Trumpet 127!!

Early last week, SOE effed up royally by spawning at least 1 Beta-test vendor into Knowledge. Of course, about a zillion people managed to transact business with the vendor before he poofed.

SOE's response to their error was to roll back every EQ character who ever ran by the vendor, much less transacted with him. The roll back was 24 hours into the past. Thousands of folks lost flags, levels, AAs, gear, plat and more.

As you can imagine, the community politely expressed their concern...er...more truthfully, the community let SOE know that there was no way they were going to take this lying down.

SOE realized that this could represent a turn of the tide in EQs subscription numbers. Their 2nd response was VERY interesting: They announced a double-XP weekend. That's right, all earned XP would be modified by 200%! Later on they extended the weekend until 12PM CST on Tuesday!!!! /huggerz SOE

The result? Highpass Hold was filled with 250+ toons at all hours of the day and night while peeps ran the Pickclaw's Revenge monster mission over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. All of those peeps were dinging levels and AA at furious rates.

I didn't learn of the situation until Sunday morning. Over the next 2 days I ran the MM countless times with my AA slider pegged to the East. I wrapped up all of my Planar Defense and Mitigation abilities, earned Shield Block 3, and got most of the way through the Omens Defense AA before my brain shut down and I fell asleep.

I wonder if we'll ever see a repeat of the double-XP weekend. . . .?

Identity Thieves ZOMG

The EQPlayers database has uncovered the existence of identity theft on an unprecedented scale.



Rangers? Oh. My. God. Why did it have to be Rangers?

Another try...

WOW! It's been 4 months since my last entry. I guess I'll make another try at keeping things up-to-date.

Let's see, in the last 4 months I've dinged level 70, and I now have 87AA which includes most of the PoP defensive and mitigation AAs. Most of my experience since 66 has been earned by doing endless repetitions of the DoD Fairies mission...the quick, 15-minute mission followed by 25 minutes of downtime dovetails nicely with my RL availability. But, when time permits, I forgo the Fairies for a Creator mission or an MPG pickup group.

I've done a lot of shopping in the bazaar, particularly for Radiant Crystals, which have then been used to buy Dragons of Norrath equipment and augmentations. By far my juciest purchase was a Radiant Celestine of Sight, which gives me worn Plainsight (nightvision as strong as Ultravision, and See Invis). Now I don't have to beg Ultravision off every ENC that I encounter.

The result of all this leveling and shopping is that I now have 6.4kHP and 1500AC unbuffed, and I buff to 10.3kHP and 1750AC. Not bad for a casual player's toon who was only 64 and 6.5kHP buffed in August of this year.

I finally completed my Epic 1.0 in a furious blast through The Hole and Plane of Fear with my friend Gbab, a Troll Shaman with Precision Strike. One of many memories from that experience: Cazic Thule popping literally on top of me while I was chasing a fleeing MOB. For some reason I was able to get out of aggro range before he knew I was there. But talk about your heart-attack moments!

And the biggest news is that I'm now Elemental flagged. It seems like it's been forever since my first Manaetic Behemoth event. Big ups to Grave Wisdom for helping me through the progression.

Now, Quarm beckons....