Every so often podcasts tend to fade, much like blogs, Facebook and Twitter users. This is just human nature. We are creatures of habit and we bore easily. I am here to say that I have found my interest once again in podcasting. Even though I have not been making new shows I have been playing EQ2 quite a bit over this recent hiatus. With all the new changes that will be coming next month with the Sentinel’s Fate expansion pack much of the previous shows are going to be kind of obsolete.

Take for example the show#1. When I wrote that show I was learning podcasting at the same time I was auditioning to get into the Virgin World collective. I feel that I over produced the early shows. I also was still learning the EQ2 game itself. I chose to do those shows to help others enjoy this game and not to struggle much like I did. I now know so much more than I ever did about the games mechanics, classes, features and even podcasting itself. This makes the past podcasts seem outdated and rough at best. Take for example the Lore and Legend show that is mostly outdated since you no longer have to obtain the quest starter the way you once did. The show on Combat basics is going to be outdated as well come next expansion. Show 3 has changed much since the Sinking Sands had its mobs and encounters raised to levels 55-60 and many of the epics have been changed to just Heroics.

My show on Leveling is irrelevant now due to the many mechanics changes over the last year. Even the last show about Transmuting is going to be vastly outdated next month. This has been very discouraging to me since the goal of the show was to keep it is relevant as possible. I had always claimed that I would just go back and edit the old shows and bring them up to date. I still may but some of them will be drastically changed I might as well just re-record the whole show. Even if I do re-record I will leave the old shows intact for historical purposes.

All in all I will be releasing a show soon about the reboot of the podcast so stay tuned and be prepared to hit the ground running once the Sentinel’s Fate is released. I am in beta and will be ready to make you ready come February 16th.

Taken from the EQ-IQ Guide to Guilds…

A guild is a player-founded and player-run organization within the game. Guilds, like the people who form them, have many different modes of operation and goals. Some guilds exist purely as a social network of players who enjoy gaming together, while others work long and hard to reach end-game content and to become rich and powerful.

Guilds are not for everyone. I was not in a guild for most of my EQ playing career. I have only been part of a guild for about a year now. The reasons I joined a guild were simple. I wanted to have the opportunity to experience the end game content and to avoid pick up groups. With a guild you are more likely to finish a dungeon crawl than you would if you were in a pick up group of players you do not know. As some may have experienced in there own journeys in the game is that most PuG’s end poorly. Everyone in the PuG has no obligation to you or your goal within a zone. Usually when a PuG formed it’s in the interest of the group’s leader to obtain his or her goal. Once they obtain the goal the group tends to fall apart more often than not. With a guild you still can experience these things but most of the times you are likely to see the groups last a bit longer.  This is because a good guild will weed out the selfish or bad players which tends to enhance the game experience for all in the guild. 

This comes full circle to the first paragraph where I said that a Guild is a play run organization. That’s the key word here, Organize. When forming groups or raids from a guild, they are usually organized. What I mean is there is a goal set as to why your are going to do the content, whether it is for loot, killing named mobs for AA, completing quests, etc… One of the main reasons so many PuGs fail is the lack of the group members understanding these goals. If the group leader just needs to kill one mob for a quest completion then he will have little interest in finishing the zone or helping others with their goals if no one has let him or her know what you need or want. With guilds this communication should be disclosed before the group gets started. In a well ran Guild you will find this to be the case.

Everyone will join a guild for various reasons. Some people love the social aspects of MMO’s and look for guilds that tend to have very active social community.  Some like to role-play and should find a guild that tends to or requires its members to role-play. There are guilds for hard core raiding. These Guilds are not for the faint of heart but are more for people whom are very extroverted and high achievers. There are guilds that balance the raiding, role-playing, crafting, etc… It will take some research and in game discussions to find the right guild for your play style. Most well organized guilds with have what we call a Guild Charter. This is a document that outlines who the guild is, their goals, expectations and how the Guild is structured. If you find a guild that does not have a charter then I would avoid joining them. Anyone whom has been running guilds within MMO’s regardless of the game should know they need one.

