2024 20/25

Yesterday I forced myself to play EverQuest II. It wasn't, you understand, that I didn't want to. It's just that I wanted to play Once Human more. Really, quite a lot more.

For the reasons given in yesterday's post, however, I'm increasingly of a mind that spending every available play-hour in a beta that's going to close down and wipe in about three weeks' time (Presumably, although who knows? Hard information on the beta itself is ridiculously hard to find.) isn't the greatest idea I ever had.

Anyway, I'm starting to wean myself off the ephemeral and onto the eternal, which certainly seems like a fair description of EQII these days. The old warhorse is closing in on twenty years' service, which still leaves it lumbering along behind its better-known, more successful elder sibling, EverQuest itself. 

The original will reach a quarter of a century of continuous operation in just a few months. EQII has to wait a while longer but the two landmark (Oops! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it...) anniversaries landing in the same calendar year has prompted Daybreak Games to declare 2024 The Year of Darkpaw. 

Based on the information they've released so far, I suspect it's going to be hard for anyone other than the faithful to keep up with the details of everything happening in both games but fortunately we have The EverQuest Show to do that for us. I'm hoping I can get away with linking to their coverage, rather than doing any original research, like I just did. That's my plan, anyway.

Realistically, I'm only going to involve myself directly with the EQII celebrations, anyway. A while back I would have tried to do something in both games but these days it's as much as I can do to play one MMORPG at a time. 

The other reason is that, somewhat atypically, I suspect, I'm finding that the older I get, the more I want to see, hear and play new things rather than revisit old favorites. I swear I was more nostalgic about the pleasures of my youth when I started playing EverQuest in 1999 than I am now.

So far, Darkpaw are being understandably cagey about what they have in store for the franchise in this momentous, celebratory year. For EQII, there's a framework but not so much in the way of detail. One thing we do know is that the Gods are coming to play. 

Okay, not the actual Gods. As far as I can recall, we never get to kill the real pantheon. It's always their Avatars, those quasi-autonomous, self-aware constructs the true Gods like to send out to take a kicking for them. Or something. Honestly, who pays attention to this stuff?

Raiders, that's who. Avatar battles were a big thing for them in EQII at one time so I imagine the news that 2024 is going to be All Avatars All The Time comes as great news to a certain demographic.

It doesn't mean an awful lot to me. I read the official press release with interest but very little understanding. It seems this time we don't even get to interact with the Avatars right away. First, we have to go through the Heralds. It's a bit like talking to a receptionist to make an appointment to see a  PA, with a view to setting up a meeting with the General Manager, all while the mysterious, never-to-be-seen CEO watches the whole thing on a screen in the C-Suite, stroking a white cat and chuckling. Sinisterly.

It seems we'll be meeting and beating some godly Avatars we've fought before, along with some new ones we've yet to crush. The Norrathian pantheon is stacked with deities so there are plenty to choose from. I imagine they're lining up for the privelige.

First up is Tarew Marr, aka the Fathom Lord. He's quite senior as these things go, being "the first member of the Triumvirate of Water, the third creation of The Nameless". I could go into a lot more detail but I won't. If you're interested I recommend following the link.

Tarew Marr's Herald, a louche-looking nereid with scales in a fetching shade of blue, can be found lounging on the banks of an island at the heart of Mystic Lake, the second zone in the Fallen Dynasty, the long-forgotten Adventure Pack from 2006. It's somewhere most players probably haven't seen in a decade and change, if ever. Fortunately, I go there not that infrequently - for reasons - so I had no trouble finding her.

Since I was on my Level 126 Berserker, I got the high-level version of her quest, the one she gives to everyone over Level 125. According to The EverQuest Show's write-up "The Herald has a rotation of 6 different quests which can be completed every three hours." I got the one that asks you to "Assist in gathering energy rerserves for the avatar's summoning rituals", which seems to mean killing Named mobs in the current expansion.

That sounds like the short straw to me. Apparently there are six quests and you can do one every three hours. I might try taking them and deleting them to see what they all are, then cherry-picking whichever looks easiest. I'm pretty sure the gathering one is going to be quicker - and certainly easier - than killing a bunch of bosses.

There's no rush. The thing to remember is... this is going on all year. I'm assuming the Avatars are going to be sequential, with each new Herald replacing the previous one, but maybe they'll stack. Once they're up, perhaps they're up for good, or at least until the Miraculous Year is over. I guess we'll find out soon enough. I wasn't really planning on fighting any of them anyway, at least not if it requires a formal raid. If it turns out they're Public Quests, then I'm in.

The whole event looks to be tailored to meet the requirements of both very committed players and casuals alike. With each episode operating independently, you can obviously drop in and out as and when you find the time. On the other hand, with the whole cavalcade going on non-stop for twelve months, there should be enough to keep the hardcore logging in and grinding until they're begging for it all to end.

It's not just an event for high levels, either. If you turn up in Mystic Lake with your low-level character, the Herald will still find you something to do. There's a big "Book of Deeds" on a pedestal you can click on. It has multiple, straightforward tasks that anyone can do. 

Of course you have to get to the island first. It's in the middle of Mystic Lake, a zone in which flying doesn't work, a zone that's full of aggressive mobs, all in the mid fifties and sixties. Added to that, the the island is only accessible by way of a single path that goes directly through a disorienting maze of tunnels, filled with vivious mobs, some of them Heroics. There are even a couple of Nameds in there. Good luck doing that on your level 20.

There's no instant map travel there, either, although, if you do make it, you can at least buy a teleport ability from the vendor that means you'll never have to do it again. I should have done that last night but I forgot. Now I'll have to walk!

