Lord of the Rings Online being a bore (but a pretty one) — I didn’t even last through my free month — I was desperate to get some fun back into my online gaming. My 9-year old niece suggested Neopets*, and that was fun for awhile.
My son had made a character on the EQ2 PvP server, Vox… and having a little bit of fun… I thought I’d join him there, made a character, looked at the server list and…
*GASP*
Vox was a STATION EXCHANGE SERVER (ie, SOEbay)! I mentioned this to my son and we both started characters on the “I used to play on Vox” server, Nagafen.
SOE execs have claimed RMT is a powerful business model with a lot of support and they plan to make it a part of current and future offerings. Number 1 complaint of ex-Vox players: Nobody’s there except roaming bot farm groups. This is the world SOE sees for its future games? Vox players leave behind high level characters, loads of money and gear some of which they probably spent real money on, just to restart somewhere else. Given the chance to play in a realm where the buying and selling of characters, gold and items is discouraged vs staying in a place where the only active people left are those who read SOEs articles on RMT and decided this was a viable way to pay for their college education; they leave.
So, Nagafen was our new home. A place where leveling is so undesired that many shut off combat experience and suicide against guards to get their experience debt up nice and high. But also a place where it’s not uncommon to have 30 AA before you’re level 20. A place where roaming gangs will beat you up and steal your lunch money. A place where you might want to go someplace in your own home town… but just can’t.
Almost anything that would be a good idea on a normal server, like soloing, doing quests in a wide variety of zones and traveling the world without a care, are a BAD IDEA on Nagafen. Instead, you stay with the zones you know, stay off the heavily travelled routes. and always be aware of enemies in the area.
(Above: Tipara (Fury/Tailor) and Chaotixa (Warlock) in Neriak).
And of course, it’s a lot of fun. Restrictions are challenges, and challenges are fun. Flying in the face of good sense but needing to pick up some more AAs, I traveled to Greater Faydark last night to do some of the quests. I knew I would be dogged by Qeynosians, and I wasn’t wrong. But dangit, they always prowl around Freeport, making it impossible to spend time in Darklight or the Commonlands without being ganked. So it was only fair… I did get a couple of kills, and more than a couple of times, a Q would attack and then run off when they couldn’t kill me right away…. but accidentally becoming carnage flagged by straying too close to Kelethin (standard PvP solution: die to a monster right away.)
(Dyzara (Wizard/Sage) and Tipara)
On Blue servers, people look for XP groups. That’s hardly ever happened with me so far (get xp? Horrors! And combat xp is turned off anyway!) and usually even when a group starts out as an XP group, it becomes a PVP group as soon as a Q attacks it.
Twinks? About half the people you come across and well more than half of the people who are hunting you will be ridiculously twinked. In blue servers, that happens, but it doesn’t affect you much. On Nagafen, well, here’s me, a 17 fury with just 10 AA and clothes I made myself and apprentice IV spells I also made myself, vs a 15 illusionist hunter with an AA title, adept 3 spells and master pet and a horse with 50% run speed… that’s not a fight, that’s a slaughter and all you can do is try to last as long as possible.
Sometimes though… like that annoying ranger who would pop out of nowhere with sneak attacks only to die die die from concentrated evil goodness last night… or that haffer conjurer I found lurking about outside the Freeport gates the other day who poured all his flames and pets on my little Arasai Chaotixa while my fury Tipara kept her healed and her dots took down the halfling (or that hilarious moment when he realized that the inky and the bug were grouped and switched targets to Tipara only to have Chaotixa administer the coup de grace…)
Route from Freeport to Nektulos Forest on PvE (blue) vs PvP (red) server
It’s brought life to the game for me; my Befallen characters are in a boring place at the moment and Lord of the Rings was, as I’ve mentioned, disappointing once I got into the 30s and found I was just doing the same old things again and again (and, also, again). Sure, I die lots, but dying just makes the times when I win mean so much.
This is what I saw in a small way on WoW when I was in Ghost Watch, a guild where, by custom, we went PvP flagged even though it was on a blue server. That opened the door for a lot of fun times with Alliance people, many of whom I came to have great fun and conversations with (when I’d pop over to an Alliance character, or they to a Horde one). It could be if I’d played on a PvP server, I’d still be playing WoW. And I finally see now why hardcore PvPers ask that question first of every new game: How is the PvP? The game doesn’t start at 70 on Nagafen; it starts at level 10, and why bother getting to 70, anyway?
* (isn’t Spitefur just the cutest little Xweetok? Oh frig, I’m away this weekend… glad I remembered to put Spitefur up in a nice Neolodge. As it happens, I was visiting that same 9 year old niece and her mother this weekend, and we sat down and designed our Neohomes together. Mine will look like an Italian villa, with gardens outside and a courtyard; hers is going to be a chateau with a forest surrounding it.).
This is funny and very true. I started my toon on Venekor, day 1. You didn’t have all of this twinking because everyone was rushing to get to the higher levels. I think the PVP at higher levels is much more fun though and I would rather gain levels just to experience PVP there.. On Nagafen, I think I’m gonna have one locked and one that I want to level as fast as I can. I’m just having trouble figuring which class I want those toons to be. I always wished that I had started with a fury or warden because I enjoy being a healer. A bruiser or monk is another class that I wish I had started early.
Another thing we do a lot is we jump just short of the griffin when we know there might be some action. When I was a queen, we would jump onto the hill between gnollslayer and the TS griffin. There were always freeps there… that is there respawn point. 😐
Stop all this talk about EQ2, you’re tempting me to come bother you! 🙂
Never been on a pvp server and no doubt it’s a different experience. Most of my pvp experience was back in the days of Nox. ;p
One of these days I’ll have to give it a go. Thanks for the writeup.
EQ2 is an awesome game (best out there in my opinion). Many people like to poo poo its PvP system but it is extremely balanced for group combat. Rogues rule solo pvp… at least at tier 7. I personally dislike the amount of twinks but hey whatever, all tiers on Nagafen (greatest server in the game!) are packed with players.
Great post