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Rash Generalizations or Why Are You So Defensive? March 18, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment, General.
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Englishman: I don’t really like the Welsh.  A nation of whores and rugby players the Welsh!

Neighbor: My mother was Welsh.

Englishman: Really… What position did she play?

-Paraphrased from Dave Allen at Large

I’m going to pick on Syp for a moment because he sent out a tweet that illustrates one of those basic problems we face when talking about games.

Of course, I’m a WoW player and felt I was being unjustly accused of being defensive.

Which made for a self-fulfilling prophecy as I was then feeling defensive for being accused of being defensive merely because I play WoW.

But I still felt he was wrong, tarring a player base of millions of people with a trait to which they neither demonstrably share nor hold any exclusivity over.

In this situation there is always the temptation to reply in kind.

Syp plays Rift!  And I am going to guess that this tweet had something to do with Rift and WoW.

Oh, and SynCaine plays Rift!  And so does Bhagpuss!  And none of them play WoW!

It is a conspiracy!

The Rift player base is made up of WoW haters!  I find it amusing how Rift players all hate WoW!

And look how defensive they are!  See those Rift players going after Tobold for saying he doesn’t want to play Rift.  Defensive! Totally!

And so on and so forth.

But that would just be demonstrating that the same silly coin has two sides.  And while it serves as a quick attention getting device, it hardly changes anybody’s mind about anything.

So, on the list of rules for being taken seriously as a member of the community, right after the one about not pretending you speak for the community as a whole, can we put in something about not generalizing about a given community?

Players of a given game are not a mass of like thinking/ like acting people.  If we were, we wouldn’t get on each others nerves so much in game, now would we?

Of course, this rule would be covered by the umbrella clause that allows use in special circumstances, such as attempts to make a point via humorous or satirical means. (Appropriate tagging is still recommended.)

We must, after all, protect our peers who eschew the simple declarative sentence and who choose instead to communicate solely via over-wrought analogy or heavy sarcasm.

Norrathian Scavenger Hunt March 18, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
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It looks like the low level armor quests are in for my two characters, a bard and an enchanter, as well as for Potshot’s paladin and druid.  So for much of this week we have put off the experience grind in favor of completing these quests, each of which give you a full set of armor and a weapon when done.

Seeking out these items is a bit of a scavenger hunt.

For example, to wrap up the bard armor quest in Qeynos, the Wind Spirits Armor quest line, you end up with quite a list of  items to obtain, which seem to fall into three categories.

There is the raw element needed for all of the recipes.  For the bard it is this:

  • 20 – Brick Of Crude Iron Ore

These drop off of gnolls in and around Blackburrow, so are easy enough to find, though they are a pain to accumulate as they weigh 15 lbs. and cause you to become encumbered after picking up only one or two.

There there are the standard vendor items that you can pick up around town at any time.  Again, for the bard quest these are.

  • 1 – Arrow
  • 1 – Bottle
  • 1 – Honey Mead
  • 1 – Throwing Spear

And then there is the Scavenger Hunt.  These items all drop off of mobs.  Some of them you can find at vendors in the area, having been sold for coin by people who did not need them, while others are flagged as No Drop and thus have to be looted from the mob in question by you personally.

  • 1 – Bandit Sash
  • 1 – Bat Fur
  • 1 – Black Wolf Tooth
  • 2 – Blackburrow Gnoll Pelt
  • 1 – Brown Bear Femur
  • 1 – Coyote Skull
  • 1 – Diseased Wolf Pelt
  • 1 – Giant Fire Beetle Carapace
  • 1 – Giant Spider Egg Sack
  • 1 – Gnoll Backbone
  • 2 – Gnoll Pelvis
  • 1 – Gnoll Scoutsman Documents
  • 1 – Greater Cat Tooth
  • 1 – Lock Of Scarecrow Straw
  • 1 – Low Quality Bear Skin
  • 1 – Matted Greater Cat Pelt
  • 2 – Ruined Wolf Pelt
  • 2 – Spider Legs
  • 2 – Vial Of Gnoll Blood
  • 1 – Woven Spider Silk
  • 1 – Young Puma Skin

The No Drop items seem to be spread out so that each recipe has one, so you cannot work completely from the vendors in your area.

