Cooking in the Blood Furnace

After the three run struggle to get past Hellfire Ramparts, I have to admit that I was a bit pessimistic about our chance for the Blood Furnace, the next instance on our four person instance tour of WoW Classic.

Yes, we had leveled up and geared up some, but even so we barely squeaked out that last fight on our third run in ramparts.  That was not a promising sign.

Still, what else were we going to do?  We can only go back to visit Blackrock Depths so often.

So we got together… this was back on the 12th… and our group was:

• Ula – level 63 gnome mage
• Beanpole – level 63 gnome warlock
• Wilhelm – level 63 human paladin (protection)
• Fergorin – level 63 human paladin (holy)

The first thing was to get everybody to the instance.  I scouted it out early, which wasn’t too hard because I had found it when I was looking for the Hellfire Ramparts instance previously.  But then I had to explain to everybody else where I was as they logged on, which I did poorly, so I ended up running out to the end of the wall to where the siege engine with the ramp is that lets you get up onto the wall so they could come to my marker on the map.  Eventually we got to the instance.

Up on the wall and around a bend and there we are

Once inside we looked around and steeled ourselves for a hard slog.  None of us could remember in any detail any of our past runs, though as we moved through we had flashes of wipes and bad turns.  I try not to go re-read the old instance group posts from back in the day before we do a run as not to spoil things, but I had a feeling there were stories.  So we moved forward to see how it would play out.

Inside and ready to move

We made our way in and up the passage, taking out groups, then up the stairs, where somebody mentioned stealthed rogues in a comment on the last instance group post, so we were warned and managed to handle them well enough.

We seemed to be doing okay, though I suspect our being level 63 help us avoid an accidental proximity pull here and there.  There were a few close runs, but it wasn’t until we got to the room outside of the first boss’s chamber that we had any real problems.  There are three groups close together and a walker that moves between them.  In an attempt to pick off the walker I managed to pull everybody in the room.

Things went badly soon thereafter.  I fell, then Fergorin, then Beanpole.  Ula ran for the instance line, blinking to keep ahead of all the mobs chasing here, which just allowed her to make it out.  That was all that kept it from being a full wipe.

The chorus line running back past our corpses after chasing Ula out of the instance

We had a soul stone handy, so Fergorin was able to revive then ress Beanpole and myself.

With that out of our system, we went in a bit more carefully and managed to pull a group, then the walker, then the other groups, clearing the room and letting us into the room of The Maker, the first boss in the instance.

You have to clear his room too, and there are groups standing around and in motion, but they are spread out enough that we were able to clear the room, which left us the prize.

Facing The Maker

The Maker did not end up being all that tough.  After a short sharp fight he was down.  He dropped the Diamond-Core Sledgemace, which is not only a very healer focused weapon, but a very dwarven one as well, which made it a perfect fit for Fergorin.

Sledgemace in hand

From there it was into the tunnel that runs to the second boss, where there are mobs in close proximity and wandering mobs and at one point Fergorin had to use Divine Intervention on me to avoid a wipe when we got in over our heads, so I was able to ress everybody so we could carry on.

In the tunnel

We managed to get through that and into the room where the next boss fight would take place.  We had to clear it out, of course, but once done there was a big level to pull that would set the event in motion.

The level awaits

We looked this one up in advance just to prepare.  You pull the level and you have to face four groups of four elites, one at a time, then Broggok, the boss comes for you.  Mana management was recommended, with the suggestion that you crowd control the final elite from the last group and let your mana regen before killing him and facing the boss.  Seemed easy enough.

This went a bit rough with the groups.  We had some trouble focusing on a single target and mobs would break away to chase the casters and then I’d have to go chase the mobs and it was a bit of a circus.  My taunt, which pulls multiple mobs, has a 15 second cool-down and inevitably I use it for one caster seconds before the other unloads with some huge windup and then I am off chasing a mob while swearing at the cool down timer on my taunt.

Anyway, we somehow managed to keep it together through the first three groups all the same, then Beanpole died on the fourth group and it seemed like we might be done for.  We managed to finish off all but the last elite in that group, then kept him crowd controlled while we regenerated mana and considered our options.  We were in combat and didn’t have a combat ress, so we were just going to have to fight the boss without Beanpole.  So we offed the last elite and went to dance with Broggok.

