Returning to Everquest 2, 2016 edition

Tags

EQ2, Lotro

I was browsing Steam games awhile back (and refusing to buy anything; have to play all the dreck I have already bought and never played) when I noticed a different entry – Everquest 2.

Having played the game forever, and seeing it on Steam, meant that it was time to download it and give it a try once again.   Same with Lord of the Rings Online.    So I let Steam do its thing over the next couple of days and download both games and update them.   Lord of the Rings, however, has yet to be opened.

EQ2 is quite a bit of fun still, the game that I needed at the moment.   It’s very familiar, thoroughly polished, and I know it backwards and forwards.   So I dived in and tried to figure out all the mammoth changes; I keep an eye on things via TAGN posts but otherwise I haven’t thought about the game for (checks blog) right about 3 years.

The current incarnation of EQ2, run by Daybreak instead of Sony (To the extent that’s its a real change and not just a name) includes three levels of account access.   I think.    That’s part of the reason for this post, the actual rules do not appear to be published somewhere I can access them.

It appears there are 3 levels of accounts in EQ2.    Free, Silver, and Gold.    Free is anyone signing up for the first time – makes sense.   Silver appears to be anyone previously in a Gold account, or former subscriber from back in the old days.    Gold is anyone paying $15 a month.

Why would you want to get a Gold account ?   One would think this would be an obvious, and clear choice; one would be wrong.    A few features are prominently displayed whenever I log in :

• 500 Daybreak cash (DBC) currency per month (Nice)
• Ability to sell items on the broker (SUPER NICE!)
• 10% Discount on the premium store items (Feh)
• Five additional character slots (Hmmm)
• Exclusive In Game Items ! (???)

I have not been able to figure out what the “Exclusive In Game Items” are.   The character slots are a mixed bag, since if you let your gold account lapse, those five characters are now lost to you until you resubscribe.   Plus, I have plenty of characters already (7 unlocked, 1 locked).   It feels like the character slot unlocks are a better deal.

The broker, now.   I love the broker.   Always did, always will.   It’s a fun marketplace for items and gives you the chance to make money with enough effort, or a few coins with very little effort; and of course you can buy most anything your heart desires – and your wallet can afford.    So for me, the broker is the real draw for Gold access.

Other reasons are not displayed.  I could only find one.

• Ability to change the XP / AA slider

This is more useful than it might first appear.   Number one, I forget how all the AA’s work and the additional ones that have appeared after I quit; and number two, I’d like to get Tez up to level 100 (the new max level).   The slider, for Silver accounts, is set at 50/50.

But I have resisted.   I usually subscribe to EQ2, then quit playing, and waste my money.   I hate doing that.   But what I did note is the price of plat, and therefore wondered about the wisdom of paying to sell on the broker.

It costs $15 to place items for sale on the broker for one month; that is, for that month you can place items to sell.   They can sit there forever after and not sell, finally selling after six months, but you cannot place new ones after the month.    Plat prices on the grey / illegal market however are around $15 for 300k platinum.    I could not resist, and I am now sitting on a hoard of plat.   More than I could ever have gathered playing the game.

But prices are inflated too. These used to go for less than 10 plat.

I burned 2,000 DBC on unlocking two additional slots; everyone is unlocked except for my Heroic character from 3 years ago, who I never played – Level 85 Dwarf Guardian.   The tradeskill XP comes fast and furious; with Vitality you can gain a level from a single writ, without it will take maybe 5.   I seem to recall it taking a lot longer back in the day.

So I play, and enjoy.    Tez is still questing; I want him to ding 100 so that a +20% XP bonus kicks in; same for Tlaloc the provisioner; and I’ll continue to look for the reasons / or not reasons/ why one would purchase a gold account.

Changes at Gazillion, Makers of Marvel Heroes

Tags

EQ2, Marvel Heroes, potbs, Star Trek Online

CEO David Brevik of Gazillion is leaving the company, prompting much angst and worry among forum posters.    Brevik is represented somewhere in the game, apparently by a cow on the cow level, was very involved in many aspects of the game among its small team, and was previously the head of Blizzard North.    Seems this guy is the real deal.   Good luck to him and hopefully greener pastures in the future (see what I did there?  I amuse myself).

I am also amused at the posters angst, worrying about games being shut down.   Some of these guys must be 20 years old and playing their first games.   But….. That did start me thinking.   What MMO’s have I played that are still around, and which ones are gone ?

