Silliness Remembered

As I mentioned earlier, I am on vacation next week.  As a result, my “give a fuck” factor is seriously strained this week.  So, there will probably be an unusual number of new posts here this week as I try to keep myself busy at work.  My boss told me yesterday to just try to wrap up all my current projects by the end of the week and to not take on any new ones.  I got most of them finished yesterday, so I have little to do for the rest of the week but play around and watch the clock.

I was blog hopping a few minutes ago reading away on other sites.  I’m not sure why, but all of a sudden I started thinking about some of the really funny things I saw over the years in EQ and some of the more elaborate (and painful) practical jokes I played during the years of my stay in EQ1.  I thought I would write some of them down.

It had to be my first week in the game.  I was playing my first toon… which was a high elf wizard.  I had just finished filling my bags with bat wings and wasp wings and was heading into Felwithe to sell when I saw something on the ground.  I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I clicked on it to pick it up… and nothing happened.  I moved around a bit and started clicking some more.  Suddenly, the “object” on the ground said, “HAHAHAHAHA!!!  That tickles!”

I jumped back a few steps and said, “What?”  “You are poking me.  That tickles.”  Dumbfounded (and truly newbie), I said, “What are you?”  “I’m really a dwarf warrior.”  “Okay,” I said even more confused.  “What happened to you?”  “I lost a bet.”  Now, I’m starting to laugh a little bit.  “Hey,” said the lump on the ground, “You are a wizard.  Can you change me back?”  I didn’t really know what to say.  “I wouldn’t even know how.”  I sat there dumbfounded for a few more minutes and finally said, “Well, I have to go.  Good luck changing back and all.”  As I was running up the tunnel into Felwithe, I hear a shout, “Can someone help me?  Some evil person changed me into a bag.”  I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard.

Of course, months later, I learn of the enchanter minor illusion spell and realize that this guy was yanking me all along, but that knowledge didn’t make me appreciate the prank any less.

I don’t remember when the change was made (or if it even was), but once upon a time, if you were grouped with someone, you could target them and annul their buffs.

I was playing a druid at this point and I had been off in Unrest grouping with some guildmates.  We were all good friends and always had a good time together, but we also loved to crack on each other.

I was master looter this day, so when we finished our hunt, we headed back to town to sell and split.  I was in the middle of selling and kept reading all of this chat where two of the other guys in the group were just cracking on me left and right.  I just ignored it for the longest time and then told them to meet me at the bank for split.  They asked why since I could split from anywhere in the zone, but I told them I had a surprise for them.

They met me at the bank and I took all of the money we had made… and converted it into copper.  I then /split with them and quickly annulled their levitate.  They weren’t floating high off of the ground, but with the tremendous weight of thousands of copper added to them, it was enough.

They both fell 2 whole feet… and took 10k damage and died.

For about 9 months during the time period between the release of Velious and Luclin, I was a member of the Guide program.  Even as a guide, I was fairly notorious for pulling practical jokes on people.  Fortunately, the GM I worked under had a similar sense of humor and he looked the other way most of the time.  Many times, he actually assisted.

I’m not sure why I thought it was funny, but I spent every shift for about 3 weeks having him change me into an Iksar and then make me the size of a giant.  It was always fun to run up to places like Kelethin and peak my snout over the edge of a platform and stare at the people at the bank and then watch their panic when they turned around and saw me.  It got to the point where, for weeks after I stopped doing that, anytime I would enter a zone, there would be at least 1 person who would /ooc the lyrics to “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult.

As I was leveling up my druid, I only had basic knowledge of how the game worked and what things did.  I knew that druids could cast things like levitate and Spirit of Wolf, but I honestly didn’t know what they were called or when I got them.  I had had them cast on me enough, however, that I knew what the spell icon looked like.

I had just leveled to my next spell level and I ran off to the druid vendor in Kelethin to buy my spells.  As I sat there scribbing them, I suddenly noticed that one of my new spells had the same icon as the levitate icon.  The name of the spell was something like Whorl of Wind.  Sounded like levitate to me!!!

I was so excited.  I ran to the bank and proudly shouted that a newly powerful druid would be casting levitate and that donations would be welcome but not required.  As a crowd formed, I thought I would play it up to my audience and show them my power.  I targeted myself and cast the Whorl of spell… and prompty blew my ass out of the treehouse to my death.  As it turned out, that particular spell was a stun direct damage with a knockback.