The main reason I forgot was that I rushed off to take a look at the other new event already in place for the celebrations. Someone was asking about it in general chat and I thought it sounded interesting. 

It's a scavenger hunt or a rather a Collection. A series of Collections, in fact. I do like a Collection in EQII, which is just as well because there are many hundreds of them by now. Thousands, probably.

The new ones they've added for the Year of Darkpaw (They get their own category in the Collection tab under that name.) are cut&pastes of old ones that have been arbitrarily ramped up to Fabled quality. I imagine that saved a lot of time although it certainly doesn't make them any quicker to do. 

I started off flying around Antonica and in a few minutes I'd picked up random examples of four out of the five available collections. It's always great at the start, when everything you find fills a slot, but pretty soon it's going to be a dozen "Gots" for every "Want".

Luckily, the shinies are tradable. I didn't check but I imagine there's already a booming market for swaps. Might be a good money-making opportunity. These things often are.

The reward for all the quests and collections is an event currency to spend at the event vendor. When I have some Year of Darkpaw Doubloons to spend, I'll go check out what I can get for them. I'm in no hurry. 

While I was on, I also checked out the new Frostfell quest. I'd heard there was one and I didn't want to miss it. I found it easily enough. Then it took me about two minutes to finish it.

Well, it was actually more like ten but nearly all of that was clearing out my bags so I'd have space to pick up all the presents. In keeping with most holiday "quests" of the last year or two, this one's actually a Collection. 

As you gather the presents that lie scattered all across Frostfell's Wonderland Village, all of them filled with crafting mats as usual, you might occasionally come across an unusual and highly unseasonal Empty Gallows Reed Basket. This is your starter.

With that duly clicked, a quest installs itself in your journal and as you carry on gathering presents, several more unpleasant artifacts appear among the ribbons and glitter. When you have them all, it's off to the Feerrott where the Ogre who the gifts are for (His name's on them.) is happy to take them and give you back the basket.

Frostfell ends a little early this year, on the 6th of January, so if you'd like a wicker basket filled with skulls and candy canes, you still have a few days. Then you have the rest of the month to collect what promises to be the first in a year-long series of cash shop giveaways. This month it's a cute vanity pet, Maxembert the Feisty, who does look a lot cuter in game than in the pictures. 

It's all in the animations, for which I imagine we have EQII's star animator Ttobey to thank. Ttobey is the GOAT as the kids probably don't say any more.

That was all I managed to get done last night but now I've re-introduced myself to the game I was happily invested in just a few weeks ago, I'll most definitely be back, hopefully every day. Novelty is great but there's a lot to be said for familiarity and this Year of Darkpaw promises to combine the two.

Christmas? What Christmas?

Once again, I don't have an awful lot to say about anything in particular. Preparations for Christmas seem to be eating up a lot of time this year. Christmas events in games, on the other hand, are having less impact than normal, mostly because they tend to be familiar to the point of ennui after so many years.

I haven't yet summoned up sufficient interest or enthusiasm to plonk all my characters next to Santa Glugg in EverQuest II's Frostfell Wonderland as I've been in the habit of doing in recent times. I'm pretty certain all the presents I got last year (And quite possibly the year before that.) are still sitting in the same bag slots they fell into when I collected them. While I am, as I often say, all about the free stuff, there comes a time when you have to acknowledge you already have more snowglobes than you know what to do with.

There's nothing new for Frostfell this year other than the new gifts and items on sale from the goblin vendors. After a decade and a half of continual development, the event really doesn't need anything added. There's already hours and hours of content just sitting there, waiting, all of which I've done many times before.

That said, I'll still find time to pick up this year's new crafting books. It's been a couple of years since I last made anything for Frostfell but I like to maintain the option. Oddly, I tend to take more trouble over decorating on Kaladim, where I only log in for the holidays. There's a lot to be said for just having a couple of rooms to decorate rather than a vast mansion or even a whole island. 

Over in Guild Wars 2, Wintersday begins tomorrow. There's "a rundown of the activities and new rewards" due this week, presumably as part of the Tuesday update, but so far I see no indication of any new events. Unless there's some big surprise, I don't imagine I'll be logging in specially, although no doubt I'll make an apearance in Tyria at some point before the end of the holidays, most likely whenever ArenaNet put a freebie in the Gem Store.

The same probably applies to New World, where the Winter Convergence festival is once again in full swing. This one does have some new content, which is to be expected, seeing as it's only the event's second year. It takes a while to build up a full dance card for these things.

The big ticket event this time is a new World Boss, the Winter Warrior, who, along with his legion of Frigid Folk, is "on a relentless mission to spread a Forever Winter across the land." Aren't they all?

He's making the rounds of several zones, Great Cleave, Brightwood, Edengrove, Ebonscale Reach and Brimstone Sands, where he'll happily take on "a party of 20+ players", although I suspect he's going to end up facing a lot more than that most of the time. Zergs win prizes, after all.

I will try to make the effort to see the fight at least once but I got a full complement of patterns from last year's event and I'm not seeing anything in the updated rewards that catches my fancy. For all that New World is supposed to be this year's Most Improved mmorpg, my enthusiasm wilted surprisingly quickly after a couple of weeks in Brimstone Sands. No fault of the game, more of my attenuated attention span. 

I didn't experience anything like the same fall-off in enthusiasm for Lord of the Rings Online after I bought the BeforeThe Shadow mini-expansion but I stopped playing it all the same. I just couldn't fit it in alongside Noah's Heart and EQII once Renewal of Ro arrived. 

Having been away from Middle Earth since the beginning of December, I can't even say what winter celebrations are happening there or whether they've started yet, let alone if the new zones are included. I know LotRO has quite a strong reputation for holiday events but my limited experience of them so far has tended towards the exhausting. There always seems to be a lot to do and I'm not really one for holiday chores.

