When people say books 8-10 are the worst, it’s true and not. The series really did start to slow down with Lord of Chaos, and it gets felt particularly strong in book 7, a Crown of Swords. The problem (if you see it as such) isn’t so much with Jordan’s overly verbose manner of explaining the world and settings in exquisite detail, and also reitirating facts of the world that we all know by heart, but more with the focus on the support characters. Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Aviendha are second tier, but when they focus on Siuan Sanche, Leane, Gareth Bryne, and Min in book 5, it gets painful. Up till that point, they had been tertiary, or even lower level of importance. However, it does help to set up the political climate of the books and further developments for the world. While not particularly necessary, especially to the extent that Jordan takes it, it does help.

That all said, book nine is Amazing, as is book eleven. Book ten was a blow to the gut, as it covers only a mere few days after the tumultuous cliff-hanger that nine left us with, and many people wanted to see a much more action-packed follow up to what happened. Still, book ten and eleven are where you REALLY start to see that Tarmon Gaidon is just around to corner, and bad stuff is almost here.

Moving on to EQ2, I’ve just recently made the return myself, and am doing the leveling up to 80 (at 76 right now), and as Theo said, solo questing seems the way to go. It’s fast, and monetarily profitable, I’ve purchased the rares for 7 of my adept 3′s, and bought two full sets of the 72 MC gear, the SK version for me to wear, and the Paly version as I wanted to betray and check out the changes (plus, paly armor is darker, looks better). you’ve probably re-dropped EQ2 by now, but wanted to give my opinion on it!

Theo – proud member of Eq2-Daily.com