In Patch 2.1, World of Warcraft introduce daily quests. Short, mostly solo quests that can be done, you guessed it, once a day. This is a great way to earn gold in the game. Since epic flying mount training costs 5000 gold, any way to earn cash is good. So I’ve thrown myself into exploring these quests.

The two bombing runs are quite fun. In one, you drop bombs on gigantic bird eggs all the while dodging the gigantic birds that laid those eggs. In the other quest, you must bomb ammo stacks which, of course, are sitting right next to the cannons that try to blow you out of the sky. I get a great WWII Red Baron vibe on that one.

It’s this other quest that is driving me a little crazy. You are asked to run into a mob infested crystal wasteland and wrangle a few Aether Rays (think Stingrays that float in the air.) This is me doing a little Ray rustlin’:

Good, clean fun, eh? The problem lies in the fact that the captured Rays follow you on a leash for a couple of minutes. So after you wrangle two or three, it’s impossible to see in third person view, or even first. The shot below is my entire screen with my UI turned off, not just a small window of my viewpoint.

See me? Neither can I. I’m at the end of my rope, uh, the rope. Did I mention the mob infested wastelands I was doing this in? Yeah, I made friends with a few real quick this way.

I’d love to see more daily quests, they are great fun, and this particular one had a unique and fun objective. But, in the future, how about no screen blocking autofollowing?

We all want the best items for our characters. But mixing and matching pieces of equipment can leave your character looking less like a bad ass and more like a clown at a kid’s party. For example, here is my mean, lean fighting machine in World of Warcraft, my feral druid:

All I need is a set of balloon animals and a red afro and I’m ready to conquer the 5 year old birthday celebration. And people wonder why I spend most of my playtime in cat form.

Everquest 2 has finally brought relief to it’s color blind players in its latest major patch, Game Update 38. Included in it is a second layer of visible equipment slots. Anything you put in there won’t add to your stats/armor/etc, but it will be the armor texture that is displayed. For example, here’s a screenshot comparison of my Bruiser, Katfight.

Admittedly, the armor on the left isn’t bad looking. But it is a complete set. Also, this guy is a monk-class, should he really be running around in that much heavy metal? When he first was created, he was granted a Gi that befits his class, but had only nominal stats. Fortunately, I never deleted it. Now I can have the appearance of his Gi, but the power and stats of his heavier looking armor.

Blizzard should definitely consider doing this in their game as well. They have already acknowledged the importance of appearance. In the next major expansion, Wrath of the Lich King; they are adding new hairstyles and dances. The least they can do is add functionality to make a raid look more like the Second Coming and less like Bring In The Clowns.

More low level quest clean up in the Shire over the last two nights. It’s like a sickness, I can’t leave quests uncompleted. And, in LotRO, the quests are as much about reward as story. Each step of the way gives you another mini-chapter. Plus, running around the Shire at night is…magical.

Michel Delving At Night

The oft-reviled escort quest are the ones I’m enjoying the most. You see, with many encounters, you can control when you engage an enemy, how many, etc. But on an escort quest, your charge will blindly rush forward, forcing you to fight on the fly. No downtime to regen power or wait for that uber skill to finish cooling down. No hanging back and observing pathing to pull the mob solo away from its allies. It takes me way out of my comfort zone. and gets my adrenaline pumping. In other words, good times!

And, since this is LotRO, there are some intersting stories attached to your escort quests. My favorite starts with a spider nest in the hills of Bindbole Woods. A subquest is required to break through the wall of webs that blocks your way. Once inside, you discover a sentient tree that has been trapped by the spiders. With your help, it wants to escape. So the tree uproots itself and starts walking out.

Walking. A Tree. By Itself.

This is what I love about this game. I tried for a screenshot of this event. I hope it conveys the crazy way it ambles on the tips of its roots.

Walking tree on the move.

My little hobbit minstrel wasn’t even as big as one of the root/feet. But together we cut through the malevolent spiders out into safety. The reward for the quest? I don’t even remember and I don’t really care. The adventure itself was worth the effort. And that’s what quests should be about.

Tonight, Clauso and I are going to jump into the Epic Quest line. I’ll try to grab screenshots, but flipping into 1st person and hiding the UI to take the screenies, makes it hard to survive the encounter. Then again, Clauso’s not happy if we’re not flying by the seat of our pants.

Elbee - L13 Minstrel

It was launch day for LotRO and I didn’t quite make it to the level cap in Open Beta of L15, but I’m not going to race through this MMO. I want to explore and enjoy it. Even the delivery quests.

I’m eager to start the epic storyline, but I’m waiting til Friday for my buddy Clauso to log on. We mostly go our own way in this game, but we’re going to do the epic quest line together.

Until then I’m trying to clear out my backlog of quests I’ve started to out level. I’m neurotic about doing every quest I stumble across. Even the pie and post delivery ones (which I’m actually enjoying — its like a mini game.)

Last night, I didn’t have much time to play, maybe 30 mins, but was able to knock out 4 quests around Tookland that were all about to go grey. Not only was I able to cross these off my list, but I also got a good chunk of experience and progressed on a couple of deed lines as well as hit a few resource nodes. I love getting multiple things done at once.

I first conceived of this blog as a way to express my view point of MMORPG’s after 8 years of nightly playing. And I still intend to do that. But I’m also going to use it as a personal log of my nightly adventures in various games.

First, an entry for Tuesday, April 24, 2007:

EQ2 L58 Fury - Silverfur: LFay Questing

Lord of the Rings Online ended Open Beta last night. There was a glitch with my pre-order code and I couldn’t log on. I headed over to World of Warcraft but didn’t feel motivated to quest grind with my feral druid or my new dps shaman alt. I decided knocking out a quest or two in Everquest 2 and going to bed early would be the best choice.

Playing an MMORPG for just a few mins. What was I thinking?

EQ2 has been on the back burner for a few months for me. Since WoW came out with the Burning Crusade Expansion in January, I had been playing nothing else. And just when I was burning out on WoW, the LotRO Open Beta came along and knocked me off my feet with its immersiveness. I had been logging on to EQ2 just a few mins a day to do a Tears Grifter instance to keep the experience rolling. Two more levels and I will hit L60. Then many new zones become available to me.

So I logged on with my Fury and headed over to Lesser Faydark to knock off what quests I could. I still had 4-5 group quests for that zone and figured I would have to write them off. But after spending an hour finishing the solo quests I had there, I joined a group and we were able to knock off 3 group quests I had in the Thexian camp.

It was a good night for experience (2 AAs gained and almost hit L59) and I was able to clear out a good chunk of the quests I had left for that zone.

I was going to wait til L60 to hit the new zones, but I could probably start at L59. Or I could clear out the rest of my Pillar of Flames quests as well. We’ll see if I feel like quest grinding or exploring next time I log on, but I think I already know the answer.