You can just see Beanpole’s corpse on the floor a bit to the left

And dance is the right word.  One thing I did remember through the years was that he drops a poison stink that you need to avoid, so you have to keep moving through the fight.  So I unloaded everything I could on him, there being no point in holding back.  Fergorin kept me healed, I held aggro, and Ula burned him down.  And we won.  With just three of us.

It seemed kind of amazing.  We got Beanpole ressed and checked the loot.

Broggok Slain

He dropped the Arcing Bracers, which went to a roll-off between Beanpole and Ula, though I cannot remember who won them in the end, but they were another upgrade for somebody.

That left us clearing our way to the final boss, Keli’dan the Breaker, which we managed to do without too much additional drama.  There are still some stealthed rogues that far into the instance, but we managed  to spot them before they surprised us.

For Keli’dan you have to slay five elites who are holding him in place, and for once we managed some very good target discipline and chopped them all down one after another, before launching into the boss.  All we really knew is that he has an AOE fire blast and that when he says “Come closer” you run away like he’s promising you there is candy in his white panel van, and you don’t stop until you know the blast is over because you’re probably not far enough away when you think you are.

And with that bit of knowledge we managed to best him.  He died with some parting advice.

Says the dead guy

He dropped the Raiments of Divine Authority, which went to Ula, another upgrade on the run.

We took our end of instance screen shot.

The group made it to the end

Then we headed out the back door and called it a day.

Happy fun ramp exit

A rather successful run.  No full wipes, no runs back to the instance, upgrades dropping from each boss.  Hard to argue with that.

It will probably boost our confidence slightly until we get to the next instance, which is The Slave Pens in Zangarmarsh.  That probably means we’ll have to do some overland content to get quests lined up and all of that.  I have been avoiding that content for a few months now.  Maybe it is time.

The 49-U6U Fight Foreshadows Battles to Come

A large battle went down last night in 49-U6U, with over 3,000 pilots in system and a trillion ISK in losses.

Right there in Querious

It was a fight over an armor timer on an Imperium Fortizar, one of the structures we still have in that system in Querious.  I joined up with Lazarus Telraven’s Rokh fleet to go out and help defend the timer.

Rokhs on the move

The invaders had been sending out pings to rally the troops for this fight, no doubt feeling a bit stung when, last Friday, they declined to contest the armor timer on this very same structure even though they outnumbered us.  Their advantage then was insufficient.

Last night they got the numbers, outgunning us on the field by about a 2 to 1 margin.

The fight started when the timer finished its count down.  We had subcap fleets on the Fortizar with fax support for reps.  They had subcaps on hand as well, but started dropping dreadnoughts near us almost right away, the first group landing pretty much on top of the Fort.

On the Fortizar

The Rokh fleet started shooting a TEST nightmare fleet and managed some kills but, as the fight escalated and people kept piling in, the server began to stagger under the weight of commands.  And a struggling server can be a capricious factor.  Back at the KVN-36 fight, the node went down and won us the timer.  This time around the node stayed up, but balked at our super carriers jumping in, with a bunch failing to jump and those that made it getting disconnected.

That stopped the battle escalation in its tracks.  Titans were not deployed and the supers started getting pulled back.  The fight devolved to an attempt to kill as many attacking dreadnoughts as possible.  We were told to stop fighting, tether up, and to get to our Keepstar in system to grab an interdictor to hold down enemy dreads.

That was easier said that done.  I sat for about 20 minutes trying to get my drones taken care of… somebody’s smart bomb managed that for me in the end… my guns to cycle down and for tethering to finally grab me.  And it was a near run thing too.  As I was watching the aggression timer count down the last 20 seconds… at 10% speed due to tidi… a hostile Munnin fleet that was rolling through the scrum decided to target me.  I could see their yellow boxes turn to red as their damage started to land on me.  I overheated my hardeners and hoped for the best.  The timer ended and there was a long wait as my shields dropped below half to almost one quarter before tether hit and I was invulnerable.

I’m going to say that tethering is pretty OP, even when it saves my ship.

Then it was just a matter of getting over to the Keepstar… through a field of warp interdiction bubbles.

Bubble, bubbles everywhere

I spent quite a while trying to motor off in a direction that would get me a clear line of warp to the Keepstar.  I went and did the dishes while that was going on.  When I was back it seemed like every time I seemed to be clear, the server would decide that a Sabre had launched its bubble before I had initiated warp and I would be back to trying to get clear again.

Meanwhile more and more Sabres were being bridged in as bubbles when up all over to hold down hostile dreads.

