Looking forward/Looking back

Stick a fork in 2008… it’s done.

I’m not going to make a whole lot of predictions for 2009.  I’m not tuned into the industry enough to even have a hint at what might be coming.  I don’t get interested in multiple games and pick them each up as they come out to give them a try.  I am pretty much a 1-trick pony and just stick with something until it quits being fun.

Now I have  a list of things that I would like to see done in EQ2 in the coming year, but I am not going to list those out because everyone has different opinions on what they would like to see.  As for predictions for EQ2 for 2009, I predict they will release a new expansion some time around November.

I’m good, aren’t I?

2008 was a time of turmoil for me in EQ2.  I only returned to the game a few months before the clock struck 2008, but it seemed that things were just starting off on the wrong foot.  Members of my guild were in a constant state of whining over the Kunark expansion and fewer and fewer of the guild logged on with any consistency.  Friends I had made were leaving the game and I quickly began feeling dispassionate about continuing on.

In February, my old friend and former EQ1 guild leader left EQ2 for what was supposed to only be a temporary break.  He never returned and, with him gone, I started looking around for a new guild.  I knew that without finding somewhere else to go, my days in EQ2 were now limited.

Over the next couple of months, I alternated between taking long breaks from the game and only playing in short stints.  I kept hunting for a new guild, but I just couldn’t find anything.  When my few remaining friends left the guild I was in, I began seriously considering leaving the game for good.  I simply couldn’t find anywhere else I wanted to be.

Somewhere in there, Jaye announced that the guild she had created in Vanguard was returning to EQ2.  Having long enjoyed her Vanguard writings, I began to read more about the guild.  I ended up e-mailing her and asking about the guild.  She invited me to create an alt and join to see what I thought.

In late May/early June, I finally took the plunge and transferred over to Guk and joined Revelry and Honor.  Early on, I had some measure of doubt about my decision, but I think that was more remorse over spending the money to move than anything.  It didn’t take long before I started getting to know the people in RnH and realizing what a great decision it was to move servers.

The rest of the year was occupied with leveling Rao and Ray both to 80, obtaining Rao’s dirge epic, and maxing tradeskillers.  I end the year with a third toon, Fuzz, sitting poised to level to 80 soon (he’s 72 right now) and more crafters hitting 80.  I currently have an 80 carpenter, jeweler, and armorsmith.  I have a provisioner at 74 and a sage at 53.  I expect the provo will hit 80 this weekend.

Goals I have had that I have not yet reached include completing a tradeskill epic (I would like to do most of them as I level my tradeskillers, but at this point, I would settle for completing 1 of them).  One of these days, I would also like to complete at least one of the rare collection quests.  Rao is only missing 3 rares to complete the Kunark collection quest and I think Ray is only 1 or 2 from completing the Faydark one.

When I joined RnH, I believe the guild was around level 58.  We had few level 80 characters and raids were definately a struggle.  I went on my first ever EQ2 raid just two short days after transferring over and that was to the Labs of Vyemm.  We lost and lost hard.

Now, roughly 6 months later, most of our regular raid crew is level 80… and that is with several of the members changing classes.  The guild is level 75 and rapidly approaching 76.  Our raid force is significantly more polished and we are progressing through Kunark raiding nicely.

We have lost some members along the way to other guilds or to retirement, but surprisingly few.  The core of the guild is strong and the values and fun-factor just keep people around.

I look forward to seeing what 2009 has in store for us.

Happy New Year all.  See you in 2009!

Multiple Choice

Last night was funny.  I was suffering from weekend burnout and debated taking the night off completely.  I finally decided to log on to check on a few things and maybe start some of the ground work to redecorating my main house and then calling it an early night.

Shortly after popping in, I got a group invite.  I joined and saw the group was made up of most of the guys I spent the weekend grouping with.  Once I got in channel, I discovered that everyone was suffering from the same type of burnout that I was.

The daily double was for Mistmyr Manor, but none of us felt like doing that one.  After discussing it a bit, we decided on hitting Anathema.

We drug our feet getting there because none of us were overly gung-ho about going.  Once we zoned in though, the fun began and we all ended up having a good time.

After completing the run, the burnout was gone.  One of our guys needed to log, but the rest of us were ready for another run.  We grabbed up another guildie and set off for Deep Forge.

There was a point in time where fighting the last named always ended in failure.  Later, we graduated up to being able to complete the fight but there would be deaths and wipes before final victory.  Then we moved towards being able to beat him with a few deaths and maybe one wipe if the pull went bad. 

The last few runs, we have dropped him on the first pull with no problem, no deaths, and only one healer in the group.

