For some this is an accomplishment of little remark. And it really has little significance to me -- the next tier for new armor, and over a hundred platinum pieces of expense, is eighty-four. And yes, I have already started shopping. I just bought my tier-nine, mastercrafted, eucalyptus bow, for twelve plat.

All of these are pretty trivial for many: level eighty-two, twelve plat, mastercrafted bow. But, as I level my berserker, I find it harder and harder for me to keep her updated. She is still using tier-eight stuff. In some cases she is still using some tier-seven stuff. Cheap upgrades for skills, jewelry and armor cost over ten plat a piece. Among all my toons, I am lucky to have over twenty plat, and then only for the briefest of time.

Why am I whining? Why am I driven to try to get the best for my pixalated hero? In some ways it's my gear-queer habits carrying into the game. In other ways it's a frustration I see with growing disparities. There are those that have cool stuff and the best gear and most powerful spells and they can solo heroic mobs all day. Then there's me and my guildees, my friends.

Quest rewards are mediocre at best. Leveling up doesn't mean skilling up as well. The skills received are worse than the mediocre ones from the previous tier, so one has to shop the broker to buy an upgrade to the higher-level skill, just to make it useable. Many of the ten-plat upgrades are only marginally better, if at all. The excitement of leveling up, of dinging, are filled with dread for me now.

Well, time for me to go farm some plat.

Or maybe I should title this: OM-MF-G, they defaulted my keybinding!

Yep, zone in and the 'S' key no longer moves me forward, but back. I /load UI and then try the /options /load and nothing. I have now been enlighted about a /save_keymaps (name) and /load_keymaps (name) command, but first I have to reset all my keymaps.

Yep, some of the keymapping stayed changed even after I finished and zoned out of the Battleground. Some of the keymapping was changed on the other characters on my account. I didn't notice this until I try to chat and all these windows started opening and my character was toggled to a walk.

It is going to take me days to sort out. My, dare I say, intimate, connection to my characters has been ganked. It has taken me days, months, really years, to figure which key works best for controlling my characters. Now it's all jumbled. I certainly didn't memorize it. I find it really frustrating, even gamebreaking.

And it's a shame too. This Battle-Ground feature is a complete imitation of a Warhammer Online feature that I miss so much. I used to log in and immediately queue up for a scenario and have a lot of fun. I am not a fan of Player-versus-player, but I enjoyed being a part of a battle.

SOE could do a lot with Cross-Server instances. They could be a lot of fun. They need to be extended to lower levels. And I would love to see quests send us to different ones. Maybe even some unique Advancements could be developed...

But first they have to promise to lay off my keymapping!

I am using the excuse that my guild needed another healer, that everyone else in the guild had a healer and I didn't. My character list consists of two berserkers, two brigands and a swashbuckler. I really need to try something else. Well, that's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

I tried a human Defiler, but humans males look scrawny and females look dumpy. Then I tried an ogre one, but they fight and run so slow... Then my guild leader suggested a Warden, which is what her main is. After some creation-screen surfing, I settled on a Ratonga. Yeah, I know, it's one of the cartoony races, but he is pretty cool looking.

And he can kill pretty quick too. I took him through the Gorowyn newbie area and then froze his leveling at ten so I could work on his alternate advancements. He now has two, decent melee attacks -- I like being able to make him swing his sword. I am letting him level again so he can continue to work on quests, but slowly. I want to fill out his strength line so I can receive another really cool melee-attack.

Yeah, leave it to me to make a melee-focused healer.

This game is all about filling bars. With the new Achievement system, there are hundreds more bars to fill. I just spent the last two sessions working on the "Nektulos Forest Flatfoot" Achievement, which entails completing fifty quests in the Nektulos. Combined with similar achievements in the Commonlands and Darklight Woods, my berserker earns the title: "Champion of D'Lere".

So, I visit the chronomages and and reduce my berserker's level to thirty and revisit the Nektulos Forest. I swear I had done half those quests already. And then half of the quests I do, don't even count. It would've been a lot more fun had I not been watching that green bar slowly fill. I finally finished, gained a few Alternate-Advancement Points, and realized I will need to re-arrange them, yet again, to get all the abilities I so desperately want...

I then "un-chronoed": the game calls it "stop mentoring," even though the character isn't mentoring anyone. I decided to venture to Lavastorm to fill some more bars. This time I needed to work on trapping and fishing. ~sighs~ Yes, I have neglected those harvesting skills.

Well, there is an invasion of void creatures there. One end of the beach is swarming with a plethora of level eighty-one and two mobs. There are also quests to kill those mobs. And there are quests that send players back into deeper Lavastorm. So, I filled the the trapping and fishing skill bars, filled my Disciples of Flame reputation bar and earned the Lavastorm exploration achievement. I feel so productive.

