Jericho, Lost, American Idol and my first DoG raid on EQ2

You can get a sense for how popular a show is by how many people are downloading it. That’s as direct correlation of interest as you’re likely to get.
Using the most popular tracker (I may go back and sum up all trackers), Jericho had about 2400 seeds and leeches this morning. By comparison, Lost s04ep01 had over 5000, and Lost s04ep02 had about 3000.
That’s pretty strong for a show that was canceled and resurrected, I think.
If I remember, I’ll write a scraper to grab this data for more accurate figures. Jericho itself is kinda skewed down, because apparently there is a bootleg of the first three or four episodes floating around, so people are downloading that instead.
I definitely don’t condone that. Watch the show on the TV, then, if it’s worth watching again, grab it. That way the advertisers get their viewers and the show gets money to continue. We WANT that for the shows we like.
It was my first time watching CBS; I didn’t know what channel it was, I had to look it up. There was some show with weird people with scary hair ending as I tuned in. What’s up with that… looked like some reality show for teens like MTV used to (and may still) show.
I was watching Hollywood week on American Idol. They play with instruments (meh) but NO GROUP SONGS? That was my FAVORITE part of last year’s show. Nobody really stands out for me, except the guy who had the guts to sing Freddy Mercury — and nailed it. Right then, he became my favorite.

I couldn’t fully watch any TV at all last night (hence why I am downloading Jericho) as I was raiding for my first time with Delusions of Grandeur. I had ACT running to keep track of my parse, as I sensed, rightly I think, that the officers will be watching it as well. We were on Overking, a fight with a lot of adds where AE is king. I don’t have a ‘blue’ AE, and so my damage was hovering between 300-400 most of the night, and for one parse only, over 650.
That’s a far cry from the 1500 they expect and the 2K they are hoping for.
Before the raid, I went with a guild group to the Court of Korocust and picked up two more harvests for my epic. Afterward, we did Vault of the Eternal Sleeper for someone’s epic (I parsed over 1600 on the boss, YAY, show them I CAN do DPS when I have a target that sticks around more than five seconds).
Afterward, I switched to Dera and healed for an epic hit in Skyfire and another in Maiden’s. I won a master somewhere along the line, not for a class I have. I’ll probably end up giving it to a guildie. It would just be wrong to keep it if someone needed it, though I need to raise cash to buy troub masters somehow.
I’m concerned that my DPS won’t be high enough on the raids to come for them to keep me. Overking has the waves of adds that I parse poorly on. Venril Sathir fears so I’ll be running off a lot. Leviathon is largely a ranged fight. I hope they raid somewhere I can really let loose before my vote comes up.

16 thoughts on “Jericho, Lost, American Idol and my first DoG raid on EQ2”

  1. Hey Tipa,
    Keep up the good work on your blog ^_^
    I have a question for you:
    I’ve been playing MMO’s since 1997 and somehow missed EQ while I was so focused on UO. I’ve recently had 3 different groups of friends ask me to play “their” games. EQ1, EQ2, and Vanguard. Which would you recommend to me? For sake of comparison the EQ1 people are on test server and level very quickly, I think in the one week I played so far I was level 57 necromancer. I really like everything in EQ1 but I feel like I’m doing the game a huge injustice playing this way, and it just wouldn’t be as good as if I had hit it in the prime. I’ve tried EQ2 for a while also with the other group and currently around level 42 or so. The game is fun but at times feels like a massive button mash fest while playing my Illusionist. Although I have really have enjoyed all the dungeons while leveling up. I have not tried Vanguard as I was scared away by the horrible reputation it carries, though my friends insist it is great now. So as someone without a whole lot of experience in any of these three which direction would you point me in? 😀
    Based on just your blog here it would seem you’d recommend EQ2, but if you had a brand new start at it would you stay with it over Vanguard or experiencing EQ1 for the first time (although in a very butchered way)?