Vanguard – Closed during Summer 2014, I remember promising myself I would resubscribe just to be around when the servers went dark.   I’ve never had that experience.   Of course, I forgot all about it after returning from summer vacation, and the game is now closed.

A quick Google search reveals……. something I don’t understand, a Steam community page for the game.   A search of the Steam Store does not reveal this title, so maybe it was up for a short time and then closed.   I was years out of playing the game, though, once it had closed.

Pirates of the Burning Sea – Closed down at the end of 2012 apparently.   I attempted to get it running again via the SOE launcher at some point and was unsuccessful, nor did I find it in existence via Google Search.    Seems I was misled – the game is in fact still running.    It would be fun to reinstall this one, the visuals always were awesome and the ship combat fun and balanced.   The economic portions of the game were awful.

I wasn’t the only one saying the economy sucked.   They apparently revamped it during 2014.    But my original characters seem to be GONE !

Everquest – My first MMO is still going strong, with no end in sight, despite the many changes over the years.    But I have no desire to go back, it was always too hard core and too social for a hermit like myself.

Everquest 2 – Still going, the MMO I’ve probably invested the most in and which you can read far too much about (it’s past) on this blog.    I’ve tried to jump back in, but when I did, most of my gear was not able to transition with me in free-to-play, and I had to go through a huge song-and-dance to get my account re-enabled after billing issues.

Not playing, because no more monthly subscriptions for me.   And Free-to-play doesn’t really work if I can’t continue with my main character.

Champions Online, and Star Trek Online, are available via Arc Games.    I really thought Champions was gone for good, but it seems to have gotten a new lease on life.   The more recent Mechwarrior Online is still running, although I didn’t enjoy the game very much.    I’m sure I needn’t mention the various Armored games I’ve played in the last couple of years.

The Secret World is an interesting parallel – it’s still available.    Shortly after its release the CEO left the company, but the game has lived on.   Perhaps that’s all that needs to be said about losing All-Father Brevik.

Old MMO’s rarely die, as evidenced by both this list and any reading of TAGN‘s blog, but people hyperventilate that such things will happen.

New Strategies, Great Gaming

Tags

EQ2, Minecraft, war-worlds

And another weekly update as my work week stays too busy.

EQ2.    Played the free gold account time.   Signed up again.    Quit playing.    Cancelled today.     There’s too many good titles out there that don’t have the restriction of “pay to play”.    I can still log in until 11/15 if I change my mind.

War Worlds :

I have devised a new strategy to limit the “sitrep spam” and constant input problems.    Turn the game and all of its strategy on its head – the only way you build buildings is by spending $$$$.     So clearly, this will only work once you have perhaps 30+ systems.

Send in the colonizer and colonize your first world.    Max it out, using rush builds for all appropriate buildings.    Set the colony to produce excess food and no production items (which have to be ships, since all buildings are built).      And put the remainder of production into population.

Check back occasionally, and see if max pop has been reached.     When it has, get the necessary number of colony ships; either because you already flew them there, build them, or rush production of them.     Then repeat the process of build up and populate for each of these worlds; I do the “populate up” all at the same time.

Finally, you have a complete system.    Start building ships and move on to the next one.

The only thing I’m struggling with is what the floor should be for holding onto money; how much is too much to just hold “in case” ?     So far it doesn’t matter much because time is more of a factor, although I sure spent a ton on Halloween night while I passed out candy – over $100k.

Soon I’ll hit the display bug of “Your empire is too big to show here”

I did destroy one other inactive player as well, and believe that everyone remotely close to me is inactive.

Minecraft gets most of my game time, and I’m enjoying the process of building out.    But this needs it own post when time permits.

I managed to get World of Tanks updated to 8.9, but didn’t get to try a Halloween Special Event game.    Soon.

Unfortunately (Or fortunately?) I am camping this weekend with my little scout, as he prepares to leave cub scouts and enter boy scouts.    Moving up to boy scouts means lots of camping, apparently.    In the fall and the winter.      And the rules specifically say “No Electronics”, which will certainly limit the amount of gaming I do.    Or even eliminate it.    But he won’t stay the kindest 10 year old I’ve ever known forever so I’ll just enjoy the time instead.

It’s a great time to be a gamer !    So many shiny things to examine and plumb the depths of.

Many things to note

Tags

EQ2, Minecraft, Steam, Tropico 4, World of Tanks

World of tanks wins the Golden Joystick award, for “Best Online game of the year”.     I’m not too surprised, given the audience for the game, and the fact that tons of people can play it because it’s free.