As I am running around looking for my corpse and trying my best to not be embarassed, I get a tell from a guy who says, “Screw the levitate.  I’ll donate if you come back and do that shit again.”

Sometime just before Luclin was released, I was now playing a bard and was becoming somewhat well known as a raid leader on my server.  I maintained a very friendly relationship with most of the other guilds on the server, so I would often get asked to come along on other raids and help lead or pull or something.

I was off in City of Mist kiting around the bridge camp when a guild that I knew very well came in and right up to the bridge I was on.  I finished my mob and started with the greetings.  I asked the guild leader what they were doing and he informed me they were going to do the Black Reavers for the druid/ranger epics and he asked if I wanted them to move to the other side.  I laughed and let them know that their raid took priority and that I would get out of their way.  Then, he asked me to join in the fun.

I agreed.  This was before the raid group and raid channels, so everything was relayed in tells to group leaders and the group leaders would tell the groups.

We formed up our groups and buffed… and nothing happened.  I got bored and started pulling anything I could find and training it to the raid over and over.  Buffs wore off and they re-buffed and I kept training.

Finally, after about an hour, I sent a tell to the guild leader asking what the holdup was.  He laughed and said, “I’m embarassed to admit it, but we forgot to bring a rogue to open the door.”  “Oh,” I said.  “Let me see if any that I know are available.”

We both spent some time looking, but we couldn’t find one.  He finally said, “Well, I guess we’ll have to call this off… unless you have any ideas.”  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I do.  I can pull the Reavers.”

He laughed and said, “I know you can pull them, but we still need someone to open the door.”  “No, I mean I can pull them without a rogue.”  He stared at me in silence.  “No you can’t.  That door requires 201 in lockpicking to open and bard lockpicking caps at 100.  You can’t open the door.”  “I’m telling you, I can pull them.”  “And I’m telling you that you can’t.”  “Look, I say that I can do it.  What have you got to lose by letting me prove you wrong?” 

I guess he took that as a challenge because he responded in spacial, “I swear, a bard cannot open that door.  But, if you want to make a fool of yourself, go ahead.  If you happen to pull it off, I will run all over Norrath proclaiming you the best bard I have ever seen.”

“Right-o,” I replied and ran off.

I moved around the building they were in with my face pressed to the wall popping my eye of zomm from my singing steel helm until the eye popped inside the room.  I then targeted one of the reavers and moved around until I was right next to him separated only by the wall.  Then, I fired up my AE Fear song and got 5 resist messages.

I ran back to the raid with 5 black reavers and several adds right on my ass, emoted poking the raid leader in the chest and said in spatial, “Can TOO pull them.”

We all died.  He never did proclaim me the greatest bard in all of Norrath though.  I still feel somewhat cheated.

Over time, the whole mess of leading raids and being the main puller got a little too hectic, so I talked the guild leader into promoting a co-raid leader.  The deal was that I would learn the target, come up with a strategy, post the strat, teach it to my co-leader and announce the strat.  Then, he would take over and just let me pull.

The problem was that he was just as flippant about the game as I was.  He was an Ogre warrior afterall.  He hated single pulls but he absolutely LOVED trains… the bigger the better.

We were raiding the Plane of Growth.  Anyone who ever did that raid knows how the zone works.  There are 2 mobs that have zone-wide aggro and charge the raid.  They repop every… I forget now… 17 minutes or something like that.  There are also boss mobs who are tied to certain portions of the zone.  If they are aggro’d, they will call all of their buddies to come help.  If those buddies are still alive, that fight gets ugly.  Tunare, on the other hand, summons everything left alive in the zone.

Originally, Tunare was a normal mob.  You would pull her and she would move around.  Sony eventually changed her so that when she was aggro’d, she would despawn and reappear in the middle of the zone where she was rooted in place.

So, we had just zoned in and hit the first camp.  We waited for the Protectors of Growth to do their charge.  Once they were dead, my co-leader says to me, “Okay bard, fetch me some mobs and don’t waste my time.”

