EQ2Flames Forum - History and Lore http://www.EQ2Flames.com EQ2 history and lore for those who actually read quest dialogue rather than just click through the screens quickly to get teh lewt. en Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:02:50 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.eq2flames.com/images/styles/eq2/misc/rss.jpg EQ2Flames Forum - History and Lore http://www.EQ2Flames.com Why EQ2 Lore Sucks #2: Adventure quests require harvesting skill. http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54592-why-eq2-lore-sucks-2-adventure-quests-require-harvesting-skill.html Sun, 01 Nov 2009 10:26:02 GMT Remember years ago when the devs nerfed mastercrafted gear because they didn’t want us to “dig our gear out of the ground”? Let’s look at the ways since then that they have regardless forced us to dig our quest gear out of the ground. I remember doing the Claymore questline on an alt some years ago, and I got to this part in Sanctum where I had to copy down something written in a book. Could I tear out a page? No. Could I write it down with a quill pen on a stray piece of paper? No. Get this: I had to kill droags to write down the information on their wings, and the only thing I could write with was rocks from inside the Sanctum. Now it might just be me, but I don’t see too many books in Norrath that use droag wings instead of paper. Like the rest of you, I was being played for a fucking fool. I had to abort my deep tedious Sanctum grind with orange mobs and no tank because my level 65 arcane expert managed to slay dragons and giants without knowing how to break a rock. Remember the Troubador epic? Forget fired, somebody should have gotten shot point blank for that. Get this: You had to HARVEST 10 Xegonite clusters to summon some asshole. I wasted an entire Saturday and half a Sunday clicking on rocks in TT. I was furious. And then when the 10 clusters disappeared from my inventory I was livid. It happened again with the Warlock epic. You had to harvest 6 mantrap roots and 10 smoldering material. Have you ever tried doing this in a T8 zone with sparse nodes? And then the opening quest for the Flowing Black Robe HQ has this faggoty dialog: ---Quote--- Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “That would be fantastic! Okay, so what I need is a fresh sample of Ebon ore from here in Lavastorm Mountains.” You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “I can go see about buying you one if you like.” Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “Are you dense or something? I said FRESH sample. I need it to be freshly harvested and it MUST be from within the Lavastorm Mountains to work for the research I am doing.” You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “You think the top researchers of Norrath got everything handed to them on a platinum platter? I think not! Get out there and do some back breaking manual labor for once!” ---End Quote--- Jesus Christ I’m just stupefied. You mean to imply that mastercrafted ebon armor is no good because the ebon is from the broker and NOT FRESH ENOUGH?? If the quest forces me to harvest it instead of obtaining it by other means when I am well out of the presence of the NPC for possibly over an hour, then we must logically assume it is canon that this is indeed the case. Yes that is a ludicrous statement, and yes it illustrates how little I think of the quest writers. But here comes the dev slap in the face when you return with the ebon: ---Quote--- Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “Oh good you are back! Did you get my Fulginate sample?” You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “Wait what?! You said you wanted Ebon.” Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “I said no such thing! Are you insane or something? You know hearing things is one of the first signs of insanity. Shhh! Deloris, I don’t need to know about your ingrown toenail.” ---End Quote--- I won’t tell you how long it took me to grind up harvesting and actually find an ebon in the shithole that is Lavastorm, because I’m ashamed of it. I would probably feel about as dirty as this if someone paid me ten million dollars to suck Barack Obama’s communist dick. If an NPC requires you to “dig a fresh rock” rather than provide one otherwise then that stupid son of a bitch should trigger flashing red lights that tells you s/he is full of shit and is DESIGNED TO WASTE YOUR TIME. There is no game experience from this; the dev are essentially telling you that you are a cash cow and they do not respect you. So why are you going to respect them? I want some generic diamonds but I don’t want you to buy them from DeBeers even if you’re rich, instead I demand you FLY TO SOUTH AFRICA WITH A FUCKING SHOVEL. Ask yourself: are Blizzard devs this lazy in their presentation of plausibility? Harvesting is a crafter skill, right up there with tinkering and transmuting and scribing and whatever the fuck else. It is not an adventuring skill. Requiring harvesting to complete an adventuring quest is like requiring crafting to complete it, only the devs didn’t give us the proper rational shortcut around it like consignment or the free market. This is why players and even other devs learn to bot EQ2. Players either complain about bullshit like this as they should, or they automate it and walk away. I’m also amazed how the devs rushed to trivialize swimming when there is nothing in the game that requires 400/400 swimming, whereas you can still piss away a whole evening grinding up harvesting through all the misses and erratically alternating nodes. Aeralik once said that Captain Fifty Statues (Vhalen?) originally wanted players to harvest like 100 or 400 rares or something in their epic quests. Little comments like that let you know who your enemies are in this game. Remember years ago when the devs nerfed mastercrafted gear because they didn’t want us to “dig our gear out of the ground”? Let’s look at the ways since then that they have regardless forced us to dig our quest gear out of the ground.

I remember doing the Claymore questline on an alt some years ago, and I got to this part in Sanctum where I had to copy down something written in a book. Could I tear out a page? No. Could I write it down with a quill pen on a stray piece of paper? No. Get this: I had to kill droags to write down the information on their wings, and the only thing I could write with was rocks from inside the Sanctum. Now it might just be me, but I don’t see too many books in Norrath that use droag wings instead of paper. Like the rest of you, I was being played for a fucking fool. I had to abort my deep tedious Sanctum grind with orange mobs and no tank because my level 65 arcane expert managed to slay dragons and giants without knowing how to break a rock.

