Life continues to be good to me in Everquest II, with rate of overall progress both satisfying, and almost accidental at times. I'll be just out there, doing my thing; exploring, questing, defending myself from wandering monster attack, indulging in the odd pick-up group dungeon crawl, and all of a sudden, 'Ding!', which is exactly as it should be; a pleasant surprise, not the focus of my existence.
I remember the dark old days of Everquest 1, when you'd be sat there, driving yourself progressively more insane by spending the lengthy, and frequent downtime (at times, 14 mins in every 15 or worse), squinting at the character sheet xp bar, and trying to work out if the blue bar had actually moved a pixel during the last hour or so, or whether I was imagining it. And this wasn't even the 'Hell Levels' - arbitrary levels where you'd need three times the xp, for no immediately apparent reason, other than to stop people hitting the max level too fast. Ha!
Modern EQ2 is a very different affair, and over the space of perhaps two months or regular play, I've gone from level 23, to level 50, almost without noticing it at all, compared to the six months or more, back in 2004/5 where I had to work quite hard to make it to 23. I'm sure, but can't prove empirically, that they've thrown the big XP Multiplier Lever in the interim, although the much greater availability of xp for completing soloable quests must help a lot too.
I've been keeping an eye on my progress though, this time around, and comparing it to my progress through the same level range in World of Warcraft, during the last fling I had in there, and I'd have to say that it's taken me an almost identical time, both overall, and in the types of gaming session I've done each in, to cover this same level range. If anything, EQ2 seems a little faster, and I have amusing visions of a SOE Lab somewhere, full of 1940's Scientists, with labcoats, horn-rimmed spectacles, pencil moustaches and clipboards, all stood around a 22 year old contemporary couch-potato surfer dude with stopwatches, as he works from 1 to 60 in an illicit copy of World of Warcraft. I amuse myself at least. Perhaps it's nothing that sinister at all, just good research into the kinds of gaming we like, and are happiest playing.
Anyway, having ranted about what a terrible expansion Desert of Flames was, mostly because it was all high-level elitist stuff that I'd never see, I'm now five levels over the lowest level mobs on the first bit of it, 45, and am actually enjoying it immensely. I know, I know, I should be in Lesser Faydark by now, using the brand new and cool Echoes of Faydwer stuff, but I got the Collectors Edition, with all the expansions in, so the Isle of Ro is just as new to me too, and fun.
Central to this for me, is the sheer novelty of exploring a new land in an MMO. I love it, and it's a shame this never really lasts very long. You soon become familiar and then bored by, say, Antonica or the Thundering Steppes. The current rate of progress in EQ2 is good though, in that by the time this starts to settle in, you've levelled up enough to be viable in the next, new, lands, and only need to return for the odd particular quest here and there.
I'm in The Sinking Sands mostly at the moment, and still not bored of it yet. It has a great deal of the 'nostalgia factor' everyone talks EoF up for, and the island occupies the area of the EQ1 Desert of Ro, featuring many of the same types of mob and landmark as those old classic zones, The Oasis of Marr, The Spectre Tower, Sand Giants, Caimans, Dry Bone Skeletons, Desert Lunatics and the like, which made me smile. Spent a lot of time in the old versions of these zones. It also has a lot of new stuff, and considering it's supposed to be a desert, it has an awful lot of interesting landmarks and oddities.
It's also very three-dimensional in places; DoF is where the climbable walls were added first, and it's clear the design of the zone owes much to this new feature. Rock holes in the sand descend into steep, dark chimneys of rock, leading a warren of caverns buried under the sands, and negotiating your way down some of them feels almost Prince of Persia-like in places, lending a refreshing feel to the traditionally very flat, 2D MMO landscape.
I'm also trying to get involved and pick one of the three city factions, instead of my usual meta-gaming strategy of very artificial faction balancing, purely to make the least Kill-on-Sight enemies, and there's a surprising amount of background lore to be read on the city, the island and it's people. It's also very convenient for me...a flying carpet at Qyenos Harbour takes you straight there, compared with the somewhat laborious overland trek from Qeynos to Kelethin, and Steamfont or Lesser Faydark in EoF. Call me lazy! Another highlight was being abducted by a Genie and having to fight my way out out of his magic lamp, a neatly packaged sort of soloable mini-adventure both interesting and novel.
My personal favourite though, is Twister Riding. Every now and then, spontaneous desert whirlwinds will spring up, and drift across the zone. These twisters will actually pick players up and throw them, if caught in the middle. With careful steering, it's possible to direct yourself back into the twister's cone as you fall, which throws you back up again. I spent a good five minutes bobbing about the zone in this manner before the twister exhausted itself and vanished. Lucky I have both stealth, and safe fall skills, or things could have got ugly, but the whole thing had me giggling away, and I'm determined to make a sport of it!
There's still at least two overland zones and many instances on the island I've not even seen yet, in addition to whatever Lv50-60 stuff is on Faydwer, and long before that all gets boring, I'll be Lv60, and ready to look into The Kingdom of Sky content. And as if all that soloing wonder and exploration wasn't enough, life in the guild is going well, and I seem to be turning into a bit of a Raider on the quiet, although far from 'hardcore'.
No, I can't see myself getting bored with EQ2 any time soon, although when level 70 arrives - no longer some unattainable ideal, but a realistic and immanent prospect, things may change for me, as they did in WoW. Until then, I'll just game for the moment.