Steam has also won as the “Best Gaming Platform” which I certainly have to agree with.    My swag for voting was a free game – Mafia – which of course I haven’t gotten around to playing.

Wargaming is giving away a free Tier II tank in celebration of their victory; this will happen along with the 8.9 update.     The update is supposed to be “Soon” I suppose, given that the public test has come and gone.     I’ve not played in a week or so, partly due to no internet access, and partly due other games.

It sure doesn’t help that again, for perhaps 4 weeks in a row, there’s no special for crew retraining.    I really don’t want to blow 1000 gold to crew-up my Maus, and I’m continuing to wait until I can do that.    Supposedly, the scuttlebutt is I’ll hate the thing anyway and be ineffective, but I’ve been known to disagree with the majority opinion about these kinds of things.

On to other games – Everquest 2.    I recently resubscribed, and got cut off from internet due to being on a cruise ship.    When I returned, I got a bunch of level 95 spells in my hotbar that I can’t use, so I figured I’d wait until they had fixed this problem.    And I haven’t logged in again since, because I’m not that interested in troubleshooting this kind of crap.   Is it fixed yet ?

Apparently, not.    I understand the workaround is to fiddle with the settings in your spellbook, set it to show all spells, and then you can add the level appropriate ones.   I should do that.  I really hope this subscription period doesn’t end like the last time I played – I got all excited, paid, and then just quit playing.

While on the cruise ship, I couldn’t get Minecraft working.     I just managed to have the update that required online authentication once, without ever having authenticated, so I was out of luck.    So this lead me to Tropico 4.      This is a fun little “mini-simcity” game in this incarnation, at least for someone who hasn’t yet played 2 and 3.    I did mess around with the original and didn’t like it.

I survived the tutorial and have finished the first mission after a false start.    Once I got enough money it became easy, and game 2 doesn’t seem like it will be any different.     The theme is fun, for someone who recently walked through the tourist district in Ensenada Mexico.     However, not much to write about here other than that I’m playing it.

After getting back to dry land I looked up Minecraft and finished updating and authenticating.    Now, at this point, my laptop will play the game successfully without an internet connection.    But what’s unexpected is today is a big update, which I’ll detail in a later post.

Jumped back in

Tags

EQ2

I went ahead and took the jump in, and resubscribed to Everquest 2.

The final push they gave me was this email :

I guess they REALLY want my money.

The warthog looks good, the trick will be deciding what character gets it.      As far as mounts go, I’m very happy with my mountain saliraptor.    I can jump so many places with that thing, and get from here to there in almost no time.     Just run, jump as high as possible, land and jump again.    I can cross the entire Great Divide in a few minutes that way.

When it’s all said and done though, I usually like to run the character through the world.     Most of the people I see are always on their mounts, which I don’t quite get.    It feels like a different experience.

I’ve played mainly Tezcatlipocca, who has gotten maybe 5 AA’s along with his level to ding 90.     I eventually needed to head back to Qeynos to deal with the stuff in my inventory, and got a surprise.

Did I really find all this fun at one point ?    I stood there for hours figuring out what to do with all the stuff I picked up.    Some of it was gear, and required making decisions – and I even picked up two good items I had not immediately equipped.  Some was simple vendor trash.    A lot of it was harvestables, which were thoroughly confusing.    I rearranged the entire bank, and got new boxes for my house storage, just to deal with it all.

Then I finished it all up, put stuff on the broker, and took stock.    I had earned about 90 plat.      Yes – 90 plat.     Just kind of messing around.

This immediately meant it was time to buy expensive stuff to deal better…… with inventory and banking, of course.    I bought a supply depot for harvestables, and food/drink.      That should free up half of my banking space for Tez, and for Tlaloc too who is my 86 provisioner.    So much for my miserly hoarding years ago, when one plat was actually worth something.     I have around 500 plat banked now and it seems the sky will be the limit.

It’s simply fun to solo your way through the Great Divide.     Somehow, all of my abilities are actually useful.    I can debuff mobs and they seem to die faster; my wards are useful and not wasted time when casting; and I have enough offense to kill ^^^ greens.     My Wizard has no trouble with enemies at 40 either.

I created the new heroic level 85 character, a guardian, and messed around with it for about ten minutes.     And then logged him off.     I don’t know, it’s just kind of boring to automatically be at that point.     I don’t think this is a feature for me.    But since I didn’t have a character in the slot, I can let him linger on my account.

