The Evil Empire Takes a Stab at the Emp

Tonight we staged our first full-fledged attempt on the Emperor Ssraeshza.  For an encounter which is so utterly fucked up and ridiculous (hi deathtouch) the guild did amazingly well.  But it goes beyond the actual fight itself.  The preparation that everyone put in to getting keys and weapons was remarkable.  I've been busier than a one-legged man in an asskicking contest because I've been moving but everyone knew the date we were planning to try the Emp and simply kicked ass to make tonight happen.  No, he didn't die.  We can't win every encounter on the first try.  But I am simply ecstatic with how well we did and how cool under pressure everyone remained.  We know exactly what we did wrong and why we lost so we are eager to get back up there and lay the beat down on that mo faka snake.

Now, about the encounter itself. . .well it sucks.  It's a fucking zerg fest.  Deathtouch is the cheapest mob ability in Everquest.  It's almost embarrassing.  The room is challenging with the 8 snakes and Blood and the fight could be a ton of fun.  But the DT is just lame and turns what could have been an awesome experience into a cheese-zerg-fest.  I can't believe that someone envisioned this fight and implemented it.  I could think of 20,000 things more interesting and FUN than to have players die instantly every few seconds.

All of my bitching aside, tonight was very exciting, even if we did lose.  Most of all I am just extremely proud of the people I play this game with.  As cheesy as that sounds, I don't think most people can relate until they go about equipping a full raid for this encounter.  The amount of time it took was simply INSANE and INHUMANE.  We will post a corpse for you soon. . .

Mort and Gage, Uber Bankers

The Wonderful Word of Rhap

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Quotes of the Day

Nameless Down, Cursed Up, Cursed Down

Apparently The Nameless crashed last night.  So Sunday turned into patch day, which was actually quite fun.  We killed the Cursed again and got some new loot. . .at least new to us.  The BST loot will of course go to Mort.  The breastplate is worse than the two BPs which drop in Kael.  Hopefully, the BP will be one of those promised upgraded items in the upcoming patch.  Otherwise I'm not really sure what to make of a BP that's slightly worse than stuff that drops off of pushovers like the Vindy or SoRZ.  But at least the dagger is Godlike.  For all of you who are bitching that the dagger makes rogues too powerful let me tell you a little something about the dagger.  It's going to make a whole lot of rogues dead.  It procs constantly -- more than primal or as much as Myrlokars.  And the proc is a signifigant taunt.  Anyway, I think it was Shakespeare who said, "Not all that glitters is gold. . ."  Either Shakespeare or Robert Plant. . .but anyway, you get my point.

The Idol of Zek happened to be up and we enjoy the AoW fight a whole lot still so we rushed to Kael to lay the smack down on our old buddy:

We also scored ourselves a rare spawn -- The Creator -- who usually decides to make his server debut when we're all fast asleep.  He dropped a Hategiver and a the 40 percent haste doo-dad -- also known as loot that is way too good to be on a mob as easy as the Creator.  We only had one death which was Manalope because I kept bugging him to parse the damage of the fight and he lagged out with all the hits on.  Fucking Manalope.  Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it again, that mob needs to be more difficult.  I think a quick and easy solution would be rooting him on his spawn point.  The designers of Ssrae rooted so many mobs but not where it counts.  Rooting the Creator would make the encounter a *tad* bit more challenging than the poosae-fest it is now.

Now, I'm going to do something I don't normally do here.  And that's give you a link to a messageboard rant.  First off let me tell you that I realize lots of us in the high end game have been ranting alot lately.  I don't want to hear the usual bullshit from you saying, "Quit complaining, if you don't like it don't play the game.  You sound spoiled -- etc etc etc etc etc."  Don't post that garbage on our messageboards.  The reason so many people are complaining and being vocal publicly is because there is a tremendous amount BROKEN in EQ in the high end game right now.  And there are only a few people who have FIRST HAND experience dealing with this broken content.  I'm sorry, just because you killed the Vindicator doesn't mean you play the high end game.  We're talking about stuff that less than 60 people per server -- if that -- have had exposure to.  And I don't want to hear your bitching about, "Well, if it affects so few people than why should I care -- yada yada yada"  I'll explain why.  Because today's Emperor of Ssrae is tomorrow's Vindicator.  If Vindicator had been righteously fucked up when SoV went live we would have bitched and gotten him fixed too.  For those of you who don't remember the entire N ToV loot table was fucked beyond recognition until a number of high end guilds made public complaints and eventually saw that stuff get fixed.  So please, if you don't like rants, don't read this goddamned page, don't post on my messageboard and don't harrass anyone at this link I am going to post.  But for the rest of you intelligent people who actually understand what it is we're trying to accomplish by constantly bitching and moaning, PLEASE read this rant and give it the attention it deserves.  And to avoid any criticism right up front, the rant was written by Kreugen.  Kreugen has pretty much publicly and repeatedly expressed his dislike for me.  So don't think I am posting this because he's my buddy.  I'm posting this because I enjoy the game of Everquest and want to see it succeed in spite of some grave flaws that have surfaced in this expansion -- most of which are addressed in the rant:

READ THIS RANT

Loot of the Day

Viva La Timesink

Working As Intended

That's the claw of the Cursed. . .not that any ranger would use it anyway. . .

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Quote of the Day

Vyzh'dra The Cursed Gets Mallowned

Karl hadn't paid a visit to the basement of Ssrae since they nerfed the Iksar Fanatics.  Karl used to hang out down there with his fungal tunic dinging 8 AA points a day but then someone wisened up and gave Karl a bit of the Wilt and before you knew it Karl was fed up with the basement.  Karl then moved on to soloing in FG but then they nerfed that too so he headed to AC and spent his time in the AE group.  One patch day Karl heard that the Cursed had been "retuned" so he went down to the basement to play ball with his buddy, Vyzh'dra.  Unfortunately all Vyzh'dra had to say about it was, "" and next thing Karl knew he was knocked *the fuck* out.  Then Karl tried his buddy one more time after patch day but once again his buddy only said, "" and after that Karl said, "Fuck this noise.  Let's blow this taco stand and hit up ToV for fast and easy lewtz.  Or maybe that poosae the Creator is up -- you know the one who should be rooted and drops BabyJesusLike items which have no business being on a mob so incredibly gimpified?"

So our hero, Karl, sort of gave up on the Cursed for sometime.  That whole patch message tomfoolery didn't bode well with Mr. Karl.  So when Karl heard that some of the other servers had taken over Beta testing Mr. Cursed (and to this day Karl can't figure out why the beta testing isn't done on Test Server) Karl decided that trying the Cursed wouldn't result in the usual wasted hour which could be much better spent camping insanely cruel and rare quest items for poorly designed timesinks.

But this time Karl found Vhyz'dra speechless!!!!  And this made Karl happy.  And before the day was done Mr. Vhyz'dra the Cursed found himself Mallowed~

Karl forgot to get a picture of the cloak -- wuwu~

Karl also wonders what the fuck is up with that ranger piece of shit.

Working As Intended

I'll explain this one.  We head down to the basement and proceed to trigger the Glyphed spawn.  What do we get instead?  The Glyphed AND the Runed.  The both spawned at EXACTLY the same time in EXACTLY the same spot.  That was a fun split to do.

The Wonderful World of Rhap

Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards

Well, I said I wasn't going to take any stalkers till Monday but a few snuck in on the other Screenshots so here these freaks are:

 why so much h8?  WHY?

This last one isn't a stalker but I'm not quite sure what to make of it . . .

Quote of the Day