Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny
Yo everyone. A front page update. It’s totally amazing, I know. This here will be the first update since Depths of Darkhollow has gone live. There are so many new features in Depths of Darkhollow to talk about which I’m going to do after we give you the dirty, filthy, greasy info on what we’ve been doing lately. So much to type and so little time. Well, truthfully, there’s all the time in the world but I need to get back to the slack A.S.A.P.I.R.L.
We’re recruiting. That means you. You right there. You can apply to Triality…mmmmmaybe! Let’s keep this within reason, Charlie. You need to read our requirements and whatnot before you apply. We’re looking for good members to fill our ranks in almost every class except filthy paladins & grimy shadowknights. So if you’re a paladin or shadowknight, you just hold your horses. Here’s an itemized list of what we’re looking for:
Berserker: 1
Updated Nov 28, 2005
Cleric: 2
Enchanter: 1
Wizard: 2
I’ll keep that list updated as we find people to fill in the spots. So if you think, “Yes, Triality is OK w/ me”, then you’ll be needing to send Miss Llohannis or Mister Grap a tell in the MMORPG EverQuest. Once you’ve done that, the next step will likely be ‘create an application and post it on our forums’. I’ve been in this guild a while, I’m going to share some top secret inf0z with you right here. If your app:
- …is 1 sentence.
Close your current window. Go to C:\Program Files\EverQuest and delete everything.
- …has the grammar and readability of a 16 year old Asian girl’s AOL member web page.
Slap yourself in the face with a bag of scorpion stingers. Immediately.
- …is lacking a profile because you can’t decipher the mystical, magical complications of Magelo.
Go to your basement and saw off your hands.
Alright, enough funny business. I don’t want this update to be all horseplay and rabble-rousing, we have complete seriousness to get to. Let’s all be Serious Men™ and talk turkey here.
We’ve been raiding all sorts of Depths in Darkhollow shit but primarily we’ve been doing the “Blood” raids. We got to The Council of Nine first. And by “got”, I mean serial killed his face with great haste.
Aaaand after that we met up with Matriarch Shyra. She’s a big sexy werewolf. There’s really nothing to this fight. We just walked in and ate her pudding. She’s boring; needs a little spicing up, eh? A little of the ole’ spicy spice eh? A little spicetastical spicy spiciness EH? Ahh, I’m totally out of control right now and it feels great. /thumbs up
I forgot to screenshot the words of lore from Shyra. It probably said something crazy and awesome explaining why these “abilities” in my Alternate Ability window aren’t actually abilities at all.
I think after that we went to slaughter Bloodeye. This is a fight where you pretend you’re not letting people die but you’re really letting people die. It’s a pretty fun fight, people just dying and flopping all over. Anyway, between killing each other, we managed to kill him too.
We did some other non-progression raids when Depths of Darkhollow first came out as well. We quickly found out most are worthless trash piles. I didn’t take any pictures, except of the mushroom Sporali king fellow, Antraygus, the Sporali King! That guy is awesome. The fight was hilarious; people getting tossed all over the place willy-nilly. It was a total g-flux zergfest. Anyway, fun or no fun, we killed him of course. Sorry, Big Gus.
Other than that we’ve been poking around Dreadspire Keep, working on Demi-Plane of Blood keys and just having a super duper awesome time, I GUESS.
So, in the opening (that’s what us pros call the first paragraph; the opening. You didn’t know that shit did ya? Wham! Knowledge sharing.) I said I’d talk about Depths of Darkhollow a little bit. So, here it is.
When Depths of Darkhollow was originally announced and the features were up on the Official EverQuest web site, nothing really jumped out at me, you know? Nothing really impressed me, I guess you could say. And I think I’ve figured out what it is. There are no good features in Depths of Darkhollow. None. I mean on the website, they list new…
- Alternate abilities
- Spells
- Zones
- Items
- Tradeskill recipes
…as like highlights of an expansion. What the fuck is that? Don’t list it – all that shit better come with the new expansion. That shit is a given. Without those what the fuck could you even be expanding for this expansion. Listing zones, really? Without new zones, you literally can’t have a motherfucking expansion. You have to have all new ‘those things’. Do you think a restaurant advertises that they will be serving food on plates and having restrooms so people don’t shit and piss all over the walls and floor, as features? Of course not! Because those are, without a doubt, going to be there.
I’m sick of that shitty deceptive advertising. Because you can’t fill up more than a few sentences describing the only “new” things of this expansion, so you toss that of-course-it’s-in-there bullshit on the box for filler. Advertising new zones in a god. damn. expansion is a little re -dundant or -tarded – you decide.
Now let’s look at the actual features: Monster Missions and Spirit Shrouds.
