The first few days of a new expansion are amazing fun, everything is new and waiting to be found, there are no Safehouse spoilers and best of all, those Gem Encrusted Rings thrown out to entice the masses (I'm so sure it was completely accidental 3 expansions in a row we've had end game drops off moss snakes). Anyone can wait until some stuffy-nosed official date, but hot dammit, don't they know who we are?? We, we here at the Evil Empire, picked up the batphone to the other Evil Empire and got comp'd a few copies of PoP a day early, so despite me checking Aten with bard track,

we headed off to PoP and thankfully left VT behind - sayfuckinnara

Let me preface this by saying I really did cancel my PoP preorder - I was thoroughly disgusted with some recent events, and there was a sincere moment when we all considered just how much we wanted to really go thru another 5 levels and attendant gayness... but PoP looks good so far - short downtime, easy patching, relative stability and just that minor thing about being about to level up and PoP was by far the best launched VI expansion to date - hopefully they will keep the extra provisioned band width for another few weeks as international copies begin to arrive.

More later, but enjoy the shots, and if for nothing other than Fleet of Foot going live, I'm excited again about playing - fuck knights and the gimp horses you rode in on~

Viva la Empire!

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Quotes of the Day

I was fucking stunned.

Aten up.

And Mini-Aten.

And both Aten goos.

We even had CoH to DXXT with just DXVT in the way to for a Night of Own as we began to muster after ganking Cursed with classic charm-kill drama.

Oh the indignity

AM3 + EQ + 80ish DR...

We were going for The New Money Shot in Ssra,

but as you can see, our innate sense and obvious teamwork

lead to this spectacular image:

So you can tell we were on a roll when we hit VT en force. In truth, we really were tearing a streak through the halls, and clearing as fast as we ever had - the Elysium fields of phat loot lay ahead. But here's where things go badly for the Evil-Empire, and yet another reason why I hate VT. You can have all the skill in the world, all the coordination, heads-up play and numbers, but one bad blowback,

and you're fucked.

You don't just CR in VT, not without a lot of luck, but a glimmer of hope yet remained - of course, when training DXVT's room and dying as fast as possible seems like a good idea... But it worked, and we get res'd in (fuck res stick nerf - 11k a pop) as respawn catches up. It actually started to get fun at this point, with us res'ing in TM's and hanging on by a thread, a barley contained chaos of spot heals and clutch DA's in a last ditch effort to stave off tiny coffins - and then an Eom Thall spawned, instantly blowing a few into the hall and aggroing DXVT's entire hall - wuwu.

Night of Own, we hardly knew ye~

Exquize Me?

I debated on posting the following, but after seeing it appear on a number of public message boards, I opted to run it:

I'm tempted to go off on another invective, but that might dilute the message, give Absor some license to just blow this off as Tork cussing a blue streak again - I'm not going to give anyone such an easy out. Without going legalboss on anyone, frequent PR/spin control whenever something fucked up happens is that VI will not comment on disciplinary actions, that players are given some medium of privacy in their account/account status, moreover, and even given the benefit of the doubt this was a mistell (the word choice "you guys" is a bit damning, however), I find the leering and jeering "ROFLMAO" unprofessional when commenting on the event - I really feel the player given the warning is owed an apology.

I guess the guide wasn't kidding when he told the player he was happy to help.

Nice.

My Impassioned PoP Plea

Please - please Jesus Lord, not Symphonist. Kapellmeister, Grand Artiste, Master Virtuoso, Warrior Poet... just not Syphilis - penicillin is a bitch to forage in some of the Planes.

Also~ please move bard songs back to old graphics, or at least AE MS. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea, but in practical terms, it was incredibly well segmented having bard songs generate particles under the old system. In a raid situation with raid level numbers, you could then toggle off the bard video spam, which even with the near/far partical clip plane, obliterates the world in a wash of liquid blue, while leaving on other spells under the new system, as it is both advantageous to see what others are casting around you and makes for pretty screenshots. =P

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Quotes of the Day

Join Voro and me for each new ep in nameless.buffy for this and other insightful discussion - we understand~

Hot dammit, we got hosed again. I had this update ready to go after a weekend of own, including the rarest of all EQ beasts, a Saturday night raid with mobs actually up at the ass end of an expansion. But hey, you win some, you lose some, and we lost this one, baby - at least I finally got to experience what a Patch Day and random spawn timers must be like for those on euro/asian time when Ssra went down and came back up during primetime... it's magical... mobs are up, and they spawn at a nice leisurely pace so you don't have to complete with other guilds, when you kill one, decess and another pops - I bring my fellow Americans proof of things thought long extinct in our lands!

