Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

Just a quick follow up to my last post regarding the difference in advertising between World of Warcraft and Everquest II…

I read somewhere yesterday that all inactive EverQuest II accounts have been made active for a few weeks of free game time.  I would have thought that I’d receive an email from SOE saying as much, but no, I had to find out about it elsewhere.  When I got seven free days in WoW, they sent me an email that practically screamed as such.

Fortunately I still have EQII installed so the patching process didn’t take long and I popped into the game for a few minutes.  Upon entering the game as my Berserker, I received a message that some of my character skill choices had been reset, and I noticed that my guy was mostly naked.  For whatever reason a bunch of my gear was in my inventory and needed to be re-attuned; there was no indication as to why.  As for the skill choices, I took a look at the screen and was completely lost.  I think it would take me a few hours to remember how to play my characters again if I ever decided to come back to EQII (which is extremely unlikely).

What I really wanted to do was check out the damage done to Freeport as mentioned in the Will of a Tyrant cinematic trailer.  The trailer claims that “war has erupted in Freeport” and that “chaos rules the streets”, but in reality, it all looks rather lame.  I saw a few staged fights going on interspersed here and there, but I would hardly call it chaos.  Not to mention the fact that the Frostfell decorations are up, which kind of detracts from the whole impression of chaos.

I logged off soon after, feeling very underwhelmed at the whole thing.

EverQuest II and World of Warcraft are the two MMOs that I’ve spent the most time with; three and a half years subscribed to EQII, and approximately one and a half with WoW.  Despite no longer having an active subscription to either one, I still follow the news from both games as much as I can.

Both games received major patches recently and both released cinematic trailers for their respective patches.  The first one I saw was for EQII’s Game Update 54, Will of a Tyrant.  Here it is, courtesy of YouTube:

I’ve always thought EverQuest II could use some work in the advertising department.  The trailers they’ve released over the years have never really done much for me, but my immediate reaction to this one was generally positive.  I find it to be more “cinematic” than previously released trailers, with the sweeping camera movements, the music, and the semblance of a story behind it (albeit small), as opposed to randomly inserted action scenes without context.

Soon after, World of Warcraft released a trailer for Patch 3.3, Fall of the Lich King.  Once again, courtesy of YouTube:

World of Warcraft, in contrast to EQII, has never lacked for advertising, consistently releasing top quality trailers.  To me, there is an obvious difference in quality between these two trailers, and yes, I think the WoW one is significantly better.  The camera work, the pacing, and the music are all masterfully executed, not to mention the story.  Anyone who has played Warcraft III and its expansion will be familiar with the story of Arthas and its significance in Warcraft lore, and for over a year now, WoW has been re-telling that story, building its players up for the events depicted in the trailer.  For over a year now, players have been chomping at the bit to get at Arthas/The Lich King, and as I watch the trailer I can’t help but feel an epic sense of anticipation.  Even though the chances that I’d even be able to take part in any of the fights depicted in the trailer are slim to none, I still feel an urge to resubscribe.  That is some great advertising.

It’s been a month, an entire flippin’ month since my last post.  What the crap?  Seriously, where does the time go?  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that I got bonked on the head somewhere in mid-October and have just now woken up from a concussion-induced sleep, because October came and went as if it never existed at all.

Isn’t it always the way that when you go ahead and post a blog entry re-affirming that your blog isn’t dead that you follow that up with a month long absence?  Craziness.  Truth is, there hasn’t been a whole lot for me to talk about lately.  It appears, unfortunately, that I’m not the only one to think so either.  A quick run through my blog list reveals that a few other gaming bloggers have taken indefinite breaks or have shut down outright.  The gaming world just doesn’t seem as exciting any more.

PC Gaming has definitely changed, there’s no denying it.  The PC section in the EB Games across the street from my office has been reduced to less shelf space than that dedicated to used Xbox games.  I’m talking original Xbox here.  I can remember a time many years ago when I could stroll through four or five entire aisles filled to the brim with PC games at Future Shop.  Now, they have barely one aisle, most of which is occupied by World of Warcraft boxes and various budget titles.  What is this world coming to?

Fortunately, while perusing that one aisle at Future Shop, I stumbled upon a collector’s edition of Dragon Age: Origins which I picked up.  I was planning on holding off on buying the game to give myself some time to finish some others, like Fallout 3, but I decided not to pass up the opportunity to grab the collector’s edition, what with its cloth map and all.  I’ve gone so far as to install it on my aging PC to see if it ran, which it did, but I’d still like to delay playing it for when I get a new rig, sometime in the mid-distant future.

I’m interested in trying out Torchlight as well, given the great reviews I’ve read, but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like the game Fate which I had started playing not so long ago.  That makes sense of course, given it’s done by some of the same developers, so I’ve loaded that up again and have been enjoying it periodically.

I’ve also taken on a renewed interest in Fallout 3 after a few weeks off to play NHL 10.  I have a feeling I’m approaching the end of the game, so I’ll try and get that finished up as soon as possible.  It’s still a great game, very enjoyable, but I’m about ready to leave the desolate waste lands for some greener environments.  I’m thinking of heading back to Oblivion to play through the Shivering Isles which I have yet to do, just so I can cross that game completely off my play list.