Via some aggressive shopping (I covered all the vendors in West Karana, North Karana, and East Karana), and only a bit of mob camping, I have been able to make two bracers, the boots, and the breast plate for Tistann.  The armor is… bright emerald green.

Bard turning slowly green

The nice thing though is that, when you make the chest item for your quest, you also get offered the quest for the weapon that goes with the set, which in my case was the Wind Spirits Longsword.

That sword might be one of the best looking I have seen so far in the game.

Tistann's new blade

The design is simple and functional, taking the form of a katana.

I am somewhat stuck on the coyote skull, the young puma skin, and the giant fire beetle carapace, none of which I have seen anywhere.  And then there is the diseased wolf pelt, which seems to drop quite regularly off of rabid wolves in Qeynos Hills, only they are a pretty rare spawn.  I count myself lucky to have gotten one so far.

The Qeynos armor quest for my enchanter, the Arcane Order Armor, has a likewise long list of items to obtain.  The magic users, magicians, enchanters, and wizards all get the same quest.  It is no wonder nobody can tell them apart on site.

Thrall looking for some clothes

For Thrall’s quests, the basic item for each recipe is:

  • 20 – Woven Spider Silks

Those are easy enough to find hunting spiders out in West Karana.

And the vendor items… well… they make more sense than perhaps some of the bard items.  An arrow and a bottle?  Really?

  • 1 – Cloth Cap
  • 1 – Cloth Sandals
  • 1 – Cloth Shirt
  • 1 – Cloth Sleeves
  • 1 – Cloth Wristband

And then, again, there is the Scavenger Hunt:

  • 1 – Bandit Sash
  • 1 – Fire Beetle Leg
  • 1 – Giant Fire Beetle Carapace
  • 1 – Giant Fire Beetle Eye
  • 1 – Giant Fire Beetle Leg
  • 2 – Giant Whiskered Bat Eyes
  • 1 – Gnoll Jawbone
  • 2 – Gnoll Pup Scalps
  • 1 – Golden Bandit Tooth
  • 2 – Large Myotis Bat Ear
  • 1 – Matted Lion Pelt
  • 1 – Medium Quality Bear Skin
  • 1 – Puma Skin
  • 1 – Rabid Wolf Hide
  • 1 – Shadow Wolf Paw
  • 2 – Snake Eggs
  • 1 – Spider Legs

There is that giant fire beetle carapace again, and a rabid wolf pelt, which I am going to guess also only drops from rabid wolves in Qeynos Hills.  And then there is the medium quality bear skin, which Potshot also needs, and which does not appear to be a drop or vendor trash, but a crafted item.

Tistann had one of those as well, the low quality bear skin, but I managed to find one of those by searching all of the tailoring vendors.  We shall see if luck strike again in that regard.  If not, Thrall may have to take up tailoring, which will mean that Tistann might have to continue on with smithing since you need skinning knives to work on hides.

So far I have not been able to complete any of the recipes for Thrall, so he has no new armor to show off.  But I suspect Potshot and I will spend some time this weekend trying to outfit our team.

World of Tanks to go Live on April 12th – Will it be Sticky? March 17, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft.
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Wargaming.net announced this morning that the go live date for World of Tanks will be April 12th of this year.

Tanks, and a world there of

The key part of the press release:

World of Tanks Release Date Announced

London (17th March, 2011) — Wargaming.net is glad to announce today that its highly-anticipated free-to-play action MMO game World of Tanks is set to launch on 12th April, 2011 in Europe and North America.

With this announcement, the company reports World of Tanks to be gradually entering the release phase after nine successive months of closed and open beta testing that let the game recruit an impressive number of players building up a strong and responsive community that helped the development team enhance and polish the game by providing valuable feedback and reporting issues.