Advantages and Disadvantages

This topic kind of goes along with why would you want to join a guild. For one there are many advantages in joining a Guild in EverQuest II. You get a discount on many items in the game by using status in addition to plat. Status is earned by doing certain quest in the game such as Heritage Quests or city WRITS. You can also earn status by killing certain Raid mobs as well as selling of items that are dropped in game for status to a status vendor. You then use this status along with plat to purchase things like mounts or player housing at a discount rate. Many of the discounts also require the Guild to be of a certain level. Yes Guilds have the same level system as a player does, more on that later. Now some mounts just require you to be in a guild just to buy regardless of discounts or not. You are also allowed to purchase titles that others cannot. This is not much of an advantage unless you’re a title junkie. There are hundreds of titles available in the game and some people love to have these.

Other advantages are you get to meet other people on a regular basis. For those whom love to socialize this is a big draw for them. Many guilds become like family to some players. Along with that you will be able to form up regular groups and become familiar with each others play styles. This makes it easier to complete content in the game.

Guilds that have Guild Halls will also bring much advantage with their Guild Amenities. This will be covered later but the Guild Halls can hold certain Amenities that make life easier for players. Some of these amenities help with travel. You can use the Guild Hall as a central place for your travel or getting around in Norrath. You get a Call to Guild Hall spell that will transport you to your Guild Hall. The Cool down is 15 minutes. Much better than the Call to City Spells, this has a cool down of 1 hour. From here if your Guild has the transportation Amenities you can get to just about anywhere in the game world fairly quick. You can even go right to your own house from the Guild Hall and even access your vault right form the Guild Hall Door. There are many more of these amenities which I will cover soon.

Now for the disadvantages, yep there are defiantly some. The disadvantages are different for both the player or the leader and their officers but many are shared. The number one disadvantage is DRAMA. This is strictly my subjective opinion but you will be subjected too much drama when you are part of a guild. No matter how hard a guild tries to curve drama it always rears its ugly head. What is drama? Drama are the events in a guild usually started by a disagreement with a player towards,  a policy, misperception or other conflict that becomes public within the guild chat, webpage or voice channel. Just as in real life guilds can bring us politics, religion, clashes of personalities and much more. This is a guild leader’s nightmare. Guild Drama just simple ruins the fun for everyone and if the leaders do not deal with it swiftly it can break apart a great guild in a hurry. The best guilds run with the least drama. Drama makes people not want to play, leave the guild, and gives the guild leader massive headaches!
Here are some good reads on Guild Drama:

http://priestlyendeavors.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/guild-drama/
http://ulduar25.com/dealing-with-guild-drama/
http://g0thicicecream.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/raiding-in-eq2/
http://mmohub.org/news/how-to-prevent-elitism-stop-drama-in-your-guild/457/

Common disputes that lead to drama:
 I never get any Loot!
 I never get picked for the raid!
 No one ever helps me!
 Why was I skipped over for promotion?
 Why am I not in the main tank group?
 Why is he the Class Leader and not ME?
 So and so doesn’t do anything.
 Girls can’t tank.

Some more disadvantages are you may feel guilty if you don’t help out on the guild raid or that guild member’s plea for another player to help out on a difficult quest when you are in the middle of a quest or crafting session. You can begin to worry about your perception towards other. Some guilds require you to donate plat and status to help the Guild funding. Yes Guilds are not completely free to run in game and even out of game has costs. Many guilds have Websites and use other third-party applications. This will require you to sometimes be a little technical savvy. Many Guilds use and require, when grouping, voice chat systems like Team Speak or Ventrilo which require you to download and setup. This can be a challenge for some players with little computer experience. Heck this can be a challenge to even the PC savvy users.  I still think that there are many more advantages then disadvantages but that is just my opinion.

Catch Show #14 about Guilds

The real life train is at full speed. Nothing bad just way too much family activities like weddings, birthdays, picnics, work projects and such. It’s been one of the most demanding and busy summers I have ever had in recent memory. This has kept me from Podcasting and playing EQ2 of late. I just wanted you the listeners that follow the show and site that I will be back as soon as I can.

Before the real life busyness hit me I was in the middle of recording several shows at once. If that original plan works out you will see an increase in the frequency of shows and when times get tough or busy I will have a backlog of new shows to post. I would say it’s a buffer of sorts. I have wanted to do this for quite some time but whether due to laziness, playing EQ2 like crazy or the current real life activities it just has not happened. I will return soon. But I can’t commit to the date and time. That would only add unnecessary pressure to an already stressful time of the year. I do see the shows resuming very soon though. For now I hope all of you are enjoying the summer!!!!