Remember the Troubador epic? Forget fired, somebody should have gotten shot point blank for that. Get this: You had to HARVEST 10 Xegonite clusters to summon some asshole. I wasted an entire Saturday and half a Sunday clicking on rocks in TT. I was furious. And then when the 10 clusters disappeared from my inventory I was livid.

It happened again with the Warlock epic. You had to harvest 6 mantrap roots and 10 smoldering material. Have you ever tried doing this in a T8 zone with sparse nodes?

And then the opening quest for the Flowing Black Robe HQ has this faggoty dialog:
Quote:
Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “That would be fantastic! Okay, so what I need is a fresh sample of Ebon ore from here in Lavastorm Mountains.”
You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “I can go see about buying you one if you like.”
Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “Are you dense or something? I said FRESH sample. I need it to be freshly harvested and it MUST be from within the Lavastorm Mountains to work for the research I am doing.”
You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “You think the top researchers of Norrath got everything handed to them on a platinum platter? I think not! Get out there and do some back breaking manual labor for once!”
Jesus Christ I’m just stupefied. You mean to imply that mastercrafted ebon armor is no good because the ebon is from the broker and NOT FRESH ENOUGH?? If the quest forces me to harvest it instead of obtaining it by other means when I am well out of the presence of the NPC for possibly over an hour, then we must logically assume it is canon that this is indeed the case. Yes that is a ludicrous statement, and yes it illustrates how little I think of the quest writers.

But here comes the dev slap in the face when you return with the ebon:

Quote:
Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “Oh good you are back! Did you get my Fulginate sample?”
You say to Toggery Von Gearbender, “Wait what?! You said you wanted Ebon.”
Toggery Von Gearbender says to you, “I said no such thing! Are you insane or something? You know hearing things is one of the first signs of insanity. Shhh! Deloris, I don’t need to know about your ingrown toenail.”
I won’t tell you how long it took me to grind up harvesting and actually find an ebon in the shithole that is Lavastorm, because I’m ashamed of it. I would probably feel about as dirty as this if someone paid me ten million dollars to suck Barack Obama’s communist dick.

If an NPC requires you to “dig a fresh rock” rather than provide one otherwise then that stupid son of a bitch should trigger flashing red lights that tells you s/he is full of shit and is DESIGNED TO WASTE YOUR TIME. There is no game experience from this; the dev are essentially telling you that you are a cash cow and they do not respect you. So why are you going to respect them? I want some generic diamonds but I don’t want you to buy them from DeBeers even if you’re rich, instead I demand you FLY TO SOUTH AFRICA WITH A FUCKING SHOVEL. Ask yourself: are Blizzard devs this lazy in their presentation of plausibility?

Harvesting is a crafter skill, right up there with tinkering and transmuting and scribing and whatever the fuck else. It is not an adventuring skill. Requiring harvesting to complete an adventuring quest is like requiring crafting to complete it, only the devs didn’t give us the proper rational shortcut around it like consignment or the free market. This is why players and even other devs learn to bot EQ2. Players either complain about bullshit like this as they should, or they automate it and walk away.

I’m also amazed how the devs rushed to trivialize swimming when there is nothing in the game that requires 400/400 swimming, whereas you can still piss away a whole evening grinding up harvesting through all the misses and erratically alternating nodes.

Aeralik once said that Captain Fifty Statues (Vhalen?) originally wanted players to harvest like 100 or 400 rares or something in their epic quests. Little comments like that let you know who your enemies are in this game. ]]> History and Lore Illuminator http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54592-why-eq2-lore-sucks-2-adventure-quests-require-harvesting-skill.html Frogloks: The Jar Jar Binks of EQ2 http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54387-frogloks-jar-jar-binks-eq2.html Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:57:46 GMT My post in this thread suffered from Mysterious Disappearing Post Syndrome (either their website database is a .CSV file or their censors are Nothing Special) so I'll replay it here with a little more flavor.

I love how people in the thread rag on Void lore by calling it Aliens, then give a free pass to the Jar Jar Binks of EQ2: FROGLOKS. I think I am beyond sick of seeing this stupid little ridiculous race given godlike powers and stature. Shove them into ovens and gas chambers. Send their pathetic fucking asses back to Marr at the end of a noose. If you roleplay, side with the iksar and nail every god damn fucking frog to the cross without ennobling symbolism of any kind. And of course pink slip the stupid son of a bitch who created the froglok concept (what else?).

Next X-Pack will feature: PANDAS. Is George Lucas's business sense running the show here? ]]> History and Lore Illuminator http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54387-frogloks-jar-jar-binks-eq2.html LoN lore http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54232-lon-lore.html Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:55:15 GMT Does any one mind recapping the story behind the first few LoN sets?

I've done all the scenarios for the first two sets, but I have no idea what is going on. ]]> History and Lore Runemasteryx http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54232-lon-lore.html Ages End http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54226-ages-end.html Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:25:46 GMT Mayong talks of Ages End and the "Moppet Shoppe does not exist. It is a pocket outside of time and space, but still bordering our world. The shadows often lurk in places like this. It is where they have the most power outside of oblivion."

To me, this makes me think of the Void and the various nasties that come with it. This also makes me thing that the Chel stone will have something to do with the next expansion.

Also, Monoliths of Theer, Theer is the leader of the void people from what I have worked out, but what are his Monoliths, and how do they relate to the Chel Stone? ]]> History and Lore Runemasteryx http://www.EQ2Flames.com/history-lore/54226-ages-end.html