Fuck these things in their variety of faces. People gaining experience doing something besides playing their own class and character? Super awesome good idea…I can’t wait to see the people who’ve gotten 75% of their total experience romping around these bad Larrys. I’m sure they’ll be packed full of skill and aptitude of their actual class. After doing a good handful of Monster Missions, to form my always unbiased and objective opinion, I came to realize that, in a Monster Mission, everything I’ve worked for in EverQuest – all my gear, AA’s, discs, skills, etc… – are just…gone. Eliminated. Nullified. Not present. Who would enjoy this and why? I just don’t understand the appeal of playing as a worse version of myself in some shitty NPC illusion, which is exactly what Monster Missions are. But wait! There’s more to it than that.
When you spend an hour doing something, even if you fail at your objective, usually there’s some experience gained at least, to make up for it. Like, if I spend a few hours camping some item, and I don’t get the item, at least I’ve gotten some experience killing mobs for the chance at it. If the mobs I have to kill don’t yield experience, it’s still my decision to go there and do it. I’ve done some monster missions that only yield experience upon a victory. So, if you spend an hour or two – shit, or more – trying to do some ridiculous objectives and you fail, you get no fucking experience gain. You basically pissed away a few hours aggravating yourself and hating EverQuest just a little bit more.
There’s some basic building blocks to the game of EverQuest. Whether they are a necessity, or just something we’ve come dependent on, is up for discussion. But I would be willing to wager 99% of the non-retarded population playing this game will agree that the ability to resurrect someone is one of the most important and useful abilities in the game and especially in a group setting. Forget the experience reimbursement portion of resurrection, that is a moot point. In a Monster Mission, you don’t’ lose experience upon death and you respawn at zone in. But what about instances that have mobs that repop and the location of your objective to update the task asks you to be deep within the zone? Well, when resurrected in a Monster Mission, you can’t get back to your group from the zone in; it’s virtually impossible. And when you’re limited to 3 “classes” to choose from, losing 1 person can be a critical failure. So you work up to that point for a while and if someone dies, then what? You’re just fucked? Pack up your shit and go home? What a fucking blast. So much fun. Holy shit.
The balancing of tank hit points and healer mana regeneration for these ‘monsters’ is totally out of sync in a lot of these missions. When you give a tank 20k HPs and the best heal available is only a 4,000 point rubbery floppy thing of a heal, which also costs an asston of mana – that’s just straight retarded. Top that cake off with the fact that mana regeneration is a fucking joke. Even with Mental Clarity ranked to the fuckin gills, you’ll be sitting to med like this shit was Lower Guk in 1999.
There was one particular mission where a bunch of mobs came to rub their sacks all up in my grill. We did the mission with 5 people; it was in the Hive. The class options were Warrior, Cleric, and Wizard – which is actually an Enchanter – why. The monster mission had this little ring event in the upstairs of the west tower. So, we plow up there at the speed of a legless invalid. And when we finally got up there for the ring event, the warrior died. No problem, right? It happens. WELL, with no way to rez, and repops alllll the way up to us, we really had to slap on the black face paint and get fully Mission-Impossibled up, just to continue with our monster mission. We had to keep training a shitload of mobs away and at just the right time, respawn ourselves back into the mission, before the mobs pathed back. So, the ability to simply return to your group is less not dependent on the abilities assigned to the whack ass monster vessel you have to inhabit in for these missions but rather more dependent on your computer loading the zone file fast, so you can try to respawn in and run for safety, before the mobs path back and put it in your butt. Again. Super cool.
During the ring event, we’d get 2 mobs at a time. We’d kill 2 and then get another wave of 2. Kill 1 of those, then have the “Wizard” mez the other while the Cleric meds for half a fucking hour. There were about 10 waves. So, if you do the math, that’s like 30 minutes per wave. You better pray nobody dies or your back at square one. And round and round it goes. What. fun.
There was another monster mission I did, some instanced version of Runnyeye, where I’m a level 30ish Sporali killing evil eyes. With no resists, because that’s what they decided to give my monster vessel – no control over that! So, it was definitely an awesome time having the evil eyes chain blind spells, stuns and, of course, gflux me all over the fuckin dungeon. At one point I actually punched myself in the throat after realizing I paid money for this experience. I mean honestly, it was ridiculous. I find it hard to believe (read as: impossible to believe) anyone tested or casually played that mission and said, “PERFECT” before sending it off with a stamp of approval, only to be added into the expansion.
Granted not all Monster Missions are this out of whack, but the general idea behind them is just too much for me to handle. But I guess if you get off on playing as some NPC illusion, with limited and untuned abilities and stats, then Monster Missions are right up your alley.
I probably wouldn’t be so upset with Monster Missions if they weren’t the only real feature of this entire expansion. Monster Missions and Spirit Shrouds, that’s it. To me a feature is something new to the game, that makes a particular expansion unique. I guess by that definition evolving items are a feature as well, but I’m only agreeing to that because I don’t want to split hairs about how shitty those things are in principal (e.g., pointless time-sink & false increases). I know I got pretty lengthy here, but please believe, there’s a lot more I’d like to say but I’m not sure I have the patience or self control to get it all out coherently. I had started writing some more bullshit about how the life span of these new expansions is only a couple months and how the lack of content and the over usage of instancing is killing the game, but I’ll save it for a rainy day.
Quotable Quotes That I Quoted
