It’s time for another New Attitude! This week coming to you live from a pond somewhere in South Qeynos! Okay. It’s only live if you happened to be in South Qeynos while I was working on the article; and actually two members of the Legion of Kithicor where.  This week an article entitled “Make My Day”, Better Moats and Gardens goes to Freeport, Great (Scary) moments in gaming and Getting in Good with the Bad Guys. Read on…

Make my day…Live from South Qeynos

Coming to you this week live from a pond in South Qeynos…

Okay, it was only live if you happened to be in South Qeynos when I happened to be finishing the column…still…

I sit here writing on a day when over a foot of snow has descended upon us like a fluffy avalanche in the last twenty four hours. In the back ground a radio blares a message – “this just in,” the announcer says, “Hell freezes over and your work place WILL remain open.” Ok the second part isn’t true, but the first one sure is. What was even more surprising was that the morning paper had actually been delivered, and delivered on time. There is little doubt in my mind that the woman who delivers our paper must have done so with a dog sled and a team of Huskies. It is people like that, who sometimes touch our lives that just make my day. And the virtual worlds in which we play are no different.

Oh sure, there are many players who are out to poop in your virtual punch bowl for whatever twisted reason they may have to do so. Some are just naïve – like the young men who would make passes at my night elf character in WoW. One time I had to tell such an individual “young man, not only am I not really a rail think night elf, I am a nun and old enough to be your mother” – the tells stopped immediately.

Yet there are some people who are not only enjoyable to play the game with, but make the virtual world a bit better just by being in it. There are people who do this in different ways, and EQ2 is no exception.

The thing about EQ2 housing is that it is instanced – so you have no virtual neighbors. Yet “back in the day” as they say, when I played Ultima Online (UO) housing was decidedly not instanced. While it made for a virtual megalopolis, what it also made for was something that I miss – a virtual front porch. Many is the evening I would come home from work and lean across my virtual front porch and have a chat with a woman I will call “Sarah”. She had the distinction of being the first person who found out I am a nun in real life and took the time to discuss problems she had back in the real world with me. I had the privilege of being a friendly ear (and a virtual shoulder to cry on – for every habit comes preinstalled with a crying towel sewn into the shoulder) of a woman who was going through some very troubled times in her own life.

Back in my UO days I met another woman the same way, who I will call Kathy, who spent many a day just sharing good times and good conversation with me – that was back on the Great Lakes Server. Alas, I moved on to other games (how could I write about the games industry without experiencing it after all?) and she did not.

When I left UO to go play WoW it was my first experience with an MMO that was not played from and isometric, third person perspective view. Yet despite the penchant for people describing the ease with which a player can learn World of Warcraft – and despite my own penchant for reading all instruction books that come with software thoroughly – I couldn’t even figure out how to talk to another player when someone approached me that first day. I remember a player flying up to me wearing a “bat costume” offering to be my own personal bat. I wandered around lost for some time when I eventually I stumbled in to a small virtual village called Kharanos. There I met a woman I will call “Tricia”. Tricia invited me to join her guild and spent a great deal of time showing me about, showing me how to play the game and just being a good friend. She took time for a new player when she didn’t have to – and yes, when she found out I was a nun we shared some troubles as well – that’s what nuns do, even in the virtual world.

The day came when the luster on WoW grew a bit dim and I decided to give EQ2 a whirl. I will admit to having missed many of the trying early days in the game. What I did not miss are people like a woman I will call Dorothy – because that is her name. I can’t tell you how I met Dorothy. She is one of those people you meet in game from time to time who seem to have “just always been there.” And its not that Dorothy has always been so helpful and so generous with both her time and her resources. It is not that she was willing to help show a new player around. Dorothy, like the other women I have met above, make the game a better place just by being in it. And the amazing thing is, after all this time, the people above still keep in contact with me and share a bit of their lives with me.

I hope you too, will all have someone like Dorothy in your virtual world.

Great moments in Gaming…

This week “Great Moments in Gaming” was going to be about some of the wonderful sights I have discovered in Norrath.   All that changed the first time I started a quest that involved looking for the bones belonging to a ghost at the bottom of the bay in Everfrost…

There have been times when I have been nervous playing other MMOs - in Eve Online for example, where the possibility of permanent character death exists (even if only through oversight by the player) and when you venture out to play millions of virtual dollars are at stake in pvp.  But this time was a first. This was the first time I have ever played in a game and been actually scared. This is the first time I ever had to take the ear plugs, and turn the speakers on so I wouldn’t be so involved in the game.