Still, I probably ought to go look it all up and see if there's anything in my line. I'd definitely like to pick up levelling where I left off a few weeks ago and a holiday event might be a good re-entry point.

Of the mmorpgs I'm at least semi-actively playing right now, that just leaves Noah's Heart, where as far as I can tell there is, as yet, no specific winter or Christmas event in progress or announced. There are always "events" so it's hard to be sure but I haven't seen any santas, stockings or fairy-lights.

I would love to see something happen there, mainly because I'm fascinated to know which historical or legendary characters Archosaur would mangle and mutilate this time. The current season brought Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon and Wellington onto the stage and the interplay between them is jaw-droppingly weird, partly due to the translation but mostly just by way of the game's general insanity. I wouldn't put it past them to add Santa as a Phantom. Or even Jesus, for that matter.

For the time being, though, I imagine it's going to be a case of the usual dailies in Noah's Heart and steady progress through the Signature Questline in Renwal of Ro. I've finished the first dungeon, which went astonishingly well, so I should have a couple of restful questing sessions before the next.

I hope that goes well, too. If not, maybe I'll find time for some Christmas fun after all.

Ring Out The Old

Now the holidays are over, it's time to get back to normality - or at least what passes for it these days. Although, are the holidays over quite yet? 

Guild Wars 2's Wintersday finishes this afternoon, or maybe this evening, my time. (Edit: I literally don't know what day of the week it is! I thought it was Tuesday. Make that "tomorrow afternoon".) I didn't do all that much this year. I didn't even attempt the annual meta-achievement. I gave it a quick once-over at the start, wasn't feeling it and forgot all about it for a couple of weeks. 

Eventually, I came back around and did a few odds and ends but I never even got so far as stepping into the instances for Toypocalypse or the rest. I went round the racecourse a few times and paid my three gold to get the Dolyak started but mostly I just stuck to doing the Bell Choir event.  

I enjoy the mini-game itself and I've always found it an extremely reliable way to get presents. You don't even need to be any good at it although I'm not bad. When there's a full roster of a dozen people playing I generally come in the top half, quite often fourth or fifth. 

Once or twice I've even topped the table but only when there hasn't been one of those infallible robots playing, the ones who score maximum points every single round and never make even one, tiny little error. I assume those are either outright bots or players running some kind of illegal third-party app. I hope so, anyway. I'd hate to think anyone could be that robotic and not be cheating. 

As an active World vs World player, I have a much easier and more reliable source of Wintersday presents anyway. All year long I pile up hundreds and hundreds of those little green flasks, the "Potions of WvW Rewards." It takes about eighty of those to complete a WvW reward track and I have fifteen hundred in the bank - and that's after I used several hundred on this year's Wintersday.

I haven't counted exactly how many Wintersday Presents you get for a full track but it's at least a stack of two hundred and fifty. What with that and the hundred or so I got each time I did three or four rounds of bell-ringing, I've been able to open to as many as I wanted. I know that's literally true because I still have a thousand in the bank and I don't want to open those. 

Like most supposedly fun things in GW2, too much can be a soul-destroying experience. The entire premise of the game's reward system is founded on opening industrial quantities of containers in the hope of finding insanely rare objects. Along the way you rack up thousands and thousands of lesser items, some virtually worthless, most worth selling in bulk, a handful actually interesting, valuable or useable.

The sheer volume leeches all the fun out of the unboxing process, which quickly becomes just another housekeeping chore. It's an odd way to run a game and an economy although after a decade I think we'd all have to accept that it works. Some people even seem to like it.

I didn't get anything much worth having in my Wintersday presents this year. I made a few gold selling the overspill and I have one or two things stashed that would sell for decent money if I was willing to part with them. It was fun but not that much fun.

Over in EverQuest II the approach couldn't be more different. At Frostfell you get proper presents every day. Santa Glug hands them out and they're always worth having. They do repeat after you've been doing it for a while but even then, since a lot of them are housing items, you can still make good use of them.

There are always some new ones although since I only do the event sporadically I'm never really sure whether something I haven't seen before is genuinely new, making a comeback or just one I don't happen to have been given yet. Some years I've been quite diligent about parking characters in Frostfell Village and getting as many presents as I can but this year I haven't put in much of an effort in that direction, preferring to concentrate on questing instead.

I did log in my character on the TLE server, Kaladim, where most of the holiday content is now active. Naturally, I immediately received a petamorph wand that was new to me and which I would certainly have used on my Necromancer. Not much use to a dirge!

Frostfell also ends today, so unless I'm freakishly lucky I won't be repeating that win on my main server, Skyfire. On the other hand, the wands are tradeable and usually very cheap so I could just buy one. Somehow, though, that takes all the fun out of it.

As I anticipated, I haven't gone back to Bless Unleashed for the Feywinter event but it still has a few days to run so it's not too late. It finishes on January 12th. I could dig into it once the two I've been doing are packed up and put away.

I won't, though. Much more likely is a renewed focus on New World's Winter Convergence, which I've let slide in the knowledge that it goes on a lot longer than the rest. The snow in Aeternum won't melt until January 14th, which gives me another ten days to make some money, build my reputation and buy the house items I still want. 

One thing I won't be doing is finishing the questline. I've done most of it. All I have left to do is kill the final yeti in the first set of three. I was anticipating a bit more after that, given the yetis in question are only level 25, but I read through the incredibly extensive guide at Vulkk.com this morning and it seems the quest jumps straight from those easy kills to an impossible-to-solo at my level bunch of Level 61-65 Elites.

I'm not displeased about that. It means I will finish all the available, non-repeatable content in my level range, which is more than I expected. For the first iteration of what will presumably become a long-running, annual event, I thought Amazon made a pretty fair fist of it.