Now maybe that isn’t such a great accomplishment for many people, but it is fun to watch how we progress from week to week and how much we are improving.

So a night that looked like it wouldn’t even happen ended up being a fun evening of instances.  I now have 30 shards in the bank towards my second tier of shard armor.  That is a nice start, but I still have a ways to go.  I think I need something like 130 for the full suit.

Tonight is raid night and we will most likely be going after Pawduster again.  When we dropped him last week, we were missing several people who needed him for an update.

I’ve started a couple of new projects recently.  I don’t know yet if they will cut into my play time, but the possibility is there.  I decided to get back on track with the IT certifications that I started last year.  Prepping for those doesn’t take a whole lot of time as I mostly study during lulls at work and in bed at night after I’m already off the computer.

The second one is a new creative writing project that I have begun.  This one is just for fun and one I’m doing on my own time rather than the NaNo that I did back in November, but it is a fairly ambitious project and I’m never sure when the urge to sit down and work on it will strike.  I’ll probably start aiming to log off no later than 9 each evening and spend at least an hour each night on that project.  Writing always works best when you can be consistent with a specific time.

As 2008 starts to wind down, I hope that anyone who happens to be traveling is safe and has a great new year.  For me, I get to work.

Winding down the season

It always amazes me how fast Christmas comes and goes now that I’m an adult.  When I was a child, the build up to Christmas was hellishly slow.  The days stretched on endlessly and the hours crawled by at a pace designed to drive little kids mad.

These days, it seems that a good sneezing fit can take me and, by the time it passes, Christmas is several days in the past.  Funny how age seems to accelerate the passage of time.  “The first 80 years go by pretty fast.”  “Yeah.”  “Yeah what?”  “What you just said.  The first 80 years go by pretty fast.”  “Yeah, but how would you know?  You’re just a damn kid.”

I don’t have any idea why I wish it would all last just a little bit longer.  I don’t do anything for the holidays.  I don’t spend them with family or friends and there isn’t an exchange of presents.  I don’t put up decorations or cook special foods or power down egg nog or anything like that.

I spent Christmas mostly playing.  I got together with some guildies for some shard runs at various times of the day and also did some crafting and Frostfell stuff.

I pretty much missed Friday and Saturday.  I was beat down and had run out of steam by Friday morning.  I woke up, logged on briefly, and logged right back off and went to bed.  The rest of the day was sort of a “rinse and repeat” of those first few minutes.  I would wake up, log back on, realize I was still tired, and go back to bed.

On Saturday, I was on bright and early and was able to put together a run for the daily double.  Pretty much right when we wrapped that up, I had to log for most of the rest of the day as I had friends passing through town.  Later on in the evening, I was able to get back online, but I didn’t really do anything.  I think I spent most of the evening farming level 1 drops on the old Isle of Refuge for fodder for transmuting.

Yesterday was a load though.  We got started early and never took a breath.  We hit the daily double in Loping Plains.  We went from there to Deep Forge and then hit Najena’s Hollow Tower.  When we wrapped up the Tower instance, we had about an hour until raid time, so we took a break to eat and stretch our legs before heading off to the Shard of Hate.  Once the raid was over, we ran over to Scion of Ice and knocked that out before I called it a night.

The day was fun and productive (productive from a gaming perspective at least).  I got 10 shards on the day and even scored a master CA from the final fight in Najena.

During the course of the day, certain things just clicked in my head.  It wasn’t very long ago that some of these zones felt impossible.  It wasn’t very long ago that some of the boss fights, even in zones like Scion, were repeat death encounters that we sometimes just gave up on rather than continuing to die repeatedly.

Now, just over a month after the expansion was released, we can do some of these zones with less than a full group.  We tear through many with the almost absent-mindedness that we had for CoA just a few short months ago.  Rather than creaping around corners and carefully preparing for each pull, we now find ourselves seeing how fast we can go through various zones.

It is a good feeling.

Over the last week, I was approached no fewer than a dozen times by various “hardcore” raid guilds with bribes to leave Revelry and Honor and join them.  The offers ranged from getting my mythical and a full suit of the raid shard armor within a week to getting paid up to 1k plat.  I don’t know if dirges are just that rare over on my server or if consistent dirges are rare.  Whatever the case, the constant tells and bribes got old in a hurry.

It was very amusing the reactions I got though.  “No, I’m not interested.  I don’t CARE that you are on the cutting edge of the content.  I don’t CARE how many times you have cleared VP.  I don’t CARE that the gear you are offering me is far better than anything I have see to date.”

