While the Return to Ostagar paid add-on is still delayed for the time-being, Bioware has just announced the first full expansion for Dragon Age. In Dragon Age Awakenings you are tasked with rebuilding the Grey Wardens. Me, I’ll see if I can get them to have a little bit more respect for life, as I’m pretty sure murdering anyone who decides not to drink their foul poison or asks too many questions is not doing them any favours in the long-term.
It appears to be an all new campaign to play through, though you can import your character from Origins. It remains to be seen how big it actually is. According to Gamestop’s pre-order page, the expected release date is the middle of March.
For centuries, the Grey Wardens—the ancient order of guardians, sworn to unite and defend the lands—have been battling the darkspawn forces. Legend spoke that slaying the Archdemon would have put an end to the darkspawn threat for centuries to come, but somehow they remain.
You are the Grey Warden Commander and have been entrusted with the duty of rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and uncovering the secrets of the darkspawn and how they managed to remain.
How you choose to rebuild your order, how you resolve the conflict with “The Architect”, and how you determine the fate of the darkspawn will be but some of the many complex choices that await and shape your journey as you venture to the new land of Amaranthine.
A Stunning World Expanded: BioWare’s deepest universe to date just got bigger with an all new area of the world to explore, Amaranthine
* Unlock the secrets of the Darkspawn and their true motivations
* Rebuild the Grey Warden order and establish their base of operations at Vigil’s Keep
All-new Complex Moral Choices: Embark on an epic story that is completely defined and reactive to your play style
* Shape your entire experience based on the choices you make and how your handle complex situations
New Ways to Customize your Hero: Experience additional spells, abilities, specializations, and items to further personalize and customize your hero and party
* Import your character from Dragon Age: Origins or start anew as a Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais
* Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins
Even more Bone-Crushing, Visceral Combat: Battle against a new range of horrific and terrifying creatures
* Put your skills to the test against an evolved, intelligent breed of Darkspawn and other menacing creatures including the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon!
The Spectral Dragon from Dragon Age: Origins - Awakenings
Maltheas’ splendid week of questing has continued with a final victory over Octagorgon in the Cove of Decay.
Maltheas faces the Octagorgon in Everquest 2
It’s hard to get a sense of scale in that picture. Octagorgon is still a good safe distance away, sitting in his favourite comfy sunken galleon. He is quite ridiculously large.
A famous undercon, he sits there looking all green and heroic level, luring in the unwise. As soon as you attack him, however, he’ll call in a bunch of skeletons to back him up, and he’ll keep calling more the longer you let him live. I’ve been trying to sort him out for a few levels now, but today was the charm. Let us not weep for all the previous attempts that resulted in Maltheas being cruelly devoured, for such is life of the extreme quester!
Defeating Octagorgon allowed Mal to finish the Polished Granite Tomahawk heritage quest, “An Axe from the Past”, and move to the next stage of the Manastone heritage quest “Stiletto’s Orders Intercepted.”. Unfortunately, like so many quests lying undone in his questbook, to finish Manastone is going to involve killing Varsoon the Undying, who is liable to render the Extreme Rat extremely dead. I won’t be able to put off the confrontation for very much longer though.
While I’m here, I’d like to welcome Syp, of the blog Biobreak, to Everquest 2, and to my server, Lucan D’Lere. It’s always great to see new players, especially ones who might encourage others to give EQ2 a try!
After my last post, not having a proper leaderboard to show niggled away at me, so I’ve cobbled this together. Seeing as EQ2 Players no longer has the functionality to let you set your own level ranges for the leaderboards, and all:
A combination of the top questers from the 30-39, 40-49, and 50-59 ranges leaves Maltheas in a respectable 8th place. The 50-59 range puts in a surprisingly poor show, but perhaps folks who get to that level are more likely to power on to the higher tiers.