So you want to power level and get to 80 as fast as possible? Why? Is it because your friends are all 80? Do you want to RAID? Is this you’re second character and you don’t care to see all the content you already have done before? First off the first excuse can not be used since EverQuest II allows players of higher levels to mentor down to any character level to play with friends. The second reason is more valid but comes at a cost as you will see. The third reason is also valid since you may have explored all the content in EverQuest.

There are some consequences to leveling too fast and with EQ2 leveling from 1-70 is already very fast contrary to what some may think. One of the major draw backs to power leveling is that you will most likely lack Alternate Achievements (AA) which has become almost necessary as new expansions have come out anticipating that players will use them to make the content progression easier. Currently AA’s are not leveled as fast as you can gain adventuring levels. This may change soon according to SOE. Because of this players can be level 80 but only to find themselves with less than 100 AA out of 200 possible. AA’s can improve your survivability in a number of ways. Some improve mitigation, taunting, rescue abilities which are great for tanks. There are many important improvements to class abilities and combat arts. This ranges from improving recast times, reduce resistibility, improve debuff’s and buff’s, improve damage, Area of Effect mitigations (important in Raids) and much more. AA’s make a difference and many guilds require you to have a minimum number of them to participate in progression Raids. Somewhere around 140 – 150 AA seems to be the norm for most hard core Raids. But rest assure you need as many as you can get. AA’s are leveled via discovery experience, killing named mobs, completing quests and turning in collections. As you can see it can be much harder to power level this aspect of your character in a quick manner. Yes you can have a level 80 mentor you which improves AA experience quite a bit but this may not be practical for everyone

Another thing that will be very badly out of whack will be your skills such as, Disruption which improves direct damage for spells. Focus is used my spell casting classes to better your chance of completing spells without being interrupted. Deflection is very important to the Brawlers and is used to avoid damage. Ministration is important to Priests as it affects the effectiveness of Heals. One last example is Aggression which is a key skill for fighter classes. This is how well your taunts will affect monsters. This skill affects the chance that a taunt will be resisted. There are many more skills which all depend upon the class you are. These skills take more time to rise and some of them are vital to the class. You can have to total of 400 points at level 80 (Un-modified by equipment). The only way to raise these skills is to use them. By leveling too quickly these skills can be neglected and very low. Some times lower than 100. Think about it. If you are not using your taunts often and you just kill the mob using high DPS from a level 80 wizard then you will not raise your Aggression. The same goes if you are a Mage and never use your spells all that often because you are being power leveled you will have your spells resisted much more at level 80 if this skill is not near 400. Yes you can get your expert (formally know as Adept III) spells but this is only part of the equation that determines the resistibility of your spells. I think you get the picture.

Then there is gear. You may be prepared for this challenge once you are at 80 if you have a main character that has been doing The Shadow Odyssey Shard runs. Since you can trade or share shards between characters on the same account. But for those who do not have the luxury of shards you character will be a little gimp. To raid at the end game and survive some of the group content you really should have Legendary Gear at a minimum. You can get some of this off the broker but the better gear will require you to complete quest lines and do heroic content. The best gear which is fabled is obtained by Raiding. Again do not expect to can hop into Palace of Ferzhul, considered one of the harder zones, in Mastercrafted gear. You will get owned. You need to progress in the content once you are 80 and earn shards to buy your shard armor. This is not as important as the other items as discussed earlier but it can be a reason why some people may not ask you to join certain high level TSO content. Just because your level is 80 and you can zone in to a zone does not make you ready to survive the instance. Just keep that in mind.

Another very important thing is player skill. If you power level or level too fast how will you know your character? Do you really know how to use your entire abilities well? Do you know when to use that rescue ability? I know from my own experience with my Fury and Defiler. Both heal differently and I was very use to the Furies fast casting heals. The Defiler on the other hand have much slower healing but also uses wards instead of regenerative healing. Also the Defiler is a debuffing machine which is a new concept for a fury. Let’s say you have never played a tank class before. If you level too fast you may have issues once your 80. Tanks are expected to lead groups and raids. You need to know your class and abilities along with the zones you quest in. Some classes are not required to be overly concerned with this. Classes like Wizards and Warlocks can be more forgiving. They are important to a group but could get away with not knowing their class more than let’s say fighters and healers. But this will catch up to you as well once someone runs a parsing tool on you and find out that your dps is lacking to a fury when you should be out dps a healer on most occasions. The more you play your character in real grouping situations the better you become as a player. If you have shoot by the levels it will still take some time to be good at your class unless you are a gifted individual.