Bubbles all over the place

Eventually I managed to warp off and made it to the Keepstar, but by then it was getting late for me on a work night.  The battle seemed to have reached its crescendo and was now wandering slowly to its conclusion.  I decided to go to bed.

The Imperium lost, undoubtedly and without question.

We lost the objective.  For all of our dread killing the enemy was able to keep applying damage to the Fortizar and it is now set for its final timer this weekend.

We also lost the ISK war by a two to one margin, with the battle report showing us having lost over 756 billion ISK in ships while the attackers lost shy of 380 billion ISK.

Battle Report Header

Two thirds of our ISK loss can be chalked up to the 14 super carriers that we blown up after  jumping in, a tally that includes a Vendetta faction super carrier.  That Vendetta was 19% of our ISK loss in a single ship.  Luckily the two other Vendettas that jumped in got away, or the count would have been much higher.  But that is the risk you take when you allow your pilots to bring their expensive toys to the fight.

The bulk of the enemy losses came from the 90 dreadnoughts that we managed to kill on the Fortizar, close to a quarter of the 375 they dropped into the battle.

And yet, even having suffered an undeniable defeat, things are not downcast on our side of the war.

Yes, people are pissed about how the servers decided to roll this time.  The first post up about the battle was over at INN complaining about that.  However, somebody is always pissed at the servers when tidi goes beyond 10% and things just stop working.  Generally both sides are, as it leads to missed opportunities.

But there is also the knowledge that this fight is a sign of how hard the invaders are going to have to work to defeat us.  This fight wasn’t even in Delve.  This fight wasn’t even on a Keepstar.  This fight didn’t even escalate to titans.  This fight wasn’t even all that consequential.  There is another timer to go.

But this fight was just a taste of what is to come.  This was the first trillion ISK battle in what may end up being a series of them.  The question is who is going to get sick of this sort of thing first?

In the slow motion scrum of battle

Since Vily has declared this to be a war of extermination, I am guessing we’re good doing this at least a hundred more times.  What other choice do we have?

Of course, that idea must weigh on him as well.  If you look at who showed up to the fight you will see that, once again, PandaFam was there doing the heavy lifting, as they have throughout the war.  If they get tired of this and go back home… which is what they did during the Fountain War, abandoning TEST to their fate… the invasion will be over.

That isn’t going to happen any time soon, but neither is the conquest of Delve.  We’ll have to wait to see who can last the longest.

Other Coverage:

• New Eden Post – Timeline of the battle

SuperData has Fall Guys on Top for August

SuperData Research got their digital revenue chart for August out and, no surprise, revenues were up over last year for another month.

• August digital games revenue totaled $10.8B, up 16% year-over-year. Digital console earnings grew the most and were up 88% compared to the same month in 2019. Revenue also rose by 15% on PC and 3% on mobile.

The pandemic continues to boost the video games industry as 2020 stays ahead of 2019.

• Digital games have earned $82.8B through the first eight months of 2020, a growth of 13% from the same time span last year. Gaming revenue took off in March as COVID-19 lockdowns spread worldwide. Since then, each game device type (mobile, PC or console) has generated higher year-over-year revenue. 

But it is the chart that we like to look at, and the August chart has a shakeup of the usual order on the PC end of things.

SuperData Research Top 10 – August 2020

And, as I wrote above, the usual order on the PC side of things got a shake up in August, with Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout topping the chart.

• Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout had the highest-earning launch of any PC title ($185M) since Overwatch in May 2016. The innovative take on battle royale, published by Developer Digital and developed by Mediatonic, was free to PlayStation Plus subscribers, but 8.2M players still paid for the PC version. The breakout success of Fall Guys was especially impressive since it came from a relatively small development team. The game’s chaotic, wacky gameplay was a big draw on gaming video content platforms like Twitch, where it topped the viewership charts in the lead-up to launch.

I had not even heard of the game… or I had ignored it… until the SuperData chart came out, but there it is on top for August.

That pushed the usual top four, which I think of as the LCDF lineup due to their frequent ordering, down a notch as their usual order changed up, with Crossfire in second, League of Legends in third, Fantasy Westward Journey Online in fourth, and Dungeon Fighter Online in fifth.

The bottom half of the list saw Fortnite back up in its spot relative to the LCDF titles after having fallen in July, seeing a revenue boost in August.

