So, I started over with a new Ratonga Illusionist named Zogan. Actually, he started as a Coercer, since Rats are an evil-aligned race. But that’s no obstacle in EverQuest 2, because you can always switch sides. Being able to change factions is one of the things made possible by not designing a game around PvP — there’s no competitive advantage to being able to do it, so there is no reason to prohibit it.

Changing factions in EQ2 is not hard, but it can be somewhat time consuming. It begins in your home city, where you find a quest giver who is somewhat disenchanted with life there. In Zogan’s case, it was a fellow Ratonga whose tail had been cut off by the Freeport militia for fun. (Oh, the indignity! For Ratonga pride alone, Zogan could stay there no longer.)

The initial betrayal quest involved sneaking around the city by night to investigate the city guard, eavesdropping on conversations and planting Gnomish listening devices. Then, with the help of an expert forger, Zogan replaced the guard shift schedule with a new one, giving the resistance an opportunity to enter the militia headquarters with minimal opposition. Finally, inside the HQ, Zogan dispatched the guard captain (dying several times in the process due to recalcitrant coerced pets), freed a few prisoners, and left behind a couple of explosive devices for good measure. But the mission was not a complete success, for poor Zogan was captured on the way out and summarily ejected from the city (tail still intact, thankfully).

Having betrayed your home city, you find yourself in Haven, an underground town for those who have no home among the primary factions. Haven has no housing and no access to the shared bank, but other than that you could stay an exile forever if you don’t mind having both other factions hate you. Usually, Haven is just a temporary home while you build faction with someplace nicer.

From here, you can gain entrance to one of the other cities by doing tasks for them. You can even go back to the place you just betrayed, if you like. Zogan chose to join Kelethin, the city of the Fae, due to rumors that they are easier to impress than Qeynos. The rumors seem to have been true, as Zogan soon found soon found an Elf who would put in a good word for the low price of killing three orcs in a nearby camp.

After learning the Fae language and exterminating a goodly number of foul-smelling orcs, Zogan was sent to see the Queen of the Fae herself to gain citizenship. Truly, it felt strange to Zogan to be in a place where he wasn’t the smallest inhabitant! Before he could accept, however, he was informed that he could no longer practice Coercion, and would have to take up the related path of Illusionism. A high cost, to be sure, but worth it…

As I write this, Zogan is level 20, having just completed the beginning quests in Timorous Deep and his betrayal followed by a quick change of citizenship to Qeynos. (Kelethin is nice, but it’s too high up in the air, and falling off of it hurts!) I’ve decided to turn off experience gain from combat, so I can play through a couple of areas I’ve missed in the past without leveling too fast. More to come…

Meet Elithia. She’s one of my EverQuest 2 characters — not my main but currently my favorite alt. She’s an Illusionist, in her mid-20s as I write this, and does Provisioning as a trade skill. It took me quite a while to decide on her class, because EQ2 has so many options it can be kind of overwhelming even if you’ve played MMOs for a while. EQ2 has a total of 24 classes, two variants of each of 12 base classes. For example, the Illusionist class is the good-aligned version of the Enchanter; the evil-aligned variant is the Coercer. You can switch between variants, provided you don’t mind moving to the opposite faction.

The Enchanter is, in all of EverQuest, a crowd-control mage. In EQ2 they are a pet class, and this is where one of the biggest difference between the variants shows up: the Coercer charms enemies as temporary pets, while the Illusionist gets a “persona” which looks just like them and casts similar types of spells. This puts the Enchanter between the other two extremes of the EQ2 mages — they aren’t completely reliant on their pet like the Summoners are, but they also don’t nuke as hard by themselves as the Sorcerers. Instead of sheer killing power, they have a large number of ways to disable, stun, and root the enemy, along with power management buffs which help out other group members.

Now, if you’ve ever played in an MMO with me, you’re probably thinking “Rob, what the hell are you doing playing a caster, especially one like that”. It’s true, I like melee, and that’s why my main in EQ2 is a Brigand. (I’ll talk more about him later.) But I’ve found that while I love soloing with a stealthy stabbing type of class, playing one in a group usually ends up driving me crazy. In groups, I’d rather be in the back where I can see what’s going on and react to it.

Allow me to digress a moment, and talk about the Loremaster class in Lord of the Rings Online. One of the reasons I like my Illusionist is that it feels most similar to the Loremaster, which is one of my favorite classes of any MMO I’ve tried. LOTRO faced a big limitation which most other fantasy MMOs don’t, and that’s the relative lack of flashy magic in Tolkien’s world. But they needed a class for people who like casters, so they came up with one which uses crowd control, pets which help you out but can’t tank, debuffs, and even the occasional melee strike to offset a lack of traditional nuking power. What they ended up with was a class that is very survivable as a soloer and is useful in groups, while requiring attention and tactics to play effectively. Enchanters in EQ2 remind me of that play style. (I haven’t found anything that feels the same in WoW.)