And that, I think, will be my final Christmas/New Year post for the season, although since this wasn't even the post I was planning on writing today, I guess I shouldn't be making any promises.

I'll finish up with one final New Year's gift, the third single from Let's Eat Grandma's forthcoming third album. It's most appropriately called Happy New Year. And here it is.

With a bit of luck this year might be better than the last two. At least we can hope!

Spot The Difference - Or Not.

Last night I surprised myself by spending an hour or so running through a number of older Frostfell quests in EverQuest II. It all started when I noticed MassivelyOP's MJ was "eager to see the new changes" Darkpaw supposedly made to the festival this year.

Changes? What changes? Did I miss a memo? "Frostfell is different this year! The questline starting off EQII’s major holiday event for the past few years is gone!" began the over-excitable piece. "Join us live at 3:00 p.m. to grab gifts from Santa Glug and check out the Deepice differences."

The stream is live today at three in the afternoon, EST. That's eight in the evening, my time, so I could easily tune in. I'd be very interested to find out what's supposed to have changed because whatever it is, I can't see it.

I had a quick google and a glance at the EQ2 forums yesterday, to see if I could work out what it might be. I checked the Update Notes but there are none. Frostfell doesn't require a separate patch. It just flicks on and off like a switch. 

I had a look at the Quests and Seasonal Events section but I couldn't see anything there. Finally I went to EQ2i to see if there were any amendments to the walkthrough. I found the "New in 2021" section but the only things it mentions are the new Overseer quest and the three new crafting books.

The section that tells you all about the many quests that can be repeated  every year still warns "there is one quest required to unlock almost all of the other quests within the Wonderland Village!" That quest, added in 2013, is called A Deepice Mystery and "Players must complete this quest once in order to free several Frostfell quest-givers."

You can learn an awful lot by reading and I place a very high value on proper research but in the end there's no substitute for personal experience. After I'd finished doing the Vetrovian crafting daily on my Weaponsmith, Alchemist and Sage (Still haven't taken the Carpenter through the Signature line. Must do that soon.) I emptied my pack pony's packs, checked both my plants and did a few other chores. Then I picked someone out of the line to go check out Frostfell and see what, if anything, had changed.

As far as I can see, nothing has. I found Jingle, the hand-wringing elf, standing on an ice flow and shivering as usual. I ran through his quest until I'd solved the Deepice Mystery, something that used to take a significant amount of time to finish.

These days it takes a fraction of the time it once did. Or it does if you have Members' access to the Instant Travel system and a 300% flying speed mount. This is something that applies to just about all retro-questing in the game now. I was thinking about it as I zipped around, checking off boxes. 

I can remember doing this quest for the first time, back when it was added. As with most quests, it was a lot of fun when it was new. I can also remember doing it several times since, when it was less fun. I'm not a huge fan of access quests for holiday content. I can't entirely see the point of them. I can easily see why someone might have felt it was about time it was retired but nope, there it still is, unchanged.

I have to say it's a lot more acceptable now it takes me about a fifth of the time but I'd still be happy enough to see it go. For now, though, it's still there and it's still required, if you want to do any of the other major quests it unlocks.

Those are the quests given by the five figures frozen in ice you first free and then interrogate as you try to solve the mystery. Candice Cheriweth, Gardy Ex-Giftgiver, Mr. McScroogle, Queen Bunny and Snarf Frostfoot all have major questlines involving instanced content. A lot of work must have gone into all of them and I can see why the devs are keen to make sure they don't fall out of use. I'm just not sure that keeping them locked until you solve the mystery is the best way to go about it.

Let's be honest here. Almost no-one who's going to do any of these quests will be doing them for the first time. Keenest will be the bunch of people for whom the seasonal and holiday events are the most important content in the game. You can hear them gushing about how great it is in chat sometimes. I used to be in a guild with a couple of them. 

Then there's everyone who wants one or more of the rewards, to which new things are added most years. That could be almost anyone other than the real hardcore combat types, who think anything other that doesn't involve getting hit in the head is a complete waste of their and the developers' time.

And finally there will be people doing what I was doing last night, taking one more ride on the merry-go-round for old time's sake. I haven't done any of these quests for a few years but as I was melting the ice off of old McScroogle I started to think about how we used to do his quest every year and how much I enjoyed it.

I still do. I cantered through the whole thing, dressing up as an extremely unconvincing version of the young grump, swapping insults and one-liners with goblins and girlfriends and generally making a mockery of the classics. 

While I was doing all that a couple of things occured to me. The first was how genuinely smart, witty and funny the writing is. I remember laughing a lot when the quest was first introduced and even now, when I know all the jokes, it still makes me smile. The other was just how much work had gone into the whole thing. 

The writing isn't just good, there's a lot of it but the quest isn't all reading. There's a large cast of characters, several locations and a number of things to do along the way. Like many of the holiday quests that have been added over the years, it's a little mini-adventure all of its own.

After I was done standing in for McScroogle, I still fancied some more old school holiday fun so I picked up Gardy Ex-Giftgiver's quest and did that too. It's even longer and involves even more travelling. It would most likely have filled an entire play session back in the days of ground mounts and world bells. 

The quests were very much as I remembered them but the rewards were new. As I said, extra rewards get added to old holiday quests most years and I haven't done any of these for quite a while. There were plenty of goodies I hadn't seen and didn't know existed. Quite a few of them were really nice, too.

I had such an enjoyable time, going through the old storylines and re-acquainting myself with some familiar faces, I'm planning on going back for more. [Edit: I just did Candice Cheriweth's quest to get screenshots for the post and had a great time once again.] 