World of Tanks is one of the most recognizable vehicle-based MMO games where players fight action-packed battles driving historically accurate WWII-era armored machines. The game’s stunning graphics, destructible environments, a wide variety of military hardware with a vast choice of upgrade options along with captivating and well-balanced gameplay make it a must-try for almost every gamer.

“Our team has been working really hard to create a unique blend of action, strategy, simulation and RPG elements in World of Tanks, and now the moment all fans across the globe have been waiting for is right around the corner”, said Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net. “We are delighted to be finally announcing the release date for this ground-breaking title and invite all veteran players and those new to the game to enjoy tense and uncompromising armored warfare on World of Tanks battlegrounds”.

Now, the usual press release puffery is obviously in play here.

I am totally with them when they speak of stunning graphics, because the game does look very good.  And bits of the terrain are, in fact, destructible.  It can be quite satisfying to bowl through some poor peasants cottage at full speed with your BT-7.  And they do have quite an array of hardware and upgrades.  You could spend a lot of time getting yourself to your “perfect” vehicle.

Well-balanced gameplay is a tough one.  When player skill is involved, it is tough to judge balance and you hear a lot of people griping about a lack of balance, especially when a match goes badly for one side.

It seems, to me, to be about as balanced as one can hope for… and the random match making system does pretty well at putting together roughly equal teams.  Often one hot shot can dominate a match, and then the complaints start.  But that doesn’t seem, to me, to be a balance question so much as a variation in skill.  You will run into a virtual Michael Wittmann now and again.

My main my concern about the game is if there is enough there to keep people interested long term.  Right now the random team on team match can be a lot of fun, but I could see the “do a match, collect points, do a match, collect points” become a drag over time.

To that end, Wargaming.net has also announced the beta for their Clan Wars feature, which is supposed to give the game more strategic depth, and which they describe as “Unprecedented.”  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The world of the tanks

The key quotes about clan wars, from yet-another-press-release

Clan Wars concept revolves around the Global Map divided into a number of provinces each providing a particular revenue stream, with hundreds of clans fighting for gaining control over them. Comprehensive diplomatic and economic systems will provide a wide array of options to wage war for global domination not only on tank battlefields but at bargaining tables as well.

“Clan Wars is not just a new game mode, but rather a separate gameplay layer or meta-game designed to provide years of fun and action for those fond of strategy thinking, politics, alliances and intrigues,” said Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net. “We’re very excited to start enrolling people now thus making the launch of the Clan Wars closer.”

You learn that whole “every press release must have a manufactured quote from the CEO” when you get your degree in marketing.

Now how this will work out, and how it will affect the average player who may or may not be a member of a clan, we shall see.  I fully expect to see the Goons create a clan and dominate any meta game that might actually occur. (And why is there no Wikipedia entry on the Goons?)

If the clan wars thing interests you… and your friends presumably… you can sign up to be in the beta for either the North American server or the European server.

For me, the open beta has been fun and I have been happy that Wargaming.net has resisted the temptation to take money during a beta, unlike so many other companies. (e.g. EA with Battlefield Heroes or Zynga with… well… everything they have ever done.)

I do hope they can give the game more depth.  Right now it is a fun game to pick up and play for an hour, and I enjoy it a lot, but I could see myself easily deferring playing it for something with which I am more deeply involved at the moment.

Something like the EverQuest Progression server.

I haven’t played a lot of World of Tanks since that launched.

If You Had Asked Me 12 Years Ago… March 16, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment, World of Warcraft.
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EverQuest is 12 years old today.  Did I mention that already?

As I have noted in the past, and will no doubt mention again many times in the future, I ran down to Fry’s on this date 12 years back, bought my copy of EverQuest, and went home to play it that night.  I still have the receipt from Fry’s showing the time and date when I bought my copy.

If you had asked me 12 years ago while I was there, in-game, on the night EverQuest launched, if I would be playing the game today, I am pretty sure I would have said yes.

The game was new and fresh and new and I was very excited about it.  I am sure that in that rush of (relatively) youthful enthusiasm, I would have said that I could play EverQuest forever.

