Whirly: good to go

Mark came to his senses about EQ. It’s just too slow for our 60 Priest / Enchanter. Using the Enchanter’s pet anyway. So we decided to do something else. For the time being we will duo in WoW. We found two toons of relatively close level, my 48 Hunter, and his 52 Rogue. We took them out for a successful quick test. My pet is a great tank, which works out for the back-stabbing rogue. I’m happy because I’ve been trying to level this Hunter anyway. I’m now tasked with soloing him to get our levels a little closer. I can grind-solo a hunter in my sleep, or even write this at the same time.

Mike and I have a Pally / Druid combo which is a great team. The Hunter / Rogue may not be as flexible, with no healing capability between us. We’ll be putting out lots of damage though which may work as well. I don’t think it will change my Hunters fighting technique much. Maybe a little more over here instead of over there, but I switch between the two anyway. I’ll just consider the Rogue as a DOT, or as an automated second pet that I don’t need to feed.

We considered Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online, both great games, before settling on yet more WoW. I’m not sure why we chose WoW. I guess it was just easier. It doesn’t matter all that much. It’s not a life commitment. We don’t duo that often. Mike and I have a regular schedule. Mark and I, not. Unlike in the old days of EQ, where we met. It seemed like we played every night back then.

Well, EQ purgatory continues. One good thing, my enchanter finally dinged level 60, it’s been nearly seven years. I didn’t have a copy of Koadic’s Endless Intellect (KEI) having given my copy to a co-worker who played. That was years ago and he promised to replace it if I ever reached 60. Of course he no longer plays. It took me a couple of days to find the spell in the auction house at 3000 plat, a lot of money. A good deal? I don’t know. I have no idea what things cost, but I had the cash and did the deed. Woowee! So far, I’ve cast KEI on myself only. I didn’t feel any different.

I know nothing about Wordpress. Once again they’ve made it easy to update. This is some fine mojo.

I updated so that I could manage and post this blog from my iPhone. I’m not sure there is any good reason to do so. It makes me feel productive even when I’m just screwing around.

Since the release of iPhone 2 I’ve been trying to let this thing take over my life.

Oops. I see I messed up my categories. Hmm, I can’t seem to get them back. I suppose I could restore from backup. I’m going to think about it. I’m not sure categories added anything.

Mike was working late so Mark and I played EQ. What can I say? Mark has rediscovered his love for EQ. I think he’s a little bit crazy.

We played my 59 Enchanter and his 60 Priest for about an hour in some dungeon next to the Scarlet Desert. Using the Enchanter’s pet we were able to kill the mobs, slowly. Back in the day we used a charmed mob instead of the pet. That was when we were playing our ‘A’ game. It’s been a few years since then and I didn’t feel ready for that challenge yet. I think I was duel boxing at the time. I may have had a Druid along for snares and what not.

We then tried a 53 Druid and a 56 Beast Master. Much easier to work with, though the Druid’s part was to snare the incoming mob, throw a damage over time, and occasionally a heal. It was rather slow. That is what EQ is, as I remember.

The interesting thing was we didn’t have voice chat back then. The slow pace of EQ made that possible I guess. We also had short hand for messaging. “Look out,” ment you had a Hill Giant (or something appropriate to the zone) behind you - move now. Also, I didn’t know Mark was crazy back then.

We had to take it slow in EQ. Mark and I were able to play on Thursday a little, but Mike hasn’t played in three years. Karnor’s Castle seemed a good place as Mark and I were able to work there with a mid 50s Monk and Druid. It would give Mike time to remember how to play his Rogue.

Getting from the Druid drop-off to the castle was a little chaotic - levitate seems to work a little different than before. We got separated vertically. Once inside, and settled, I started pulling. I had Mark harmony one of the fist two guards and pulled the other. Later, while reading a Monk strategy guide, I was reminded that Monks can mez. It took me another half hour to figure out what it was, and find I had it available.

We didn’t enter Karnor’s, working the entrance instead. I didn’t want to push things, so we just ran a cycle of ten re-spawning mobs - nice and easy. No surprises, other than my new Dell computer spontaneously rebooting once. Luckily the mob we were fighting had just turned.

This was the first time we ever played EQ with voice chat. It’s a much slower game than the current MMOs. Plenty of time to text I guess. I miss the mini-map, “where is everybody?” And, the ability to see casters mana bar. I hate having to deal with cash, especially as a Monk. Fighting for melee classes is simplistic - auto attach, hit special when it recycles. Hmm, maybe melee is like that in all MMOs, just with more specials.

I enjoyed the experience in a ‘isn’t this slow and boring’ kind of way. Of course we weren’t pushing the difficulty envelope at all. There is still too much to remember before we start fighting hard. Experience gain, on the Test server, appears to be much faster.

I’m trying hard not to give up on AoC. It’s beautiful, that’s for sure, lots of quests, but it’s buggy - you know it is.

Mike and I played AoC this weekend instead of our regular WoW Pally/Druid. We’ve been playing this AoC pair for a few weeks. We work shared missions, if we can find any. We’ve finally gotten out of Tortage. I’m looking forward to seeing what the real world brings. We each had to quit the game a few times because of graphic anomalies.

Unfortunately, Monday AoC patches mean we’ve not been able to play, as a full group, for weeks. We three live in far flung time zones. I’m the furthest west. As soon as I get home from work it’s time to play. A long patch means we can’t play AoC. The boys live in the real world and have higher-speed Internet connections than I can get here in Alaska. Friday is our other fight night, but as it’s Friday we get to play a little longer than on Mondays - perfect for a WoW instance.

We are still committed to reaching level 70 in WoW, switching to some other game full time just isn’t in the works yet. We are level 66 though and are starting to think about what the future will bring. Starting over in WoW for the forth time is being considered, but not with overwhelming excitement.