I guess some people just assume anyone and everyone can be bought with the promise of gear.  Of course, a lot of people can be.  It just amuses me is all and it amuses me even more how some people just don’t get it.  They don’t get how anyone could possibly be happy unless they are at the end of the game.

Well, here is the answer.  I’ve done that already.  I was raiding hard and heavy back in EQ1 for YEARS… long before a lot of current gamers even knew what an MMO was.  I’ve done the whole forced raid calendar, the 5-7 nights per week raid schedule, and the staying up until all hours of the night to make sure your guild stayed a step ahead of that guild.  I’ve done the whole obsessing over a game until it became more important that job, family, friends, health and life.

I’ve done it all… and looking back, I can only describe that whole mentality as pathetic.

I have a job.  I don’t need or want a second one.  I love my guild and the casual nature that we approach the game with.  And most of my guildies?  They have ALSO all done the hardcore thing before… which is why we all love the casual pace we are at.

I can appreciate that you love the hardcore pace.  I’ve been there.  I know the draw.

I am so past that now though.  So, while I appreciate the offers, I can’t be bought with promises of gear, mythicals or plat.  I can’t be shamed into feeling like a second-rate person by laughs and insults when I turn you down.  This dirge is where he wants to be, thank you very much, so please feel free to take both your bribes and your insults and move along.

Before the raid last night, I was looking around on the broker for stuff.  I don’t go out and buy masters or weapons or anything else like that.  I don’t know why, but I just kind of see that as a waste.  I do buy fluff items though and last night, I suddenly had a need to buy the music boxes.  I don’t know if these were a world event reward, a gift from Frostfells past, or if they are still quest rewards that you can still get.  All I knew was that last night, purely without warning, I had to have them.

It was the whole nostalgia thing that got me.  Someone dropped the music boxes in our guild hall back when we were first putting it together and, from time to time, someone will play one of them.  During our break between Najena and Hate last night, I got to playing with all of them and just went down the line.  As I listened to the old EQ1 music, nostalgia hit and I suddenly had to get these music boxes for myself.

I checked the broker and found someone not far from our guild hall who had most of them.  I ran off to this person’s house and was just dumbfounded when I zoned in.  I have seen some decent decorating jobs since coming to EQ2.  I have randomly come across some amazing homes while out buying items and I have seen amazing screenshots at the Norrathian Home Show and on the sites of fellow bloggers.  I have never seen ANYTHING like this house before.

Needless to say, seeing that house and then zoning over into my crumbling collection of randomly dropped crap has put the bug in me to start redecorating.

Woo-hoo!  I have a new project!

In the spirit of Christmas

We hit PR last night.  I’m not too sure how we did because I had more important things to worry about… such as unloading snowball hell on anyone and everyone.  I zoned into PR with just under 1k snowballs.  I walked out with 20.

Snowball vigilante justice was dished out and 23 of my guildmates were found guilty.

Unfortunately, however, my guildmates came locked and loaded as well so I too was *piffed* into the depths of snowball hell.

I mean, raid loot be damned.  We only get snowballs for a couple of weeks per year and they must not be ignored.

Or the bunnies get unhappy.  Mustn’t tick off the bunnies.  Sirran the Lunatic told me so.

Merry Christmas all and to all a good *piff!*

I’ve got a beautiful feeeeeellliiiiiing, everthing’s going my… ack! Agro!

There is no reason for that title other than the fact that I had the misfortune of waking up this morning with that song stuck in my head and I can’t get rid of it.  I have spent the morning finding creative ways of making fun of it.  If you don’t happen to know what song I’m talking about, all I have to say is that I am very old.

Yesterday was a collection of random fun.  I wrote about some of it last night.  After making that post, I got back on and did some crafting on my provo and got him to level 73.  I then finally did some of the Frostfell stuff.  I ran through the Icy Keep a few times.

Later on in the evening, I ran off to Seb to help some guildies with epic updates.  That was a fun no-stress evening.  It is amazing how rapidly things change.  I remember not too long ago that grinding through certain parts of Seb was challenging, dangerous, and a serious time commitment.

I spent this morning running errands.  I got up just as early as I could stand while being on vacation to try to miss the last minute Christmas psychosis.  I just needed to go pick up some food so I could eat on Christmas day.  I figured that might be important.  Afterwards, I spent some time looking at apartments because I really need to move to a smaller and less expensive place once my current lease is up.  Now I’m sitting here about to log on and see what kind of trouble I can get into while watching one of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour DVD’s.  Why?  Because there are few things on the planet that say “vacation” more than listening to Ron White talking about being drunk in public.