I received an email from the EverQuest II team, outlining all the lovely bonuses I could get for pre-ordering the upcoming expansion.  I checked out the trailer for Sentinel’s Fate and I’m sorry, but I have to say, as much as I loved EverQuest II, they’ve never been able to make a compelling trailer to save their lives.  The beholder-like monster looks pretty cool, but other than that, there’s nothing in there that makes me desperately want to play the game.  That said however, I am toying with the idea of checking it out in February.  It still eats away at me that I stopped playing with my Mystic sitting just six measly levels away from 80.  Of course, now I’d have to get him to 90, but, you know… whatever.

There’s a whole lot of post regurgitation for you, a rambling, incoherent post if I’ve ever seen one.  Cut me some slack though, I’ve been out of it for a month.  Don’t worry though, I’m not dead.

A number of years back I started reading the Wheel of Time series of books by Robert Jordan.  I absolutely loved the first book, Eye of the World, and instantly became drawn into the world and the promise of the story to come.

My excitement for the series continued through books two and three, but started to wane a little by the time I reached the fourth book.  The world itself, and the over-arching story was very intriguing, but the books started taking longer and longer to get to their point.  It took an epic battle of endurance to power my way through the fifth book, The Fires of Heaven; a battle which, as it would turn out, paled in comparison to the one it took to get through the sixth book, Lord of Chaos – which many people consider to be one of the good ones.

I ended up taking a break halfway through that sixth book, putting it up on the shelf until returning to it over a year later to finally finish it.  That’s where I am today.  I look over towards my book shelf and I see books seven through eleven (with a twelfth – made up of three separate volumes no less – on the way) staring back at me and I wonder if it’s even worth it to continue.

I’ve been away from the series long enough at this point that while I remember the major plot, many of the details have been lost.  I will never go back and re-read the first six books because, quite frankly, there isn’t enough money that you could possibly pay me to do so.  If I ever return to the series I’ll just find some summaries online in order to get caught up, but it’ll still feel like something is missing.  I’ve bought all the books, and I like the story enough to want to know what happens, but I’m not really sure if I want to continue.  It doesn’t help to see people saying things in forums like, “books seven through ten are the worst in the series and are mind-numbingly boring”, I have to wonder a little if I really want to put myself through that.   Book ten, Crossroads of Twilight, has been described as “an 800 page novel where literally nothing happens”.

A friend of mine described the problem I have with the series perfectly.  He said that Robert Jordan would take twenty pages to describe two characters walking along a gravelly road, detailing every rock they stepped on, but the big huge epic battle at the end would be told in two sentences.  Basically, the series has become an incredible grind to read for little payoff.

That’s where I’m at with EverQuest II.  I’m trying to like it, and I really like the idea of being into it, but it’s been on the shelf for just a little too long, and working my way through the seven levels required to hit the cap is starting to look like one of Robert Jordan’s gravelly roads.

I logged in to EverQuest II again last night in an effort to maximize my fourteen free days to see if it can pull me back in to subscribing.

The main reason I left EQII a year ago was because I found the Rise of Kunark expansion to be a horrible, boring grind.  Quest after quest of “get me fifteen rhino horns”, followed by, “thanks for the rhino horns, but now I need twenty pristine rhino horns”, only to followed once again by “okay, sorry for all that work, but it turns out I really need super rhino horns”.  I couldn’t take it any more.

It probably didn’t help that I was levelling two characters at the time and doing the same content twice over.  My main character was a Berserker, which was just about the least wanted class in the game at the time.  Because of that, I decided to bring up my Mystic as quickly as possible, but by the time I had reached level 70 and started questing in Kylong Plains, most of the server population had moved on to the higher level zones.  I remember not being able to find a group for the life of me, so I soldiered on solo through to 73, and the grind just became too unbearable.

Upon entering the game last night, I found myself in Kunzar Jungle and opened my quest log.  I picked a quest at random and started working on it.  Fortunately there were no rhinos to kill.  It took a little bit for me to remember how to play the Mystic; its icons were even more foreign to me than my Berserkers were, but after a few close calls, I think I’ve got it down pat.

The graphics were still bugging me last night, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get over it.  The performance also seems to have taken a hit since I last played.  I used to play on the High Quality or Balanced settings, depending on whether I was grouped or not and I have it on High Quality now but it seems a lot more sluggish than I remember it being, and Balanced doesn’t look quite as good as I’d like it to.

I only managed to get an hour and a half of play time last night, but in that short period two things really stood out for me, and not in a good way.  There were no less than 7 server wide announcements of people getting their Mythicals.  Those were in addition to the 5 or 6 I saw the night before in just an hour spent in game.  For some crazy reason I thought these Mythical weapons were supposed to be rare and difficult to get.  What will they introduce in the next expansion, Super Mythicals?  It seems as though raiding guilds are selling raid slots to those with a whole lot of money and dragging them through their updates, which, to me, just seems kind of lame, but I guess it is what it is.

The other thing that stood out for me is that the Kithicor server chat hasn’t changed at all.  I saw the same people being complete ass-hats that I saw in there a year ago.  For all the crap that World of Warcraft takes for its “immature population”, I have to say, the WoW server I play on isn’t half as bad as the immaturity and e-peen waving of Kithicor.  I pity any new player who chooses this server.

I hope to continue my observations over the remainder of my free period, but so far, I’m definitely not feeling a pull back to the game.  Release EverQuest III though and I’d probably be on board day one.