Before Frostfell finishes next week I'd at least like to do the rest of the quests I unlocked by solving the Deepice Mystery. A couple I might even want to do more than once, for the rewards, since each character can do them separately and choose different things.

As for what's supposedly changed about the introductory requirements this year, I'm still none the wiser. It all looks just as I remember it. If anyone knows, don't keep it to yourself. I'll probably forget to watch the stream so I may never find out.

Maybe This Is What They Mean By "Winter Convergence"?

Games developers seem to love releasing expansions in December. Just this year we have Square Enix dropping Endwalker for Final Fantasy XIV (And sticking the landing by most accounts, despite some truly terrifying queues), Daybreak launching their traditional yearly packages for both the EverQuest games and Bioware giving us Legacy of the Sith for Star Wars: the Old Republic... oh, wait a minute...

When you stop and think about it, though, it seems an odd choice. For one thing, the run-up to Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for lots of people. Everyone working in any kind of service, hospitality or retail business is going flat out and everyone in every other line of work is shopping, partying or leaving the country to try and avoid the whole affair. 

Where I live, even the schools don't break up until close to the end of the month. It makes you wonder who it is that can find time to play at this time of year, let alone sit in queues for hours on end just for the chance of playing.

And that's not the half of it. Every mmorpg with the least pretension to providing some kind of setting or backdrop for the cash shop rolls out one of the year's biggest holiday events at this time of year. Wintersday, Frostfell, Winter Convergence...

Excuse me? "Winter Convergence"? That's a name? What committee came up with that one? It makes those much-derided, real world attempts to come up with a name that won't offend anyone ("Winterval" limps immediately to mind.) sound positively Dickensian.

Having one of your biggest holidays arrive at the same time as your brand new expansion seems like poor programming but then some mmorpgs have so many festivals there's barely a space on the calendar to squeeze an expansion in without rubbing up against something. 

Even so, I was a little surprised to see in the EverQuest II launch pad news yesterday that Frostfell was already upon us. Or, I guess I should say, the Deepice Celebration of Frostfell. 

I'm not sure if this is some sort of rebranding excercise or whether the holiday always had a Sunday-go-to-meeting name and I just never noticed but apparently that's what it's called now. Other than that it seems largely unchanged. 

The main addition is a new Overseer quest. I'd give you chapter and verse but I'm still in the middle of it. So far I've received an arctic wurm house pet and a petamorph wand that turns any combat pet into an Eidolon of the Ancients. 

Don't ask me what one of those is. I'm looking at it and I still don't know. Next up is a new Overseer agent and after that I have no idea. I could look it up but Christmas Frostfell is the time for surprises so I'm not going to.

Other than that there are the expected additions to the main vendors and gift givers. Santa Glug has nine new presents, Gerbi Frostfoot has a dozen new items for sale and there are three new crafting books full of new recipes.

If you want to see every last one of them, EQ2 Traders has you covered. Just because Niami Denmother's on the other side of the curtain now doesn't mean she not still covering the waterfront. I want a gold star for that one. Mixed metaphor and double cliche! 

All the myriad quests of the last umpty-thump years are there, just as you'd expect. Frostfell is a time of tradition after all. We do things the same way every year and we like it.

Whether I'll find the time for much more than the Overseer quest and my daily presents from Santa Glug is a lot less certain. Looping back around to where I began, there's rather more appeal in the exciting new expansion than the admittedly gorgeous and atmospheric Wonderland Village and Frostfell Workshop.

Plenty of people seem to be enjoying the festivities all the same. I have my Inquisitor parked next to Glug as I write this and there's a continual stream of players flying in to grab their gifts. Someone's even planted a guild flag next to him for instant access.

Like most of the winter celebrations in every game, Frostfell's set to be with us long enough to wear out its welcome and then some. It started yesterday and it doesn't end until the fourth of January. That's more than a week longer than Wintersday and I'm betting I'll have had enough of both of them by December 27th.

But then, I could say the same of Christmas. Couldn't you?

Gonna Get What's Mine

 

Today's the day EverQuest II's seventeenth expansion, Reign of Shadows arrives. The patch notes are already up, including an extremely lengthy section on the new Alternate Advancement (henceforth to be referred to as "AA") system. I started to read through the details but my brain wasn't having any of it so I gave up and came here instead.

I'm not sure exactly when the expansion goes live. I'm guessing it's after the regular scheduled Tuesday maintenance. That usually starts at three in the afternoon where I live and finishes an hour or two later but I'm guessing it might take a little longer than that this time. (Breaking News! Servers just came down, an hour earlier than usual. Downtime is estimated at six hours).

When the servers come up and we're able to log in I imagine there'll be the usual round of restarts and emergency patches before we can get down to the real substance of the update - the bugs, unfinished content and broken mechanics. I'm not working again until Saturday, so I'm reasonably confident of getting a session or two in before then but if things are working smoothly this side of New Year I'll be both surprised and delighted.

In the meantime there's holiday fun to be had. Frostfell arrived last week with remarkably little fanfare. Given that it's arguably the biggest in-game holiday of the year (Halloween runs it close) the timing is unfortunate, clashing as it does with both the annual expansion and the anniversary. Nevertheless, Frostfell always attracts a great deal of interest, particularly among crafters.

Nothing says winter like reddish-pink.

 

Every year I buy the latest collection of seasonal tradeskill recipes from one of the vendors in the ironically-named (but is it, though?) Frostfell Wonderland Village. I rarely use them to make anything but it's nice to have the complete set.

This year there's a new quest with the puntastic title "Icy Something Worth Mining". Yeah, I nearly missed it, too. Then when I got it I kinda wished I hadn't. That's Frostfell for you, though. 