It took me a couple of weeks of playing both an Illusionist and Coercer to decide which variant I liked best. The Coercer reportedly becomes a very powerful soloer later in the game, but early on I found it somewhat more frustrating than the Illusionist. At low levels the Coercer’s charmed pets don’t last very long at all — and when the timer runs out, or a resistance check fails, they turn on you. I often found myself not even bothering with a pet, preferring to just root and nuke on my own much of the time. Perhaps I will change Elithia into a Coercer at a higher level when a more complete set of skills, as well as longer charms, are available.

I’d like to try to start blogging about what I do in EQ2, the way some other people write adventure logs for their characters, instead of just talking about design issues or random things I run across. That’s why I picked Elithia to talk about first — my main is at a higher level, so I’ve missed my chance to talk about lower level things on him.

So, what is Elithia up to? As I write this, she has just reached level 26. Her first 20 levels went by in a blur, questing among the Sarnak in the Timorous Deep. The TD starter zone is popular because of the quality of its quest rewards, but even now that the other areas have been upgraded to match it is still an excellent place to start an alt because it has good quest flow and gets you through the early levels at a quick, smooth pace. I like the Sarnak, too — story-wise, they are trying to find their place in the world, and have a very pragmatic attitude combined with a recognition of the importance of history. They’re aligned with Freeport, but I really don’t see why, as they are effectively neutral in almost every way that counts. Unfortunately, this means my Illusionist can’t live in their city of Gorowyn, which is a pity because I like it a lot, especially the housing and tradeskill area.

After leaving Gorowyn at level 21, Elithia finally took up her residence in Castleview Hamlet in Qeynos, and immediately started working on her armor quests. A helpful NPC in Qeynos gives you a whole set of armor, piece by piece, in exchange for you going out and killing stuff. Unfortunately, after getting the gloves and boots easily, Elithia’s next task took her deep into the sewers, which are annoyingly claustrophobic for a tall High Elf like her, and full of curves and little rooms which make combat uncomfortably close. That next piece of armor better be worth it!

To shake off the stench of the sewers, I decided to investigate the strange blue shard in Elithia’s inventory, which seems to have come from the Thundering Steppes. This is the start of the Splitpaw Saga adventure pack, which has a few nice solo challenges that scale to your level. The Splitpaw gnolls enjoy gladiatorial combat, which is why the first challenge Elithia undertook was to defeat their arena champions, a task which she completed without breaking a sweat or dropping below 90% health. (Poor things. Even the ones that weren’t terribly sleepy had trouble moving their feet to get close enough to hit her. Maybe next time they’ll remember to take their afternoon naps before trying to fight!) For this, Elithia received a mounted Dreadsnout head for her wall — still on fire, I might add — and a cute little mushroom pet that makes way too much noise when it walks around behind you.

Next, a sneaky gnoll wanted Elithia to sneak into a rival tribe’s hideout and destroy their supply crates. This was slightly more challenging, as the hideout was quite full of gnolls which insisted on fighting in groups instead of one at a time. Still, the appearance of two identical Elithias must have confused them, because they all died easily, leaving only their boss to be dealt with on the way out. Unfortunately, the boss left behind only a piece of plate armor, which soon found its way to a nearby gnollish pawnbroker.

The last test is the toughest: the Trial of Harclave. Commemorating a great hero, this is a solo trial in which you, infused with a spirit of vengeance and great power, must carve your way through a legion of heroic mobs just as Harclave himself did. Unfortunately, Elithia didn’t do too well here, primarily due to recklessness — while dealing with one group of six, two more groups added on, and even the Spirit of Harclave couldn’t save her from an untimely death.

As you can tell, I kind of like the Splitpaw adventure pack; while it doesn’t have a lot of solo content (it has some group stuff and raids too) the three quests you can do solo are fun, especially the Trial of Harclave which makes you feel really powerful. That, in fact, is where its difficulty comes from. It’s very tempting to get careless and risk an overpull; while you can easily kill one heroic group at a time with the Harclave buff up, adding a second or third group will quickly overwhelm it. I’ve failed it several times, and that’s always been the reason.

Next for Elithia: more armor quests, tradeskilling, and perhaps a Heritage quest or two. Meanwhile, my main, a level 51 brigand, explores the Sinking Sands on his flying carpet, while seeking to become a Vindicator of the Coin…

Ouch.

As always, I must put a disclaimer here and say that I’m not really a “hardcore” player, I don’t raid or PvP, so my knowledge of the endgame pretty much stops at high level 5-mans. If you want to look me up on the Armory and make fun of my gear, please note that I don’t care, and if you don’t see tanking gear it means I logged out in my cat form set, not that I suck even worse than I already admit.