On the other hand, if you had asked me that same question 8 years ago, I am equally sure that I would have said no.  I had worn out the game… or it had worn me out.  Either way, I had had my fill and didn’t really want to play it any more.  My life had grown more complex (marriage, house, child) and I was more interested in TorilMUD then, one of EQ’s key progenitors, or the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.

And over the last 5 years or so, the answer would have vacillated.  I have gone through fits of nostalgia where I have dragged out old characters and tried to see the game again.  And I have spent an equal amount of time convinced that there is no going home again, that there is no return to the excitement that was EverQuest back in 1999.

But things ebb and flow and suddenly now, at the 12 year mark, I am playing the game again and having quite a good time.

It isn’t the same, day one experience.  You can never recapture that.  But it is a really good nostalgia run.

Part of it is, of course, the Fippy Darkpaw progression server.  EverQuest Live today, after 17 expansions, often feels like too much game for me to catch up with.  I actually own all 17 expansions, though thankfully I did not have to buy them all individually.  SOE nicely rolled up all past expansions in a couple of releases.

But if I have been into areas that were part of more than 6 of those expansions, I would be surprised.  EverQuest has such a huge and sprawling world and I have seen a surprisingly small amount of it.

The progression server cuts that back to just the lands I know by heart.  And those lands are both populated and populated by players who are not all 80 levels ahead of me.  You can, you know, actually find a group now and again or find some help when you really need it or get a random buff now and again. (Drive-by buffing is one of the things that EQII mistakenly tried to kill.)

And so for these last few weeks I have been far more likely to be camped out in West Karana than in the new lands of Azeroth.

Fun with Bandits

Of course, that screen shot also illustrates the other key factor to why I am playing on and enjoying the Fippy Darkpaw server.  That is Potshot and his two characters out camping bandits with me.

Having somebody to play with regularly is always a key motivator for me, and Potshot and I seem to be on a semi-regular 9pm-10pm weeknight schedule which allows us just enough time to accomplish something.  That is the cornerstone of this return to Norrath.

And so we carry happily on in a game we were both playing 12 years ago.

How will this all seem another 8-12 years down the line?

Happy 12th Anniversary EverQuest! March 16, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest, Sony Online Entertainment.
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It has been 12 years since EverQuest launched.  It went live 12 years ago this evening.

As a way of remembering this launch, I have… um… borrowed the 12 pictures that SOE used for their EverQuest 12 Year Anniversary Contest (now over and I did not win) over on the SOE Facebook Page as they provide a quick look at some of the high level facts about the game and all the expansions they released.

You can click on the individual pictures to see them full size.

There are also some amusing tidbits on the pictures (like how many wolves in game versus dogs) and, of course, the trivia questions.

I couldn’t answer most of them without looking them up.  How about you?

To Get Rich in Norrath is Glorious March 15, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
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Okay, maybe we didn’t get rich, but my characters have quite a bit more money.

Thanks to some of the advice on the last post on the topic of money, we were able to redirect our efforts and end up with enough cash to catch us up on spells and the like.

Blackburrow is a bit much to two-box solo, at least where stuff is still up at your own level.  I ran in to try that and ended up leading a train to zone in under three minutes.  It was a record I think.

Since I couldn’t find Potshot on initially, I headed out to West Karana to look into bandits.

While there are a couple of spots where only two bandits spawn, they were already camped.  So I took a chance and started hitting the bandits at the farm near tower 2.

The aptly named Bandit Farm

I found that with a little luck with spawn timing, I could hold down the farm with just my bard, my enchanter, and his pet.  Not only was the experience good, but the drops and the coins looted did start adding up pretty quick.  The bronze weapons they sometimes drop are worth anywhere from 1 to 4 plat.  Serious money for somebody with only a plat to play with.

However, a bad spawn… like finding out that there were two casting bandits around the back of the barn… lead to some less successful encounters.

Bandits to Qeynos Hills!

Later on I even found out that, yes, you can still lose a level in EverQuest if you die.  Again, a bad spawn at the bandit farm did the trick.


But that came a bit later.  First Potshot got on and we decided to hit Blackburrow as a team.

