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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Besides a curmudgeonly lawyer, your host has also been a barbarian rogue wench (via the online magic of EverQuest)!
Until I quit cold-turkey about a month ago, I was a devoted (read: addicted) player of EverQuest, Sony Online Entertainment's "massively multiplayer online roleplaying game" (a/k/a "EverCrack"). The cumulative time I've spent advancing various characters in this game, off and on since 1999, would be measured not in hours or even in days, but in weeks and perhaps even months.
I began as a beta-tester before the game was released at retail, and shortly thereafter became a volunteer "Guide" (a/k/a unpaid slavelaborer) as part of the game's customer service program. After being promoted to a "Senior Guide," for the next several months I became responsible for running the new "Rodcet Nife" server — one of many simultaneous, identical "game-universes" which was home to perhaps 7500 players, 1500-2000 of whom were online at any given time. Eventually, though, when I realized that I was "investing" 60+ unpaid hours per week as an EQ Senior Guide (and I'd basically quit playing my non-guide "just-for-fun" characters), I quit, cold-turkey.
About a year later, however, my oldest son, Kevin, got interested in the game. Since he lives with my ex-wife, I started playing EQ again so that we could "adventure" together in the cyberspace imaginary world of EQ, "Norrath." And so we did. After a few months, Kevin's gaming interests wandered elsewhere, but I'd become thoroughly re-addicted — not only to advancing my characters to ever-higher levels with ever-better weapons, armor, and skills, but also to participating in a cooperative "guild" of other players, the Keepers of Kithicor.
My principal character became "Mizchif": a seven-foot-tall buxom barbarian wench with a red Celtic facial tattoo (a "woad") and a punk blonde haircut who had progressed to become one of the most powerful rogues on the Fennin Ro server — a silent, usually invisible, and always very deadly assassin, known for her skill with poisons and her ability to backstab.
I also spent time inhabiting the more compact, even more muscular frame of a wood elf bard named Pontifex — a warrior-musician whose magical battle-songs could inspire friends and dishearten foes:
By the time I became the guild leader for the Keepers of Kithicor, we had almost 100 different active members, among them controlling several hundred different characters. We typically would have 20-30 players simultaneously working on a "raid" to defeat, say, a particular dragon — like, say, this one:
Or we might gather together to tackle a giant undead monster and its mounted minions of death, like this one:
Time-sink though it became, I don't much regret my EverQuest addition. It provided me with immense diversion, and an odd but nevertheless useful (cyber-)social life, at a time when I needed both.
Let's hope that weblogging provides some comparable diversion and satisfaction, albeit with (I hope) a lesser investment of time over the months!
Posted by Beldar at 07:11 PM | Permalink
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Comments
(1) Steve Reeves made the following comment | Sep 8, 2003 7:29:13 PM | Permalink
Im a lvl 48 rogue and was seeking tips on the type of Armor and how to get it, that I should be aspiring to get. Any other tips would be a bonus. Thanks and Semper Fi...... Steve
(2) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 9, 2003 12:43:05 AM | Permalink
Thanks for commenting, Steve.
Everything I know is now substantially out-of-date, and you'd get better advice on The Safehouse in by asking someone in-game. A lot depends on whether you're in a guild and if so, what capabilities it has; and to some extent it may even depend on what server you're on.
But the convensional wisdom would be:
- Try to tag along on some raids to Hateplane, where "woven shadow" class armor drops from the beasties and often rots when unclaimed.
- Kunark-class mrylokar armor has good AC, and a few pieces have useful effects (helm for vision buff if you're a barb; arm for strength buff; bracer for summoned daggers; boots to get unstuck; gloves to debuff/pull; BP for heals). You might be able to find pickup groups in Old Sebilis or Karnor's Castle, where this stuff drops; or most pieces sell for pretty reasonable prices, except the gloves. The BPs and legs are still in pretty high demand, though, and drop off zone bosses that you're unlikely to get the award from unless you're in an open-roll raid or your guild is killing them.
- There are beasties in Umbral Planes that drop a nice rogue-wearable armor; getting a group there will be problematic for you for a few more levels, though, probably.
- If you don't mind trashing Tunare faction (which usually is no big deal, even for a WE rogue), see if you can find raids to tag along with or perhaps strong groups hunting in Plane of Growth. The least attractive Velious class armors drop there.
- The Velious quest armors are fine gear for most folks in their 50s and even 60s. Which you pursue depends on what faction you want to work on, the choices basically being dorf/dragon versus giants. The guild I was in hunted mostly chose the former, and so we hunted giants a lot in Kael (for the quest armor that you get from NPCs in Thurgadin), and then later in the east wing (Halls of Testing) of Temple of Veeshan (for the quest armor you get from NPCs in Skyshrine, which is really very nice).
- Unless you're in a fabulous guild that is willing to basically twink you (and you probably aren't or you wouldn't have posted this question), you're still 10+ levels from looking seriously at the PoP armors.
Traditional wisdom, with which I agree, is that rogues should always upgrade weapons before armor because your job is to be a DPS machine. But of course, stats feed into DPS, and a dead rogue does zero DPS, so there are limits to that strategy.
My best advice is to try not to obsess much about gear. The people who are most gear-conscious tend to burn out the quickest on the game and to be the least happy while they're actually playing, because whoever you are, whatever guild you're in, however many hours per week you play, and however long you've played, there's always someone around who's got better stuff than you do. G'luck!
(3) Laura Nichols made the following comment | Oct 26, 2003 6:16:46 PM | Permalink
Ahhh, the sad demise of Mizchif and Pontifex. The world of Norrath certainly misses their witty chatter and warm friendship. It's very nice to see, though, that Beldar *snicker* is continuing his wonderful ability to entertain through his writing of his thoughts (and I thought it was just a bard thing). That's still one of the things I miss most since you've gone - all the wonderful chats and arguments (what kind of fun is it if you always agree, right?) that we had both in game and out. I'm having a delightful time roaming through the site here; Weiss is beautiful, and an amusing pun to the name. When my mother divorced and there were just the three of us women in the house we had a hamster who's name was T.M. because he was the Token Male of the house. *grin*
Well, back to roaming the site and commenting wherever strikes my fancy. Oh, and by the way, Idara will actually hit 60 some time in the next couple of weeks. Now there's something I never thought I'd see...
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