My brother-in-law Lucas introduced me to the game MechQuest during the holidays, ostensibly because it was a free online game my son might enjoy playing. As it turns out I wanted to give it a try and see what it was like so I made an account and started a character.
Well I played through most of the game that was available and some content was simply too difficult to beat without farming encounters for credits for about a week so I slowed down and took my time at that point. Other content was locked out because I was using a free account, you see this is part of the business model of these free games - pay for additional content and/or easier progression through the existing content. In MechQuest upgrading to a paid account promotes your characters to Star Captain and makes available various equipment options that are otherwise unmatched in the game (e.g. better equipment for the same cost, or similar equipment available at a lower level).
A few nights ago I found myself reading the MechQuest forums looking for a workaround for a bug. It turns out that there are a bunch of kids on the forums whining that their parents won't upgrade them to Sar Captains. I make a joke to my wife that I was sad because she wouldn't make me a Star Captain. My wife surprised me tonight, when I logged in to MechQuest my account was upgraded to Star Captain - lol.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Ekard Angst
I'm still finishing my write-up about Ekard and I wanted to see if Google had indexed/archived any of my old SOE forum posts. I was also curious if this blog had made its way on to the Google index.
At any rate, a search for Ekard "highest melee hit" turned up an entertaining post on the EQ2flames.com Assassin forum:
Heh, I just had to register for that forum and say hello. I noticed that Vaanir and a Skratt as well as a couple of other Assassins are still kicking around, that's awesome, I have fond memories of our discussions on the assassin channel.
I noticed a post on that forum from November 2007 about the guk.assassin channel and it makes me smile to think that this channel might still be in use by the assassin community. When cross-channel linking became available I thought that things could easily go either way, either the channel would continue to be popular or players would move to a channel preferred by one of the more dominant raiding assassins. I certainly wasn't in the running for top assassin at that point, dare I say I had become more infamous for my exploited Highest Melee Hit record than respected for my role in the assassin community.
I don't recall how many of the current scores on the EQ2 Highest Melee Hit board existed when I left (I do recall a few like Sparkimus, Silvaro, and Kalyr) and how many are new and valid scores. Because some of the level 80 Assassins seem to be approaching the 70k mark my score may soon be only a memory. As such, I've preserved this memory of my time in EQ2.
At any rate, a search for Ekard "highest melee hit" turned up an entertaining post on the EQ2flames.com Assassin forum:
| Wish they would reset the melee hit boards...fuckin ekard, bastard dosen't even play anymore. |
Heh, I just had to register for that forum and say hello. I noticed that Vaanir and a Skratt as well as a couple of other Assassins are still kicking around, that's awesome, I have fond memories of our discussions on the assassin channel.
I noticed a post on that forum from November 2007 about the guk.assassin channel and it makes me smile to think that this channel might still be in use by the assassin community. When cross-channel linking became available I thought that things could easily go either way, either the channel would continue to be popular or players would move to a channel preferred by one of the more dominant raiding assassins. I certainly wasn't in the running for top assassin at that point, dare I say I had become more infamous for my exploited Highest Melee Hit record than respected for my role in the assassin community.
I don't recall how many of the current scores on the EQ2 Highest Melee Hit board existed when I left (I do recall a few like Sparkimus, Silvaro, and Kalyr) and how many are new and valid scores. Because some of the level 80 Assassins seem to be approaching the 70k mark my score may soon be only a memory. As such, I've preserved this memory of my time in EQ2.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
MMOG Profile: Everquest II
When I play a massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) I tend to focus on a single character, my main, and only rarely indulge in alt-itis. This is the first in a series of MMOG character profiles highlighting my main character from each of the major MMOGs I've played in the last 10 years. Probably my most memorable character is the Dark Elf Assassin Ekard from Everquest II (EQ2) so I'll start with him.
The now retired Assassin of Guk was once well known among the EQ2 Assassin community through the worldwide Assassin channel. Although few probably remember (and fewer still who continue to play EQ2 today) Ekard started the worldwide Assassin channel - hosted on Guk - to connect with other up-and-coming Assassins and discuss matters of interest to the Assassin community; primarily DPS results, new equipment discoveries, and raid techniques.