Now I had been into Blackburrow a few times with my second guy on follow and seemed to never have a problem with him getting peeled off or falling into anything.  So naturally, the moment we both start into the zone with our second box in tow, both of them managed to fall into a hole within a minute.

This got us separated and we ended up spending the next 15 minutes just finding each other via vague directions and the little green Xs on the map.

Eventually though, the game could not hold us back.  We found a nice little spot and started the gnoll slaughter.

Deep in Blackburrow

Things got a little hectic at first, thanks to the joy of fleeing gnolls running off to bring back friends.  I am sure at one point we had over a dozen gnolls in play.  But most of them were far enough below our level that we managed to keep a lid on things.  Eventually, after that epic battle, we settled down into a sustainable routine.

Gnolls in smaller numbers

Gnolls were not as good experience-wise as bandits, but they all seemed to have pockets full of stuff.  We slew them until we were all heavily encumbered.  We then waddled out of Blackburrow meeting up at the entrance.

Out of Blackburrow

Then it was time for the second part of the money making plan, selling our booty to the right vendor.

For me, that basically meant stop selling to this guy.

Buy cheap, sell dear!

Yes, that is Tubal Weaver, the NPC vendor who stands just inside the gates of Qeynos.  He is the convenience store of NPC vendors; handy and well located, but you pay a price.

In my case, I found that the vendor at the guilds of either of my characters would give me roughly double the amount in coins for any given item.  I am going to have to keep a known price item with me now just to test vendors out in the field.

Anyway, after focusing on that for the weekend, I was able to accumulate enough coins to bring Thrall up to date on his spells, with a good 50 plat surplus between the two of them to cover future levels.

Now, next on my list, is equipment.  Both Tistann and Thrall are wandering Norrath rather under-equipped.  I will have heard conflicting reports on which of the newbie armor quests are in-game at this point.  Potshot has managed to finish a couple of the Paladin quests, so I will have to research the bard and enchanter quests.

KartRider Comes to the US at Last… on Your iPhone March 14, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Misc MMOs.
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A little over three years ago the Nexon game KartRider was in open beta here in the United States.  My daughter and I tried it out and found it reasonably light and enjoyable.

Big Ad on the back of GFW Magazine

It wasn’t quite Mario Kart, but it was a decent game and seemed to have quite a following in Asia with a reported 230 million people having tried the game world wide. (Or is that just 230 million accounts created?)

However, within a few months, the beta closed down and nothing more was heard about a US version of the game.

Open Beta has Ended, See You Some Day...

Apparently it was not a big hit in the US.  It disappeared from the Nexon America site.  That was nearly three years back.

Now, however, Kotaku reports that the game will be coming to the US market after all.  But not on your computer.

Instead it will be available on your iPhone, iPad, iTouch, or Android device.

You will be able to play against three other people in local match ups, and it will hook up to Facebook and the Nexon item shop, where you will be able to buy new tracks and all the car upgrades and customizations.

The odd thing is that online play will not be available.  At least it is not mentioned at all currently.  I can see how you might sell things in the MMO version of the game, but on the mobile device version, where you can only play against three other people locally, or against the CPU, the item shop seems… less compelling.

Still, it is supposed to be a free download from the App Store, with the Apple device version available soon followed by Android support this summer.

Down and Out in Qeynos Hills March 11, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest.
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Our little expedition into EverQuest has advanced a little further.  We have faced a few barriers, such as when Grimfeather spawned right on top of us in North Karana.  That was a bit of a surprised.

A song for departed... me

Actually, the biggest surprise was that two of us survived and made it to the zone.

And there was that stretch when North Karana seemed to be nothing but blue mobs and so the allure of that bridge to East Karana beckoned.

Is the linoleum greener on the other side?

That started out okay.  We did camp for a bit and were able to pick off some scraps that another group, which seemed determined to kill everything in the zone, missed.

A few spiders were left for us

Then, when we were involved in a fight that was already stretching our abilities, a cyclops wandered up and we had to run for it.

Cyclops Attack! Run!

