MMO-Symposium

An expansion at my own pace

Yetian — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:17:01 +0000

It’s been a while now since Sentinel’s Fate was released and as you can see from previous posts I’ve been exploring the first zone while questing and crafting.

I am now at the point where I’m not far from finishing the quests in Sundered Frontier and I have enjoyed the quests so far. I think the main reason for this is unlike the Ruins of Kunark expansion I’ve been taking things a bit slower. When RoK the last level increase expansion was released my main character Yetian was my entire focus and as a result I rose through the levels pretty quickly.

This time around with Sentinel’s Fate I am playing both Yetian and my Warlock Naitey. Yetian as you know is questing through Sentinel’s Fate while Naitey is currently questing in the Moors of Ykesha. I only quested through the Moors on Yetian and as a result it’s still fresh enough to make it a new experience almost with Naitey.

As a result both characters are going through the levels at a slower pace and I’m happier with this, returning to my old way of playing characters. I’m also playing both of them in guild groups depending on what character is needed.

Sure there is the disadvantage of possibly falling behind other guild healers and then not getting Yetian in groups as often, but to be honest with the amount of higher level healers we have, that happens anyway to give everyone a fair chance.

Yetian is currently level 84 with Naitey behind on level 81 so both have plenty of questing and grouping to go. I haven’t even reached the second zone Stonebrunt Highlands yet.

How about the rest of you EQ2′ers? How are you finding the new expansion after a month or so of playing?

Sentinel’s Fate – The Hole Part 1

Yetian — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:55:49 +0000

Today’s pictoral tour of the new Everquest 2 expansion Sentinel’s Fate is The Hole. Those of you who played Everquest will remember the hole, things have changed.

It’s a nice zone though and as Keoq one of our members commented, it’s nice to see other people in a dungeon type zone.

I won’t go into details of what each pic is as I was healing at the time and didn’t have time to note areas down. As there are many heroic ^^^ mobs in the hole I couldn’t really go back and take notes.

Instead, here is your chance to tour the hole with neXus. Your guides for the tour are Yetian, Milkyjoe, Urstrix, Katary, Gotchi and Keoq.

Tinkering maxed again

Yetian — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:32:08 +0000

Well as I’m now a level 90 tailor (wooo me), I’m also able to reach max tinkering. It took me all of an hour or so to hit that max taking my tinkering in total from 400 to 450.

The best item I’ve been able to make is the Hotwired Gnomish Hoverpad which you can see in the image above. It’s a 68% speed mount which means I don’t have to go and do those Ice faction quests which I never got round to. It did require 4 (maybe 5) brellium ore’s which i bought from the broker. I have been trying to harvest all my rares but I just had to buy those to make the Hoverpad.

Granted I might run at 67.5% solo but 5% of that is with my bogstrutter charm item, so that can now go.

Other items I can now make include:

10 charge versions of the portable trading tables

Cranial Capacitors for the various crafting trees which add to craft skill levels

Portable Harvesting Depot so you can now have a guild hall style harvesting depot in your house. This also requires about 5 Brellium Ore.

A shiny new firework

A beholder type illusion item

A new improved Feign Death item

A couple of dumfire pets

There are probably more I’ve forgotten. If your on Splitpaw and you need anything give me a shout.

As I said I’ve also reached level 90 tailor and there are a few nice items in the new recipes. 40 slot backpacks are popular with my guild, I’ve made a nice new cloak for myself and a couple of guildies. If I remember right they had about 4.8% crit and around the same reuse speed boost. The master crafted armour isn’t bad really either, as most of the sets seem to have a lot of reuse and critical bonus boosts on them.

Sundered Frontier Tour – Part 1

Yetian — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:48:16 +0000

I have had a few days to wander around Sundered Frontier, the first overland zone in the newly released Everquest expansion Sentinel’s Fate. During my exploration of the new zone I’ve taken a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure. This is just part 1 of Yetian’s Sundered Frontier tour, as I’ve yet to explore parts of the zone. The pics I’ve taken so far are of the area’s or creature’s I’ve encountered while questing.

The first pic is of the appearance armour set you can claim after purchasing sentinel’s fate. It was about time Yetian had a new look and I think it fits him well. The annoying neck bits vanish when you place a head slot item on your head. I have used the free station cash you get with the expansion (I won’t pay for those damn credits), to buy a new hat.

Anyway, enough about Yetian where are the pics?

The first area you zone into if you go to Sundered Frontier via a Wizards portal is a spire. It’s also the only area I’ve explored that I haven’t taken a pic of, so you’ll have to take my word that it’s a wizard spire surrounded by rocks.

After leaving the spire area you are greeted with the sight of Paineel the Erudite City on Odus.

The images below show various views of the city. The 3rd image is one of the two lifts which you can use to leave the city itself and venture out into the surrounding area.

There are two ways to leave the city of Paineel, as well as the two lifts there is also a launchpad area. The launchpad allows you to fly to various locations in the zone in the same way as you can when exploring the Barren Sky.

The last couple of pics I have for you are of the inhabitants of Sundered Frontier, I should probably take more of these so look out for them in the next installment of my tour.