Brew some Maj’dul coffee, Mal. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
When last we checked in on Maltheas, extremiest of all extreme Everquest 2 questers, the leaderboard looked something like this:
He was doing pretty well, the highest placed 30-something in the world, with only 3 people of 50 or less ahead of him.
Sadly, the new and “improved” EQ2 Players website will now only allow me to create leaderboards within my own level tier, instead of choosing the level range for myself. This makes it almost entirely useless for my purposes. I truly hope that it eventually regains the functionality of the old system, because I am hugely unimpressed by the changes to the EQ2 Players website.
You *can* also make a leaderboard with no level restrictions, but level 36 Maltheas, while doing great for his level, does not appear on a board which allows level 80s onto it.
Anyhows, here is the current leaderboard for the 30-39 range:
What sorcery is this??? In spite of Maltheas completing a couple of hundred quests since last time, Annyya and Kirskax have come from nowhere, toppling Maltheas from his rightful place at the top! Admittedly, they’re both three levels higher, but nevertheless it seems Mal has some serious competition again. A little research shows them both to be part of the same guild, so they’re either a questing team, or a multi-boxer, either of which would have a bit of an advantage over a soloing rat. The Legion of Apathy show themselves to be anything but apathetic, and Maltheas will have to quest hard to catch up with them.
But he will. The Gods of Norrath have shown him a sign this very evening.
Maltheas finally completes the Everquest 2 quest, Lion Mane Helm.
Lion Mane Helm, finally completed. After years of smashing the Tortured Maid every time he rode past Zarvonn’s Tower, she finally dropped the quest starter “an unfinished helm”.
Mal has had quite a lot of luck clearing up low level item-dropped quests recently. Maybe the stars were aligned correctly, or maybe the drop-rate got upped, but either way every time one of those starters dropped it felt like finding a dragonhoard.
I *might* even celebrate by letting him level tonight!
As usual these days, there are a ridiculous number of different combinations of bonus items you can get, depending on who you order from. I went for the Direct2Drive Digital Deluxe option.
I was a little torn, as the TNG and Deep Space 9 uniforms offered by some retailers would have been nice, but this settled it for me:
Exclusive “KHAAAN!” Emote
An unforgettable moment from the second Star Trek Film. This exclusive emote allows players to relive Kirk’s unforgettable moment of fury, with the timeless cry… “KHAAAN!â€
That will never get old. NEVER!!!! KHAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This might also be fun, for an alt. Cap’n Arkenor Oakshadow will be a human, most likely.
Joined Trill Race
The ability to play as a “Joined Trill†– a symbiote that grants you several lifetimes of experience.
Open Beta starts on the 12th. I’ll be sure to report on how things go.
A few months ago I posted a little report on Evony that received a rather staggering amount of attention. I hope I’ve saved at least a few people from getting involved with iEvony, their disturbingly inquisitive application.
Since then, Evony has mostly stopped advertising here, helped along by my blocking every advert URL I could discover. But there is a new contender in town. One that offers oriental exotic gameplay. One with an equally nonsensical name.
Enter the Dragon! Enter Kingory!
In Kingory’s favour, at least its advertising campaign has yet to devolve to Evony’s level of simply having a picture of an ample cleavage, and the word “Play”. Though they have been up to their usual copyright-infringing tricks, roping Chun-Li and Kung Fu Panda in to advertise for them.
So, what is Kingory like? Lets load it up and take a look!
The Kingory City Screen
Hmm, that looks slightly familiar.
The Evony City Screen
Ah yes. Let’s try that again shall we?
The Kingory Farm Screen
The Evony Farm screen
Kingory is a reskin of Evony. (Or it is from our point of view. Kingory in fact appears to be an English translation of a Chinese game that predated Evony. Evony was a reskin of that for western audiences.) Same buildings and troops, occasionaly renamed to fit the setting. I would say, in its favour, that it does look better, and I don’t immediately see any in-game graphics that have been stolen from anywhere, though I am quite willing to believe that is simply because I never played the game it was nicked from.
