SOE 12 Days of Holidays! Dec 13th-24th

Log in participating SOE games each day between Dec 13th and 24th and get a special something. This could be an in game item, a sale or a new feature. HERE is the official post and list of participating games. Happy Holidays!

EQ2 Grandfathering Characters Created Before F2P

If you are a vet of Everquest 2 and were looking to come back to game now that it's Free-to-Play but were sad to see your old character's race or class was not available in the free package rendering it unplayable, here is a light to brighten your day. Smokejumper (EQ2's Producer) has decided to grandfather in all characters created Pre-Dec 6th 2011. HERE is the producers letter stating the facts. Welcome back vets!

Kristin's Adventures in MMOLand Episode 5

I'm having a ton of fun with EQ2's Age of Discovery and the latest Game Update. After the extended overnight downtime getting it going I hopped in game and ran right for Frostfell Village. I got 2 server item discoveries one being the sled from the Frostfell Fanatic quest. So that was pretty cool. I spent several hours completing all of the Frostfell quests on my main.

I then ran to North Qeynos' tradeskill building and grabbed my first Tradeskill Apprentice. I plopped her into my main's home and office "Super Star Mansion". I have her learning an earring recipe as her first task. It says it will take 15 days but you can speed it along a little each day.

Then it was off to make a Beastlord. I decided on an evil Kerra named Purrdy. At first I didn't see how they were different than any other class. Then I hit level 18. At that point a new fancy Beastlord hotbar popped on my screen. Interesting..... Basically you have abilities that are only available when other things proc or are triggered like when your warder has "Weakness" active on them. It's similar to games like Aion where you can only use certain abilities if your opponent is knocked down, for example.

I got Purrdy to level 20 and headed over to Freeport to start with the new quests there. That's where I still am today. I did take a little time to pop my alts over to Frostfell Village for their daily gift from Santa Glug.

There's still a ton to do like playing with the Dungeon Maker. I am waiting a bit on that to see what other drops I can get for them. So far I've gotten drops from a random wolf, a random clockwork, a named crocodile, and a couple drops in Icy Keep. Most are mob spawners I think. So we'll see what else I come across this week and maybe this weekend I'll start designing a dungeon.

I hope you all are having a ton of fun too.

A helping hand for new Everquest 2 players

EQ2 goes fully Free to Play 12/6 and I hope it brings new players to the wonderful world of Norrath. It can be hard starting a brand new game with no connections, no coin and limited bag slots. I will be enthralled with Frostfell and the new Freeport revamp and the new Beastlord class and dungeon maker, but I will always find a few minutes to help out a new potential friend and Norrathian. So if you decide to join EQ2 in the near future and create a character on the Antonia Bayle server feel free to comment here on this post, message me on Twitter @Girlygamersite or find me in game most likely on my main "Twinklin". Introduce yourself and I'll toss you a few strong boxes for your inventory to make it a little easier on you. I'll also be happy to answer any questions you have when trying to figure out starting game mechanics or how to get around. I hope to see you in Norrath.

Farewell old drab dirty Freeport, Hello New SHINY Freeport!

The servers just went down in EQ2 for the implementation of the new expansion, game update, and Free to Play. The game update includes the new improved Freeport, rebuilt by Lucan now that he is back. I guess he likes shiny too. I took my one Freeport character "Milldew Millie" and for the last hour of the old Freeport's life, ran around to take some screen shots. Even though my dislike for Freeport was one of the reasons I played mostly Qeynos characters over the years I wanted to pay my respects since Freeport as it has been is no more. I had over the years snuck some of my goodies into West Freeport to RP in the tavern or do Heritage Quests. I will be heart broken when they redo Qeynos this summer as it's been my home for many many years and it will be so strange having it change. Here's a slide show of the old Freeport.

Kristin's Adventures in MMOLand Episode 4

So I had a decision to make this week. Do I, 1. Buy Skyrim, 2. Get SWTOR, 3. Resubscribe to WoW for 4.3 or 4. Get the new EQ2 expansion Age of Discovery. Since like most of America I'm poor I had to choose one and only one for right now. So I made a pros and cons list. It basically came down to which had the most options for me.

Skyrim looks pretty fun but there's a lot of talking to NPCs which isn't really my thing. I have heard so many great things about the game though. I have a friend with the game so I can just play theirs though I won't get my own Steam achievements. Plus it's single player and I love MMOs.

SWTOR ended up being really fun when I played it last weekend. A lot of the questions that I had early on were answered as I played more. But only playing to level 20 I couldn't get a full grasp on how soloable it is. Since my raiding and grouping is minimal I need a game that can keep me busy for a long time. Many games lose me once I hit max level because there's nothing to do beyond that except raid. I fear SWTOR will be like this so I would rather wait until my friends get to max level and see what they say about non raiding end game content. It also comes out only a few days before I take a holiday and so I wouldn't be able to play much until I got back.

WoW 4.3 has some fun stuff like Transmogrification and the new Darkmoon fair but DMF is only 1 week a month and since I solo most of the 4.3 content does me no good.

EQ2 Age of Discovery has a ton of new stuff like the new and improved Freeport, Tradeskill Apprentices, and Dungeon Maker. I listened to the Design your own dungeon podcast for a bit the other day and it seems that since you run the player created dungeons using avatars you can do some of them solo which is perfect for me. Plus it's more decorating. I also "know" EQ2. I know it can hold my interest long term being as there's a bazillion quests and has the best player housing available in any game. It's going free to play with the release of the new expansion which I hope brings me new friends. There's the new mercenary system coming with the expansion which will hopefully help me complete some of the not so soloable content. Plus there's always an in game event going on. Currently the New Halas City Festival is going on plus with the new expansion they're starting FROSTFELL!!!!

So looking at the pros from each game it ended up being a pretty easy decision. I went with Age of Discovery. It releases Dec 6th. I'm currently playing one of my very few evil characters so I can fully enjoy the new Freeport Revamp.

EQ2 New Halas City Festival and New Launcher

Today starts the New Halas City Festival. As always it will run for one week. Stock up on tokens and get your hands on the icy house items before they go away for 6 months. There will most likely not be any new items this month with the expansion on the horizon along with Frostfell coming soon. HERE is ZAM's write up on city festivals.

Also EQ2 released their new game launcher today so update yours. HERE is step by step instructions on how to update your game launcher.