I really like the idea of the Public Raids in the Great Divide too.    I tried The Ring War, and can’t remember the other one’s name.    The Wiki talks about them as raids, but I just found myself participating as a solo helper each time I tried it.     I can do them once a day and get a nice piece of an armor set each time – I think.    I have two so far and plan to try it again tonight for something different.     Three pieces give me +100 wisdom.

Apparently back in January I had completed 2,023 quests, and am now at approximately 2,250.      Will continue to chase them with Tezcatlipocca, but it doesn’t seem that I have any method to check my position in global rankings any longer.    u.eq2wire.com doesn’t have rankings.    Players.everquest2.com doesn’t have any either.    Ah well – it was fun to do back in the day, but I’m not sure I want to aggressively chase top spots any longer.

Instead, just enjoying the experience.

Thinking of Three Games

Tags

EQ2, war-worlds, World of Tanks

Over the week I have managed to expand my War Worlds empire to 38 stars.    Then, it started to seem like I was playing an email management game where you get tasks over the course of the day, continuously.    That little red light on the phone would blink so many times – events that just transpire within minutes of each other.

The downside to micromanaging, is at some point it really becomes drudgery.    And without the usual artificial limits introduced in such a game, the fun can vanish.    So I’m currently only messing with it for limited times each day; and just trying to max out the stars I have.      Ground Shields, Shipyards, Biospheres and the necessary Silos to max populate all the planets.     Expansion will come soon enough.

The game rewards micromanaging.    From what I can gather, the developer doesn’t want the game to become “Set it and forget it”, and so the queues are not really queues – every item on the list gets worked at the same time.    I hear there are limits to how many ships one can build for the same reason.    Still and all, it’s good, as long as you can master the difficult task of putting it down.

If they were still playing, my neighbors would be nervous.

Ultimately I found out what my problem was with EQ2.    You *DO* need to save a AA configuration at least once, and suddenly all your AA’s are in your knowledge book or otherwise usable.

I’ve been enjoying the journey and am considering a month subscription.     I managed to get my main Tezcatlipocca to level 90, which meant that he gets another quest to finish.    This one’s goal is to unlock the route to level 95.     First, you need 270 AA (and he has 163), so I’m not too worried about hitting that one anytime soon.

The new Qeynos is interesting.     I was outraged that Nettleville is gone, and I will never again be “coming to gaze upon me, have you !”      But that’s just being grumpy.    The new Velious zones are nice and pretty, with the Tower of Frozen Shadow just out of my reach when I last logged in.

I see that World of Tanks has once again not started a crew training special for the weekend; double crew XP would be pretty good right now, but I haven’t played a match since Tuesday.    8.9 is in public test, so the updates just keep right on coming.    What a good time to be a gamer, when there are aggressively pushed updates to games like Wargaming does.

And for someone who usually concentrates on a single game, to have three things to mess with at the same time, is pretty neat.

EQ2 Confusion

Tags

EQ2, war-worlds

After noticing a TAGN post, I decided to take a quick look again at Everquest 2.     Apparently, you can now create a level 85 character.     I’m not quite getting why – I was always about the “Journey is half the fun” kind of person.

After patching and logging back in, there’s the usual bewildering array of messages, one of which seemed to say “Your Alternate Advancements have been reset”.     They don’t seem to work either, but they do all seem to be assigned.     For Tezcatlipocca, my 89 Mystic, these are a critical part of his offense and ability to solo through the world.    And the only problem is, I can’t quite seem to use any of them.

OK – now what ?

I seem to have ten points spent in the spear ability.    But I can’t drag it to my hotbar.     My knowledge book has abilities which I am able to drag, but none of the AA’s are there.     Frack.

The AA’s were there – on the hotbar – but ghosted out.    After deleting a bunch of them I seem no closer to getting live, usable ones either.

Perhaps its tied up in the apparent new system, where it appears I can set a list of AA’s for soloing, for this or that special purpose, but I am not too interested in that.    So I can’t really play – I managed to quickly die after fighting some group of blue death stags.

Thus having my enthusiasm dampened, after googling “EQ2 Alternate Achievements Hotbar” and similar, and striking out, I thought I’d bitch about it here instead.    It’s a shame, because having the ability to get back into Norrath as a gold account character was very interesting.

I’m a bit at a loss with War Worlds at the moment, because it’s getting to be a bit more like a constant workload.    I get a notification – my silo is built.    Time to build a new one.    Well, if you queue them the game works on all buildings simultaneously so that’s out.    And if I have to take an action every 10 minutes, multiplied by how many worlds – Let’s just say it’s getting a bit tedious.    So I’m issuing orders until I get annoyed by the whole thing, and then switch to something else.    Why not implement a real queue system ?

Tanks works well when you can commit large chunks of time to it.    And not be interrupted.   That’s not where I’m at, at the moment.    Games continue to be played but, I don’t know.   Maybe the impending launch of World of Warplanes will make me more interested.

Um – What ?

Tags

EQ2

While I’ve been whiling away the hours with X-COM, the hacker community has been busy :

I didn’t request any reset !

I have a similar email from Turbine for LOTRO.    Nothing from Perfect World, thankfully.      So the first thing to do is log in and see if all my characters are gone. But thankfully, I’m all set.    It appears the idiot level of security on my characters is working; my email address is not compromised and is apparently strong enough to withstand simple attacks.

And now it’s vacation time.    There will be no more posts until I either return home around 8/2, or somehow complete X-COM while on vacation (Probability : 2%).

38 Studios Woes

Tags

38 studios, EQ2

I first became aware of Curt Schilling about 15 years ago.   His biggest claim to fame is being a major-league baseball pitcher, who also managed to win three world series with two teams.    It was revealed the jock was also quite a geek – war games, tabletop miniatures, and such in addition to being an outstanding athlete.    And, a PC gamer.   He was big time player of Everquest and EQ2, and raised the profile of the MMO genre a bit.

Many years back he founded his own games studio.    It was time to retire from baseball and pursue a more geekly hobby.    Made sense to me – baseball has a shelf life for its players, and being as we are the same age, and I also have another friend – former longtime MLB pitcher our same age – it just kind of gelled and I’ve been watching the whole thing from the sidelines.

38 studios released Kingdoms of Amalur in February which many of you have been playing; I’m getting too cheap to buy games anymore so I haven’t.    And today I find out 38 studios is apparently in trouble.

Also Friday, 38 Studios made an overdue $1.125 million payment to the R.I. Economic Development Corporation

Asked whether Rhode Island would offer do a 38 Studios-style deal again, Chafee replied: “Never, never – not on my watch. I said from the beginning it was a risky enterprise.”

Seems the studio got some taxpayer money when moving to their latest studio in Providence RI.    This can be a smart move for a company – use the State’s credit to get bonds issued at a favorable rate, if your project is beneficial or desirable to the State, presumably in this case to bring jobs to Rhode Island.    Then, the company simply makes the payments like you would any loan.    Problem seems to be, they couldn’t make the payments.

Yesterday, they couldn’t even make payroll.    Doubly scary.    Back to the Everquest2 connections – Curt hired two former Sony dev’s who I always thought did quite a job – Moorgard and Blackguard.   Their blogs are (intelligently) silent about any recent events at their company, but I hope they’re well.   Certainly the press looks pretty bad.

38 Studios employees who were standing outside the company’s Providence headquarters on Thursday afternoon looked glum but said they could not comment on whether they’d gotten paid.

This comes as a big surprise – I had actually looked for a failure for quite some time, but after they released Kingdoms of Amalur I figured, they must have gotten it right.   Seems all is not well for the former Green Monster games after all.

Financial Info 2012 – Jan, Feb, and March

Tags

EQ2, Secret World, Spending, Star Trek Online, World of Tanks

Because I think it will be interesting, I continue to track my personal gaming spending, or lack thereof.     I could have sworn I posted this once but I cannot find such a post.   You expect different from an accountant ?

In the old days, my unmarried irresponsible youth, I spent hundreds of dollars on computer games, as well as tons on hardware.    So far, 2012 has seen some remarkable austerity in game money spent.

1. Jan 2012 – $15 EQ2.
2. Feb 2012 – $15 EQ2.
3. Mar 2012 – Zero.

I’ve got plenty to spend, but not a lot of motivation.

I will probably be buying gold again in World of Tanks sometime in April.    Premium account is the only thing motivating me, but it’s a strange beast; a full month premium also induces the “Must extract maximum value” impulse which then turns me into a machine, and starts sucking the fun out of the game.    The one-day premium, when I know I’ll have a day to game, minimizes this impulse.   The trick is the full month of premium is a good value – 30 days for 2,500 versus one day for 250.

There is no reason to pay for Star Trek Online since I only log in occasionally and run my duty officers.    The Secret World is due out in June, and I’m simply not motivated to check out SWTOR.

Financially, a great time to game, soooooo many free options.