Caption: Exclusive LoS Footage of thought-extinct Emp (courtesy of LoS Gallery © 2002)

Anyhow, let me preface this by saying I'm going to try and be civil about this one, but straight out, it's complete horseshit and VI needs to train its GM-Admin staff to understand the intent of its oh-so-holy content that we get shit on and suspended for by passing - I mean, if it's so fucking good, then why not make sure *everyone* gets to experience it, including the Game Mastahs... I wouldn't want anyone to miss content so compelling even zone dev's sploit their way past it, but I ain't one to gossip, so you ain't heard it from me~

For those not familiar with that abortion of a zone known as VT, it works on the principle of mindless clearing of 4 armed Akhevans, robes (which for some odd reason aren't undead) and your token black goo - he was bussed in from HS - to reach either a set of twin minibosses, the diabo triplets, boss mobs and then, finally, your money mob, Aten Ha Ra. Again, a pair of two more black goos were thrown in - quota? The boss mobs are tied to Akhevan Warders, non-targetable, unkillable mobs which are in place to force guilds to clear content in a specific order lest they be ported near kaas goo's hall of death door - bring your own tiny coffin to the party afterwards.

On the face of it, this is pretty gay, but don't worry, we're talking about VI here, and so of course it does get mucho mucho mas gay - the warders and their respective mobs are under no special compunction to spawn at the same time, meaning you could proceed in a perfectly legit fashion, and find yourself fucked at the end by killing a boss mob, only to have its warder pop at some point later - and there's nothing you can do about it, aside from petitioning for GM assistance to despawn that particular warder. This is what's known as a bugged warder, and generally the GM will purge the late spawning, and hence unkillable, warder. It can get tricky, however, as VT, layout-wise, is set in mirror, offering separate paths for a guild to race take, and so some warders are tied to two different mobs, killing either will die spawn the shared warder. Clearly, in some circumstances a warder will pop before its boss mob - which brings us to the present.

The obvious solution to this circumstance is to wait for the parent boss mob to spawn - VT isn't very much fun to start out with, and you can imagine how enjoyable it is to stay huddled in an annex to what serves as VT's leveled narthexes, (not so) affectionately known as cubby, waiting on whacked random 6.5 day spawns. But that's VI's idea of fun, that's the *intent*... that's *content*, and it must be done, in that order - or you get suspended.

Unless somehow you've found the cure to what ails you - today LoS was staging for a good chess match and race to Aten, with another guild which had by passed content to kill mini-Aten while TVK had yet to spawn. This presented a problem as TVK's warder spawned ahead of time - this is not, nor has never been (until tonight), considered bugged, however the other guild was able to successfully petition and have a GM-Admin despawn the offending warder, giving them a clean shot at Aten, which they took, killing him... her... it... whatever.

On the surface of things, this sort of ignorance and aura of impropriety demonstrated by the Game Master Admin staff, the ones who should be most knowledgeable about the game, the intent, the Vision^™ and to be considered above reproach, was vexing enough, but as LoS was also in the zone and with legitimate interest and stake impacted by whatever actions the GM's took, or didn't take, it was outright offensive to be given the ultimatum to STFU or face a guild warning, moving us one step closer to being disbanded - even our officers were not allowed to communicate with the GM's in any form. That, lovers, is unadulterated horseshit, and to be intimidated into silence, browbeaten and then left ignorant but GM's more intent upon on... I have no fucking idea what they were intent upon, because their actions make no fucking sense... than actual customer service was insulting.

EQ CSR is wretched - response time is measured in *days* and it's so fucking hard to get a GM now to even log on to the Nameless to answer petitions, I should probably be happy they bothered to even show up so I can see they still exist - how foolish am I to think the non-Legends scabs actually had a clue after a hard night of ignoring days old petitions requiring immediate assistance?

In truth, I get so fucking mad when I think about the utter gall it takes to shrug off players asking legit questions and pointing out immediate and direct conflicts between policy and action when the person committing the action is so clearly ignorant - yah, VI's got some good CSR people, but they have this annoy habit of running them off with internal politics so incestuous even the Brits would flinch. Seriously - when players have to explain to the GM's how an encounter functions or, even better, how to interpret an item stat screen... or what Focus Effects are... or how tracking works... there is a major problem, and one I'm no longer interested in dealing with. It's probably *too hard* to get the warders and bosses to spawn at once, I understand, but at least it was easy to cancel my PoP pre-order. I like my guild and there are people I consider awesome friends, but VI - your fucking *game* as entertainment sucks ass. I look forward to seeing the upcoming 48 Hours "investigation" as addiction is about the only thing you've got left retaining customers - trust me, it ain't content.

In closing, since we couldn't say anything in-game, let me say something - just me to you, VI, k?

Go fuck yourselves.

So from here among the groundlings, my only consolation out of this whole gannfest is that with your explicit promise to provide Premium Customer Service to the rich kids on Legends by fleecing them out of 4x the normal monthly fee is probably gonna land you in front of a rich kid's golf buddy, investigated by the FTC for fraud.

Love,
-Tork

PS: TVK spawned about an hour later - wuwu and ccc, we meet again.

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

How fitting, I check my mail after today's festival of gann, and booya - from the guy who brought you the controversial work Gnome Sex Party in Pop, I give you:

picture uf ur latest raid

Quote of the Day