The quest itself is pretty good. On one level it's a simple solo dungeon romp through some frozen caves but on another it's a searing indictment of the fae/elf industrial complex and how it exploits Norrath's irreplaceable natural resources. Or maybe that's just me.

Before you can even see the exclamation mark over Sugarbow's head you need to complete the lengthy precursor A Deepice Mystery. This mildly annoying quest was introduced in 2013 along with the major revamp that created what we might call Modern Frostfell. (Only we don't). 

 

Elf down!

The reason it's mildly annoying is that for some unexplained reason it has to be repeated every year to unlock a number of the other repeatable quests, meaning if you want to re-do any of the main questlines you get to do this one whether you want to or not. Only not any more!

This year it becomes a one-and-done deal, as I discovered by checking the write-up on the invaluable and authoratative EQ2 Traders (here's wishing you a Merry Frostfell and a speedy recovery, Mum!)

 "The quest "A Deepice Mystery", which used to require that players complete the unthawing process on various Frostfell NPCs before they could do the other Frostfell quests in the Frostfell Wonderland Village is being changed to a one-time quest. You will need to complete it this one more time, then in future years, you will not need to do it again."

I was checking because, naturally, I'd tried to get the new quest and hadn't been able to find it, even though the walkthrough on the wiki does clearly start with "You must have completed A Deepice Mystery at least once to obtain this quest." You mean I actually have to read this stuff?

Oh, yeah, now you talk to me.

 

One final round of defrosting fairies and blatting ice creatures to get Sugarbow to pop his punctuation and down the mines I went. As well as the faint environmentalist subtext there's also a hint of lore. If you ever wondered where all that holiday cheer and spirit, not to mention the "elven radiance" come from... 

Yeah, okay, no-one ever wondered that. Or at least I hope they didn't. Except that at least one person must have because someone wrote this quest. I guess there's no problem so small it doesn't keep someone awake at night.

It seems that these fuels (yes, in Norrath "holiday cheer" and "holiday spirit" are physical items you can pick up and put into stacks before using them to make seasonal casualwear in colors even great aunt Maude would balk at) have to be mined from crystals that form in subterranean caverns. (Wait, aren't all caverns subterranean by definition? And wouldn't that be "subnorrathian", anyway?). Geez, I'm never gonna sleep tonight.

Hug it out!

As anyone who's ever played an rpg is going to guess before they even get to the end of this sentence, mining those eldritch crystals has set something loose, in this case elementals. And it's up to you to sort them out because in fantasy worlds no-one ever clears up their own mess. 

Before I got started on clean up in mineshaft seven I thought I might as well gear up for the occasion. Not in a hard hat and pickaxe, obviously. I'm talking Frostfell robes and a sparkler. 

I'm very fond of EQII's wardrobe system - in theory. I add stuff to it regularly and spend cash shop currency on more slots but what I forget to do is wear any of it. I tend to set a look and forget it for years at a time, even though it's one of the easiest of all the appearance systems to change on the fly.

This time I rifled through the hangers and found some of the Frostfell gear I'd crafted back when I used to do things like that. It's all pretty hideous but what holiday outfit isn't?  Bad taste is traditional. 

Despite being dressed for the ocasion, somehow I managed to bug the quest on the first run-through. The mobs are supposed to scale to level but at 120 my Berserker was one-shotting everything. I think he may have pre-empted a script through being so awesome. Whatever the problem, the standard fix worked - if in doubt, relog. 

Apart from that one little glitch it was smooth slaughtering. I crushed ice elementals, mined crystals and generally took care of (someone else's) business. A couple of nameds took a few shots to kill and didn't drop anything special.  At one point I hit someone so hard a wall fell down. There was a final boss fight that I could have missed if I'd blinked, which I didn't. Good times were had by... well, by me. Not so much by all those creatures I killed, I guess.

In the end it's all about the presents, though, isn't it? Forget the thought, it's the gifts that count and the rewards were nice. A choice of house pet or cloak. Or you can just take the tokens to spend in the Frostfell goblin shop. I chose the cloak because I collect them. It's a harmless affectation. I could quit if I wanted to. I just don't want to.

Sometimes I don't know my own strength.

By then I was in the mood so I ran through the whole of the Icy Keep dungeon. On "Hard". Which is actually "Easy" if you're max-level, or so it seems. The scaling algorithm may not have been updated. I remember either last year or the year before, trying it on "Hard" and getting my tail handed to me by the first mob. This time it was a (fruit) cake walk.

I picked up my daily present from Santa Glugg and called it a night. I'm not sure how much more seasonal stuff I'll get around to this year, what with the dark side of the moon and the Shissar invasion and all that, but there are a few things I'd like to buy and a few new presents in Santa Glugg's sack I wouldn't mind having.

We can't be saving the world all the time, can we? Sometimes it's just about having fun. 

And the presents. Don't forget the presents.

I Covet The Waterfront: EQII

Yesterday marked the first day of Frostfell in EverQuest II. The midwinter celebration is a huge event in Norrath's calendar, bringing a welter of quests and activities, several seasonal instances and a whole zone dedicated to games, crafts and gift-giving.

There are no new quests this year, which is probably just as well. There are already nearly two dozen, several of them multi-part, some repeatable. There are three new Collections, all of which I completed in a ninety minute session last night.

EQ2 Traders, as always, has full details. I found the gloss there very useful although I was familiar with the mechanic from previous holiday events. Each of the three Collects comprises nine items, three sets of three, to be found in three locations - a home city (Qeynos, Freeport or Neriak), a secondary starting city (New Halas, Kelethin, Gorowyn) and Frostfell Wonderland Village itself.

