Nostalgia the Guild

What looks sillier than a very tiny fairly, with an even tinier fairy stuck to her shoulder, riding a huge, massive bear into a huge, massive bear convention with a group of gnomes in a steampunk city made out of mega-works and rusted iron? Not much, actually. That’s pretty much as silly as it gets. Or maybe the retailer support for EverQuest II’s latest expansion would be a little sillier. I went to Best Buy and two Gamestops last night hunting up the retail box. In between the hundreds of WotLK boxes, and many Hellgate: London boxes, the rows of Lord of the Rings Online boxes, the huge Warhammer Online displays (with collector editions!), were two copies of Rise of Kunark and one copy of Secrets of Faydwer, last year’s EverQuest expansion. ...

Being a Drogorn civic planner must be the most interesting job in the world. I can just imagine the presentation at the planning meeting: “Well, Jim, what do you have for us today?” “Well, today – something really exciting – here’s the plans for the new Elementary school!” “Oh, very good. Very good. This covered walkway – very interesting, that. Protect the kids from foul weather! Quite considerate.” “Ah yes, I am very proud of that, indeed. I call it ‘The Wall of Slaughter’.” ...

The Overlord Lucan D’Lere showed up at the EverQuest II Birthday Bash last night. Awestruck? You can say that. This is the man who saved us from the Rallosian Hordes and the Green Mist. This is the man who singlehandedly defeated the Avatar of War on Lucan’s Mount in the Commonlands. This is the man who drove the orcs to their doom in Wailing Caves and sealed them there forever. ...

The plan was to go to some experience hot zone last night for Nostalgia’s weekly meet-up. But Mantis decided to just farm some of the giants in the Bastion of Thunder while waiting, and then I drifted over there – again, just while waiting for everyone else to log in. Coldheat came over after a few and, while waiting, each of us with our bots to make a full group (ranger, enchanter, two clerics, two warriors), we cleared out the water wing, killed the wing boss (grats Coldheat on some nice Defiant shoulders), stepped on the teleport pad and found that the bees – the Stormriders – were uncamped! ...

Wizard 101, why can’t I quit you? I spent most of the night last night working on my LittleBigPlanet level. Well, almost. I spent most of last night feeling like an idiot. A frustrated idiot. Since LittleBigPlanet is based around a physics engine, everything you make there has to actually work to some degree. I started working on a sorta free-floating player system as is used in the hugely popular Gradius level, and got it kinda working, but I didn’t like it. Then I decided to make a game set not in space, but underwater, and the space ship becomes a submarine – or a bathysphere, really, since the thing has to be connected by chains to a hidden, remote-controlled trolley which handles the mechanism of bringing the bathysphere through the level. ...

Yup, last night we entered Vex Thal for the first time as a guild. Aten Ha Ra, your days are numbered, etc. (I don’t have to mention that we were trying to zone off a train, right? Good!) I’ve always had a deep and abiding affection for Vex Thal. What’s not to love? A city devoted to the worship of a four-armed goddess who dresses like a Rocky Horror refugee and uses her moon as a footrest for her spike-heeled, black leather boots? ...

Because FRAPS conked out on me, and I didn’t notice until after. there’s no screen shots of our night in the Bastion of Thunder. No screen shots of our first, tentative pulls of the giants of the lightning wing. None of Niiko zipping around at bard speed, threading the monsters with song into beads of pwn. None of Mantis, trying to keep his warrior mercenary from breaking his own mezzes :) That was fun! ...

So this screen shot entirely contains my philosophy of life. I’m in this really stormy place, and I’m fighting for my life, but some souless minion is trying to save me, but he’s about to be eaten by a giant bear he can’t see, and there’s some huge guy with a “wide stance” lurking about, and someone not even in the screen shot keeping everyone alive. That’s it. Now you know everything important about me. ...

Massively is reporting that Seeds of Destruction goes live today. Since I abandoned the high level game over a year and a half ago, closer to two years, I haven’t really kept track of EQ expansions. They tend to cater to the max level raiders with a zillion AA, and keeping up was just too much of a grind, so I quit and haven’t particularly missed it. The new stuff is more of the same – grind levels to 85, and then, here’s some more dungeons for people at the level cap. I took a peek at the new stuff with my cleric, just running around, and it’s totally gorgeous – and I STILL had no desire to play my cleric again. Almost two years and the burnout hasn’t faded a bit. ...

Doomfire, the Burning Lands Last night was another light night; by seven, there were only four of us on: Stolig, who had heroically leveled from 46 to 53 – just two levels from being able to enter the Plane of Storms for hot zone xp goodness; Kanad; Mantis and myself. Stolig only had an hour before real life would call him away, and was having fun further mutilating the mutilated, undead frogs of Lower Guk, so the rest of us were left figuring out what we could do. ...