Winterwing

Last night, I was going to get my necromancer, Dorah, over to Najena. No matter what. I tried their automated transfer system with a couple new names. Neither were in use, according to EQ2Players. Since Sony TSRs can’t actually move characters themselves, their jobs are to pass you along to someone else – either make it my fault somehow, or have me contact an in-game GM. But I’m pretty sure in-game GMs can’t perform a character move, either, so I was not going to leave until the TSR gave me a different solution. ...

Last Tuesday, the second progression gathered for our second time in Paludal Caverns. Back In The Day… I start out so many sentences about the EQ groups that way? And yet, you really can’t go to these old places without saying that a lot. Every camp we moved to carried with it a dozen memories. Here’s the place I ran into Jaasur who restarted on Stromm when it opened, same as I did, but didn’t stay with it. Over here was the bandit camp where I really learned how to play a cleric. Here’s the small rise where two groups would chain pull the bandits. Here’s that icky disease crud that made clerics (again) so incredibly popular in PC. In all the time we were there, we were the only group. ...

With my EQ2 raiding career at an end – I just don’t have the time for a six day a week raiding commitment any more – and the EQ1 guild up and running now, it’s time to start adding back in the other games I want to play. I love EQ1 and always will, but EQ2 is my home. I know I’ll miss raiding. But every night we would meet at 8pm, run to 11 or 12, and then I’d have to do my writing for the night if I hadn’t completed it before. Since just keeping up with my raid commitment meant more than 20 hours a week raiding, I stopped logging in at any other times because that was already too much time spent playing MMOs. So the group instances I loved – gone. Playing the alts I cherish – gone. All gaming but raiding wiped out. That’s the raiding trap. You raid casually, learn to enjoy being part of a larger group and trying to be as effective as you can be. That’s a lot of fun, but you want more, and so you join a raiding guild. Now you are owned. You have just voluntarily given away all your free time. Saturday was our only day off, and you can bet I played no EQ2 that day. Raiding sucked away all that I loved about the game, except raiding itself. ...

I finally hit 31 in Rock Band last night after about a dozen duels of which I lost two. Huh? Levels? Grinding? PvP? Yeah, this is Rock Band. If you start exploring the Multiplayer menu in Rock Band, and avoid the unsatisfying “Band” player matching, where you and three random strangers from Xbox Live slowly come to understand why people suck, you’ll come to Tug of War and Score Duel. Score Duel was unsatisfying. Tug of War is surprisingly strategic. ...

I didn’t want to talk about Winterwing before she finished the Butcherblock quest line, but while I was messing up an alliance between the Timorous Deep and Butcherblock aviaks, I looked up and caught the end of a partial eclipse of the sun as the un-blowed-up moon Drinal passed before it. Whichever artist did the sky – well done. I was blown away. Also, note that Winterwing has a gi now :) That’s the Lonetusk Gi from a named in the Ruins. The stats are awful but… it looks like a gi, and now she doesn’t have to do the woefully out-of-date armor quests in order to look like a monk again. Well, bruiser. ...