MMORPG

Go ask Alice, when the white dragons fall None of us was happy about the way we left Gianthold Tor; expert at getting through the dungeon and killing the Gatekeeper, unable to kill the three dragons at the end. We’d all gained a level since we left the Tor, though, and the Harbingers of Madness gear was a literal game changer for most of us. The rewards for grinding Gianthold Tor for rare dragon scales are not that great, given the effort involved. I estimate it would take killing a dragon thirty times in order to get enough scales to make a piece of armor. We were never going to spend half a year farming this instance. ...

Infected Space (Elite) Infected (Space) is very simple. There’s only one thing you have to do. And that is all focus and kill the nanite spheres and probes when they pop. That’s all. Infected (Space) is a test of teamwork. If someone goes off on their own, the optional is all but lost. There are two optional objectives. Complete the entire task force in fifteen minutes, and don’t allow any nanite sphere or nanite probe to heal one of the transformers. If any nanite probe or nanite sphere gets close enough to heal a transformer, the optional is instantly lost. ...

Killing the Cube Before Star Trek Online implemented the PvE queuer, getting into special task forces was a matter of sitting in Gamma Orionis, spamming for groups. And the people wanting to fill groups would have insane pre-qualifications, like specific classes and builds, and they would kick you out if you didn’t fit their narrow requirements. You also were obliged to stay for all parts of the special task force, all space parts and all ground parts. ...

Fully functional I had a run of luck; I got the rare borg deflector tech drop which went to replace my Mark XI MACO Deflector with an Omega Force Mark XI deflector; winning just five missions got me the rest of the Encrypted Data Chips (EDCs) I needed, 40 total, for the Omega Force Mark XI engines, and I already had the Omega Force Mark XI shields, so… full Kellerun Infiltrator set. 2 pieces give a boost to tetryon damage, and 3 pieces gives a power that makes enemies unable to turn for five seconds. ...

My lizard, Leapster When you think about it, Fae are just the right size to be eaten in one gulp by the EverQuest 2 jumping lizard mounts. I’m too terrified to dismount, and so I leap from place to place within Lesser Faydark, death from above for the invader Tier’Dal who nonetheless managed to drag me from my mount last night and slaughter me. Experience is slow in the Lesser Fay. Every EQ2 story I read tells of people hitting 60, 70, 85 before they realize it, in just a couple days, but I’ve been working on this zone for months, with breaks to do quests and some seasonal events. Clearly, this hasn’t been my main game. ...

Is something ... missing? Having spent the last month or so running errands for lazy journalists in the Harbingers of Madness module, we all felt it was time for a little change. Thus we were soon returning to our old haunts (heh heh) in the Necropolis, looking for a little adventure in the Orchards of the Macabre. I can just imagine what the Stormreach zoning board thought when they got the property proposal for review. “So, you wish to build an orchard along the northern border of the city? Well, I see no reason to object… Hold on. An orchard of the macabre?” “Well, yes. Don’t you think apple trees look really scary? I know I do.” ...

Auraxyllon None of Team Spode much liked working so hard on In The Flesh and failing it Sunday. We were so close, but we were just out of time. We decided to meet mid-week and try it again – on normal mode – to finish the quest series and get the rewards. We grouped up on time, went into the instance, summoned the clerics, and thrashed the instance – Yaulthoon for sure, and even the undead beholder that thrashed us again and again a few weeks back. First try. My respec definitely helped, but these instances have raised our level of gear, and they’ve also taught us how better to work as a team. It’s a lesson we desperately need – because there’s no reason we can’t win every instance we come across on normal mode. Losing a normal mode instance means we failed. ...

Making M.A.C.O. Star Trek Online may have unique story missions, the genre’s best capital starship battles and a kinda fun “select and dress your crew” mini-game, but the end-game is the same as it is for many MMOs: repeating end game missions on normal mode for tokens with which to buy advanced gear to do heroic mode instances and raids. In Star Trek Online, these are called “Special Task Forces”, “Elite Special Task Forces” and “Fleet Actions”. But they are not dissimilar to the regular instance grinds in modern fantasy MMOs. Except in one, you can blow up space ships on the Internet. ...

In the Flesh? All we wanted to do last night was finish The Harbingers of Madness quest for the second time, this time on Hard mode. The quest on Normal mode the week before last had kicked our butts; the Ghost of Pyzjyn slaughtered us, and Yaulthoon the Mind Flayer walloped us several times until we found out his trick. In the time between then and now, though, I’d respecced into a damage build instead of a fairly useless trap-focused build (though I am still able to find and disarm traps). I wondered if this new focus on damage would let the group take on the hard content we really should be doing when we can. Normal mode is for solo and small groups; we head in with four PCs and two dedicated cleric hirelings. And Gleek and Spode have devoted a lot of time outside of our weekly gaming toward making their characters utterly uber. ...

EQ Emulator server list EQ Emulator now works with versions of EverQuest I actually have now! So anyway I still have some configuring to do before I can regress back to 1999. And I’m playing it through my LAN to where the files are stored on my Linux server because I had some crazy idea that I could play it in Wine. That wasn’t happening. More later. Sleep now.