So there’s this new TV reality show called Unan1mous. The basic idea; lock nine people away, and promise a prize of $1.5m to the person who gets the unanimous vote of the others. The catch is, each day they do not choose one person to receive the bonanza, the pot lessens. I suppose after a couple of weeks, it’s down to ten bucks and a rusty quarter.
Do they really expect the contestants to be so greedy that they just don’t decide in the first five minutes to pick one person to win, and split the pot?
“Hey! What say we share? We all get over a hundred and fifty grand apiece, and we can go home!”
/shrug.
—
I was thinking about why EQ2 is more fun than WoW, at least for me. Crafting in EQ2 is still very difficult; today, Etha became a level 30 alchemist and graduated to tier 4 recipes. She had a commission awaiting her when she logged in, from someone for whom she had made bruiser skills a few days back. A gold for a level 19 skill. Hot diggity – she made another skill and included that along with it.
In WoW, once the gathering is done, then you make the item, assuming your skill is up to it. But there is no drama in the making; you always succeed. In EQ2, you might not succeed, or you might make a crappy or even just barely less than pristine item, which is worthless to sell. So you have the gathering, and then the crafting, which depends on paying attention to the crafting process. And it takes TIME. I have spent several hours getting Etha to 30 Alchemist, and I have many hours to spend later getting Dina from 21 to 30 tailoring. I figure it will take a hundred fifty finished items for that, not to mention the various subcombines, and the stuff Etha needs to make for her.
But here’s the thing. Gathering is trivial – more trivial than it is in WoW, since one person can gather anything (in WoW, you can gather at most two kinds of things). So Dina makes a run to a zone, gathers whatever she sees, and gives the stuff to those of my alts who can best use it.
And then, we fight the chemistry table, or the loom, or the forge, and try to make something worth having.
Yeah, while I am crafting, I am not getting experience levels. But you know what? I’m making progress. And in EQ2, you can be any level and still do fun stuff. I will have to get back to Splitpaw and do the Harclave thing. No matter when I go, it will be challenging for my level.
I REALLY want to get back to that Everfrost instance.
In WoW, you can solo – easily – but it’s the boring kind of soloing; killing wandering monsters or doing fedex missions.
My Freeport troubador quest – where I had to disguise myself as a dervish cutthroat bard assigned to pump up some orcs with a rousing tune prior to an invasion of the Commonlands – was just an unqualified blast, even though I died twice figuring out what I was supposed to do.
