It's nearly time..

It’s been a quiet few days for me really. Sunday night saw me lead two and a half groups in to Veeshans Peak Raid zone from Ruins of Kunark with Acolytes of Valor. It was a fun night, albeit a little frustrating at times, especially the Nexona fight. We just didn’t have enough of the right classes to do that which really surprised me. I mean this is content from two expansions ago and we were all pretty much level 90, yet we still struggled. I think it must be because that fight is so technical and to win you simply have to get all the jobs that are required perfected. We got a few other nameds down though, and most of all we had a lot of fun.

Monday night was good fun too. We hit the Palace of Rohan Theer and cleared up to Maalus who we attempted to do in hard mode again. We got close but to be honest our time there did seem to be marred by quite a few problems. I’m really not sure what they were though, despite a few setup changes the results were always the same. It didn’t help we kept having quite a few ninja afks from important folks in the raid. I think there is a kind of lethargy too that has crept in, with Velious on the doorstep and further progression of our raid force unlikely at this late stage. I guess whether folks realise it or not, they have become less enthused about running the same raid zones every week with all this other stuff about to happen.

Aside from that I haven’t really spent much time online. I seem to be losing a bit of interest again in EQ2, part of which is the upcoming expansion and the fact that there is no point pushing for further upgrades as they will be defunct soon and I am struggling to find the excitement in the game at the moment as I have so much going on with work and home life. In addition I have really found the flavour for moving my novel forward and have been spending a considerable amount of time developing plot and characters.

I really need to pre-book Velious. I’ve been tempted not to bother with the new expansion and perhaps take a break from the game, but having invested 6 years of my life to EQ2 I feel I owe it to myself and my lost spare time to give it a go. I know there will be the hard core crew hitting content they know how to beat from having done Beta and before you know it there will be folks who have completed everything, have 300 AA and progressed nicely through the raid zones. I don’t think I’ll be doing that. yeah, I’ll be doing the quest lines and instances but I certainly won’t be rushing them and I have a feeling initially they will be harder than we think they are going to be, until of course we all get some great kit.

One thing I am unsure on is flying mounts. I really don’t know what to think about this. I guess it will be kinda fun flying over zones and seeing them from a new perspective, but some zones we already get to do that, albeit we cannot control the flight paths. But is this yet another thing that will shrink the world of Norrath? I really do miss the old days of having to trudge everywhere. I know that wouldn’t work these days as getting a group to wait 20 minutes for you to get there just wouldn’t wash and you would lose your spot in the group most likely, but I guess after 6 years I can call myself old school, and change always makes one a little apprehensive.

All I can say for now, is that Velious needs to be something really special to keep me in the game.

Be well