Character Profile
World-Wide Assassin Channel
Ekard was well known for my prolific record keeping through chat logs and for happily re-linking newly discovered equipment for the worldwide community - at that time linking could only be performed from the server which hosted a channel but all channel members could view the link regardless of their server. In my final days playing Ekard the advent of cross-server linking let other Assassins take up that responsibility and Ekard concentrated on Beta testing for the then-upcoming Kingdom of Sky expansion.
Progression
I took a meandering route through the game starting out with a college buddy at the launch of EQ2 (much later he went on to work as an EQ2 developer at SOE). We settled on Guk after being unable to hook up with the Goonsquad on another server during the first week of release. It turns out some friends of his from EQ took up residence on Guk and they formed the basis of our first XP groups.
My first guild in EQ2 was Wolfsbane, the membership of which went on to form the core guild members of the uber-guilds throughout Guk server in the early years of EQ2. Most of these players burnt out but I eventually reuinted with some of them in Aei Desis.
Ekard joined a "family guild" named Soulbonded and geared up to raiding strength while learning how to raid through strategy instead of raw force. This experience proved very useful when I joined Aei Desis well after its heyday and during a time of rebuilding AD. Aei Desis eventually would come to compete with some of the larger guilds on Guk and elsewhere but remained overshadowed by Ne Plus Ultra. Ascendance, and the other EQ2 uber-guilds. Ultimately Aei Desis was doomed to fall apart, mainly due to lack of commitment by various players (including myself in the end days), as people got busy with their real lives. In AD there was always more than enough drama from the "old guard" guildmembers who yearned for their golden days of dominance, most of whom became mean and petty before leaving the guild on bad terms.
Highest Melee Hit
During my time EQ2 Assassins had always competed for the Highest Melee Hit record on eq2players.com and Ekard eventually made a name for himself with a hit for 3107 damage using Condemning Blade (Master I) during the time when very few characters had access to that Master and before Assassinate (Master I) was available.
At some point a troublesome mitigation bug was not being publicly acknowledged by the developers and I decided to start a competition on the worldwide Assassin channel to see who could get the highest hit by exploiting this bug - all in the hope that this would garner sufficient developer attention to get the bug fixed. This resulted in Ekard taking the Melee Highest Hit record, which he holds to this day, with a hit for 89,320 damage. As an interesting note while the hit dealth 89K damage (as shown in logs) the graphics engine used 16-bit values for displaying damage numbers and the value wrapped once showing only 23,784 points of damage. EQ2players.com was updated shortly thereafter to show the full damage dealt and a few patches later the bug was indeed fixed. For whatever reason EQ2players.com was not cleared of these erroneous scores although many among the Assassin community, myself included, asked for that to be done - as a result an informal highest hit record was maintained through chat logs on the worldwide Assassin channel.
Forums
During the Kingdom of Sky Beta I was very active on the Beta forums under my forum name "deaks" and posted an in-depth analysis of the Assassin options under the new "Achievements System" (EQ2 version of EQ alternate advancement of AA) - requesting some fixes and usability enhancements which eventually made it in game. This thread carried over to the open forums once the Beta NDA lifted and provided the first glimpse at the Assassin achievement choices for many people playing Assassins. It was my last act in EQ2.
Previous to the KoS Beta Ekard was a strong voice for change on the forums pushing for Assassin DPS dominance based on the "Tier 1 DPS" label give to the Assassin class by the developers. Ekard covered Assassin happenings on the forums from the Combat Update through the Kingdom of Sky release.
The now retired Assassin of Guk was once well known among the EQ2 Assassin community through the worldwide Assassin channel. Although few probably remember (and fewer still who continue to play EQ2 today) Ekard started the worldwide Assassin channel - hosted on Guk - to connect with other up-and-coming Assassins and discuss matters of interest to the Assassin community; primarily DPS results, new equipment discoveries, and raid techniques.