Sony is having ‘welcome back’ events on a few of their games, including EQ. Mark was first, then me, Mike is downloading the game now. I suspect we’ll play EQ a few times between now and July 25, the end of the event. Mark and I went on a little run today with two testbuffies, we play on Test. It wasn’t easy remembering how to play EQ. I’m playing a Druid, I demanded we have SoW, and I’m sitting, meditating for mana, most of the time. My part of the fight is to Dot the mob, when they comes in, and throw a snare if needed. Other than that, I just watch. At least I don’t have to look at the book. When EQ first came out, casters sat, looking at a picture of a book, until they reached level 35. That’s so crazy. Enchanters, who are crowd control for a group, couldn’t even see how many mobs were in the fight. This was before we had voice chat as well. Ancient history, fondly remembered.

We made a run at ‘Escape from Durnholde Keep’. It was a multi death / not much success effort. We were unable to handle groups of four level 66-67 mobs, there were lots of em. I made some dumb mistakes as well. When mind controlling mobs, it’s important to NOT use the mob’s fear spell. It’s a lesson I should have learned long ago, I occasionally need a refresher.

After four of five deaths we moved on to Blood Furnace. I figured we had a 2/3 chance of beating The Maker. If Mr. Maker charms my Priest or Mike’s Mage we can survive. He chose Mage - we won. Although there was an added twist. When he charmed the Mage, my priest was silenced, making it harder for me to stay alive with a Mage nuking me. We won anyway. It was time to camp so we left it at that.

Mark picked up some plate gloves. He wasn’t that excited. I don’t think they were an upgrade. They had slots for gems. When we returned to town, I purchased a couple and Mark installed them. It was our first gem enhanced item.

Our visit to Underbog went swell until we ran into Hungarfen, the first boss. Actually, it went better than swell - we did great. But, then there was Hungarfen, our only death of the night. Those Underbog boys are hard for a small group. They put out a lot of damage. Hungarfen has a  360 ever 2 second dot that can stack up to 5 times -  that’s 1800 damage per 2 sec. I couldn’t heal fast enough for that. We finished the evening in the Slave Pens, nothing new to report there.

We’d planned to play AoC. Monday is patch day and there was a large patch that was going to take me a long time to download. I pulled the plug and we switched to WoW. Mike made fun of my 1/2 meg bandwidth. He says he has 16 meg. I think it’s rude to flaunt it.

I’m this close to quitting AoC so we can continue our slow march to 70 in WoW. The thing is, AoC isn’t that easy to give up on. It’s a great game with a lot of good ideas. Playing AoC was just a lark, I never expected we’d stay, but it’s better than than most. I’m not quite ready to give it up.

We’ve been stuck doing the same instances for a while. It seemed like a good time to take a break, do some exploring, and track down the next instance ‘Mana Tombs’. Unfortunately, I made a small error and took us off on a goose chase. Surely you can see the similarity between the names ‘Terokkar Forest’ and ‘Blade’s Edge Mountains’. Even a non dyslexic can understand that mistake. Anyway, the instance ‘Mana Tombs’ is not in Blade’s Edge Mountains. I know that from experience, now. The closer we got to where I thought the instance was, the harder the surrounding mobs became. Eventually, I started thinking, “these guys are just too hard for the entrance of a level 63 instance.” A closer look at my research-maps showed my error. We turned around and headed the other direction.

We worked Mana Tombs, the one in Terokkar Forest, until we reached the first boss Pandemonius. Man that guy can put out some damage - I was chain healing Mark’s Warrior and couldn’t keep up.

Mike’s Mage ported us to Ogrimmar and we took a bat to Gadgetzan to explore the ‘Caverns of Time’ which I had never heard of. It was all new to us, and we had no idea what to expect when entering the ‘Escape from Durnholde Keep’ instance. It took us to Hillsbrad Foothills, seven years in the past, to help preserve, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know why. We were transformed into, not very attractive, humans, and given the task of helping some guy escape from the Keep. We poked around the entrance, but it was past our camping time, and we didn’t stay long.

An interesting evening. We collected around three bubbles of experience. Next time, back to work. I’m thinking Underbog.

I had a flashback playing Age of Conan with the boys last night. At level 14, we entered a non-exclusive outside elite instance. We wandered, died a few times, and finally found a good spot, on a long set of stairs, to pull to. The stairs had a resurrection plate at the top, so that was convenient. My Guardian would go out and pull a couple mobs to the boys, on the stairs, where we would beat them till somebody died. The flashback was of EQ. That’s how we often worked in EQ. I specifically remember a spot on the moon where Mike’s Shaman would pull bugs to Mark’s Priest and my Enchanter. The play style was very similar. But, in AoC, there is no death penalty to speak of. In AoC failure is an option.

We fought there, on the stairs, until I got too bored. We all dinged 15, and moved to a indoor elite dungeon. We were crawling through when another player showed up and started ‘helping’. I’m sure she wanted a group invite. We are kind of picky, so we left the instance, it was getting late anyway.

This morning I realized that even the dungeon encounter was much like EQ. When you were dungeon crawling in EQ, you often came across other groups or players you had to work around. Though we played on EQ Test where there was plenty of room for everybody. I know on EQ production-servers it often got ugly in dungeons with groups working the same area. Usually on Test, if there was somebody in the dungeon you wanted, you just moved on to a different dungeon.

I’ve not decided on AoC yet. The EQ model worked well for a long time. EQ eventually created instanced dungeons, which we used extensively. The instances kind of killed the EQ community. We’ve been playing WoW for years now, almost exclusively instances, without meeting anybody new.