I’m finally engaging in some online activities I feel are healthy and interesting enough to relate in more detail than “I’m playing Star Wars Galaxies”. Fffh. Always felt like I was admitting to some sort of disorder when I said that.

My friend Brian and his wife moved across the country this past Summer. We’ve been friends for many years, and he’s been a fixture in the table-top RPG campaigns I’ve run since I got out of college. He, my wife Katie, and I all enjoying gaming together, and so we decided we’d try to get together on the online to make it happen.

We were originally going to play DDO, but that never really worked out. We got together online, and then his computer freaked out and refused to run the client. For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, he’s not a big fan of the background in World of Warcraft and has resisted any recent attempt I’ve made to get him to try it.

When talking with Brent this past week, and going through the VirginWorlds site, I thought a lot about EQ2 … because, well, it’s a game that comes up a lot. I’ve enjoyed my limited time playing it, but I’ve always really wanted to get a regular group going there. Last Thursday I suggested this as a course of action, and I received very positive responses from Brian and Katie. Within a span of six hours we’d formed the plan, procured the necessary items, and that night we got in about two and half hours of playtime on the newbie island.

We only made it up to level 7. I know, I know, fairly pathetic. You have to realize, though, we were doing a *lot* of dicking around. Getting Ventrilo working, explaining some basic fantasy MMOG concepts to Brian, waiting while Brian playing with his hotbars, getting wailed on while Brian played with his hotbars, watching Brian run off while accidentally playing with his hotbars … good night.

My take-away from the event: The newb island stuff is really, really not meant to be done as a group. Which, makes sense, given that most people are probably going to be soloing this stuff. It was just interesting to experience. Even with that said, those low-level quests are much better than the could have been elsewhere. The “Collect Three Bear Pelts” -type quests were far less annoying than they are in WoW, as instead of actually collecting pelts you’re just killing bears until you’re told you’re done. Each ‘bear pelt’ you find counts for every member of the party, so there’s no need to worry about who is looting, making sure everyone has all the pelts they need, etc. When one of you has completed such a quest, you all have. Very convenient.

… unless of course, you happen to be out of range when your teammates kill the quest mob Brian. :)

We are just about ready to leave the island, and I expect we’ll do so very soon after we start our next session thiscoming Wednesday. We’ll be heading to Freeport, where we will start what will hopefully be a fruitful career of villainy and opression of the weak.

As Gnomes. Evil, evil Gnomes. Tallies beware.