Mutagenic Overlord down Sunday!

So that big bad mutant mantis is down now, and we can call Kingdom of Sky complete!

So, What I Have Been Doing Lately...

In light of my earlier post about our farm status of the Kingdom of Sky expansion, we have decided to start up in WoW. Tarique is playing a Night Elf Hunter and I'm playing a Night Elf Druid. We figured we wanted to play things that were fun, since in EQ2 and other games we tend to stick to needed raiding roles.

I must say, its refreshing to just fool around in a world where no one knows you, no one needs you to help them camp something, and you can just enjoy the content. I'm fully aware that at some point we will either reroll or stop playing entirely since raiding in two MMOs would be insane - (even if both don't have seven days of content.) With the quest oriented game play I am enjoying it. Normally in an MMO, I would skip doing quests unless its a kill quest with an NPC near by for mobs we are already killing, or a quest for a particular piece of gear or access. The beauty of the WoW system is that I know if I get the quests in an area for my level, I will probably level once or twice, and can move on to the next set. Now aside from needing to harvest meat for cooking - I have no reason to grind away on mobs with no purpose. This is a good thing. Other than the occasional tailored dungeon that you have to fight to the end to, this is the way people should level. It definitely masks the dreaded grind.

My impressions of WoW so far are good, but these are the similar to the impressions I had in beta. Not much has changed in this time. Great game to explore in, not enough ongoing raid content for me. I'm sure there are some folks that are just happy to do the same dungeon set with a freebie thrown in now and again. But instead I chose a game that allows us to do that including the freebies - plus allow for about 2 expansions worth of stuff per year.

We have ideas of pursuing other race/class combos, but for now I think we will stick to these.

Current EQ2 Happenings

Currently my EQ2 guild has one more raid mob to kill in the Kingdom of Sky expansion to call it complete - Mutagenic Overlord. It's not as though we have thrown ourselves nightly at it, but we did enough to know we don't have the proper class mix. The guy is a giant praying mantis that spawns baby ones to kill your raid. It's the anti-zerg. That leaves us with:

• Three Princes (contested)
  
• Halls of Seeing (instance)
  
• Lyceum of Abhorrence (instance)
• Pantrilla (contested)
  
• Harla Dar (instance)
• Gorenaire/Talendor (instance)
• Deathtoll (instance)
• Hurricanus (contested)
• Laboratory of Lord Vyemm (instance)
• Various x4 Quest updates (that we don't feel like doing for new folks/slackers)

Seems like a lot right? Not really. Until we have the proper folks geared up/recruited to do Mutagenic this schedule often leaves us with 2-3 free nights a week.

So, Tarique and I have been dabbling in WoW. We decided on this game because while console RPGs are excellent, we really can't play them together. I still have a few heritage quests in EQ2 I want to complete, but that's more for completion's sake. A lot of them aren't exactly compelling content.

A new adventure pack, Fallen Dynasty, due out this summer. I'm sure the adventure pack will be cool like the others have been, it's just a ways off. EQ2 has also announced a new expansion, Echoes of Faydwer. I'm really excited about this because I grew up in Kelethin in EQ1 and this expansion seems like it will have a nostalgic twinge for me. I'm really hoping for good things for these announcements, since the reason we are playing EQ2 over other games is the amount of new content. I don't care how compelling your raid content is -- if you end up doing the same dungeons and contested for over six months past farm status, its stale. And six months is pushing it, I'd prefer 3 or 4 with a small break to check out other games.