Ahhh! Vacation memories!

Well, back to work today.  As my co-workers have all approached me asking me how vacation was and asking me what all I did, I have tried my best to think up a properly suitable answer that won’t just frighten them to the core of their being.  How do you really explain being strapped for cash and so you spent the last 9 days playing EQ2?

“Well, there were beautiful beaches, scantily clad sirens, lush forest lands, breath-taking sunsets, lots of ruins, and orcs, orcs, orcs… thousands of orcses… and they doesn’t taste very nice, does they prescious?”

And that’s when they report me to HR and I get sent to psychiatric counseling.

Still, for a gaming geek like me, it was a great vacation.  Given another alternative, I can honestly say that I would have liked for there to be something like a fan faire that I could have attended.  As much as I love traveling and would have enjoyed doing something like going to some exotic location, trips like that (for me anyway) are not much fun when you do them on your own.  So, since I didn’t have anyone to share a trip with anyway, sitting at home and playing EQ2 for 9 days essentially did me just fine.

I got in a lot of fun exploration.  I treked through much of Zek, the Enchanted Lands, Runnyeye, and Rivervale.  I took my first tentative steps into Steamfont and The Feerrott.  I revisited Stormhold to go and recover Ghoulbane.  I ventured back into Varsoon in order to gain access to the instance where Octogorgan was in order to finish up my Polished Granite Tomohawk heritage quest.

I also began several other heritage quests including the Greater Lightstone, Shiny Brass Shield, Shiny Brass Halberd, Manastone, and one or two others.  I was jumped by and horribly killed by a whole new cadre of named mobs that I either just didn’t see there or that I decided to take a shot at just to see how I would do.  I learned that I can survive a jump from the top of Titan’s Peak in Zek and that I can also survive an accidental jump from the top of the Ascent in Nektulos Forest.  I learned that the mobs in Nek Castle aren’t too impressed with my bravery at venturing in there alone and that the roaming evil eyes in the Enchanted Lands have a fairly huge aggro radius… and that they look damn silly running on their little rear tenticles.

I also spent some time scouting out housing in North and South Qeynos.  My little 1 room inn in The Willow Wood is becoming cramped with all of the various tropheys and quest rewards and my 3 pets are becoming cranky.  My little robocopter seems to electrocute my monkey and plant more often these days and I even got myself stuck for about 20 minutes after dropping a table… because I just couldn’t get around it or over it and it completely slipped my damn mind that I could pick the bitch back up just as easily as I dropped it in the first place.

I have to admit that of all the houses I saw, I desperately want to buy one of the Halls.  A couple of close friends in my guild have Halls in S Qeynos and I spent some time roaming through them.  The buildings themselves are pretty damn sweet, but a big part of what makes them that way is the impressive array of items that they have sitting in them.  It would be pretty silly for me to spend most of my savings buying one of those when I own a whole 40 items that can be used for decorating at this point.

So, I sit here at work coming down from my week-long EQ2 bender reflecting on my time.  Was it time well spent?  Was it a waste of vacation?  Was it a direct reflection to a sad and pathetic existance?

I know what many people would say to that and it doesn’t bother me in the least… because I know what my answers are to those questions and, well, it was my time and my vacation so my opinion is really the only one that counts.

So, where is my next destination?

I’m thinking Everfrost.  After that, maybe I’ll go travel the desert of flame for a bit. 

I promise to bring back some souvenirs.