Part of it may be due, as with many people I am sure, an innate fear of sharks - this despite having studied marine biology in college. Movies like “Jaws” haven’t helped either.  The odd thing is, even those times I have flown over both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where the very real possibility of encountering said sharks would have resulted had the plane gone down (and here I have in mind a particularly turbulent trip over the Sea of Japan). Yet when I encountered a virtual shark it scared me.  I was working on the quest at the bottom of the bay when up from behind me appears these huge shark jaws that open wide to swallow my gnome  whole. Because of the way graphics are generated in game what appeared first was just a set of jaws - and a label above my head that said  “epic x 2”. Any time a game developer can create a moment in game that brings REAL fear to a player, THAT by friends is great gaming.

Better Moats and Gardens…

This week in Better Moats and Gardens I stopped by to visit my good friend Decim.  She had moved into some new digs in Freeport and was in mid development of some great decorating ideas I wanted to share with all my fellow crafters (and especially carpenters) out there.  First off is one of the most comfortable looking hot tub areas I have seen to date.  It just says throw yourself down on a soft pillow, sip a cup of  hot chocolate and take a dip.

If you live in one of the houses in Gorowyn like I do, the size of the rooms can be a challenge to decorate. The rooms, quite simply put, are huge.  The best way to deal with huge rooms is to divide them in to small rooms. Here is a room idea that I have borrowed for my own home - quite a creative use of cupboards for walls. The owner of the house, in an alternate guise, is showing off the house and her red wings at the far right.

Mirror trick - here is a creative use of multiple overlapping mirrors to make a design reminiscent of an window in a church (ok perhaps it is my perspective on life that reminds me of it). In this case, it is the home of one of the owner’s plushies.

Getting in Good with the bad guys…

Note: Before you start this great odyssey do not do so until you have two gold - you will need it. If you are already a citizen of Neriak skip down to “the easy part”.  If you are a citizen of Freeport and want to go to Gorowyn skip down to “Almost home”.

 Having played EQ2 for a while now, I am surprised by the number of players (even long time players) that don’t know where to start when it comes to betraying from one city to the next.  The fact that I had betrayed back and forth between  cities was pointed out to me when members of my level 63 guild recently pointed me out to a newer player as someone who knew about betraying.  As I have mentioned in previous columns, many players are surprised to find out that despite the fact that in order to become a citizen of Gorowyn if you already have an existing character, that the city is friendly to good characters as well.  I will start out by saying that if you want to be a member of Gorowyn and are ready to start out a new character that you don’t have to start out evil - the city council of Gorowyn is perfectly happy to take members of neutral races as well.This then is a quick tour through a trip I have made several times now - as you will see from the various characters in the pictures - from Qeynos to Gorowyn.  Most recently I took my goodie two shoes (or perhaps goodie two flippers) Froglok from paladin to shadow night.

First stop…

 From Qeynos the first top is this gnome named Sprockfuddle.  Now if you look on the many guides on the internet you will see that they give coordinates for this gnome.  You can wander around Qeynos port all day long (been there - done that) looking for him and you won’t find him. This is because he is UNDER the streets of Qeynos Harbor. As you can see from the red arrow on the map, the only way to reach him is to dive into the canal, and swim through a hole in the wal.  Mr. Sprockfuddle here has a laundry list of places to stop in order to betray.  The problem being, is that Qeynos is an instanced city and unless you want to spend time waiting for the instance you will do what I did - head on over to Kelethin.

Kelethin here we come…

Why  start from Kelehin? Well as I said, the city is not instanced.  Everything is right there together and it is relatively fast to betray the city.  To become a citizen of Kelethin make a quick stop in Greater Feydark on the Green Knoll (no, not the “grassy knoll”, the GREEN knoll) in a small hut at waypoint (594,45,78). For those of you brand new to the game, this simply means type “/waypoint 594,45,78” (without the quotes of course) from anywhere in the zone and simply follow the trail of light to the red dot on the map.  You will stop in to a man named Gibrien Marsden, who sounds suspiciously like he is from a valley somewhere in Southern California. I suspect he is a “valley elf”.  He will have you do something simple like kill 8 orcs and send you off to do a language quest called “Learning Faerlie” that begins with Miella Maarsitoots at waypoint (245,109,361) After completing her quest - if you haven’t threatened to kill her for the joke she plays on you (I did) - she will send you to talk to the registrar and Queen Amree in the Fae Royal Hall at waypoint (422.20, 136.63, 261.64).

Say goodbye to the tree hugging fairies…

Now is where your adventure beings. You need to see this fella depicted above right. You need to see this disgruntled fairy named SelirVarryn. He will send you to get some red-blooded and yellow blooded mushrooms located at waypoint (+89.94, -5.16, +65.79) and some purple berries from Brizeyl Myrika Joleena’s Restaurant (ask any guard to find this NPC by name and he will guide you there). Ingredients in hand, he will then send you to the Fae Royal hall at waypoint (+397.14, +145.23, +155.95) to get some declarations out of a cabinet.  Click on cabinets until you find them.  He will then send you off to find small red globes called “sul spheres” located respectively at the following locations: