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The journal of Deinnun.
First a little about my playstyle. It's unusual so you need to know it to understand my journal. I'm an ESAK type if I do that RPG test. I'm also casual, not only in playing times but also in style. I do not feel I have to gain experience every second ingame, I'm known for fooling around for hours without gaining a single point of experience. Other times I can do a rush for the next level but rarely for more than a couple of hours. I'm a soloer but will not turn down invites to groups, that is fun too. (Exception, unsolicited invites are always rejected.) Items are fun to loot, craft and buy but I do not feel I have to have the best items possible unless the game forces me to. I'm also a roleplayer and will always roleplay if others are doing it.
As an explorer I like to run around in the world to see new places. Even at the cost of capital punishment. The death system in EQ2 makes this possible, you don't have to do a corpse run if it is impossible. I will of course be gimped for 3 days but that is a reasonable punishment for being a tad too brave.
Dein.
Back in August I started a highelf priest with the name Dein. This is the story about him.
So, somehow I was picked up from the sea by the crew on a boat called The Far Journey. There I was with only rags on my highelven body, wet and miserable. The Captain greeted me and welcomed me on board. He promised me to set me ashore on the Island of Refuge but during the time I was told to do some simple taska onboard to earn my living until we arrive to the island. I spent the time killing rats when suddenly a imprisoned goblin came free and ran around on the boat. The Captain oredered me to kill the goblin and to my surprise I managed to do it. The captain rewarded me with a pair of nice gloves.
Finally the boat arrived to the Isle of Refuge. I wondered what would happen now when a guard spoke to me. He told me that there is a goblin invasion going on and needed all help he could find to fight back. He gave me a weapon and some food and set me off. I wandered around a bit searching for the frontier and found it. Sure enough, a lot of invaders came in an endless stream towards the gate and people had a hard time killing them. I joined the fight and killed a lot of invaders until I got tired.
I returned to the guard and he was pleased and rewarded me with coins and a pair of nice pants. He then told me to seek up a priest and speak to her about what to do next. So I walked away on the beach and found a shell and kept it just in case it could be useful. I found the priest and she immediately gave me a task. I was told to find some goblin mystics and destroy their totems since they aided the invasion with the magical powers from these. So I went off to find them. After hours I finally found where they had the hideout and saw a lot of totems. I smited the totems into oblivion and the mystics, angry over this tried to kill me in revenge but weak as they were I finished them off too. Satisfied with the result I returned to the priest to inform her about the successful task. She told me to seek up the bank where she had placed a reward. So I did and sure enough, after opening an account I found a pair of nice boots there. I returned to the priest and thanked her for the boots only to be given another task. The main camp of the goblins had been found and help was needed to invade it and retrieve their weapons. So I set off to the camp, joined in the siege and killed many a goblin. When I had collected enough weapons I returned to the priest and she now rewarded me with a really nice tunic.
After this I decided to explore the island to see what I could find. I found more shells and also found a lady who told me she was interested in collections. I had enough different shells so I offered her the shell collection and she gave me an item for it. Nearby there was a gnome who told me a fantastic story about a submarine boat. He also wanted help to find a few gadgets he lost somewhere so I promised him to search for them. And did he lose them in the weirdest of places? One way up in the mountains in a creek. One at the bottom of the sea. One way into enemy territory so dangerous that I questioned how that gnome could still be alive.
So I continued to explore the island, killing many a goblins until I was told to be worty enough for a free trip to the city of Qeynos. And so I left the island for Qeynos.
I arrived in a village called Castleview Hamlet. It was obviously the home for highelf refugees and for some reason also the home for the very few Frogloks left. Here, I was told that her Higness Antonica Bayle gave away complimentary apartments for us refugees so I seeked up the Inn and got myself an apartment. Not the shiniest room in the world but what did I expect? There was a maid in the room speaking to me when I entered. The maid told me to go out and familiarize myself with the village, gave me a few basic furnitures which I thanked her for. She also told me that I had to prove myself to become a citizen of Qeynos. Uh, oh. Didn't I prove this on the island already? No. Her Highness had a couple of tasks to do before this. I ripped an application note from a sign in the village and read it. It said I had to go down in the Down Below, the sewers of Qeynos. Urf. Well, I climbed down and found the place full of vermins so I disposed off as many as I could find. I went back up to the sign with my application and the first task fulfilled only to be sent to a person telling me to judge a few persons to find out if they were true traitors or not. So I did, I went further inside and met a Freeport mole. Wondering what a Freeport mole was doing here I killed him. I found another person and asked her about her. She was regretful and wanted to go back to Qeynos so after a promise not to defect again I let her go. Then I found a monk and I asked him about things. Speaking to him for a while it was obvious that he was trying to bribe me so I executed him for this. The last person in the room was a cute lady. What was this cute lady doing here? Was she really a traitor? Well, I asked her a few things and she had some trouble answering them. She was obvioulsy not happy whit this so she suddenly turned into a darkelf. A shapeshifter! We went into a hard fight which I won with wounds so bad I was down on my knees and had to use all healing powers I had to survive. Wondering what was up next I returned to the person at the entrance and he welcomed me as a citizen of Qeynos!