Kingory does also add a new feature: Your heroes can be equipped with items you find during your adventures. Apart from that, everything, from the quests, to the wheel of fortune, to the excrutiatingly slow gameplay that tries to tempt you to spend real-world money on in-game currency to speed things up, is the same. Success is still determined by your willingness to outspend your opponents. If I had to pick between Evony and Kingory, I’d take Kingory, but then I’m a big fan of the ancient orient genre. Luckily I don’t have to pick one, and I denounce them both as being dull.
How these guys can afford to plaster their adverts so thickly across the internet is a mystery to me. Can they really be the highest bidding advertiser so often, or are they somehow gaming the system?
At least Kingory seems to be keeping its advertising relatively classy for now. There was a big backlash against Evony’s oversexed ads, so it is perhaps not surprising that UMGE are choosing to play this shell game. Rumour has it that there are even more Evony reskins doing the rounds, but I’ve not been unfortunate enough to encounter them yet.
Doing the Freeport side of the “Attack on the Crowns” World Event was proving to be a bit much for Maltheas. While he could, with an acceptable risk of dying, manage to get to Sir Tallen Yevix in West Freeport, he had no chance of getting into the heavily guarded Academy of Arcane Science to see Researcher Kendril. Not without some Frostfell Magic!
And amazingly, even though yesterday he had ten days to wait until he was eligible for the year 6 veteran pack, today it mysteriously became available. Having acquired the extraordinarily useful ability to teleport to a group member let our fearless ratonga bypass the guardian gargoyles and undead, and appear right next to the Researcher, who was eager for assistance. Though sadly not so grateful that he would tell the guards not to beat him up on the way out…
Malth made short work of finding the parts to Tinmizer’s Magnificent Messenger (slowed only by the one hour cooldown on Call of the Veteran), and being a master tinker, was even able to impress Sir Yevix by assembling the gadget for her. Whereupon we used it to contact Lucan, and find out where the heck he’s gotten to.
Turns out he’s gotten himself kidnapped by person or persons unknown. The smart money is on the Void. Sir Tallen managed to locate Soulfire’s hiding place and undertook to find it, to ensure its safety. Rather rudely, she refused to let Maltheas come with her. This would not do, as Maltheas had business of his own in the Overlord’s office. Fortunately, Researcher Kendril owed him a favour, and it was not long before, for the second time in his life, he stood within Lucan’s chambers. The last time he had been there, to assassinate the Overlord (that didn’t go so well), he had noticed something that bore further ….. investigation.
It was the deliciouses!!!
After having a quick nibble, he set to work stuffing several hundredweight of finely aged cheese into his bag of holding. The bulk of this was to be distributed to Ratonga families who had been driven into exile by Lucan for refusing to serve him. Revenge would be delicious, served hot or cold! Also, Maltheas’ annual Frostfell fondue party was assuredly going to be a big hit this year!
The important job dealt with, Sir Tallen arrived, and while she was a little annoyed Maltheas had managed to get there before her, she instantly forgave him, and set to work finding Soulfire. She seemed to have given the whole business quite a lot of thought! Even the room suddenly filling with Soulfires did not slow her down terribly much.
So confusings!!
Once she found the genuine Soulfire she declared herself the true ruler of Freeport, meaning that Lucan had been betrayed at least twice in one day. That’s Freeport for you, and entirely to be expected. Maybe she’s being possessed by a minion of the Void, but she didn’t seem anywhere near unpleasant enough. Actually she seems a lot nicer than Lucan, and unlike Lucan, actually likes Maltheas. We’ll have to see if we can persuade Queen Antonia to rethink trying to find the Overlord, though I suspect the Royals are going to stick together.
Seeing as the real Soulfire had already been stolen, Maltheas yoinked one of the fake ones to put on his wall, next to his replica Qeynos Claymore. It’ll make a great novelty cheese-knife for the party.
