No EQ1 raiding yesterday, and of course I totally forgot to hunt up my City of Heroes disks and check out Paragon City once more. I logged Nashuya in to sell and repair prior to finishing up the Cauldron Hollow access quest needed for the next fight in the Restoring Ghoulbane heritage. Heard in the 40s channel (oh yes, our dear Shadow Knight is 40 now) that people were gathering to kill Emperor Fyst in Deathfist Citadel.
Alas, 40 is a smidge too low for that particular raid. That had been pounded into me during the last three unsuccessful trips there with Dera. I’ve been there so many times that I’ve started leading the raids, I know them so well. It’s a dreadfully complex script that takes a minimum of two hours, usually three.
Point being, Dera (47 now) needed it, so I logged on and asked if there was room. There was, and in only a few short hours (as people who needed it logged on), we were off. Me leading. I haven’t led raids in EQ since an incident in EQ1 with a drama queen in one of my raids made me make a promise to myself, never again. But the past few times I’ve known the script better than anyone else there, and leading raids is fun, when things go well.
So we clear to Fyst in a record time of an hour and a half, run eagerly into the arena to start the final ring event and — and — nothing. Nope. Nada. Fyst sits stalwartly on his throne, refusing to send in his gladiators. Did we miss a named? Did we miss anything at all? We go through every room and tower in that castle. Scrub the ramparts clean. Come back and NOTHING. I petition and eventually a GM responds with a form letter which makes it clear he has not actually checked to see if there is a problem.
TWO HOURS LATER… some of us have left… a group member goes link dead and BAM! the event starts.
Sure, working as intended. But I’m finally DONE with that raid. With Dera snd Dina. Nashuya still needs… but that can wait until she’s 45. By then she should be done Ghoulbane and, Innoruuk willing, the Electrified Bone Bladed Claymore.
So anyway, during the raid the guild leader of my guild sends me a tell that our guild is being swallowed by another guild, and I should get ready to pack my bags. Except that of the three characters of mine in the guild, they only really want Dina, my highest-level one (at 54). So it’s back to the ironically-named dead guild, Immortals, for Dera and Nashuya.
Carlisle sent me an email reminding me the EQ1 Combine progression server opens soon. The Combine server won’t launch with ANY of the expansions. They’ll open Kunark when some trigger events happen; likely the killing of Nagafen and Vox, but they aren’t saying specifically what triggers the next phase. Similarly for all the other expansions up through Prophecy of Ro.
I did something similar to this when Stromm opened. Stromm was the last new, no-transfer EQ1 server, but it opened with all the expansions at the time; at least up to Legacy of Ykesha. I think Lost Dungeons of Norrath opened while I was leveling. Anyway, that spawned Dera v1.0, who became Brita when I brought her to Erollisi Marr. And it was a lot of fun, but in the end, I had to focus on her to the exclusion of all other games and characters.
I don’t think I’ll have the time to do the Combine server properly unless I give up on Erollisi Marr and EQ2.
