Dec 25
Seasonal EverQuestive Disorder
As you’ve probably noticed, not only have I been straying from World of Warcraft to play Lord of the Rings Online, but EverQuest II as well. Heading back to Norrath was probably a foregone conclusion for me, but I found myself more and more thinking fondly of my days adventuring with good old Ostimak.
You have to understand … as much affection I have for all of my mains (Grodimil, Hackworthe, Amak, Jacob’s Ladder, etc.), I’ve been playing Osti for more than two freaking years. On top of that, almost all of my time with that character has been spent playing with good friends, two of whom in turn I’ve known for something like half of my life.
Even after the Shortiez took their leave from EQ2 to try out new games, I didn’t want to put down my imperious Inquisitor. I jumped to the Guk server and was given a very kind invite by some of the members of Revelry and Honor, the guild Karen (Jaye) runs. Though I haven’t had much time in the last pre-holiday weeks to actually enjoy playing with guildies, it’s always nice to know there are people around. And, of course, I get to enjoy the guildhall.
Oh. My. God. The guildhall.
Guildhalls in EQ2 are so good they feel like cheating. Cross-world teleports, a unique recall spell on a separate cooldown from your ‘port home’ spell, buff statues, a dedicated crafting room with unique crafting storage, a bar, hidey-holes, a lounge … there’s even easy-to-use vendor/bank/broker NPCs hanging out just waiting for my business. So beautiful. Should have sent a poet.
Though I’ve been chipping away at level 59 and remembering very clearly how much soloing used to be deprioritized in this game, the last few days I’ve been having fun with Frostfell. Every year SOE trots out and entire unique zone associated with the holiday, a hub for all sorts of jingle-related malarkey. This year they’ve not only introduced a new quest, we can actually go back and do all the older quests from previous years. I quite liked the new one: a quick dash around Freeport that resulted in some unique ‘tweaks’ to my apartment’s Christmas Tree. I can now make Eyeballs or Bats grow from it … basically making it into a Halloween tree. Yay for multi-tasking decorations!
I don’t know how serious my intentions towards EQ2 are at the moment … lots of fish to fry out there. Either way, it’s a game I have a lot of affection for. In the long run, I’ll most definitely be returning on a regular basis. Norrath, it seems, feels just a bit like home. And isn’t that a little bit what today is about? Happy hols, everybody!
2 comments2 Comments so far
Feel free to stop by our Guildhall while you’re on Guk. It’s open to the public and some of our members have put quite a bit of time into it so far. You can find it from the Antonica docks, just look for “Legion of the White Rose” from the Guildhall bell.
[...] December – Which brings us to the month just closing. After a slow start at the beginning of the month I vowed to really jump back in with both feet. I dinged 74 in World of Warcraft, probably the last ding I’ll see there for some time to come. The second week in December was an MMOnewsplosion that almost killed me. December 9th will forever live in infamy in my mind. The most dramatic news was on the MT front, of course, with SWTOR’s plans the most surprising. SOE’s Station Cash project wasn’t all that surprising to me, but they definitely have their work cut out for them. Meanwhile, I was exploring Norrath by myself while enjoying high seas adventures with the Shortiez. Downtime this month lead to a lot of chances for photo editing/tagging, and I put up Flickr sets on my visit to Mythic, my visit to SOE Austin, and a bunch of conferences besides. I came to some realizations about why Tabula Rasa was closing down, and spoke again about the problem of bewildering content amounts in MMOs. Moria well and truly pulled me away from Lich King, and I further reflected on new opportunities in EQ2. [...]