That is Broon, Froon’s little brother or cousin or some such.  He is physically smaller than Froon, who I have mentioned before, being only level 23 to Froon’s 30, but that was enough to make him a hazard to us at level 10.

As you can see, my guys seem to have a head start on the fleeing process.  I think I may have understated the danger.  I typed in that we needed to move because a cyclops was headed our way, when I probably should have just written, “RUN!!!!”

They cyclops pounded Potshot’s guys into mush, while I had enough time to stop and take pictures.

Broon off to stomp somebody else

After Broon, we decided that maybe blues in North Karana were not such a bad deal.

And mobs come in waves.  We cleared out blues and soon more lucrative targets began to show up.  We hit level 11 across the board which, among other things started to open up griffawns to us as potential targets.

A Griffawn attempts to escape us

So all that was well and good.  And then I went back to Qeynos to buy spells.

I had not been thinking too much about money up to this point.  I had enough for my spells previously.

This time around though, I got to the spell vendor and noticed quite a discrepancy between the prices of the spells I wanted to buy and the amount of money I had.

Not much money... or equipment... on Thrall

Spells were 1-2 plat, and Thrall didn’t even have two plat coins to rub together.  And he had to pick up his level 10 and 11 spells.

Fortunately my bard, Tistann, had a bit more, maybe 5 plat total, so when he bought one new song, he handed the rest to Thrall who was able to at least buy a couple of key spells.

But in general, my simply selling to the vendor anything that drops off of mobs does not seem to be bringing in enough to pay the bills.  So I need a plan to bring in a bit more money.

I looked at trade skills for a bit, having seen some people hawking their wares on the auction channel in various zones.  But trade skills need some money invested in them before you can start turning a profit.  Not having the seed money, that does not seem to be the path for me.

I will have to look around and see if there are any mobs out that that we should be hunting that are more lucrative than beetles, lions, and wolves in North Karana.

At level 11, the game had one suggestion.

I wonder if gnolls are well off enough to support my magic habit.

Any other ideas for money out in the Qeynos region?

I have to save up at least enough for Bind Affinity at level 12 so we can travel across Norrath without having to worry about dying and ending up back in Qeynos.

Traveling to the Scarlet Monastery March 10, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest, Instance Group, World of Warcraft.
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There were only four of us on Saturday night.

Which wasn’t a huge surprise.

Due to the new computer negotiations of last autumn, we had resolved to take the first Saturday night of each month off from the instance group.

However my wife and one of her friends were going to the San Jose Sharks game on Saturday night, so there wasn’t much point in me not playing.  And so I checked into World of Warcraft to see who else was on.  I knew at least Potshot would be on, and if it were just the two of us, I was pretty sure we would adjourn to old Norrath for more nostalgia.

In the end though, only Mike, aka Nancyboy, was nowhere to be seen.

So we had a perfectly good group of four, all of whom were level 30.

* Xula – level 30 Gnome warrior
* Earlthedog – level 30 Worgen warrior
* Ethelred – level 30 Worgen druid
* Maloney – level 30 Worgen mage

Technically, that left us without a healer, Nancyboy being a priest.  But we figured we could press Ethelred into healing, even if he wasn’t ready for it.

But what to do with a group of four?

The Dungeon Finder wants nothing to do with the number four, unless you are proceeding to five.  Being the tight group that we are, we were not really keen to have a stranger along just to use the Dungeon Finder.  And those in the guild who were online Saturday night were all too high level to go along with us, at least via the DF.

So when we decided that we ought to give the Library in Scarlet Monastery a try, we knew it would mean some travel.

We were all sitting in Stormwind and discovered that the closest flight path to Scarlet Monastery we had was in Loch Modan.  Some travel indeed.  Time to get flying.

Werewolf on a Griffon - Call the Enquirer!

From there it was a trip on the ground through changed zones and memory lane.  Heading to the Wetlands we all recalled the formerly murderous journey that night elves use to have to take to reach the rest of the Alliance player base.

Whole bunch of Orcs just beyond this tunnel!

We ran across the Wetlands, picking up a couple of flight points, which made us grumble about how easy kids have it these days.  Back in the day we had to run… no mount, no flight points… back and forth across this zone for various quests.