One of the best references for druid theorycrafting and information is the Druid Wiki. Originally I had a bunch of stuff written here with tips for new druids, but then I realized that the Druid Wiki does it much better and in more detail. Start with their game mechanics page for more detail than you ever wanted to know about stats and mechanics of the druid. The druid facts page is also interesting, with a collection of random tidbits you might not find elsewhere.

Another absolutely indispensable reference, once you get near the end of your leveling career at least, is Emmerald’s feral druid gear lists. Here you will find lists of high-level and endgame gear for both bear and cat forms, ranked by effectiveness for tanking or DPS as appropriate, and sorted by equipment slot.

Finally, a couple of blogs. First I’d like to mention WoW Insider which is chock full of good information for all classes; the Shifting Perspectives feature is specifically for druids, and includes posts such as this one about talent specs for leveling. Another one I like is the Big Bear Butt Blogger who has been writing about druids for quite a while. For example, this post on multiple pull tanking is recommended reading for everyone who is a bear tank or groups with one. (And yes, I admit I’m not all that great at actually implementing what I’ve learned here. Oh well, it wouldn’t be a SBA run without a few wipes, now would it?)

See you in game, whether you’re behind my big bear butt, or I’m behind yours…

First I should insert a disclaimer: I am not a real game reviewer, I did not play in the AoC beta, I don’t have a level 80 character already, and I generally don’t like PvP. I’m mostly an explorer and socializer who tends to fill his entire character roster with alts before even one of them reaches maximum level. So if you’re looking for fairness, PvP stuff, or anything about high-end play, please look elsewhere.

The single aspect of Age of Conan I have chosen to comment on today is its class choices. There are twelve available classes, divided into three each in the archetypes of soldier, priest, rogue, and mage. The archetypes are not just a convenient descriptive tool; each archetype shares a feat tree (feats are similar to talents in World of Warcraft) as well as having a different path through the story-related “destiny” quests. (Warriors break a lot of heads, rogues sneak and spy and assassinate, and so forth.)

With so many classes, there is plenty of room for both traditional and non-traditional interpretations of the standard MMORPG roles. One of my favorites, for example, is the Herald of Xotli, one of the “mage” classes. Xotli — an alien god borrowed in concept from the Cthulhu Mythos, apparently — doesn’t go for the finger-waggling type of mage at all. His servants prefer to wade into close combat swinging a big two-handed sword, bringing with them a torrent of magical flame. Sure, they can bring down a pillar of hellfire to burn everything around them, but they do it along with a powerful melee combo instead of a spell. For short periods, they can even transform into the avatar of one of Xotli’s lesser servants to become more resilient and powerful. And yes, since Heralds of Xotli are mages, they melee in cloth armor. If you play one, you die quickly — but you also cut through swaths of enemies like butter while doing so. Fun? You bet!

Another example of an interesting hybrid class is the Bear Shaman, one of the priest classes. Priests who melee aren’t exactly new to the genre, but the Bear Shaman is the first one I can remember that actually heals by melee. A lot of his healing and buffing power comes from reactive abilities that trigger and spread while he’s fighting. The shaman has buff A on himself, which gives a chance to place debuff B on the enemy when he hits it, which causes anyone else attacking it to gain buff C, which gives extra healing to spell D. That sort of thing. Unlike the other game we all probably play, being a healing or casting hybrid in Age of Conan doesn’t mean choosing between healing and something else — sure, you can customize yourself to boost one or the other aspect of your class, but in the end you can and should do everything if you want to be playing at your best.

Let’s say you’re looking for a stealth class. In Age of Conan, every class can sneak, if they spend points in the Hide skill, and rather than basing stealth solely on your class it also factors in lighting and equipped armor. Of course, the three classes under the “rogue” archetype are the most dedicated to sneakiness, and you get to choose from the combat-focused Barbarian, the Assassin, who had best kill his enemy from stealth or die trying, and the Ranger, who actually gets to sneak attack with his bow. I’m not sure why more games don’t have a bow-using class that can actually play the stealthy sniper, so I have to give Funcom some credit for including it here.

Class customization uses a feat tree very similar to the talents in World of Warcraft, except that each class only has two trees and they are deeper than the ones in WoW. A third tree is shared between the classes in each archetype, which I think works well because it allows the main trees to be completely devoted to class-specific abilities, while “generic” talents — mana and health regeneration, defense boosts, and the like — can be factored out.

