Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

The EverQuest II expansion Rise of Kunark has been live for a week now, and I must say, there’s nothing quite like a new expansion to breathe new life into an MMO.  Truthfully, I have been toying with the idea of finally getting into Vanguard for the past little while, but this expansion will have me sticking around for a while yet.  (Quick side note: every single post on Journeys with Jaye pulls me closer to Vanguard).  Anyway, it would appear as though the new zones are quite popular, judging by the number of instances of Kylong Plains that exist any given night.  I’ve had a little bit of time to check out the new zones, both in the beta and since they’ve gone live, and indeed they are very nice.  The hype surrounding the size of the zones was justified, they’re definitely big, but they’re well done in the sense that they don’t feel big just for the sake of being big.  Every part of the zones that I’ve seen have flowed together very well.

Obviously it’s still too early to write any sort of in-depth review.  I haven’t actually played much of the expansion, aside from the majority of quests in Kylong Plains, most of my time has been spent exploring the new zones, doing all I can to avoid being killed.  From what I’ve seen of all the zones, I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with the work the level designers and artists have done.  As far as the quests I have done, I have to say I enjoy them on the whole, but as other bloggers have commented, they do seem a little too solo player oriented.  That, and they also give you a lot of stuff.  I’ve never had such problems with my inventory slots before.

There’s been an uglier side to the expansion, more a result of the actions of certain players.  Obviously with a level cap increase, there are going to be many players doing whatever they can to level up as quickly as possible.  Personally, I think they’re missing out on the content of the game, but if that’s what they want to do, then I have no issue with that.  The first player to hit level 80 on my server did so in about two days, possibly sooner.  My first thought, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, was “seriously dude, turn off the computer, go outside and see the sun.”  I was quite literally shocked.  Not necessarily surprised, but I really didn’t expect to see someone hit level cap that quickly.  As it turns out, this particular player, along with a few others apparently, took advantage of an exploit in the game which allowed them to complete a repeatable quest very quickly.  They have since had their characters rolled back, losing any experience and levels they gained from doing the quest.  I can’t believe they thought they’d get away with it.  You’ve got to believe that the GMs were watching the servers closely to see how fast people were leveling, and that they’d catch something as obvious as the exploit.  I don’t know much about the exploit, or even which quest it is, but from what I understand, it was obvious by the steps you had to take that you were exploiting.  I think it says something that the majority of those that used the exploit were from the uber guilds, that quite often make no bones about pointing out to the rest of the server that they’re “so much better than everyone else”.  Well, congratulations!

I do need to make it clear that any information I’ve got on the above exploit and those that took advantage of it, is solely from what I’ve read in both out of character chat and on forums.  I don’t work at SOE so obviously I don’t have any hard and true facts, just what I’ve observed.  I guess I just don’t understand why you’d be in such a rush to get to max level.  Take your time and enjoy the content that’s been created for you, because from what I’ve seen so far, there’s some great stuff.  I intend on making it last.

Last night, Elrahir completed the Draconic language quest, To Speak as a Dragon.  The Draconic language is required for a few of the larger quest lines, most notably the Prismatic Weapon series of the original EverQuest II, and the Claymore series of Kingdom of Sky.  Unlike the majority of other language quests in the game, this quest is hard, and I would say as close to impossible as you could get.  That is unless you make use of sites like the EverQuest II Wiki or Allakhazam’s.

I first completed this quest when I was probably around level 60 with Davyydeous, and was 57 while doing it with Elrahir.  I could only imagine what this quest was like when EQII first launched and the level cap was 50.  First of all you needed to enter the Maiden’s Gulch raid instance and defeat Vyr’drais the Vicious, a 51^^^ Epic x2 just to speak with the Sage of Ages to get the quest.  This of course would be after slogging your way through Lavastorm to get there, which can be tough enough for level 50 characters, especially back then.

Next up on the quest of pain, would be making your way through Solusek’s Eye.  Personally, I love this zone, but only once I’ve out-leveled the mobs so that they’re no longer aggro.  When you actually have to fight your way down to the bottom, again remembering that level 50 was the cap and there weren’t any teleporters, Sol’s Eye is akin to having your finger nails ripped out one by one, drawn out over a period of three hours.

Finally, after reaching the bottom of Sol’s Eye, and speaking to Majordomo Inferinus, the real hard part of the quest starts.  You now must travel throughout the lands of Norrath searching for 26 runes.  You get no hint as to where they may be, no help at all, just the name of the runes, which also offers no clues as to the whereabouts.  Now, these aren’t big, huge, obvious looking things, rather, some are books, some scrolls, all tucked away in unassuming parts of Norrath.  I pity the poor souls who tried doing this quest without having a list of their locations available to them, because some of them are in spots I would never, ever, think to look.

Fortunately for me, I used the EverQuest II Wiki, and as a result, Elrahir is able to speak Draconic after a few short hours of questing.  There were mobs still aggro to me in Sol’s Eye, so I brought my wife’s level 70 character along for the ride along with another 70 friend and we whipped through the zone pain free.  Same for the Obelisk of Lost Souls and Permafrost, although Permafrost had a level 54^^^ Epic x2 sitting on top of one of the runes I needed.  To all those who actually did this quest without guidance, if there are any of you, I salute you!

Elrahir, my Mystic alt, finished off his tradeskilling by dinging 70 as a tailor.  It’s weird, because it wasn’t something I was really striving to achieve with this character.  Unlike my armourer, with whom I consciously ground my way to 70 through much pain and suffering, my tailor just sort of happened.  I suppose it helped that my wife and I were both levelling characters that wore cloth and leather armour which gave me a reason to continue crafting.  Aside from that though, the other week I noticed I was sitting at level 62 and it sort of took me by surprise.  I started doing the tradeskill writs and the final few levels flew by.  As an added bonus, I’ve found a few of the things I can make as a tailor do well on the broker.

As for his adventure levels, Elrahir is currently sitting three percent away from level 57.  There’s no way I’ll get him to 70 before Rise of Kunark, in fact, I doubt I’ll get him to 60, but I’m having fun playing the healer role regardless.  I’ve seen a lot of talk that the 50-60 level progression is the worst grind, but it hasn’t been too bad for me.  I’ve done a lot of the heritage quests for that level range, in addition to the solo questing timelines in Steamfont, Sinking Sands and now Lesser Faydark.  The biggest source fo my experience though has come from doing the lore and legend quests.  Some of them can be a real pain, waiting for the item you need to drop, but they’re worth it in the end.