• Fortnite revenue grew 76% month-over-month on PC and console, more than offsetting its falling mobile revenue. Player spending jumped in late August thanks to a new season of content featuring cosmetic items based on Marvel Comics characters. This is in sharp contrast to its mobile revenue, which fell by 62% after Apple and Google removed the game from the iOS App Store and Google Play as part of the ongoing legal dispute between Epic and the two technology companies. (Our published mobile revenue totals do not encompass the Android version of Fortnite available outside of Google Play.)

Fortnite was followed by Roblox in seventh, CS:GO in eighth.  New shooter Valorant was down from fifth in July to ninth in August, and World of Warcraft managed to stay on the chart in tenth position.  World of Tanks fell of the list for August.

On the console chart Call of Duty: Modern Warfare took the top spot back as last months number one, Ghosts of Tsushima fell back to sixth position.  FIFA 20 and Fortnite followed in second and third, with the venerable GTA V in fourth position.

And at the mobile end of the chart, Pokemon Go continues its summer reign in the top spot.

• Pokémon GO continued its upward momentum in August and broke its all-time earnings record. The game generated 25% more that its previous revenue peak achieved during August 2016. It benefited from warm weather and frequent limited-time events that appealed to its passionate player base. Pokémon GO has historically performed best in the summer and revenue will likely begin a seasonal decline in either September or October.

Then there is Free Fire, the title from Singapore that popped onto the charts in third place last month.  It has worked its way past Honour of Kings and into second place.  Behind them in fourth position is Peacekeeper Elite, the mobile version of PUBG available in China.  PUBG Mobile, the version for the rest of us only rings in at eighth position, just ahead of Candy Crush Saga.  However, PUBG Mobile may be in for a fall, as it has since been banned in India.

• PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile was the 8th highest earning mobile title in its last month before being banned in India. The game was frequently the country’s highest-grossing game before India’s government furthered a widespread crackdown on Chinese apps (Tencent has operated the mobile version of PUBG). Also in August, the game’s overall revenue and player numbers did not change significantly, which indicates that bans of the mobile version of Fortnite did not lead to a mass player exodus to PUBG Mobile.

NPD also has their top ten chart forAugust available as well.  As always, NPD numbers are US only, combine PC and console sales, and doesn’t always include digital sales (where noted).

1. Madden NFL 21
2. UFC 4
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
4. Ghost of Tsushima
5. Animal Crossing: New Horizons*
6. Ring Fit Adventure
7. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe*
8. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
9. Paper Mario: The Origami King*
10. Mortal Kombat 11

*Digital sales on Nintendo eShop not included

As usual, this list continues to indicate how much consoles still depend on physical retail distribution.

So it goes.  Another month of pandemic remains good business for some.

Exploring Why I Like WoW Classic So Far

I suppose that my current affinity for WoW Classic isn’t exactly inexplicable.   Surely last week’s posts about the effort put in getting to Ragefire Chasm, a dungeon of no particular significance aside from its low level rating and awkward location, doesn’t seem out of place for somebody who, say, put in the effort to build a 20km road in survival mode in Minecraft.

The Classic Background

Still, there has to be something compelling here to get to that level of effort.

Much ado has been made about WoW Classic and what its essence really is, with assertions running along the vectors of simplicity vs complexity, ease vs difficulty, fulfilling vs time sinks, and even modern vs archaic.

There are two amorphous camps out there whose banners seem to be “Why would you play WoW Classic?” and “Why wouldn’t you play WoW Classic?” or something like that.  But the messages can be indistinct and at times I have heard arguments that I was sure were in support of one side of the divide only to reach a conclusion that surprised me.

Meanwhile, I am always suspicious of my own opinion.  I am an unreliable narrator on the gaming journey that this blog covers, and I have often said I would play certain games or that enjoyed specific activities, only to give them up and never mention them again.  So when I say I am enjoying WoW Classic, there is some part of me questions that sentiment.  Am I really?  Am I sure about that?

The only way to tell is whether or not I keep logging in.  I can say whatever I want, convince myself that I am having fun, write blog posts about what I am doing, but if I sit down at my computer in the evening and don’t log in to play, then the reality of the situation has been exposed.  Regardless of why I tell myself, I won’t log in if I am not enjoying myself.

So that I keep logging into WoW Classic seems to be a good sign.  In fact, I keep logging into it to the exclusion of nearly anything else.  I suspect my play time distribution at the end of the month will be very much lopsided in favor of WoW Classic.

