The site outage has made this a bit tardy, but my band of adventuring kin did get the chance to check out the extremely awesome FrostFell event Sony has laid out in EverQuest II. I’m not going to go into an in-depth description here, as Van Hemlock has done a good job with that, but I did want to comment on it just the same.

The spread put out for the Holiday season by Blizzard is reliable, but after three years of the same thing I think most players are mostly done with the adventures of the reindeer Metzen. The EverQuest II event, though, is different every year.

This year was notable for me as, thanks to my recent Norrathian traveling companions, I had a really good reason for checking it out. My wife, who is (I love you sweetheart) a giant book nerd and academic, really dug the pseudo-literary theme for the instanced quest. I’m a clothes-horse in massive games, and ended up falling head over heels in love with my pimped out Christmas attire: blue santa hat, blue winter cape, and pepper-mint wafting candycane cane. Nice looking stuff.

Katie has also really been getting into crafting of late, and the emphasis placed on that part of the game made the holiday activities that much more enjoyable. By endlessly gathering from presents in the Frostfell village, players could craft unique holiday items like outfits, furniture, and other such niceties. I picked up one of the books of holiday furniture, but I’ll be damned if I ever got something made.

The problem was (and this is my only real complaint with the way things were set up), all ‘classes’ of crafting items were contained within those packages. Cooking items were side by side with woodworking, cloth-sewing, and other bits. It was thus very hard to get a specific item made: by the time you’d found what you were looking for the inside of your bags resembled the floor in a Santa-themed strip club. Duck heads, tinsel, toy parts strewn everywhere.

For next year, assuming they do something similar, I’d love to see crafting-specific nodes. The game as a whole does this (offering wood from fallen trees), and I can’t see that it would be too hard to do the same for the seasonal offering. Rivers of molten chocolate could offer up cooking resources, while rocking horses and toy soliders could be broken up for woodworking resources.

All three of us had a blast getting our holiday on. Assuming we’re still playing EQ2 as 2007 ends, I’m resolved to get even more out of it than I did in 2006.