In closing I would like to say play the game however you want. I just wanted to point out some of the disadvantages of power leveling from my own experiences. I have been locking my current alt’s level while I complete all of the content in a given tier. Right now I have a 19 wizard who has gone thorough Timorous Deep, Darklight Woods, Commonlands, Greater Faydark and now finishing up Antonica questlines. This type of game play is discussed in the EQ2 Redux podcast as well as a thread in the EQ2 Forums. Currently I have 30 AA which is great for a level 19. This play style is not for everyone but if you have rushed through the content it can be fun to take your time and enjoy all of the content available. There is no pressure for me since I have a well equipped level 80 character. This just keeps the game fresh when the fast pace raiding game starts to burn you out. Look for a EQ-IQ show on Character Development in the future. I would love to hear about anyone else’s experience with their character development.

Taken from the EQ-IQ guide to Stilettos Order’s Intercepted

As with all Heritage Quests the goal reward is an item that was usually a item that was highly desired during the original Everquest days. This quest is no exception to this rule. The reward is the controversial Manastone. The Manastone was a rare drop from an Evil Eye mob in the Lower Guk zone. This is the same mob that also drops the Bag of Sewn Evil-Eye which is a reward for Foomby’s Stolen Goods Heritage Quest as well. The drop rate was sometimes reported to be some where around 1 in 100.

The Manastone was a much overpowered item in the game and was soon nerfed around the time the Kunark expansion pack was released. It was also removed from the loot table of the Evil Eye mob and stopped dropping altogether. Now the funny thing is that Sony did not remove the item or actually really completely nerf the Manastone itself. What they did do was prevent it from dropping as well as prevent it from being used in any new zones other than the original pre-Kunark zones. This nerf was also extended to any old world zone that was revamp as well. This means zones such as the Commonlands, Lavastorm and Desert of Ro zones will not allow the Manastone to be used.

So why was Manastone considered so overpowered? Let’s look back at the early days of Everquest when mana regeneration was very slow as compared to the way it is today. For those healers or mages that were lucky enough to own this Manastone they would never run out of mana. Forgive me if I am off a little here but from what I understand from my reading the Manastone itself would sacrifice 60% of your total heath and then take one third of that add and it to your mana pool. So try to imagine that you had 6000 Hit points. Take 60% of that to get 2400 hit points sacrificed. Then divide that by 3 to get 800 mana. Now cast a Heal over Time spell that uses 400 mana. You just got back a net of +400 Mana and full heath as a result of your Heath over Time Spell. You could then click on the Manastone again and then heal. This all adds up to some very fast regen. These are not exact numbers and are used to illustrate how powerful the Manastone was in a time where mana regen was very slow. Today the Manastone still remains in Everquest mainly as a relic of the past. At times after it ceased to drop it could be found on in the Bazaar going for as high a 1 million plat. With today’s faster mana regen and the revamping of the old world zones the Manastone is now just an old relic of a forgotten time.

For more on the Manastone see show 10 on Stilettos Order’s Intercepted.

With my inability to deliver a show as often as I want as well as posting content on the site here I have now added a new tool to keep you informed for those who follow this blog and the EQ-IQ show. Yes I am now Twittering. As you can see in the sidebar I have added a tool to keep you up to date on my progress on the shows or what I am doing when it comes to video games in general. You know sometimes I do like other games. For those of you out there that do not know what Twitter is let me give a quick summary. It is a social networking tool that ranks up there in popularity as My Space or Face book. I do have a Face book page for EQ-IQ but still just don’t get the hang of that just yet. With Twitter it allows me to send out short thoughts where anyone who is following me can read. Or in this case even those whom are not following me. What this allows me to do is keep you out there aware of what it takes for me to do these podcasts as well as the blog its self.  Because Twitter forces me to make it short and simple I am more motivated to post a twitter than to sit down and draft up a post such as this one.  Now that I have an iTouch and I have a Twitter application that allows me to update the Twitter while I play it makes it even easier. Thanks to Brent at Virgin Worlds for his recent plug for Twitter which has allowed me to give it a try for this show. So far I like it a lot. I hope it keeps you informed as to whether or not I have pod faded. If I can’t find the time to Twit then I give up…