And he’s not bad.
Sadly, he was ganked by the right honourable Senator for Darkfall shortly after making this speech.
|
||||
 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! I’ve experienced both school and workplace bullying, and I have no time for people who behave in such a way. I’ve even called a supportline or two in the past. So don’t take what follows as in any way diminishing the anguish that bullying can cause. I have two points to make on the current scandal, which involves Christine Pratt, the head of the National Bullying Helpline, going public with claims that staff at Number 10 had called her support line about the Prime Minister’s behaviour. 1. These things are supposed to be confidential. By breaching this, she has made it much harder for people to pluck up the courage to call support lines. Not to mention that I strongly doubt that staff at Downing Street will thank her for damaging the government for which they work. They have been betrayed, and used to score political points. 2. That is, of course, assuming that these staff even exist. How does she actually know that the people that called really worked at Number 10? She obviously does not run background checks on people who call, so what is stopping random idiots, and/or the Tory dirty tricks department, calling in and making all sorts of outrageous claims? Unless a real, solid, person comes forward and states that they were bullied by Gordon Brown, this whole business should be considered inadmissible. We’re supposed to believe that a number of different individuals all chose to call the same helpline, and more than that, that they unnecessarily divulged the sensitive information that they worked at Number 10. The National Bullying Helpline has this to say about itself on its website:
I’m sorry to say, but The National Bullying Helpline should lose it’s charitable status for its confidence-breaching and naked politicising. There are many other similar helplines that do respect confidentiality, and do so without funnelling money to their husband’s Human Resources company. The whole thing stinks like a political hit-job just a few weeks before a General Election. Journalists were sent by Conservative operatives to Mrs Pratt makes it obvious that there is a link, and the way that the opposition parties are making hay out of this is distasteful. They’re now calling for an in-depth enquiry, which is clearly an excuse for a fishing expedition to rummage through the inner workings of Downing Street. Gordon Brown is now caught in an intolerable position, having to deny ever-escalating accusations from ghosts, who can have whatever words put into their mouths that Brown’s enemies choose. You can’t defend yourself if you don’t know your accuser. Disclosure: I’m a Liberal Democrat voter, not a Labour one, and I am far from happy with the way Nick Clegg is handling this.  Episode 11 – Allies in Adversity
If you happen to like our little show, do please share it with anyone else you think might be interested. Season one’s Episodes 1-10 are also available through the player below.  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.
All sounds great. Except for this line, which I found hair-raising:
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. |
||||
