Rise of Kunark! (part 3)

So I’ve been dabbling in Kunark some more between raiding and doing other quests that I wanted to do from previous expansions and have a few more thoughts on Rise of Kunark. I’m finding some stuff I don’t like as well as some stuff that I do.

They did do some great stuff with making things like faction actually mean something. They’ve always had a “faction mechanic” but it never was really implemented really well, and eventually just kind of got nerfed onto the back burner. There used to be some interaction with the city factions, doing writs or tasks for one would lower your standings with the others. This was OK to some extent, but the amount of time to put in to actually do it all was just silly. In order to get all the rewards from one faction then work your way up with the others became just astronomically difficult when taking the fact that you ended up having to do twice the amount of grinding to work up faction with someone else when it came time to switch. There seems to be still a bit of a grind, which adds to your sense of accomplishment, but it is definitely a far cry from the original city faction mechanics. I’m hoping to see more stuff like this in future expansions now that they seem to have figured out what to do with that stuff. You saw a bit of it with Desert of Flames, but it didn’t really affect you all that much, and really most of the time I just don’t even bother with the Maj Dul faction stuff anymore. I tried to work my way through it once upon a time, but things happened and I ended up just out leveling the stuff and got bored with it. I wanted the Ring of Fate, but really, that whole thing was sooooooooooo long that you pretty much ended up leveling way past it being useful by the time Kingdom of Sky was out for a bit. I really didn’t like the desert thing to begin with so I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in that expansion. In Kingdom of Sky, I really didn’t notice any particular advantages to raising faction with any of the NPC groups, and Echoes of Faydwer really didn’t seem to do anything with it either. Now with Kunark, in order to get some quests, items or even safe passage through some areas you need to work your faction up with the various NPC groups. I haven’t explored this too terribly much yet, but from what I’ve seen it isn’t all that difficult and grueling, as it could have been done. So I have to say that what has been done with that was pretty good. Granted, from looking at some of the stuff on the merchants that require faction, I probably wouldn’t buy what I’ve seen thus far. I’ve heard though that there are some things that you can get from faction merchants that are worth the time. Initially the faction levels required to get anything were set pretty high, to a point that some people weren’t able to get to that point because they seem to have run out of things to do to raise their faction. Just recently they lowered the bar for some stuff so that it’s not like chasing a carrot on a stick.

I’ve gone running around and exploring and I’m finding a lack of instances or group content. Maybe I’m just not seeing it yet, as being a n00b, you overlook some stuff. Hell I never made it into Blackscale Sepulcher in Kingdom of Sky lol, now that I’m actually getting around to progressing my Deathtoll access, I’m going to hit it eventually. I’ve seen some guildies hit up some instances lately, I probably should get on earlier and head out with them, but I’m not really seeing them hit up too many different places. I don’t know, I think I got kind of spoiled on instance runs with Echoes of Faydwer. I did all of those instances over and over, to the point where I could almost tank them in my sleep (which I think I might have a few times hehe). I’ve come across some places in Fens that look like they would be awesome places to drop an instance. Maybe I’m just not seeing it, but I think putting an instance or a dungeon up at the Ruins of Cabalis would be a good spot. It’s just screaming for an instance or dungeon of some sort up there. I was up there poking around doing a writ the other day and noticed the mountain at the very back of the ruins looks like one might be able to go up in there somehow. Might just be wishful thinking though. I have a weird need to try to get to places that are hard to reach. For instance, I bound my brigand on top of the inn in East Freeport after using the geometry to get on top of the mailbox then up on the roof Fens is an interesting zone. Much more in depth than Kylong is with its nooks and crannies. It’s very three dimensional, in that there’s the river that goes on forever, there’s the northern edges with lots of cliffs and mountains and then there’s the swamps and plains. It definitely has a very “big” feel to it. I’ve had some fun just running around and trying to see what’s where.

Some of the stuff I haven’t really liked thus far is the fact that the quests aren’t very group friendly. I tend to duo or trio with two people I’ve been playing with since the spring of ‘05. Trying to do some of the quests thus far have been slightly monotonous due to the fact that the updates are body loot that doesn’t update everyone when you loot it. They had started to get away from that and just update all group members when doing that sort of thing then reversed course with this expansion. I’m kind of confused at why they decided to do this. It’s making these piddly little quests take two to five times longer to complete now because you have to lotto all the stuff. It’s kind of irritating and discourages group play. Sometimes it’s just easier to go off and solo now because you end up having to wait until everyone’s gotten the loot they need. Depending on the size of your group it can take up to six times as long as it would solo just to finish one quest. Talk about discouraging grouping. I really hope this isn’t going to be the trend for future expansions. It would be rather disappointing to see EQ2 move into the realm of being a mostly solo game.

Another thing that hasn’t really worked so well this time around is the persistent zones. We went and tried to do Crypt of Agony or whatever it’s called in Sebelis the other day and ended up in a mostly empty instance because someone in the group was bound to a mostly completed instance. After fumbling around a bit, we ended up zoning out and getting massacred by a train someone decided to drop on the front door. We also had a bit of trouble with Shard of Fear when it was initially released with not being able to enter at all because of the instance binding. I think they tried to find a middle ground with it when they released Kunark due to the fact that people not being able to enter the zone because they’re bound to different instances made it really hard to get groups going.

Overall I’m still pretty happy with the expansion. I’m hoping that some of these trends that are making the game less group friendly don’t happen much more than they are now in later expansions.

~ by g0thicicecream on December 19, 2007.