For those under rocks, or not interested in EQ2 (why are you reading this?), Sentinel's Fate is now live. Being the geek that I am, I went out and bought three Collector's Editions (I couldn't get the girlfriend the cheap stuff).

I now have it loaded and am exploring a bit. No, I haven't gotten to the Hole yet, but I did explore around the Erudin City and up into the Frontier and the Jungle. I am still working on the "Welcome to the New Zone Quests." The city is very pretty.

The important stuff for me is the new Level Cap and the revamp of Alternate Abilities. I am still trying to catch up after the last cap raise. All my much-saved-for Master Abilities are now becoming obsolete and Experts of the next Tier are barely, if at all, an upgrade. So it's time to start brokering harvests again. After attaining Level Eighty-one, the AA point cap is now one-hundred for the warrior table. Gone are the old attribute AAs and now alternate skills can be increased to ten. There are some new Sentinel's AAs as well. I see myself spending a lot of time tweaking AA setups.

So yeah, new zones, new quests, higher levels. I haven't finished exploring Kunark yet, much less Ykesha. In fact, I am looking forward to chrono-ing down and re-exploring old zones. A lot of things have changed since my main was "little".

So Leyek ventured into the Kunzar Jungle to work on Guild writs. I really want to at least get our little guild to twentieth level to open up our bank a bit. All our alts are feverishly working on Heritage Quests. Leyek has done most of the Heritage Quests for her previous guilds and her writs earn almost as much status.

So she has been running around the Kunzar Jungle, killing things.

Well, half the zone wants to kill her. Like an idiot, I have been ignoring most of the quest givers just to grind out writs. She earned over forty-thousand guild-status points in a short time, but has had to spend a lot of the time avoiding guards and villagers and monks. It came to a head when she tried to join a raid in Sebilis. Yep, she arrived at the gates to be greeted by guards that wanted to kill her. A quest at the gate offered not only reputation with Sebilis, but with those villagers scattered throughout the zone. Huh, time to go back and talk to some of those folk.

It only took a few quests, and being late to work, to open up the whole zone. The quests were pretty straight-forward and fun. Some lead to quest lines that reward legendary gear, which isn't better than the mastercrafted, but it's still nice.

Needless to say, the zone is a bit easier to negotiate now.

The more I read about it the more excited I become. I am not sure what is officially in the expansion and what will be part of live updates, but this month looks exciting for EQ2.

I have been anticipating the uncovering of Halas for some time now. I am saving a character slot for a new alt to start there. I may even let my main, Hluill, betray to there. He misses his old home from the original EQ.

I am not as excited by an over eightieth-level zone because I am still exploring the Kunark content. Leyek is only seventy-nineth level, is still working on reputation in the Kunzar Jungle and has yet to even get to the Jarsath Wastes. She rode the blimp once and has only the briefest of time in Ykesha. It will be neat to explore, someday.

Something else that gets me excited about the new expansion are the new Signature Quests and revamps of Butcherblock and the Kingdom of Sky Zones. Sony is going to make Butcherblock a bit easier to navigate and Kingdom of Sky a bit more solo and small-group friendly. Maybe Leyek can get some of those old quests done. It will be fun to actually help those poor, stranded gnomes.

This does sound really fun, especially for Hluill, my Brigand in his fifties. Kingdom of Sky was such a 'grind zone' for Leyek with a lot of convoluted quests. I am still not a fan of a bunch of rocks floating the the clouds, but it's the place to go for levels sixty.

The idea of the upcoming Battlegrounds could be interesting. I did enjoy the way they were done in Warhammer and Dark Age of Camelot. If it's similar I may spend some time there. But if Player-versus-player were my thing, I would not be on a roleplay server, or still playing those games. I guess I am a 'carebear' at heart and never really understood the 'gank-or-die' philosophy. I get enough of that in the real world.

This expansion is due by the end of the month and I hope to be ready.

I made the mistake of taking part in a 'zerg'. You know, that group that runs through content and mobs like a steamroller? They only chatted to compare power gear. A blurry, laggy hour later, I had several AA points but all my quests were still unfinished...

I went back to soloing writs. My berserker just made seventy-eighth level. Now she has to go into the Kunzar Jungle, part of the Kunark Expansion, to do writs. Kunark writs are nice. One can get them on the docks in Kylong and not have to return to the docks to turn them in. I just set my berserker to killin' and wait to receive my City Token (I have to get to one of those fairs to exchange those things...).

Kunzar Jungle is filled with lots of different factions. The Fens were the same way, I guess, but I didn't notice until everyone wanted to kill me, even the quest givers. In the jungle, they start out wanting to kill me. By doing a few quests, I've managed to calm a few down. The iksar are the most confusing. The Sathirian Empire hates me, but their townsfolk all think I am a hero. Interesting reputation system.