One of my big concerns with Age of Conan, however, is how well its original class designs and abilities will hold up over time, give that it has a heavy emphasis on PvP. Anyone who has followed World of Warcraft for a while knows exactly how many nerfs and buffs are the direct result of PvP imbalances, and how often those nerfs and buffs screw up something in PvE. Can Funcom avoid the same problems Blizzard has had with class balance over the years? I can only hope…

The main reason I’m even bothering to write about this is that I want to plug the 960 Grid System by Nathan Smith, which I am using here. It’s based on the idea that 960 pixels is not only a nice width for a web page — it fits on a 1024×768 display and is not too wide for comfort — but it can be easily subdivided into 12 or 16 chunks to build a page layout. So, you can easily have 2, 3, or 4 equal-width columns, or a combination of unequally-sized ones sized in units of 1/12th or 1/16th the width of the page. The base stylesheet for this defines classes you can apply to divs to produce whatever column layout you want, including stacking different column widths in different vertical parts of the page. It’s really quite simple and surprise-free, and the styles and demo code are available freely under both the GPL and MIT licenses.

For those new to WoW, perhaps I should back up a moment and describe what an interface addon is. One of Blizzard’s most interesting and forward-thinking decisions in the design of WoW was to make its client scriptable. Most games let you customize their interface a little by rearranging windows, graphical skinning, and the like, but WoW goes much farther than that by embedding a complete programming language in the client so that its behavior can be drastically changed or extended.

To be honest, the availability of this degree of customization is one reason I keep coming back to World of Warcraft. I’ve been spoiled — every time I play some other game, I keep finding small inconveniences or wishing for new features, and in the back of my head I can’t help but think “if this was WoW, there would be an addon for this”. (And if there wasn’t, I could probably write one.) So, over the next few weeks or months, I’m going to talk about my favorite addons, why I like them, and how to tweak them to your liking. And since I have so many, this will probably be quite a long series of posts…

I don’t want to spoil my review too much by talking about the Kindle here yet, but I do have a few first impressions.

Amazon Whispernet (the Kindle’s wireless service) actually works at my home, and quite well at that. Considering that it’s supposed to be based on Sprint EVDO, this surprises me greatly. I suspect it’s roaming on Verizon, unless Sprint lit up a tower close by very recently. If it’s roaming, I have to give Amazon props for allowing that — it makes the Kindle much more useful for those of us who live a bit outside the city.

A hardware tidbit: check the system/logs directory of the Kindle’s internal storage. Mine had a boot log showing that it uses a Linux 2.6 kernel on a 400 MHz PXA255 with 64MB of RAM, and EVDO module from AnyData. The software seems to be Java based with a plugin architecture so they can add more applications later, like the ones under the “Experimental” menu. Maybe someone will figure out how to hack it for user-installed apps, though I don’t have any more hope for that than I do for it on the iPhone.

I’m also pleased by the fact that the Kindle has native support for unencrypted PalmDocs. Although the Kindle’s native format for DRMed books is something new, its format for unencrypted documents is MobiPocket, which is essentially HTML wrapped in a PalmDoc container. Plain text PalmDocs work just fine too. Just make sure the file name extension is .prc, not .pdb — just go ahead and rename it, as the file format is the same inside. Other than plain text, those are the only formats it supports directly right now, but at least Amazon offers a conversion service which is free via email, or 10 cents if you email it a document to be sent wirelessly to the Kindle. Or, on Windows, you can use Mobipocket’s own conversion tools. From where I sit, this is far easier than dealing with the Sony because all of my books are on my Mac, and many of them are already PalmDocs.

And yes, this probably means that Pyrite Publisher is about to rise from the grave. I think this incarnation will be a Kindle-supporting e-book librarian though…

• PGCU_Tabula_Rasa.zip

Instructions after the jump.

The profile zip file contains three files. Put the Tabula Rasa.dat and Tabula Rasa.pr0 files in your PCGU driver installation directory, or load them and save them into the default location using the profiler, and you should then be able to load them using the system tray icon. The third file, is a PDF of the printed output of the profiler, showing the key assignments.

I should point out that I play TR using the MMO keyset, but this profile should work well with only minor modifications for the FPS keyset as well. In MMO mode, buttons 1-4 activate the first four skills, while buttons 5-8 select the first four weapons. Button 19 activates the fifth skill, and button 20 selects the fifth weapon. In FPS mode these are reversed, as the weapons and skills flip positions in the game UI. Button 17 does a melee attack or overkill, and button 18 reloads. Button 9 crouches and buttons 10 and 11 cycle the weapons (I think I’ll probably move the 5th weapon/skill functions to these, though).

Button 12 is the Tab button for locking a target, and shifted it turns off mouselook, while button 13 opens the radial menu and button 14 is Escape for closing windows. Under your thumb, button 16 is the “use” key in FPS mode, and button 15 is the push-to-talk for voice chat. Finally, shifting buttons 1-4 changes skill loadouts.

As always, I map jump and auto-run to buttons on my mouse, so if you can’t do that you might need to remap a key or two.

Remember, you get a free t-shirt for every 25 Thrax skulls you turn in to the Foreas Base quartermaster, so get out there and grease some Bane, soldier!