Then it was across the Thandol Span into the Arathi Highlands and to the Refugee Point flight master.  From there it was across the zone to the big wall.

That's a big wall

It is interesting how good the landscape in WoW looks when you’ve been spending your time in old, unimproved EverQuest zones where the place looks like somebody laid some really ugly linoleum on the ground.

Hey, this stuff was totally on sale at Home Depot!

But those big beetles still look totally cool.  And the cardboard cut-out trees!

Anyway, at that big arch in the wall we got our first surprise.

It seems that the Horde has put up some guards.  We ran smack into a group of level 35 sentries.

Momentum seemed to carry us though, and the sentries gave up chasing us before that had killed any of us though it was a near run thing.  We healed up a bit and carried on down the road until we passed a little too close to some more Horde bad guys… guys who only showed up to us as level “skull”… who zipped out and one-shotted Earl and Maloney.

Dead dogs on the road

Ethelred had a ress ready and managed to bring us back to life from a safe distance, but that flagged all the worgen in the group PvP.  Just one more aspect to consider.

From that point on we were more careful, skirting around any likely concentrations of Horde NPCs.

We'll just avoid that camp...

The Foresaken had been busy in South Shore and beyond, throwing up more walls to block passes and narrow strips of land.  We faced a choice.  We found that we could attempt to rush through the checkpoints, hoping to survive the onslaught of guards, or we could WALK THROUGH THE OPEN SPOT AT THE END OF THE WALL.

Each and every wall we faced was easily avoided, all of them ending just shy of keeping us from passing through.  But they sure looked impressive.

We ran on through Trisfal Glades, admiring the sites.

The Undercity Zeppelin Complex

We even remembered to skirt around that one guard outpost where a couple of us used to die every single time we had to run to Scarlet in the old days, and eventually we all arrived.  This is part of the reason why we only used to do one instance on a Saturday night, rather than the two or three that has become our standard.  We used to have to travel…  in the world… where stuff lives.

We found that, with care and a judicious polymorph now and again, we could handle to guardians of the library in Scarlet Monastery.  We actually only ran into trouble with Houndmaster Loksey, the sub-boss that shows up early in the instance.

He has three elite hounds to help him with his fight.  With five of us, even at level 28, the fight was tough but manageable.  With four of us at level 30, we seemed to be juggling just too many balls at once.  We wiped.

More dead dogs... and live dogs

We actually wiped a couple of times.  You can see the bones in the picture above from the previous wipe. (I still think that is a nice touch.)  We did find out that the graveyard for Scarlet Monastery has been moved to practically outside the front door, so running back was very quick.

After the traditional three runs at Loksey, we declared we had given it the old junior college try and decided to bypass him.  Fortunately, he is off the main path in his own side-room, so he is easily avoided.  We carried on.

Having done the library the previous week, we were ready for all of the occupied side rooms and wandering guards that can take a group unawares.  We made it all the way to Arcanist Doan without another death on our part, and took him down on our first attempt.

At the end of the library

As with last week, we checked around the room to see if that chest with the scarlet key was still around.  It appears to be gone and the whole place is unlocked.  I guess you don’t really need a key when most people get instantly teleported to the place.

We had to actually use our hearth stones to get back home.  There was no little button to teleport us back to where we had started the night.  So we recalled and called it a night, travel and a single instance having used up our play time budget for the night.

Next on the lineup for us is the (new) first segment of Maraudon and Razorfen Kraul.  As amusing as the travel was, I think we’ll tackle those two via the Dungeon Finder.

Answer This Question… March 10, 2011

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Humor.
Tags:
4 comments

Sent in from a reader… at least I think he is a reader.

Subject: king sun man.

strategy adventures universe culture happy?

I think he might be an Iain M. Banks fan, but I could be reading too much into the word “culture.”  Plus I haven’t really written a lot about The Culture.

Anyway, I am currently leaning towards “yes” as an answer, though I have not totally discounted “no.”

Maybe he’ll read this and clarify his position.

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