EQ2 vs EoF

Granik is wanting to avoid burning out by playing night after night and, since I caught up to Ramp I’ve eased back my playing too, put some more time in crafting when I’m on, tending to lowbie quests, etc.

When its just Ramp and myself playing, we generally progress our Freeport line of quests, when Granik gets on we head over to Faydwer. We were hoping Toto would join us Friday so we could go do crushbone but we ended up in steamfont instead. Granik: 35 or 36, Ramp: 35, Me: 33.

I really find the EQ2-original quests unsatisfying because somehow it seems that so few of them are quests but simply sanctioned camps. I had a quest to gather 10 owlbear claws and 10 fireshriller somethings. The mobs in Nektulous have been severely reduced and relocated. The owlbears exist in a little gorge and on the climbable hill north of them are the shrillers. All it needs is a fork and knife and someone to say ‘dinner is served’.

Ok, well killing 10 ain’t so bad, is it? But wait. It’s one of those “obtain from beastie537” quests. Which means I’m not guaranteed to get a credit for each kill. The owlbears weren’t so bad, one pop every 2-3 bears. But the shrillers… Randomness stepped in and gave me a sucky average of 11 shrillers per update, which meant they went from green to grey. God what tedium.

Maybe I just haven’t got high enough in EoF yet, but it lacks this same beat-down style of questing as far as I’ve experienced. I think if there are going to be “Kill 60” quests they should either be exceptions (like the halberd) with exceptional rewards or they should be presented to you way in advance to be sure you as much overlap as possible. When I’ve just done killing 200 owlbears, I know that satan has just put his nads in my mouth when the next quest I get wants me to obtain “10 claws from owlbears”… Oh you f*cker you. Pardon my French, but that’s really what I feel.

That said, the payback so far has been adequate. I’ve nearly done my Armor Quests, but I find the ‘early world’ EQ2 content the way it sits today uncompelling in the extreme. Visiting Runny Eye and Deathfist Citadel might be fun, but I’m really hoping the 3-4 of us level up some and do some of the non-original level 30-70 content.  Crushbone roxxors. Steamfont has been great fun. I did some of Deserts of Flame and wouldn’t mind doing that stuff again, assuming it hasn’t been Nektulized. I didn’t do much of KoS at all.

Granik hopes we get to do some of the adventure packs; Bloodline Chronicles sounds pretty good.

But so far, EoF wins hands down. I’ve posted a lot about this, and I guess whats driving that is its rare for MMO expansions, in my experience, to really deliver such a wonderful progression of the gameplay experience; its usually more-of-the-same or something-else-entirely. Perhaps Luclin for EQ1. So maybe, in part, its a merit of adding a newbie zone and content for the newbie up?

When SOE sell Brad into slavery (I hear Raph is looking for a maid *monger monger*), I will petition them to give the proceeds to the EoF team as a June bonus.

And for those of you thinking it was about time I quit writing about EQ2, here’s a little snapshot of my Linux desktop.

 (For those of you following the link from EQ2 daily, the screenshot is going to be a bit meaningless, it has nothing to do with EQ2 but rather the MMO I play most of the time and happen to work for)