Misadventures in Gaheris

I have been absent from the blogging scene too long. This has been due to heavy work hours this spring, but I suspect with my summer vacation fast approaching, I will be logging in more frequently and updating all of you on what I have been doing mmo-wise. Do you play DAoC? Chances are that you are not playing it, perhaps busy sampling Tera or some of the other shiny new mmorpgs out there, maybe even indulging in some Diablo 3.

For me, I have had the most fun playing Camelot the past few weeks, first leveling up my Midgard Berzerker to 50, then I switched over to doing "glass" questing on TOA, but to be honest, I did not like it as much as running b.g.s, and I dreamed of leveling another class altogether to see how the pve side matched up to the pvp.

Well, I rolled a Bonedancer on the Gaheris co-op server. For those of you not in the know, Gaheris is DAoC's co-op sever, meaning there is no pvp. The battleground NPCs are all there, but I don't think they port you anywhere, and the factions can all work together towards defeating bosses and doing pve questing. Even though I am not big on raiding, I just wanted to try it out and found it lacking, that is until I found the great Gaheris forum. An entire forum dedicated to a specific DAoC server in 2012? And not even one dedicated to pvp! Go figure! (click on graphic above to check it out)

This should convince EA Mythic to continue developing resources for the game, the population may never be what it once was, but there are still dedicated members and subscribers alive and well in this forum.   

So how's it been leveling the bonedancer on Gaheris so far? Well pretty slow going to be honest, and not as much fun as leveling in the pvp servers. The xp gained from doing b.g.s is actually substantial and fun, but here on the pve side of things apparently you gotta join a guild, find a friendly soul to pl you, or take hours to level up on your own. It can be a daunting task if you have a caster or a squishy class, and it can get pretty lonely as you may feel you are playing an RPG, because most won't group with you until you are closer to max level. Is it as much of a grind as wow? No, but in some respects, wow might be  better because with the Dungeon finder, you can pretty much get a lot of xp by running instances as soon as you hit level 15.

So the jury is still out on how far I can go leveling my BD. As much as I love the atmosphere and old school feel of DAoC, wow has a bigger advantage at the moment: more of my mmorpg loving friends are running through Azeroth still and  I know I won't have problems joining the PUGs. It may all be academic anyhow, as summer rolls by and I have less disposable income to spend on games, I may be playing DDO's new expac or LOTRO, or even LOL and Dragon Age 2 as they say, stay tuned!

History of the Drow: DDO's Latest Expansion Features Familiar Foes

Everything old is new again eh? It would seem the same applies to DDO whose new announced expansion coming this June "Menace of the Underdark." is an intriguing virtual retooling of the old Forgotten Realms setting first made popular by TSR more than 20 years ago.

There are plenty of sites out there including Ten Ton Hammer and Massively which have all the details about Turbine's new expansion. Instead, I want to focus more on the history of the drow, the race which is heavily featured in the campaign setting in which this new expansion is based on, so I dusted off my old copy of The Drow of the the Underdark (available on paperback on ebay and similar places online) and brushed up on the history of DDO's new/old fantasy campaign setting.

The Drow or dark elves, are a fearsome and mysterious race to most surface dwellers in the realms. The most dangerous of the drow, are wizards. They can become quite powerful and often appear in the company of strange familiars. What's the connection with the drow and spiders? Well, they have a strong affinity for arachnids, Most of them worship the spider goddess Lolth,
whose priestesses dominate drow society.

Lolth will most certainly be making an appearance in DDO's new expansion, as she is central to the drow. I am guessing she will be a high level boss, but there are many other gods or creatures which can make an appearance which dwell from the forgotten Realms. For example there is VHaeraun, a lesser god, the god of thievery, and then there are the monsters native to the region.

"Deep Bats," werebats, deep dragons, and Rothe are just a handful of creatures which may or may not make it into the video game version of the Forgotten Realms, but with such a rich history, the game will have plenty of adversaries to confront in parties or solo play.

If you want to read more about the lore and history of both the Drow or the Forgotten Realms, you can head over to wizards of the coast and look up some of the books explaining the elements of this campaign. Alternatively, you can visit the ddo Menace of the underdark website which has info. on the new expansion. Players will be able to play the druid class and I should probably also mention that the new ddo expansion is going to raise the level cap to 25, which means I hope to be getting some toons to max level. I have been very busy playing through my subscription of DAoC, but I hope to play some DDO this spring in preparation for what appears to be a fun expansion.