Now back to out of character.
The Isle of Refuge was really pleasant as an introduction to the game. There was enough to do for hours including quests, fights both solo and group and even a miniraid encounter. Quests ranged from those given by NPC's, by rightclicking items, by looting items and examining them and picking up items and examining them too. You can even buy quest starting items from the merchant there.
The villages around Qeynos are full of quests, all from simple errands within the same village to more complicated multistage quests. There are quests asking you to kill stuff, find places, find items, find NPC's. My character Dein is now a level 14 druid and a level 9 artisan. He has around 100 completed quests so far and the journal is full of quests to do. There is almost too many quests, many have turned grey during the time but are still possible to complete. The trivial loot code does not affect quests.
Items are important in the game, you should always try to have level appropiate items equipped. This is not so difficult as one may think, if you are missing drops from mobs you can always buy a reasonable item from a merchant or a better from an artisan. Dropped loot is more rare than in other games and coin never drops. Thus money is hard to come by and the copper coin is actually worth something. You are rich if you have a gold coin. The main source for coin is to sell loot to merchants or other players and as rewards for quests. Quests are also a very good source for experience, some of them are worth a level of it. I will not reveal which, it's too good to be spoiled.
Instancing works fairly well, some of the newbie zones spawn a new instance when there are too many players in them, thus reducing overcrowding a lot. It's easy to go to an instance of choice so you are not separated from friends but at times, an instance will not let you in because it is full. A new phenomenon I call instance jumping some players are doing to harvest resources or find named encounters exists, I can't really form an opinion about it yet but it does not feel good.
Some recommendations; stay on the island as long as possible, you should be level 6 before you leave. You can fill the experience bar until you can't get more experience, that is around 200% worth of experience in level 6. Artisans will find a lot of the dropped recipe books up to and including volume 9 on the island. Artisans should do the artisan quest available there too.
EQ2 suits me with my play style. I see it as a journey to the highest level where I have fun on all levels. For me, the 'end game' starts at level 7, not 50. There are even raid encounters on all levels, there is really no reason to rush the game. Those of you who rush through the game will miss most of it and I think EQ2 is not a game for that playstyle.
Soloing is very possible, there are encounters on all levels I have played for the soloer. The experience difference for solo versus grouping is large, way too large in my opinion. Solo experience is really slow but can be compensated somewhat by doing quests.
All in all, it's a great game but I have a few issues. Quests are a little too spoonfed for an explorer like me. I would like the NPC conversations to be more complex, eventually leading to different quests depending on the convo. I would also like more complex multistage quests, there are too few now.
The classes are too similar. I would like to see some difference in skills and spells even by just the name. As it is now, all priest classes have the same smite and healing all the way to almost level 20. It would have been better if the classes got unique spells at level 10 with different names and spell effects as replacements even if they did the exact same thing.
Resources for artisans to create better items are too rare, way too rare. As an example, the Adept level of spells need a rare component, one of Bronze cluster, Raw Lapis Lazuli or Copper. During all these weeks of play I have found 3 lapis lazuli and 1 bronze and I have harvested a LOT. This is not good, as an artisan I'm not even bothering about crafting Adept spells to sell unless the customer supplies the rare himself.
The players have EQLive etched into their brains. They expect EQLive in new clothes and play as if it was. It isn't. It's a totally different game. You don't solo to 20 just to get rid of the levels. You don't twink and powerlevel, there is no reason to. You don't rush to 50 thinking the game begins there. If you are this kind of player you will not be happy with EQ2 unless you adapt to it.
My last issue with the game is from a casual point of view. It is fully possible to play it as a casual, but expect it to be very slow. Too slow in my opinion. There are a couple of bones for casuals, the death system is experience debt and it decays slowly if you log off. Most of the debt is gone the day after. Most quests are soloable and if you have a quest needing a group it isn't difficult to find groups on the same quest. But I would like to see a little better experience for soloing.
To sum it up: it's a game I will play for a while. It suits me and my playstyle. EQLive could not support my style and I got tired of that game. I have played others but the only game close to this is Anarchy Online.
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