 Bitey the Armoured Highland Stalker mount from EQ2's Sentinel's Fate This is Bitey, Maltheas’ new Armoured Highland Stalker mount that came with the Sentinel’s Fate collector’s edition that I won. It’s very nice, with a 65% speed boost, and a realistic feline run animation that is so bouncy that if I use it for too long I get motion sickness. For looking cool, though, it’s top of the heap of EQ2 mounts at the moment.
EQ2 has a fair variety of mounts. There’s a vast range of horses, bears, and rhinos. Even some flying carpets and magical platforms. As there is a definite progression of mount speeds and buffs, often you outgrow them, but recently we gained the ability to turn unused mounts into house items, so we can still take care of our loyal friends. Here is a family photo of Maltheas’ mounts.
 The Many Mounts of Maltheas From the left, we have a pack unicorn which grants bonuses to harvesting. The Armoured Pinto, which gives bonuses to xp gained while mentored. The Armoured Highland Stalker is my fastest steed at the moment, but has no other bonuses. Finally the Ykeshan bear, who came with Shadow Odyssey. The bear is a bit of an oddball, as it grows with you as you level, starting off as just a pet that follows you, then becoming an ever faster mount. At the moment he’s the slowest of the gang, but one day he’ll outstrip most of them.
They’re all great members of Team Shadowsqueak, but deep down, Maltheas wants another mount entirely. This one:
 Flying 2 feet above the ground is the only way to travel! Curse you, Free Realms, for having the most awesome mounts ever!!! Sure, they cost 500 Station Cash each, but who would be able to resist their own flying dragon mount, in six delicious colours? I wonder if there is any way they could be reused (with a less cartoony skin) over in EQ2?
Just a few pictures from Maltheas’ adventures in Everquest 2’s new Sentinel’s Fate expansion. Click the pic for a full screen version.
Maltheas only gets to play with the crafting content at his level, but it has been a lot of fun exploring new areas, especially ones I was familiar with in EQ1.
 Toxxulia Forest seen from Kerra Isle  Flying in to Paineel.  The Hua'Mein practise Tai Chi in their hidden village. The Hua’Mein are an awesome addition to the game. They are extremely tranquil in nature, and set a fine example to all the crafters and adventurers found rushing about their once secret village in such a hurry. I look forward to them becoming playable. Also, I need to learn their Tai Chi emotes!
 Pesky collection quests! I really really did not intend to do that. Maltheas was about 20% into level 38, and I was letting him gain a bit of xp for a change, so I could quickly get to 39 when I decided the time was right for that.
Unfortunately, I forgot that I was unlocked when the time came to hand in a couple of Moonlight Enchantments collections. The xp for them is utterly insane, giving him a level each. The collector takes all your outstanding collections at once, rather than letting you hand them in one at a time, which compounded my error.
Pretty annoyed with myself right now. No more levelling for Maltheas for a VERY long time indeed!
Brenlo recently posted this on the EQ2 forums. It describes the new “Golden Path” which will help lead folks from zone to zone.
I have been poking around ingame and on the forums and have noticed a lot of confusion regarding the “Golden Path” and what exactly it is. People are looking for specific NPCs or quest lines, and finding themselves stuck. So I wanted to take a moment to clarify a little and talk about what it is currently and where it is headed.
The golden path is the first step in a larger revamp of our new player experience. We took a look at the starting areas, other than Qeynos and Freeport as we plan to move away from those, and reworked content so that it had a better flow. We wanted the quests in Darklight, Timorous and Greater Fay, to give you a better progression path. What you will find, is that if you start a new character, or jump into any of the quest hubs in those areas, is a more guided experience through content. We have hundreds of zones and for non veteran players, it can be intimidating trying to figure out where to go next. We wanted to remove that intimidation and give them a better play experience. So phase one is the “Golden Path” of content. A better progression of quests through various hubs starting in the three new player areas above. If you go to any of the zones listed in the update notes and start questing at one of the hubs, you are now on the “Golden Path!”
Phase two, which is following in the upcoming months, will introduce the Storyteller window (which is a much better name than Golden Path) which will link quest lines together in an interface, providing the visual representation of the golden path. We want players to understand why they may be collecting 10 oranges or killing 15 Goblin Scouts and show how that evolves into a larger story. The Storyteller System will move players along through content that we feel will give them a fun and exciting experience. While also engaging them in the world, the story and their character.
All sounds great. Except for this line, which I found hair-raising:
We took a look at the starting areas, other than Qeynos and Freeport as we plan to move away from those, and reworked content so that it had a better flow.
What does that mean? What is in store for Qeynos and Freeport?
I can’t believe they’d actually remove Qeynos and Freeport. I would suppose that it’s something more like leaving them to obsolescence, and perhaps removing their status as starting cities. Really, we’re just guessing at this point. “move away from” could mean quite a spectrum of things, but the fact that they were left out of the starting area improvements does suggest that they’re not considered worth fixing, which makes me sad.
Qeynos and Freeport have been neglected for years, alongside many of the older zones. It’s a bit of a sore point for me the way older content like Splitpaw is practically disowned, when with a bit of a tidy from time to time it could still be a vibrant part of the game. For instance, the boss loot in the Down Below still has no stats at all on it, and never has. I remember reporting that in the week after launch. Nevertheless, I still find that the original zones have far more depth to them than many of the newer ones. Places like Crushbone and Kaladim are very nice, but they are quickly consumed snacks compared with the questing feasts that are Stormhold or Nektropos, or even the Crypt of Betrayal.