  2. Well, I am biased. I played EQ1 for eight years, and I went through it twice from scratch — the first when it opened, the second around 2003 or 2004 when the last new, no-transfer server, Stromm, opened. And playing through the low levels, experiencing all the old EQ and the new — that was a heck of an experience.
    I felt EQ died when the emphasis shifted from having fun with your friends regardless of level — EQ always had plenty to do every level — to leveling as fast as possible to max level so you could raid. I didn’t like that in EQ, I didn’t like it in WoW, and I don’t like it in EQ2.
    I have played EQ2 exclusively for about a year now; prior to that, I split my time between EQ1 and EQ2, or was playing WoW. Having tried all the major MMOs out there, I believe this is the best one at the moment. WoW is far too goal-oriented for me. EQ2 is not yet so old that it’s impossible to experience the original content — you won’t have to solo all the time if you don’t want to.
    Vanguard is a very small game, less than 50K subscribers. But those players are passionate, and by choosing Vanguard, you won’t just be a face in the crowd — you’ll really get to know the people on your server, and they you. It’s risky, though, because it is a niche game in SOE’s stable, and won’t get all the love an EQ2 might. I have only played Vanguard a little, so I’m not the best judge, but I do know a lot of people who are very much into it. It still remains a game in which most of the time, it won’t be clear what to do next — it’ll be up to you how you play.
    You’ve played the EQs, you should probably give Vanguard a shot, but I think the only way to truly experience it will be to close your eyes, jump in, and make a commitment to stay with the game, good or bad. Doing it with friends will help a lot. Whenever I played, it was just me, alone, killing monsters alone, crawling through caves alone, doing quests alone. I just can’t take playing games alone.
    You should look up Stargrace (mmoquests.com) as well. She played both EQs and is currently working through Vanguard.

  3. I would have played some Vanguard with, if you had asked! 😛 Vanguard is fun and is a very in-depth game.
    Crafting is complex and diplomacy is complex.There just isn’t a lot of folks coming in. The starter areas are very empty.
    You definitely have something to strive for when you craft in that game. For example, making a house or a boat. There are tangible things and you don’t even need raws to craft when you’re trying to level. You only need raws when you make something usable.
    I would try it out, but like Tipa said… its a hard game to do alone because it takes a long time to do stuff.
    Have you tried the EQ2 PVP servers?
    Also, there are two new MMOs in the horizon that folks are very excited about: Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Maybe you should wait for those?

  4. About Vanguard –
    I beg to differ about ‘not a lot of folks coming in” and “starter areas very empty”
    Not sure what server you’re talking about Lishian, but on Seradon, there’s at least 2-3 new people every single day speaking up in the regionsay channel. There’s always groups going on – granted a lot are PST time zones (so very heavy populations at night). I’d say this server is nicely populated, there’s always people talking. If not on regionsay then most certainly on /craft and /dip.
    Again, biased though, since I play here in VG.
    My guild is small, and every night we have 5-14 people online between levels 5-50. We get a new recruit (or two) every single week. I’d say more people are playing VG now then were playing say 3 months ago.

  5. Oh.. and while I love VG for it’s complexity (by far one of the most complex mmo’s I’ve ever played between EQ/EQ2/WoW/VG) EQ2 has far more polish, and that can turn people off from VG.

  6. This is exactly the reason why Jericho almost got canceled last year. Torrent popularity is great, but the show didn’t fare very well last night in the ratings. If people don’t actually sit down and watch this show when its actually on there won’t be a show anymore.

  7. I beta tested Vanguard last year around October and even though it was bugged as hell it had a lot of really interesting lore and open endedness that reminded me of EQ1. If it wasn’t for most of my friends being scared to leave World of Warcraft I probably would have bought Vanguard after it was all patched up.
    If you want a more directed and polished game experience I would recommend staying with Everquest 2. Though from some of the stories Tipa tells it seems the end game raiding guilds are starting to get a little too exclusive. If a MMO is ever at the point where most guilds are only looking for healing classes then it usually means the raiding scene has gotten stale and its not getting any fresh players.
    World of Warcraft has a very easy to get into raid scene and is about to get a new raid zone next month. However, some people find WoW a little too polished with all the goals layed out for you in a nice little row. I can tell you that almost every guild in WoW seems to be recruiting since a lot of players quit raiding in favor of PvP.

