Adventures of Taas

I managed to get my hands on a copy EQ2 Sentinel’s Fate before the release date and I figured for those of you excited and waiting for the expansion you might want to check out the contents of the collectors edition.

A quick reminder of the advertised collectors edition contents:

• Up to a 7-day headstart of gameplay access before the digital release
• Guarding of the Reasoned armor piece
• Exclusive Armored Highland Stalker in-game mount
• Collectible Armored Highlands Stalker pet figurine
• EverCracked! The Phenomenon of EverQuest DVD Documentary
• 500 Station Cash™ to spend on virtual items
• Legends of Norrath™ The Fall of Erudin scenario
• Free 30-day subscription included for new accounts

Some pictures:

Inside of the box

What awaits you inside...

The box contents...

Neat little Highland Stalker pewter figurine ...

Evercracked DVD!

All the fun on 2 DVDs

For the price it wasn’t the best collectors edition I’ve ever seen but it is great to see something new coming for EQ2 regardless and there are enough little bonuses here to make this a worth while spend…

Sometime about a year ago I decided to take a serious shot at getting to level 80 in World of Warcraft.  I had been playing Warhammer Online and the lack of depth PvE in the game was killing me and I really wanted to sink my teeth in to something deeper.

For a time I stuck with my goal of getting up there in WoW – I made it to around level 35-40 but the new Everquest 2 expansion was calling with lots of new dungeon content to try out.  Group play, particularly in focused PvE situations (Dungeons and raiding in particular) are really what make me tick with MMOs and the EQ2 expansion was focused almost exclusively around that – so it was a bit of a dream come true so WoW lost out in the end and I went off to play EQ2.

For various reasons after about a month and a half I just couldn’t stomach playing EQ2 any longer (I think I’ve hit that.point with EQ2).  For a few months I drifted and even took a full break from MMOs at one point.  All of this until around June/July when I decided once and for all I was going to suck it up and get the Level 80 in WoW MMO-goal checked off of my list.

I’m happy to say I’ve finally done it – it took quite a bit of effort (I did the last 20 levels in a pretty hardcore amount of time – I was pure heads down focused on leveling) but in the end it was totally worth it.

I also have to give Blizzard a lot of credit – both the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions were huge evolutionary steps for the game.  Even after climbing this mountain I’m not convinced I would have enjoyed vanilla WoW if I would have done the drive to 60 back five years ago – I still think the game was too generic-MMO but with the two expansions, especially with Wrath you could tell Blizzard was finally figuring out how to tell a story and drive some really compelling content in an MMO.

I have a post that’ll be coming soon(TM) comparing raiding in EQ2 and WoW.  We’ll find out if the journey was worth it…