I ran out and grabbed about 11 mobs and brought the back to camp.  Those who were raiding with us for the first time were feeling a bit of panic and concern, but we quickly dropped the mobs.  Once we were down to two, I left the raid and went looking for more.  A second or two later, a shout pierces the zone from my co-leader, “Is that the best you can do you nancy bard boy?  My Grandmum could pull a bigger train.  Grow some balls, you pussy.”

I laughed to myself as I came up with a plan.  I circled the mobs I already had on me to bunch them up a bit and then took off at top speed so that I could lose them in the mess.  Of course, my guild leader who knew me quite well was sending me frantic tells trying to get me to not do anything like what I was about to do.

I charged through hundreds of mobs… all of which took their shots at me, raced right up Tunare’s tree and goosed her.  She immediately respawns in the middle of the zone and does her emote to call everything to her aid.  My co-leader immediately sends me a tell, “You didn’t!”  Spatial chat starts to fill with panic and confused questions as everyone tries to judge just how crazy I really was.  My guild leader promptly (and wisely) camped her 2-box cleric and sent me a quite colorful tell questioning the validity of my birth.

I ran down the tree house and headed to where Tunare was.  I goosed her a few more times to make sure all of the mobs were incoming and then started circling them up.  That train was so huge that my framerate started dropping and I was having a hard time moving.

I ran the whole zone straight at my co-leader, stopped right in front of him and said, “Tank THIS, you fat bastard.”

After the 5 whole seconds it took to wipe out our entire raid, my co-leader says in guild chat, “Now THAT was fucking pull!  Nice work, bard boy.  I think I’m in love.”

Of course, other than him, no one else fully appreciated the feat that it took to pull off and most questioned me about exactly what kind of raid it would be anytime I announced another PoG raid.

Disjointed Tuesday

I’ll probably jump from topic to topic today because I had several things to mention, but I didn’t want to do a different post for each.  So, hold on tight… this train will be jumping tracks.

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I’ve been reading GU Comics nearly from day 1.  Since 2000, it has been part of my daily normal routine to check that site first thing in the morning and get my daily chuckle in.  I always find the comics amusing (even the ones about Warcraft that I don’t necessarily get).  Sometimes, they bring a smile to my face.  Some days, they cause me to sit here and giggle for a while.  From time to time, like today’s script, I absolutely laugh out loud so hard that my co-workers prairie dog over to make sure I’m okay.

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I’m actually going on vacation next week.  As a result, I find that I am feverishly watching the clock slowly tick down to 5 PM Friday.  I wish that I could say that I was going somewhere exciting so that I would have interesting stories to tell when I get back, but the sad truth is that I’m not going anywhere.  The combination of some unexpected medical bills over the years, a poorly thought out excursion into graduate school, and a less than scrupulous family member who got ahold of my credit card once upon a time have all ensure that money will be tight for many years to come and I simply can’t justify traveling very often.  So, I will be spending a week in Norrath and eating junk food most likely.

I may spend some time tearing down my PC setup and reconfiguring it all to accomodate the influx of “new” machines that I now have.  Also, two of my desktops and my laptop all desperately need to be reloaded, so I might tackle that chore.  Hell, I might even splurge a little bit and go out and buy a second desk.  It is kind of hard to fit all of my machines into my current setup and it is all just one stiff breeze from tumbling into a mess onto the floor.

I’ve also been debating picking up a small television.  I am not a television watcher at all, but I do enjoy a good football game from time to time.  I only have 1 television that rarely gets used, so I could just move it, but it is too big to fit into my office.  I want something smallish that can fit out of the way but that I can still use when the mood hits me for some background noise.

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I didn’t really do anything amusing or suicidal last night in EQ2.  I set last night aside for knocking out some quests.  I forget what the total number it is that you can keep in your quest journal at any given time, but I was at the limit and needed to work some out.

By far, the greatest number of quests that I had were in The Thundering Steppes.  This is a great zone for questing as there are a metric ass-ton of them there.

Now, this leads to my first gripe about EQ2, but it is a small one.  If this is the worst that I have to look forward to, things are definately good.

These quests in The Thundering Steppes are long.  They aren’t painfully long and I realize that there are far longer out there to look forward to.  The problem is that many of these quests take long, add in a dash of tedium, splash in a generous helping of frustration, and combine it with a healthy dose of annoyance.  I’ll give you some examples.

There is a Quest giver NPC centaur out near one of the beaches.  He will offer you up 5 quests.  They are actually all one quest, but they were divided out.  You are basically being asked to pay tribute to the tribal chiefs of old.  There are 5 chiefs and you must make them an offering. 

Sounds simple enough.

Initially, these looked like they would all be a breeze.  “Go kill 10 deer and collect their skins.”  No problem there.

I run out and kill a deer and get the dreaded “No Quest Items Found.”  Ah.  There is the catch.  10 deer later, I had gotten 1 update.  It took me nearly 3 hours of slaughtering deer to get my 10… but, the quest wasn’t over.  At this point, it updated and told me to go slaughter something else.  Several hours later, I get another update.  More hours and ANOTHER update.  FINALLY, I finished that quest… and had 4 more to do.

Each of the 5 quests had 4 updates (I may have that number wrong… it may have only been 3 updates).

During one of the quests, I was told to go out and forest some lumber.  So, when I was told to go fishing, silly me… I actually took the game at its word.  I went fishing.  Of course, my skill wasn’t high enough yet, so I had to spend about 2 hours working my skill up so that I could fish in TS.  When I finally could, I started casting.  After more than an hour, I still hadn’t gotten an update… and I needed 18 of these things.

In frustration, I looked the quest up online.  As it turns out, even though the text of the quest was “Go fishing and retrieve 18 fish oils,” I wasn’t supposed to be fishing at all.  I was supposed to be killing fish.

I have another quest where I am supposed to be gathering field reports.  I had run the width and breadth of that zone multiple times popping track every few feet and I couldn’t for the life of me find one of the soldiers.  Again, in desperation, I checked the net.  According to the writeup, he isn’t there.  You have to kill specific skeletons over a specific level in order to get that update… but there is NOTHING that happens during the course of the quest that even HINTS at this.

I don’t mind mysteries, but mysteries are generally best solved when there are at least rudimentary clues.  I’m sure that someone most likely figured out that they had to kill skeletons because they were running around looking for the update and got jumped by one and then got the update when the damn thing died.

As I said, there are a ton of quests in Thundering Steppes.  I went there to try to clear out my journal a bit, but that didn’t happen.  As I completed each quest, the quest giver ended up giving me a follow-up quest.  Of course, I could have said ‘no,’ but I’m weird about that… I just can’t seem to turn down a quest.

Which leads me to my final gripe about this zone. 

It seems to me that there is a disproportionate number of high level named nasties in this zone.  Now, most zones have 1 or 2 rare pop named, but these don’t seem to be rare.  Over the weekend, I was grouped with some people working on our dwarven workboots and we were all up to the point where we needed Bloodclaw.  While we were slaughtering griffs, a level 29 ^^ epic x 2 centaur kept roaming by and aggroing us.  Finally, we just killed her instead of running from her figuring that if we could pull off killing her, she wouldn’t be back for at least a few hours.

Wrong.

Less than 5 minutes later, she respawned.

That seems to be the case with most of the “rares” in this zone.  Of course, one of the problems with these named is that they roam the entire zone.  Last night, there were 7 (count them, 7) high level heroic and/or epic mobs roaming the zone.  This is a zone designed for hunting levels 25 to 35 give or take, but it can be EXTREMELY frustrating when you are getting slaughtered or having to run from a named every other minute.

In more than 3 hours, I was able to actually complete 1 quest there last night.  I couldn’t do any more because I ran out of time… because I was spending so much time recovering from being slaughtered by those damned named mobs.  They were everywhere.

I have never been a huge fan of the rare spawn concept… especially not insanely rare spawns like some back in the early days of EQ like Bilge or… that damn mob in Befallen for the Paw of Oppolo quest.  Still, when a zone becomes nearly unplayable because of the sheer number of epic encounters up at any given time, things are just a touch out of hand.

Anyway, I was too frustrated last night to do anything fun or stupid.  I started the night with a goal of knocking out at least 5 quests and 2 writs.  I ended the night completing 1 quest, being killed by a named 11 times, evacing from a named 7 times, and having to go repair my gear twice because of the number of deaths.

I think tonight, I will just go somewhere else.  I may do something unthinkable for someone like me… and just delete all the quests I have for Thundering Steppes and leave the place behind for good.

Well, not completely for good.  I have now added all the names of those named spawns to my list of mobs that will be visited at a future date to receive a generous dosage of Raolien style street justice asswhuptivity.