Whirly: good to go

I haven’t posted recently, but we are still playing. WoW now, though we are ready to move on if we can find something. We started from scratch in WoW and are 44 Horde. I’ve been working terrible hours this summer, so we’ve only been able to play once a week or sometimes less.

With the last expansion, they have reduced the difficulty of old-world dungeons. It’s made it easy for us to cruse through places that have given us trouble in the past. This is our third time through WoW and it’s gotten a bit stale. We entered Zul’Farrak last time and finished half of it. I don’t think we died once. Mike is on vacation so it will be a few weeks before we can kick the rest of it’s butt.

We can’t see anything on the horrizon, game wise, to give us hope for the future. In a month, when my work schedule eases, we plan to take a look at what games are available and probably move on. I have no idea to what.

We’ve moved back to WoW. I’m not sure why. These things just seem to happen out of boredom. I thought we would start on a different server, but I was convinced that going back to our old server, horde side, was for the best. We have resources (cash and skills), we have a guild, and a guild bank with three tabs.

Our line up was going to be the same – me/Priest, Mike/Mage, and Mark/Warrior. Mark and I have since decided to switch so I’m now Warrior. It’s not my first, we’ve done this a few times. While Priest is my favorite, pulling and tanking is very busy and keeps me engaged. It’s fun.

Playing different classes was discussed many times. We run dungeons exclusively. It seems reasonable to use the best in class of the holy trinity, tank-healer-nuker.

We’ve just started. On our second fight night we completed Ragefire Chasm and have moved on to Wailing Caverns where we experienced our first death. We should ding 18 and probably 19 next time out.

I don’t know how long we’ll stay. We are in it for a month then we’ll reconsider. There has been talk of returning to Star Trek Online. Though flawed, it had potential.

At 70, we’ve been camping in the Wall of Slaughter attempting to find a Dark Enchanted Scroll, so Mark’s Wiz could create a Gate to Wall of Slaughter. We’ve spent hours trying to find this scroll. A little more research, and we moved to the next zone, Nobles’ Causeway, where we found the scroll on a stalking feran right away.

We then, successfully, ran an adventure quest in North Ro. We picked a “hard” one, but it turned out to be easy. I don’t know why.

We dinged 70 tonight and only died once. Mark’s wizard is trying to create a port spell to Wall of Slaughter, so we’ve been working there. We camped Kyv Pureshot tonight trying to get the last part, a Dark Enchanted Scroll. Kyv popped, and we killed him three times. No luck. Our death happened when Mark pointed out a named passing by. He was yellow to us. I pulled him. It looked like we might win, but one of our merc-tanks went down. the Mob was down to 44% when I died.

70 is the highest we’ve ever gotten in EQ. Reaching it certainly has been anticlimactic. What now? 80 I guess.

We popped into the Earthen Bad Lands tonight for about two hours. It was our first time. Everything on tracking was blue or white with a couple of reds. We are level 65.

The mobs were ho-hum. Lots of hit-points, but not challenging or dangerous. They didn’t have much loot either. It kind of felt like a wasted zone. We didn’t make it underground though. Maybe it gets interesting down there. I expect we’ll go back at least once. We are starting to get quite a few places on our return list.

We had only one problem requiring an evac. It was my fault. I was trying to take a short cut requiring us to lev across a gap. We lost control of our mercs and things got challenging and dangerous all at once.

Mark gave me a present today. He found a copy of ‘Lullaby of Morell’ in the auction house and purchased it for my Bard. As the name implies, it’s a lull song and works on mobs up to level 65. I played with it tonight as we fought. I was able to lull two mobs at a time while the group killed a third. The negative is I’m not helping to kill the target, and I’m not singing the tunes I normally use during fights. But, I take two mobs out of the fight. That certainly is a plus. I probably won’t be using it all the time, but situationally, it can be a real group saver.

My Bard has his epic v1. We popped into Old Sebilis, fought to the Undead Bard, triggered Trakanon and proceeded to kill it. Actually it went fairly easy. Close to the end Trak hit me with some kind of black fear which didn’t run me off it just blacked out my screen. I opened my map and walked over to where the Mercenaries were fighting. Easy peasy.

I dinged 63 killing Trakanon, kind of cool. The Singing Short Sword at 63 isn’t that special of a weapon, but it’s got some nice stats. It’s not important, it was just something to do. v1.5? Probably not.

So, my main is a 62 Bard. I know it’s silly, but I’ve been working on my v1 epic. What a royal pain. Mike and Mark have been a ton of help and I’m almost done. The only thing left is to kill the dragon Trakanon.

I’ve never seen Trak before tonight. Mark and I ran into Old Sebilis to see what we were in for. I didn’t know there was a lower level to Seb, there is. (Thank you EQ Atlas, after all these years your great work is still invaluable.) We made it to the right spot with little trouble, I was able to spawn trak by doing the turn-in with the undead bard. Trak ported me off to a different place in the zone. Hmm. I was being attacked by some other mobs a long way from the Trak fight. I called for an evac.

We went back in, but Trak and the undead bard were gone. We’ll try with the full group Monday, probably.

As strange as it seems, we’ve moved back to Everquest; what fun. I’m playing hours and hours again, haven’t done that in years. We started new characters, and are at level 61. We’d be further, but Mark has insisted we get AAs, so 50% of our exp goes to that when we play together, %100 when we are solo. My play schedule was chaotic this summer, we were able to play only a couple of hours a week. It’s better now that fall is here.

Everquest is a different game now. It’s very solo friendly, at least for the first 60-70 levels. You can now hire a Mercenary to play with you. The mercs are kind of like pets, but much better. They are part of your group and take some experience, but it’s well worth the exp loss. You also must pay the merc, they aren’t cheap, but I’m making good money even considering that.

With each of us running a merc, we are a full group of six. We can do content, dungeons, we were never able to consider before. It’s like a whole new game. They have reduced the death penalty as well. It’s just a small bit of experience. And, there is no equipment loss. I know some think a large death penalty is a good thing. Sorry, I don’t agree. We are having great fun.

I’m playing a Bard. it’s been kind of a dream for a long time. It’s silly now, but I’m getting very close to my Bard epic v1.0. We are headed to Plane of Fear Monday. If successful, that should just about finish my epic. WooHoo.

We’ve been working in Forochel recently. Running quests, lots of quests. The loot isn’t special, but the experience is. We dinged 48 Monday inside the Icereave Mines. I always love a good cave crawl. I think we saw it all.

I suppose we’ll return to Forochel Friday though I wouldn’t mind a return to Sarnur. We were doing well down-stairs when we got over run. We were trying to set up a good pulling spot by the, what I think is, frozen lake. We ended up with six or so of the big guys – Just too many for us. I’m not sure what’s all down there. I’d like to find out.