There’s nothing wrong with the original cities that couldn’t be fixed by going through their sewers and surrounding areas and bringing the gear up to match the newer zones, and doing a little polishing. Maybe bring back all the quests that have been removed from them too.
If they really did do away with Qeynos and Freeport, I think that would be something of an NGE experience for some of us, especially if it was for so poor a reason as the newfangled streaming technology not working well with them, as has been suggested.
If they’re not streaming client friendly, simply don’t let people with the streaming client start there unless they’ve already downloaded the right zones. (Though I would have thought the average new player would have downloaded most of Qeynos by the time they had finished the Isle of Refuge for the first time.) Please don’t go throwing away places that we care about.
It’s almost as if the developers themselves believe that the game doesn’t start until you reach max level, and are trying to rush everyone there, and so don’t think the lower level content is all that important any more. I’m sure they don’t really think that, but the game does seem to becoming ever more that way. Not the best of ideas, because max level content is a rather small percentage of the game. It’s true that a lot of players do hang around at the level cap, but quite a lot of us don’t, and even most of those that are capped like to mentor down and explore the world sometimes.
I wish there was a Developer with the job of keeping older content viable. I’m not talking about zone revamps such as the recent Lavastorm one, though those are welcome. We just need someone to make sure that the loot and quest rewards are comparable to similar-levelled gear from later expansions, and that quests don’t get broken. That’s the real reason why the older zones aren’t popular.
When the flood of new players arrives for the new player experience, they’re not going to know what is new content and what is old content. Everything will be equally shiny to them, so it is illogical to value the new over the old when it comes to taking care of it.
Hopefully we’ll soon get more detailed information as to what is in store for our homes.
 Maltheas was glad he'd taken that correspondence course with ACME. Another milestone for Maltheas. Varsoon the Undying is at the root of a great deal of Everquest lore, and Malth needed him dead for the Manastone and Glowing Black Stone heritage quests. Like Lord Maltus Everling, who is still a bit too powerful to defeat, he is the final boss in a Heroic dungeon, so I’ve been putting off dealing with him until today.
So it was that Maltheas, servant of Nife, did delve into the Ruins of Varsoon, bludgeoning his way past countless of Varsoon’s foul clay creations, and wretched undead slaves. Deeper he went, the stench of infamy all about, until he came to the entrance of the Chamber of Immortality, Varsoon’s lair. Steeling himself with a little nibble of some cheese left over from the raid on the Overlord’s office, he stepped within. Only by the grace of the Prime Healer could he hope to emerge with his whiskers intact.
Turns out he was far easier than Everling, as you only have to face him on his own at the end of a ring event. He’s probably personally as powerful as Everling, but unwisely chooses to fight alone. A foolish decision when facing RATONGA JUSTICE, and he has paid the price, and lost his suffix. I’m sure that’s the last Norrath will hear from Valdoartus Varsoon…
What’s so social about “social games” anyway? I speak of the likes of Cafe World, and Farmville. I keep hearing that they are the next big thing. I hope that isn’t true.
Sure, you might play them on social media sites, but they’re more antisocial games than anything else. The only real interaction with other people that you have in most of the ones I’ve tested is sending constant spam about lost sheep to your friends list. An MMO is vastly more social, as you actually get to see and talk to people. You may not actually like any of those people, but it still counts as socialising.
I’m not sure that some of them even deserve the compliment of being called “games” either. Spending half an hour tending crops that don’t do anything at all isn’t my idea of fun. There are no, so far as I can tell, any problems or difficulties to overcome. No real strategy or tactics to it. Just making more food to sell to NPCs, or growing more crops for no reason other than to be able to buy more crops. Progress Quest has at least as much real decision making, and doesn’t require us to click things for half an hour every day.
I suspect the real reason developers consider them the next big thing is that they’re impossibly easy to make, compared with most commercial games. Although I can’t find the fun in them, they are played by millions of people daily, and some of those folks go so far as to spend real money on decorations for their farms that pretty much nobody else is ever going to see. Though it boggles my mind, it seems that there is a demand for these things, and capacity for profit.
Now, by all means there may be second generation ones coming up that actually have some gameplay. There are developers such as Raph Koster and Richard Garriott working on social games, both of whom I have profound respect for. I can’t imagine either of them creating something as mindless as Farmville, so perhaps they will redefine the genre. Even so, I wonder if good developers are giving up on making MMOs for something easier and more profitable.
For now, get back to me when I can invade my neighbouring farms with my goat army and sow them with salt.
 Klingon Sector Space The great STO meme is “Where’s Sulu?”. New players would often not be able to find him, even though he was standing in the same room as Admiral Quinn, the man who told you to speak to him. This was tackled by adding random NPC comments down in the starbase stating exactly where he was. Apparently this was still not enough, as from today he will be added to your contact list at level 2, meaning you never have to ever find him, or speak to him in person. Is the Explorer Bartle-type dying?
Another solid bugfixing update for Star Trek Online. I have to confess that I’ve not really played this week, being busy with other games, but it’s encouraging to see work continuing apace.
Continue reading Star Trek Online ST.0.20100217c.4 patch notes, 18th February 2010
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