I started in Freeport for the very good reason that it was where I found myself when I logged in. There were purple sparkles scattered across the cobbled streets of Lucan's capital and I wasn't the only one trying to grab them. Track Harvestables came in handy once again.

It was while I was grubbing around down by the waterfront in North Freeport that I noticed the hole in the wall. I know Freeport pretty well after living there for a decade and a half but it still has the capacity to surprise. I must have passed the building in question a hundred times and yet somehow Id never noticed how different it looked from the rest.

The walls were grey stucco, patterned with swirls. Fancy. An archway opened into a small, featureless courtyard. Had it always been there? How had I never noticed it before?

Against the outer wall there leaned a crude ladder. Planks nailed together. Why was it there? Had it been forgotten by the plasterers? Left behind by burglars? More to the point, could I climb it?

Climbing in EQII is quite specific. It was added as a feature in the first expansion, Desert of Flames, back in 2005 and has been included in content ever after, albeit somewhat sporadically.

Climbable surfaces are usually easy to spot; the walls are marked with the tracks and handholds of previous climbers or there are ladders or nets. All you need to do is move close enough and your character will begin to scale the obstacle, hand over hand.

Freeport predates all that. When it was built there was no climbing in the game and as far as I know, no-one ever bothered to go back and add climbable surfaces to original game zones. But we never needed special skills to climb back in the old days. We just...climbed.

And the way we used to climb was by jumping, hoping to find a piece of geometry that extended, invisibly, far enough into the horizontal to allow a precarious perch. I looked at the ladder. The expression "thick as a plank" came to mind. Those were pretty thick planks.

My Berserker tried a standing jump with a little jink forward. He landed on the first cross-strut - and stuck. Good start. He tried again and there he was, on the next rung. Third jump he fell off. Luckily no-one was watching except his Mercenary and he's paid not to laugh.

The ladder turned out to be fully climbable - old school style. I'm not sure I've climbed a ladder that way in EQII before. I kind of think I have but I couldn't say where it was if I did. 

At the top was a wrought-iron railing and no roof. I stood and looked down into the courtyard of the room with the hole in the wall and I pondered. I knew now that the ladder could be climbed but I was no wiser as to why it was there in the first place.

And I'm still not. Does it have a role in some quest, possibly for a class I've never played? Did some designer place it there intending to add some feature they never got around to finishing? Is it some kind of in-joke? I have no idea although I'd bet someone does.

One thing occurred to me as I stood on the roof. I've known since almost the start of the game that there are buildings you can rent in Freeport which have outdoor views. I actually own one on some character or other. Unless it's in Qeynos. Whichever, that one's a closed rooftop with no real view but I've seen and visited a large Freeport house with a rooftop terrace and views of the harbor. Maybe this was it...

Not to undercut the tension but yes, it was. I went round the front and checked the door. I was outside 7, Compassion Road, one of the original Guild Houses. I took the tour and went upstairs. The six-room home has not one but two rooftop terraces, both with great views. And neither of them is the rooftop I climbed onto.

There was a time when I coveted that house. It seemed impossibly expensive. Not only did it cost three platinum to buy the lease but 250,000 status as well - and you had to be in a guild of at least Level 30. And if you could manage all that, weekly upkeep ran to fifteen gold and 50,000 status.

Well, that may have been a pipe dream in 2004 but fifteen years later it's trivial. I have almost a million platinum on my Berserker alone, his one-person guild dinged Level 63 two days ago and he has enough Personal Status to pay the upkeep for almost as long as the game has been running. Fourteen years-worth, in fact.

I did consider buying it. It's a fantastic property in its own right and I'm pretty sure it's breakoutable. I could have a whole section of the Freeport waterfront all to myself.

In the end I decided against it - for now, at least. I already have an astoundingly over-furnished mansion in Maj'Dul on that character, which he long ago broke out of, giving him access to much of the city. Plus he's in the process of landscaping his Mara Estate, a bona fide small town, complete with river, ocean and fields, no breakout required.

EQII is one of those games where it's all too easy to take on more than you can handle. I don't need another housing project right now - I still have my Inquisitor's Baubleshire to deal with and my Wizard just set up home in the Mistmoore Crags Estate.

I shut the door of 7, Compassion Road and went back to my shiny hunting. An hour or so later I'd finished all three collections and handed them in. My Berserker was the proud owner of a Bleachbone Faun Mask (the sunbleached skull of a deer, complete with antlers, set in a silver hood, covering the whole face and making him look like the first jump-scare in a 1970s horror movie), a Bleachbone Faun Cloak (a silver cloak, embroidered with an image of the same skull and quite  possibly made from the flayed skin of the same deer) and a Bleachbone Faun Staff (made, I'm guessing, from whatever bits of the deer were left over).

What connection those gruesome items have with Frostfell and its happy-go-lucky cheer I cannot begin to imagine. They're druidical, that's as much as I know, but what druids have to do with goblins, false beards and Dickens parodies beats me.

It's another culture. Who am I to impose my values?

On with the revels!

Special Snowflakes : EQ2

As Wilhelm reported, Standing Stone Games have some very pricy pre-Christmas deals going for Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings Online. Daybreak, SSG's publisher, is also running a limited-duration holiday offer for EverQuest II but it's a different beast altogether.

The SSG packages both rely on long-term commitment. The DDO package includes two years of premium membership; for LotRO you get one year. In both cases you also get access to a very large amount of content that would take months to play through.

The EQII offer is called 12 Days of Frostfell. It does indeed last for twelve days, running from Tuesday, December 4, when this year's in-game winter holiday season began, until just before midnight on Wednesday, December 16, and it's much more about instant gratification.