Naturally a big portion of this is related to the revival of the instance group.  Getting the band back together to play is a huge draw, and one that is self-reinforcing, as the more the others in the group play or chat on Discord or whatever, the more we are all likely to log in and play.

There is also the chance for a fresh start.  It has long been an open secret that one of the draws to the EverQuest progression servers is the start in a brand new world with everybody at level one again.  That was part of what got me going on the LOTRO Legendary server as well, a chance to see the early zones alive, to have people all around you, to have a place not already filled with people where most every new character you meet is an alt, twinked up to level up more quickly.

And, honestly, I find some satisfaction in there being some effort required to get things done.  Last weekend was the fourth time we, as a group, did the Ragefire Chasm instance.

We did it back during WotLK, over level, but keen to run into Orgrimmar.

We did it during our venture on the Horde side on the Lightninghoof RP-PvP server.

We did it during Cataclysm when we re-rolled a fresh group.

And we did it last week in WoW Classic.

Only one of the first three was a memorable event.  The first time it was something out of the ordinary that took effort and some patience as we ran into Orgrimmar with our Alliance characters.  That run sprang into my mind right away when we started talking about giving the dungeon a try.  The other two though, if I hadn’t written blog posts about them and tagged them correctly with the dungeon name, they wouldn’t have popped up.

The second time we ran Ragefire Chasm it was as Horde, and there was little effort needed to get to the instance.  It is right there in Orgrimmar.  The instance itself isn’t all that exciting and serves mostly as a training dungeon.  We moved on from there and it left no memory with me.

The third time, during Cataclysm, we did it with our re-rolled Alliance group.  But that was in the Dungeon Finder era after everything in the 1-60 range had been reworked into Dominoes dungeons (done in 30 minutes or less) and the level curve had been goosed once again to speed people up into the latest content.  We did three instances that night; Ragefire Chasm, Shadowfang Keep, and Stormwind Stockades, and none of it has any presence in my memory.  Certainly the 11 minutes we spent in RFC left no mark.   But what should you expect from low effort encounters?

Here is the thing.  Difficulty or inconvenience or failure or shared effort to overcome obstacles, those are things that create memories, that make for interesting tales, that build bonds, and make what you did a solid part of your personal history.

That difficulty, that level of effort required to get things done, that was part of the MMORPG landscape of the time.  Blizz just took what they found in EverQuest and made it more purposeful in WoW.  Bhagpuss did a whole post yesterday that sifts through the level of effort and inconvenience with purpose aspect of this.  If you haven’t read through that, you should.  I am in agreement on how a lot of the effort seems quite well planned to get you involved with the world.  The world was, as Chris Metzen said, the main character of WoW.

And finally, of course, there is nostalgia.  This is a return to not just an older version of Azeroth no longer available in the retail version of the game, but even a return to mechanics and play styles long gone from WoW.  I can understand why some might not prefer that over retail, but to claim there is no substantial difference between retail and classic seems to me to be deliberate self-delusion.  If you draw back far enough, every fantasy MMORPG plays about the same, but those involved get into the details.  You cannot do everything in retail that you can do in classic simply because the world and the mechanics therein are so very different.

I am logging in to return to a game that was no longer there, that retail has replaced, to have an experience that is quite literally no longer possible in the current version of WoW.  I’m not saying retail WoW is bad, but it is very different and it is sometimes surprising at how wide the gap between the two really is now.

And it has also been eye opening to see how well made the original game was and how so much of what Blizzard has done to “improve” the game has only succeeded in taking some of the edge off of what was a pretty well honed blade.  The reason WoW took off back in the day was because it was a well put together MMORPG that made much of what came before… an most of what came after… look like amateur night.

So WoW Classic has clearly clicked with me for a variety of reasons.  Skronk jokingly said that Comcast called and wanted to know why they hadn’t turned on their TV over the last three weeks.  If my wife played I might be tempted to make the same joke.  Four weeks in I keep logging in daily to play.  That is the tell, the indicator that my opinion is in line with reality.  I am really enjoying WoW Classic.

Looking for a Path in Norrath Again

As it ever does, the coming of autumn turns my mind to Norrath.  There is certainly some association in my mind with there finally being a bit of a chill in the night air and nostalgia for what once was.

Of course, having a long running blog… the self-recharging epicenter of my of my nostalgia… as well as Daybreak talking about expansions and events and what not feeds into this need to return to Norrath, visit my house, and see what is new in the world… or what is old and memorable and still there.