  8. Relm: It more means I’m getting more exclusive about the guilds I consider. There’s plenty of non-raiding, casual raiding, or lower level raiding guilds in EQ2, that will take any character you want to play and fill their occasional raids with pickup raiders. But since I was in Veeshan’s Peak with Clan of Shadows, I wanted to continue there. And the guilds who are in VP or close to it at this time are looking for people who can contribute greatly. Raiding guilds always need healers, I just refuse to play mine as my main. I can’t afford the time to make Dera raid-ready, and I won’t give Dina up.
    You can still play EQ2 and see nearly everything without raiding; and you can get excellent kick-butt instance gear and your epic without even one raid. Veeshan’s Peak is the only locked zone in all of Rise of Kunark — the original EQ locked Sebilis and Howling Stones as well.
    Read Random-Battle today where Cameron gushes about an add-on that goes through your quest log and automatically makes little ant-trails on your map to show you which way to go to do your quests and places big arrows explaining what to do when you get there. EQ2 is nothing like WoW — thankfully. WoW is like a tricycle with training wheels. It boggles me how anyone can have any sense of accomplishment in that game.
    While watching Jericho last night, I realized I hadn’t watched the last three episodes of season 1, so I was a little lost. I thought I had watched all the episodes when Rob Hawkins had discovered who was behind the bombings, but apparently there were three more shows in which they meet people from a town called New Berm, continued into season 2.
    I didn’t find the show significantly better or worse than season 1. It always was uneven, but it’s better than most of the stuff on TV. Lost is uneven, Heroes is uneven — there’s not going to be many shows that just hit high notes every episode. I can’t even think of one. You gotta support the good stuff so there’s room for the great stuff.

  9. I downloaded season 1 of Jericho and was able to watch it all in a row a couple of months ago so I was luckily up to date on the New Bern plot line. Basically its a town that Jericho traded with for windmill turbines. They got jealous over how much food Jericho had so they basically decide to go start making mortars/weapons and take their stuff. It reminded a lot about how states had to be stopped from going to war with one another before their was a strong federal government.
    The ratings were not good. It got beat by a repeat of Law and Order. I sometime really wonder if the nielsen ratings are horrible broken and if there is anyway to prove it.
    http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/02/13/nielsen-ratings-tue-feb-12-all-hail-jericho/2658

  10. my GF and I watch law and order repeats over and over and over and….
    @Above Lishian: I really have no interest in AoC or Warhammer. I have a friend in AoC beta for a long time now and has not said a single good thing about it. On the flip side this same friend was also an early Vanguard tester and is now the friend trying to get me to play EQ1 again with him. Some habits never die 😛 And Warhammer looks too WarCraftish for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong, WoW was a great game with incredible release polish. Heck I played for nearly 2 years. I’m just looking for something PvE and hopefully raid focused. My issue with EQ2 so far is that I’ve enjoyed the game, I like the game, but I can’t seem to get passionate about my character. I have hope that I could, and I enjoy the game enough to keep going.. but my curiosity for the other 2 games is making me wonder far too much.
    It’s hard to enjoy an MMO game without a character to call home.

  11. @Tiv-
    Warhammer is nothing like WOW, other than it’s an MMO. Don’t discard a possibility just because the visuals seem similar. There are very very few similarities between WOW and WAR. I can’t really say more than that or risk messing up my NDA, but trust me. Different.

  12. Perhaps == and you know my email if you can snag another beta invite for me, Genda. Tiv, though, is looking for a raid-oriented PvE game, and we’re all hoping Warhammer will be a RvR-oriented PvP game, pretty much its opposite.
    Vanguard only has one raid — though by the time you leveled to raid level, they might have more. Back at Fanguard, they were talking about bunches, so they’ve always been in the plans.
    EQ1 is built around raiding, but I’m pretty sure nobody raids Trak or VS, for instance, any more. Or VP. Or PoP or PoTime, probably.
    I see T6 raids all the time, though, in EQ2, and I even saw a T5 raid (Venekor in CT) awhile back. T7 raids are very common, even in pickup raids, as are tier 1 RoK raids — so for PvE and raiding, I don’t think you can do better than EQ2 *at the moment*. You might consider that you like the game but not your class, and that’s very common. Out of 24 different classes, it’s hard to find the one that matches your playstyle best. They all are so different.

  13. my gf would kill me if i rerolled again in Eq2 LOL. Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, what a nice crowd you have here 🙂

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