get along. EQ lore would have her worshiping Bristlebane, but once again, it just didn’t work out. When Dina moved to Gorowyn and stumbled upon Karana priest Askr and his lonely little shrine to Karana, I immediately knew I’d found a god for Dera to worship. ...

Last night while recovering from a wipe, I was browsing my RSS feeds and was stunned by Ogrebear’ story that SOE was to be bought out by an Indian entertainment company, Zapak. That spread throughout the blogosphere by wildfire, and even to the people at SOE, who hadn’t heard about this, frantically e-mailed John Smedley about it, and found out, as we all did, that the rumor was false. This whole thing had blown over before I went to bed. Apparently the news that SOE was looking for an Indian partner with which to develop games for the Indian market had been combined with Zapak visiting SOE offices and then boom. ...

There’s been a lot of topics going around the blogosphere, and I’ve been holding off on them because, well, I don’t really have anything groundbreaking to say about them. But, what the heck. eBook Readers First up is a non-MMO one, but something I’ve covered extensively in this blog – eBook readers. “Ask Slashdot” fielded a question from a reader who asked Which eBook Reader is Best? The comments fell predictably into the camps that felt nothing could come close to the experience of reading an actual book; PDAs, cell phones and laptop computers were more appropriate for the task; Sony’s Reader comes from Sony and nothing more needs to be said (these are people angry less for the SWG NGE than for Sony’s rootkit adventures and their role as a quarter of the allegedly evil* RIAA). I use my Sony Reader every day, and daily rediscover old friends – yesterday brought Fred Saberhagen’s “First Book of Swords” and Julian May’s “The Many-Colored Land” onto my Reader. I didn’t comment on Slashdot, though, because… well, commenting on Slashdot on matters of opinion is pretty pointless. I doubt many would be sympathetic to my “I use a Reader because it looks good and is REALLY EASY TO READ” stance anyway. ...

It took me half an hour to find the portal from Gorowyn to Kylong Plains. Those helpful geniuses at EQ2 Interface must have thought that big glowing purple portal was too obvious to mention, or I just haven’t updated my maps recently… Anyway, Rock Band interfered for awhile (drumming on Hard is HARD), but eventually I got down to business; Dera and Dina in the same zone. I wanted my son’s character to come along, but then he got a CoA group. Decisions, decisions… well, obviously, CoA was going to be better for the short run with discovery and possibly useful loot, and he did ding from it and get some loot, but now he is behind on some Jarsath Wastes quests and it will be hard for him to catch up unless I go back and redo all the quests I’ve done. Then, though, he would always have to group with me for these quests so we wouldn’t get out of sync, and that just won’t happen. ...

While traveling, I could only play for a little bit here and there, so I focused mainly on Frostfell crafting when I did play. I did get a group finally to finish my Bone-Clasped Girdle, and thanks to the new non-aggroness of the Sanctum of the Scaleborn, advanced a step in my Wurmslayer quest. Yes, I am way behind on quests, and it has been impossible to find groups to help. ...

No time for leveling last night; when I sat down to play, I was invited to a Crypt of Agony group right away, and of course, I had to go. Have I mentioned that dungeon crawls are my absolutely favorite thing to do in EQ? It would be fair to say that meeting the dangers along with new friends is at the very heart of what makes MMOs enjoyable, for me, and the more time I spend in a group using all my character’s abilities to the limit, the more fun I am having. ...