Character Profile
| Name: | Ekard Slackass | |
| Class: | Assassin (previously Predator and Scout) | |
| Titles: | Assassin of the Shard, Hero of Kugup, Knight of Freeport | |
| Bio: | ||
| Ekard is the creator of the first worldwide Assassin channel hosted on Guk server, once the most active place for EQ2 Assassin discussion in the world. As of January 2008 Ekard continues to hold the title for Highest Melee Hit for a strike made on October 3rd, 2005. | ||
World-Wide Assassin Channel
Ekard was well known for my prolific record keeping through chat logs and for happily re-linking newly discovered equipment for the worldwide community - at that time linking could only be performed from the server which hosted a channel but all channel members could view the link regardless of their server. In my final days playing Ekard the advent of cross-server linking let other Assassins take up that responsibility and Ekard concentrated on Beta testing for the then-upcoming Kingdom of Sky expansion.
Progression
I took a meandering route through the game starting out with a college buddy at the launch of EQ2 (much later he went on to work as an EQ2 developer at SOE). We settled on Guk after being unable to hook up with the Goonsquad on another server during the first week of release. It turns out some friends of his from EQ took up residence on Guk and they formed the basis of our first XP groups.
My first guild in EQ2 was Wolfsbane, the membership of which went on to form the core guild members of the uber-guilds throughout Guk server in the early years of EQ2. Most of these players burnt out but I eventually reuinted with some of them in Aei Desis.
Ekard joined a "family guild" named Soulbonded and geared up to raiding strength while learning how to raid through strategy instead of raw force. This experience proved very useful when I joined Aei Desis well after its heyday and during a time of rebuilding AD. Aei Desis eventually would come to compete with some of the larger guilds on Guk and elsewhere but remained overshadowed by Ne Plus Ultra. Ascendance, and the other EQ2 uber-guilds. Ultimately Aei Desis was doomed to fall apart, mainly due to lack of commitment by various players (including myself in the end days), as people got busy with their real lives. In AD there was always more than enough drama from the "old guard" guildmembers who yearned for their golden days of dominance, most of whom became mean and petty before leaving the guild on bad terms.
Highest Melee Hit
During my time EQ2 Assassins had always competed for the Highest Melee Hit record on eq2players.com and Ekard eventually made a name for himself with a hit for 3107 damage using Condemning Blade (Master I) during the time when very few characters had access to that Master and before Assassinate (Master I) was available.
At some point a troublesome mitigation bug was not being publicly acknowledged by the developers and I decided to start a competition on the worldwide Assassin channel to see who could get the highest hit by exploiting this bug - all in the hope that this would garner sufficient developer attention to get the bug fixed. This resulted in Ekard taking the Melee Highest Hit record, which he holds to this day, with a hit for 89,320 damage. As an interesting note while the hit dealth 89K damage (as shown in logs) the graphics engine used 16-bit values for displaying damage numbers and the value wrapped once showing only 23,784 points of damage. EQ2players.com was updated shortly thereafter to show the full damage dealt and a few patches later the bug was indeed fixed. For whatever reason EQ2players.com was not cleared of these erroneous scores although many among the Assassin community, myself included, asked for that to be done - as a result an informal highest hit record was maintained through chat logs on the worldwide Assassin channel.
Forums
During the Kingdom of Sky Beta I was very active on the Beta forums under my forum name "deaks" and posted an in-depth analysis of the Assassin options under the new "Achievements System" (EQ2 version of EQ alternate advancement of AA) - requesting some fixes and usability enhancements which eventually made it in game. This thread carried over to the open forums once the Beta NDA lifted and provided the first glimpse at the Assassin achievement choices for many people playing Assassins. It was my last act in EQ2.
Previous to the KoS Beta Ekard was a strong voice for change on the forums pushing for Assassin DPS dominance based on the "Tier 1 DPS" label give to the Assassin class by the developers. Ekard covered Assassin happenings on the forums from the Combat Update through the Kingdom of Sky release.
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