I hope you enjoyed the first part of my Sundered Frontier tour, I’ll take more pics as I travel around the zone and post them in the near future.

Battleground Europe – More on Axis equipment

Yetian — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:08:47 +0000

I’ve now played a few Campaign’s since swapping to Axis with some of my squad and our new squad the SODS plan to stay there for at least the next campaign.

One of my new favourite unit types is the 232 armoured vehicle. It’s a very wobbly but very fast armoured car with an AP/HE firing main gun and a machine gun to back it up.

The picture here is what was left of a Bedford truck I blew apart as it tried to head to an FB I was defending.

The 232 doesn’t stand up to anti tank gun fire or heavy rounds of any kind. It can be destroyed by an anti tank rifle, a well place rifle shot from close range and as with any armour, satchel charges.

So you might think, why would I want to drive round in an armoured car that can be taken down so easily?

Well the 232 is fast, fun to drive, with guns that can chew up EI, anti tank guns, trucks and other small armoured cars like the Panhard with ease. Hell I even got a kill on a Stuart tank by ramming AP rounds into the side of it’s turret.

If your playing Axis for the first time, give them a go. Sure they are no replacement for a well armoured and heavy gunned tank, but they have their place on the battlefield as fast attack cars. The other day myself and a few of the SODS flew through an underpass in the centre of a town as the attack was at a bit of a stalemate. We drove right through the enemy guns and infantry, swung around and decimated everything in the way. Granted there were no heavy tanks in the way at that time and a couple of the SODS died in the melee, but we managed to stop the enemy spawning and allow our infantry to capture the CP. We then drove into the Army Base and helped suppress the infantry inside.

I’ll be posting about other equipment types soon, but for now, get in your wobbly beast and head off onto the battlefield.

Sentinel’s Fate – I’ve got mine

Yetian — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:48:41 +0000

It’s that time again, the new Everquest 2 expansion Sentinel’s fate is released on Monday 16th (head start date).

I had an email last night from DLgamer so I’ve bought my copy from them via Digital download pre-order.

Here’s the link in case anyone else wants it:

Sentinel’s Fate Digital Download Pre order from DL gamer

It’s not an affiliate link or anything similar, just thought I’d let you know where I bought mine.

LEGO!

Wodge — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:30:26 +0000

Personally, i’ve been looking forward to this for ages, but at long last LEGO UNIVERSE BETA IS STARTING SOON!

Click here to head to the beta sign up page.

Looking likely to be a blockier version of Second Life with much less filth and more JOYOUS HAPPY BLOCKS OF WIN!

Sorry, just loved Lego as a kid.

Sentinel’s Fate Digital Download for none US customers

Yetian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:23:02 +0000

SOE have finally announced a Digital download version of Sentinel’s Fate will be available to none US customers. It seems that the download will be available from 2-3 sites and should be made available on February 16th.

I would say I’m surprised that it has taken SOE so long to announce this, but I’m actually more surprised they have announced it at all. We all know Sony Online Entertainment are not known for their concern for European Customer’s so someone somewhere must have spotted they were losing out on cash.

I’ll be buying my digital download when it’s available as it’s one less box I’ll have to find room for on my shelves.

MMOsite – Reader’s Choice Awards 2009

Yetian — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:33:19 +0000

Over at MMOsite they are running voting for their reader’s choice MMO awards for 2009. We have our own voting page for you to head over and cast you vote, there are various prizes that can be won for casting you vote including WoW game time, vouchers and a mystery big prize.

As MMOsite is a site mostly about free mmo’s it’s not suprising that the votes so far are going the way of various free to play titles, though there are voting options for all the popular pay to play MMO titles.

Head over to the MMO-Symposium Custom Voting Page and cast your vote.

Everquest 2 Battlegrounds

Yetian — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:18:31 +0000

I just received an email from Sony regarding Everquest 2 Battlegrounds. There are 3 PvP maps with either 6 or 24 players on each side. The type of matches announced are Capture the Flag, Tower capture and hold, as well as having to find and hold onto a relic of some kind.

Everquest 2 Battlegrounds

Apparently we wanted it so we’ve got it, according to SOE.

Personally I don’t remember asking for it but some people must have done, that or an SOE dev did. Either way another try at PvP is coming to EQ2.

The first attempt was the arena’s in Freeport and Qeynos, something I’ve tried but like most people gave up on after a couple of matches.

SOE’s second try at PvP in Everquest 2 was to create PvP servers. I did have a character on one of the servers and it was fun for a while but it simply wasn’t busy enough to make it fun long term. Other players must have had the same opinion as Sony closed down the European server. This means as a European Everquest player you have to change your launcher to the US server selection and play on a US PvP server.

For their 3rd attempt at PvP they have added rewards such as Chaos armour. This does offer a carrot to players but as of yet there are no details about the armour itself. Will it be appearance only? Will it be stat gear? I guess I’ll have to play the new zones to find out.

Granted I’ll probably try these new PvP area’s with my guild, well at least the 6 player a side versions. Will I be playing them on a regular basis? I doubt it, but you never know they might turn out to be a better implementation of PvP than previously attempted by SOE in Everquest 2.