Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Stingite . . . and the State of His Gaming: Part 1 -- Everquest

About two months ago I started a blog post that I never finished, and it said this:

"Everquest . . . yes Everquest . . . has me firmly held by the hand . . . and I'm completely in love with it all over again. I'm in a new guild. I'm two-boxing. I'm grinding for xp.

Someone send help.

I love it, it's weird graphics, and GOSH DANGIT THIS GAME IS HARD. I don't even want to talk about the number of times I've died.  It's literally been two steps forward, one step back for the majority of the time."

I don't know what happened to that blog post. Maybe it was just the time wasn't right.  Maybe it said too much, or maybe I just wasn't confident enough that I was really ALL IN on Everquest again.

Let me cut the suspense short -- I'm not really playing Everquest right now and haven't logged on for a month.  That said I did grab 90 or so screenshots from my time playing.  Here are a few of the highlights:

1- This screenshot comes from a new Heroic Instance (well "new to me") where you help out all of bixie-kind with various problems. I was clearing out spiders, ousting spys, and even jumping into war-zone trenches for these dudes. I was soloing or "moloing" (that's soloing with the help of a mercenary) this instance and dying . .  a lot. I later found out that you really should group up to do these instances. I'm not much of a grouper, so . . .


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2- Here I am in a dangerously safe tunnel in a zone called . . . I believe . . . The Foundation? Yup. The Foundation. A lot of my first five levels beyond the Heroic Character stages was done here because they now have these great experience quests that are level banded. I honestly don't know why Daybreak doesn't make these quests repeatable for a premium currency price like they do in DC Universe Online. I would have shelled out a lot of money. (This is my character's werewolf form btw and sporting my guild tag.)


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3- I purchased a "hoard pack" like item that gives you a random roll on loot. You think wiz packs are bad? You only get two items for about 4 times the price. Anyway, I got a pretty weird looking hand to hand weapon, so I snapped a picture of me looking strong in the guild hall.


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4- I snapped this picture in a zone I can't even remember the name of. *shrug* There were sea turtles under the water I needed to hunt for a quest, and you could walk on the floating islands and bridges above. I mainly just loved the alien blue ocean here.  Strangely pretty.


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5- There's a zone called "Fear Itself" that is a remake of an old classic Everquest zone. In fact, that seems to be how they mostly operate here 20 years later.  Step one - take an old zone that's pretty much immortalized. Step two -- slightly redo it. Different skybox. A few different landscape touches. done. Step three -- fill it with super insane mobs and bosses. Step four -- itemize those with up to date drops. Step five -- write a few new collection and hunting quests. Step six -- profit. (ok ok . . . there may be just a bit more to it than that.)

In this shot I was giggling over the fact that Baron Bigdeal was trying to pick up on an undead turmoil toad.  Hey baby . . . wanna come back to my lily pad?


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6- So, to make some money -- and you WILL need money. I would head over to an oldy but a goody -- I remember raiding this area with a guild ten years ago. There were a few drops here that people really wanted to buy -- did I say people? I meant CRAFTERS. Crafters in Everquest are only kind-of people. I believe they're demi-gods of infinite patience and bottomless bank accounts. Anyway, nothing quite like a giant fountain of blood in a land infested with Vampires. *click* That's a screenshot moment!


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7- Oh look, I'm back in the "Fear Itself" zone here . . . It was Gorgonrific. Soon after taking this shot I was pretty much done with the zone, which was sad . . . it was probably one of my favorite places to die.


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8- I'm a lizard Luke riding my lizard Taun-Taun on Hoth! Naahhhhh . . . this was again a redone old zone. I can't even remember what it was called, but it was over in the old "Scars of Velious" area. Again, a redone classic zone made new again. There were giant wooly mammoths here that were scaled up to around 90th something level. Good times.


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9- This may be what killed Everquest for me . . . or a possibly it was just a sign of my interest in Everquest dying again. I got bored around level 96 (there's 105 levels) and went back to do something super pointless -- level up "monster forms."  At some point Everquest released an expansion where you could level up your character as a low level monster -- you work your way through a class of monsters. The only problem is they never updated the levels on them. There's no badges associated with leveling them . . . and while a neat different way of visualizing your character . . . it's ultimately un-rewarding.

I WANTED these monster-forms to be something cool so badly when they were first released. I even wrote up some weird role-playing event about them at the time. I'm so drawn to wanting to play as the monster, but it just didn't click in Everquest, and Sony (and now Daybreak) stopped spending time and money on developing the system (understandably so). So, here I am as a wandering eye . . . one of the last things I ever did in my recent addiction to Everquest. Griding to unlock forms for this wasn't fun. bye.


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That's about all I have time to write this morning, so I'm going to call it here. Part 2 and maybe Part 3 coming soon.

Thanks to my new Everquest guild for being super cool. Thanks to Daybreak for keeping this game alive and running for 20 years. I may be back again in the future, but for now . . . I'm OUT.  It was a fun couple of months though for sure. :)

Happy Dueling

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