It's also a somewhat convoluted affair, requiring nested purchases in both the cash shop and from an in-game NPC. It took me a couple of read-throughs and a bit of digging around in game to figure it out. The short version goes like this: if you buy specific packs (all labeled "Holiday") in the DBG Store during the promotion they come with a new currency called Glug's Chocolate Coins. You can then spend that currency at a vendor who lurks in the shadows near the wardrobe that zones you into the Frostfell Wonderland Village.

It might seem like an odd way to go about things but I guess you could argue that it turns a marketplace transaction into something more lore-appropriate. In doing so, it also connects what you're doing more strongly to your character, since it's they, not you, who makes the final purchase.

I would argue that, as it happens. Yes, it would be simpler and more convenient just to buy the items directly from the store but simplicity and convenience aren't everything.

Those are the means. How about the ends? What can you buy, how much does it cost, and is it worth it?

The "what" is simple enough. As is usually the case in EQ2 these days, what you can buy with your chocolate money is Mercenaries, Familiars and a Prestige Home. Mercs and Fams (No-one calls them Fams. Let's not start.) are mostly sold in the cash shop via randomized packs but the in-game vendor sells them directly, so you can get exactly the ones you want, first time.


(As an aside, DBG have managed to finesse lockboxes through the store in such a way that I see very few complaints. In fact, in a game where complaints are commonplace and the playerbase is frequently grumpy, lockboxes rarely get a mention, although this particular promotion has raised a few hackles. I believe the lockboxes are broadly accepted because the items inside are both tradeable and convertible to Status, the currency all high-end players crave and can't get enough of. I'm guessing people are more than happy to sell or salvage their spares. Probably some even buy them for that very purpose).

Getting back to the current promotion, while it's quite expensive, it does seem to offer decent value. The various bundles in the cash shop give coins in various quantities. Things like the unattuners that cost a few hundred DBC come with a single chocolate coin and the number you get scales according to cost all the way up to ten coins with the 4999DBC Mindbender Merc seven-pack.

Santa Glug's Curious Clerk, the in-game vendor, charges three, five and seven chocolate coins for the different Mercenaries. The Familiars are all three coins each except for the Blush Gumdrop, which is top of the shop at ten coins. That's because the Blush is Ethereal quality while the rest are merely Legendary.

The Prestige House, which the promo calls "Santa Glug’s Snowglobe Home" but which is known in game as Santa Glug's Cheerful Holiday Home, also runs to ten chocolate coins. The blurb says "This amazingly cozy winter home really has to be seen to be believed! " and fortunately you can do that without buying it if you go to the Prestige Home portal in game and take the tour.

Naimi Denmother did just that and posted a video but it only shows one of the three globes.
Denmum must have been tired that day (she works harder than Dulfy on this stuff and for a lot less reward, I bet) because you can visit all three globes on the tour. I just did.

As well as the one on the counter-top there's another on the mantlepiece and a third on the table. You just have to click on the tiny globe at the edge to swap from one to another. Snow falls constantly inside the globe and flying is enabled, making for some spectacular views.

The breakout zone for the new home (and it's been cofirmed there is one) would seem to be either the Baubleshire Inn itself or, just possibly, the whole of Baubleshire. Only on a Land of the Giants scale, since your character has been shrunk to a suitable size to fit inside a snowglobe.

I find this an immensely appealing prospect. I'm not particularly interested in the Familiars and Mercs (although having Santa Glug as a healer has a certain appeal) but I'd love to break out of the snowglobe and go exploring in the old, no longer accessible, pre-invasion Baubleshire.

(Another aside: one of the less well-known reasons that EQ2's housing is best in genre is the ability to "break out" of the homes into the surrounding area. This used to be a somewhat clandestine activity but is now fully sanctioned, albeit on an "at your own risk" basis. By breaking out you can effectively gain access to an entire zone, which you can decorate (and in EQ2 "decorate is a synonym for "build") just as though you were in the core home instance. The snow globe home has apparently been designed with breakouts in mind and the breakout zone covers an area larger than Antonica!)

To get ten chocolate coins is no small undertaking. Well, okay, it is a small undertaking in that it doesn't ask much more of you than a few mouse-clicks. What I mean is, it's quite expensive. It varies a little according to what Holiday Packages you choose, but it always comes in, near as makes no odds, around 5000DBC.

Five thousand in Daybreak Cash would cost you $45 (or £37). It's a lot less than the $200-300 SSG are asking but I'm not about to spend that kind of money on an imaginary house I most likely will never spend more than a few sessions messing around with. It's also very expensive compared to any other Prestige House, none of which breaks 2,000DBC.

And yet...

All the Holiday Bundles are genuinely useful: the Mercs and Familiars, as I mentioned, can be converted to Status and also traded on the Broker. You might even get a really good one that you'd end up using. Other bundles include things that always come in useful, like extra character slots, server transfers and item unattuners.

Even so, I still wouldn't spend $45 on a whim. Only I don't have to... As a result of SOE's notoriously idiotic policy of running regular double and even treble cash sales (sometimes cited as the reason they never made any money) plus the regular 500 stipend I get for being a member, I have over 20kDBC on my current main account and 17k on the old one.

I might as well spend it on something and five thousand isn't even going to make that much of a dent. So I'm thinking about it.

And because I'm seriously considering the offer, it also clarifies for me the reason why game companies like to put a either a time limit or a limited number on what is self-evidently an infinitely renewable resource. It makes purchasers decide.

If there was no time limit I'd tick the mental box that says "one day" and forget about it for now. And probably forever. I'm extremely good at feeling as though I've bought something just because I thought about buying it. Put a time limit on it, though, and I have to make an actual decision.

It's a wonderful house.

I really would like it.

Let's not be hasty, though.

Still got six days.

Don't rush me, I'm thinking!