Going to go see that bitchin’ Firiona Vie poster in my room

I will even have some time.  The war in EVE Online has reached its conclusion so, aside from move ops home, there won’t be much activity for a month or so, while I seem to have paused in Azeroth for the moment, as noted on Friday.  So Norrath could be a thing.  I have room on my calendar.

The problem is that EverQuest II has, over the years, accreted layer after layer of barriers seemingly designed to thwart any sort of easy return to the game.  As has been said many times over the years, EQII isn’t WoW.  But I still manage to forget exactly how determined Daybreak can be in blocking people from getting back into the game.

And this autumn there was an additional barrier on the way to Norrath.  Having upgraded my rig recently I was still in the process of finding out what worked and what did not after the move from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

EverQuest II started off in the not working column.  It crashed early and often.

That it was copied over from the old system meant that something might have gotten corrupted, so I renamed its directory and did a fresh install.  That did not seem to help.  Fortunately, having gotten ZMud to run on Win10 I knew I was not out of options.  Setting EQII to run under Win7 emulation and as administrator seemed to take care of the block on actually playing the game.  It has not crashed since.

Which left me with the old problems of what to do once I could play.  I see three possible paths forward.

Level 100

Over the years, through various boost offers, I have managed to accrue several characters at, or very close to, level 100.  The character I would consider my “main” is level 96.  I used a level 95 boost on him back in the day and actually played him enough to get within striking distance of level 97.  There are two other level 100 boosts and then the super-special level 100 boost from earlier this year.

They were handing out flying mounts with that boost

So getting a high level character isn’t a problem.  Figuring out what to do with one, on the other hand, seems to be a bit of a chore.  The last couple of times I have tried the in-game messaging has directed me in the wrong direction.  I certainly didn’t end up where many other people were playing.  But going out of game doesn’t seem to be much help either.  Googling what I should do in EverQuest II at level 100 gets me results like this:

• A wiki article that directs me to an NPC that is no longer there
• A wiki article that directs me to go back to the starting zone to run gray quests
• A wiki article that tells me I need to learn two languages or I can’t play new content
• A forum thread that calls level 100 boost “bait and switch” without very much in the way of push back

And I hate to say it, but those were among the more helpful, or at least on point, results I found.

Even if I can figure out where to go, there is the perennial problem of trying to figure out how to play a given class again, though that problem is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the last 100 boost I got had good enough gear that I could pretty much faceroll my way through anything I could find.

Start Anew

This is always an option, though it is one I have may have used a few too many times at this point.

On the upside, starting fresh does hit right at the nostalgia factor, especially if I start on the Fallen Gate progression server, which has the Isle of Refuge starting area.

The problem there is that I may have trod that path too many times at this point.  How many more times am I going to fight the orc on Zek or run through Feerrott trying to complete The Journey is Half the Fun?  And even when I throttle experience pretty heavily, diverting it to AAs, I will persist in leveling up faster than the content.  And then there is the need to completely re-gear every ten levels that becomes oppressive when you’re a level the market has forgotten.

And then, in the end, after moving through content I have done so many times I will hit a point where I will tire and stop, somewhere between the Desert of Flames and the Rise of Kunark if history is any indication, leaving me with yet another mid-level character.

Mid Level Options

The middle way is often the worst, and in Norrath it does tend to be a combo of problems.  I have an easy half dozen characters… probably more… situated between level 50 and 80.  I ought to be able to pick one of those up and carry on.  The double whammy here is that these mid-levels miss out on the old content nostalgia angle that I would get if I simply rolled up a new character but also face the age old EQII problem of having to relearn how to play the classes.

If I were to highlight a single problem that the game has, I would probably pick “too many damn skills” for every class.  I generally have to operate with three 12 button hot bars on my screen, which usually means I don’t have all the combat skills or most of the buffs/debuffs represented.

So this seems the least likely path forward.  I fear that my dual-baton wielding monk will never get any closer to level cap.

Finding a Path

So there I stand, looking for a way to proceed.   Subscribing isn’t an issue if that will make things easier to find, and the Planes of Prophecy expansion is half price, so if that was the way to go I would jump on board with it.

I am sure Bhagpuss will have a suggestion or two, but I an open to any advice on this front… as well as maybe a clue as to which wiki or site is the most up to date when it comes to EQII.

Hurry though.  That autumnal feeling doesn’t always last.