I logged in to my SOE account to check it out.  I saw that my EQII subscription was now active.  I checked the credit cards associated with my account.  It listed my old card which expired back in August of last year, and another card which did not belong to me, but some other fellow in Hartford, CT with the same first and last names as me.  Figuring that something was screwed up with SOE’s back end I opened up a support ticket and explained the situation.

The reply came back the next day that the account was compromised and was now banned pending their investigation.  Over the next few days I responded to various verification questions and my account is active again, so I’m now able to log in to EQII should I choose to do so.

There’s something I find weird though…  If the account was indeed hacked, why wouldn’t they have changed the password on it along with the email address?  If the email address had been changed first, I would never have been made aware that the subscription was purchased.  I would have thought those two things would be standard account hacking procedure.  Furthermore, why would the hacker add a credit card to the account?  Wouldn’t they prefer to hack an account that had an active credit card associated with it, rather than my useless, expired card?  Also, would the hacker really take the time to associate a credit card with a matching first and last name to the account?  I doubt it… which leaves me still convinced that the account wasn’t actually hacked, but some other guy out there from Hartford with the same name as me created an SOE account which somehow piggy bagged on to my existing account.

After a bunch of games of NHL 10 I finally lumbered up to bed and closed my eyes for a while.  Just a few short hours later though, I was wide awake again.  The clock told me it was just before 6:00am.  I checked on my two kids; the first born was out like a light and typically doesn’t wake until 7:30.  The new born was sleeping so soundly in his crib that I had to stare at his chest to make sure he was still breathing.  Glorious.  Two and a half months old and already sleeping nine hours a night.  So again, I fired up the 360 and dug out a game I haven’t played in ages, Burnout Paradise.  It didn’t take long to be reminded of just how fun Burnout is, and how good looking it is too.

I managed a solid two hours with the game before my daughter awoke and took over the TV.  Later in the afternoon, with my wife out with our daughter and my little guy sleeping in the crook of my left arm, I fired up my PC and killed some time in EverQuest II: Extended.  I haven’t been actively playing it, because I’ve definitely moved on from Norrath, but from time to time I do get the urge to pop in and check out the game I spent so many hours playing just a few years ago.  I gained a couple levels with the Inquisitor, now level 12, and yeah… that game does nothing for me.

Finally, I loaded up Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I had purchased off Steam for pretty cheap.  I only got a few minutes to play it, but what I saw was awesome.  I’ll be coming back to it for sure.  Hopefully my cold doesn’t go away too quickly.

World of Warcraft
My Warrior is now level 43 and I’ve run into “the wall”, much like my previous characters. It’s typically around this level where my motivation to play begins to dip. There’s not much driving me forward at this point, especially with Cataclysm looming on the horizon. With my other characters it was around level 50 that my interest began picking up again, as I like the zones relevant to that level, plus knowing that I’d be just 8 levels away from Outland acts as a motivating factor as well. I’ll continue to play, it’d be nice to have a third character hit the level cap, but my pace will be slowing down for the foreseeable future. (Oh yeah, my second child is due to arrive within a month as well, so that may put a bit of a damper on any time I have to dedicate to gaming).

EverQuest II Extended
I have actually been reminiscing a bit about EQII for the past while, thinking it might be neat to subscribe again for a month just to check things out, and then lo and behold, the free to play version gets released.  Perfect!  Of course, I don’t have access to my previous characters but that’s fine, as I really just want to pop into the world to check it out.

I created an Inquisitor, a class I have never played before, and started in Halas, a zone I’d never seen before.  After an hour or two, I’m level 8 and the nostalgia factor has certainly kicked in, but like I say every time I return to EQII, the world graphics are just a wee bit too ugly for me to really enjoy the game.  It’s amazing to me how aged the game looks.  I used to be wowed by these graphics, but now they’re just kind of… meh.  With my new gaming rig I can even play at “Extreme Quality” too, and the graphics just don’t do it for me.  But hey, the game is ‘free’, so I’ll kick the tires a little longer.   I can see though, just how limited the free client is.  Two bag slots?  I was always running into space issues back when I had access to all my inventory slots.

StarCraft II
I’m still plodding along the single-player campaign; I believe I have about seven missions to go until the final one.   I’m still really enjoying the campaign and I’m having a lot of fun.  I did pop into a 1v1 multi-player match against a friend and was destroyed in less than three minutes.  I’ll definitely be sticking to the single-player in this game… I’ve never been good against human opponents in RTS games.

