Kids in the Guild Hall

There we stood out in front of the Halas guild hall door, money in hand, a buying decision to be made.

The Halas Guild Hall Door

I had insisted on the Halas guild hall.

First, Halas seems to be a lot more lively than Qeynos, chopped into so many little zones, and a lot less prone to falling deaths than Kelethin, up there in the trees.

Second, The guild hall in Halas is right next to the broker, the bank, other player housing, and other things that are nice to have close to hand.  Yes, we could but guild hall amenities to replace most of those things, but we are only allowed so many at level 30 and they can be pricey.

And finally, I just picked the rent free five room Halas house as my Legends of Norrath choose your loot reward. (I guess you had to be active in LoN before the outage to get that card, as nobody else I know got one, but none of them had opened up LoN before.)  So I was committed to the neighborhood.

Gaff, who had been sitting outside the Qeynos level 1 guild hall waiting for me to log in, consented to the choice of locations and showed up with the cash to get us in the door.

Just 50 Platinum

I clicked “buy” and in we went.

The Halas guild hall, unlike the player housing in the area, is exactly the same as the Qeynos guild hall, so far as I could recall.  That was mildly disappointing, since I like the Halas housing, but not all that big of a deal.

Gaff had enough on him for us to buy the gatherer hireling from the list of trade skill amenities.  That was another 20 plat plus 2 million status points.  It is a good thing that status copies over from EQ2 Live.

That added to our weekly rent, but I was hoping we could cover the cash part of hit by selling some of the harvesting take on the broker.  Then I figured we could reduce the status overhead with some house and guild items.

Gaff dropped off a couple of crafting stations he had then logged off.

I went looking for some good house items.

I laid out a few items that had big status reduction values, 500 to 1,000.  Then I looked at the access panel to see how much of a dent I had made.

The items made no dent at all.

6 items, no reduction

It appears, after some digging around, that status reducing house items only reduce the status upkeep costs on personal housing.

And you can accuse me of being optimistic, but when I read the description on these items, the idea that they work only on personal housing does not leap to mind.

Rent Status Reduction... except for guild halls

Live and learn I suppose.

Potshot showed up and began laying out a few items of his own with the very same idea, including the marble effigy of Al’Kabor, which I immediately christened “El Kabong!”

Inspecting El Kabong

He had the same “you’re kidding, right” reaction to the status reduction thing, so I feel a bit vindicated in my expectations.  I suppose we should have checked with Karen of the mighty guild Revelry and Honor on the Guk server (and also at Massively of late… and whom I have actually met in person), of which I think most of us are still members, if not members in good standing.  I think Reynaldo Fabulous isn’t the lowest possible rank in the RnH, but he is pretty close.

Anyway, she would know the answers to our guild questions.  RnH has quite a guild hall.

Potshot and I ran around putting up items here and there.  Since there was a lot of space, we went for the “big as possible” theme for items.  Hold down the shift key and you can use the scroll wheel to make your house items huge.

Then Mrs. Potshot showed up.  She is actually interested in decorating the guild hall and was, I suppose, keen to find out exactly what we were up to.

Some pictures

I was unable to convince her that these pictures were scenes from The Good Earth.

I am also pretty sure that the Firiona Vie picture was a bit too much.

Never too much Firiona!

Note the giant (ogre size, in Potshot’s terms) bonsai along the wall.  We were definitely on a “bigger is better” kick.

Still, aside from some of our more egregious decorating faux pas, she seemed to like the place.  I’m not sure she got all the details on the cost, but she was happy.

Our own loan crisis looms?

We will have to see if we can come up with the weekly toll for the place.

I think, if we stay committed to the game, it will not be a big issue.  The first few rounds of harvested roots covered the cash side of another weeks rent.  But we’ll probably have to look into doing some heritage quests along with the usual writs to build up some status points across the group.

SOE Screws Up Again – Bogus Race Pack Lock on Characters Copied to EQ2X

I got an instant message from Gaff earlier in the day.  He said that characters he had copied over to EverQuest II Extended, characters that contributed greatly to our dash to guild level 30, now appeared to be locked.

The message given, “You do not own the appropriate race pack for this character.”

So as soon as I got home, I checked my own account.

Sure enough, one of my characters has been locked as well.

Score another blow against SOE.  The EQ2X forums are… well, I won’t say lit up, as they tend to be pretty quiet and heavily moderated… but it is a key topic of discussion at the moment.

Even when you select the character in question, the play button is grayed out.

However, it seems that if you simply select the character in question and hit the enter key on your keyboard, you can still log the character into the game.

I petitioned the issue and got a very quick response.

This is GM Dratanico in response to your petition. There is currently an issue where some privileges are not working correctly on players accounts in regards to toons and their races. We are aware of this problem and are working to find out what the issue is. Please be patient while this issue is further investigated and please hang in there for us. Keep an eye on our patch notes for more information on when this will be fixed. Until then if you need any other assistance please feel free to let us know and we will do our best to help you out further.

A pity they didn’t mention the enter key solution.  Just the usual “we’re working on it, please be patient” boiler plate.  I fear we have had a lot of that over the last few weeks.

So the error seems to be primarily visual, but it will no doubt lead to a load of petitions and support calls… and more bad feelings about SOE.