Those three games are the ones that I’m ‘actively’ playing lately.  I recently purchased a couple games off of Xbox Live that I have yet to get to.  I got Catan, Limbo, and Lara Croft: Guardian of Light.  I have actually played a few games of Catan, and it is what it is… a nice version of the board game.  The other two I’ve downloaded but have yet to play.  I plan on checking them out tonight.

Still looming on the horizon… Dragon Age: Origins (I promise I’ll get to you one day soon!), Torchlight (gotta get my $5 worth!), Left 4 Dead 2 (No idea why I bought you), and Dead Space (great game, just needed a break from it).

I’ll be spending some quality time with StarCraft II tonight, no doubt.  I played the first three missions of the campaign last night and I like it so far.  I’ll hopefully have some more impressions of it at a later date.

What I really meant to post about was the news that EverQuest II was going to introduce a free-to-play server.  You can read all the details at the official site, here: http://everquest2.com/news/read/current/3630.

I’ve said it many times before, that I loved EverQuest II back when I played it, and hopefully this move does something to introduce the game to new players.  It used to drive me nuts to hear people put the game down without having tried it.  I’ll definitely be trying it out again myself.  It’s too bad I won’t have access to my existing characters, but they’ve been dormant long enough that I probably wouldn’t know how to play them anyway.

My only concern is that this move may prove to be too little too late.   The last time I was in EQII (free period just before the release of Sentinel’s Fate) it really showed its age and it couldn’t hook me in.  I can’t see anything having changed since then.  It’ll be nice to have the option of poking my head in now and then though.

I’m actually a little surprised that EQII was the game that SOE decided to try the free-to-play model on (aside from Free Realms of course).  I was hoping Vanguard would be the first to go that route.  I would love to play that game some more, I just can’t justify paying for it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve been thinking about EverQuest II a lot lately, especially as my interest in World of Warcraft continues to hover around the “rock bottom” range.  I’ve found myself eyeing the box for The Shadow Odyssey more and more in the local game store lately, but each time I talk myself out of picking it up.  I like the idea of playing EQII again, I just don’t think it’d go over so well in reality.  The fact of the matter is that I’ve sort of been drifting away from MMOs altogether.

Some of my greatest times in gaming have occurred in the three years that I played EverQuest II.  WoW may hold my subscription at the moment, but it’s never held that magic, nostalgic feeling for me that EQII did.  Imagine my reaction then, when I received an email the other day from Sony Online Entertainment inviting me to try EQII again for 14 days free.  The email was apparently sent to any dormant accounts with an Iksar character.  The only Iksar character I had was created just to check out the PvP server way back when it was introduced.  I abandoned him at level 20.

I immediately dug out my Rise of Kunark discs and re-installed the game and started patching… for about 15 hours.  Yikes.  The next day I launched the game and the nostalgia flooded back as soon as I heard the opening music.  I couldn’t suppress the smile creeping across my face, and I soon found myself back home on the Kithicor server’s version of Norrath.

It’s been over a year, maybe slightly less, that I last logged in to the game, and obviously much has changed.  I logged in as my level 73 Berserker first and I was fairly lost.  I saw a bunch of messages flash on my screen informing me of new combat arts, a new introductory summary screen (very cool), a new map system (extremely cool), and some black circle with crossed swords icon which I still haven’t a clue about.  I took a few minutes to familiarize myself with all of my long forgotten combat art icons, mounted up on my horse, and headed out to explore.

I hate to say it, but my first reaction was that the graphics looked amazingly dull.  I used to be one of the staunchest defenders of EQIIs look, but after a year and a bit of WoW’s in your face assault of colours, I couldn’t help but feel that EQII just looked so very bland.  It’s amazing how attached to WoW’s look I’ve become; it definitely comes as a surprise to me, because I hated it before i played it.

Everything seemed mostly the same yet very different as well.  East Freeport was completely empty; I guess everyone uses the broker somewhere else these days.  I’d really like to check out the Shadow Odyssey but unforunately, it’s not available as part of the 14 free days.  While in Freeport, I decided to check out Stargrace’s Norrathian Museum, which is just stunning in its awesomeness.  It’s a showcase of imagination that reminds me of some the things that set EQII apart from other games.  Well done Stargrace.

I ended up spending about an hour or two just running around, checking things out.  At this point, I think EQII is going to remain a nostalgic trip for me; I can’t see myself re-subscribing.  It’s mostly because I’m getting burned out on MMOs in general, but also that I think I’ve been away from it for too long.  The fun I had in EQII is too far removed now, and perhaps, best left a memory.  Never say never though.