Incredible Dinosaur Puppet

I am not generally into posting this sort of stuff, but watching this was pretty interesting. Its a large dinosaur puppet — that really can excite and scare the kids:

Still Playing Everquest

So it has been more than a few weeks since I lasted posted. The reason for this is quite simple, playing Everquest. Perhaps some of you may recall that name that was often given to the game in its prime, that of Evercrack. Not much as changed with the game, mostly now with the Progression Server.

On a Progression server, unlike the other traditional servers in the game, starts the game over again as if it was 1999 — with a few provisions. Most notably is that in the original game if you perished somewhere in the world, all of your dearly gained material wealth lay on your corpse until you retrieved it. Not a huge problem, unless you were at the bottom of a shaft in some horrid dungeon. In the new Progression servers, they did away with that — thank god! Now, when your character dies, he simply returns to where he was bound.

Binding is a process inwhich some characters have the ability to say, “start here” when I teleport or die. for others, it is a matter of where you started the game or talked to a Non-Player Character and asked to be bound to that spot.

I started with a Shaman class character, with the plans of playing only one account. But I knew I would cave in and start another account — that is called two-boxing. Sort of a cheat because you are intended only to play one account at a time, but with two accounts you have a mini group all the time. The bad part of two-boxing is that you spend far more time grappling with the horrid pathing in the game and wasting so much more time equipping two characters instead of one. Everquest does a better job of allowing you to two-box than other games, but it is still a hassle.

Later, I started a Druid and a Ranger — I am unsure why I created this combo, since they are very similar to each other and I think it would be have been better to create two divergent classes. Perhaps I will split the two up, giving each a new character to travel with — Ranger and a Cleric? or Ranger and a Paladin? Druid and a Shaman? Druid and a Mage? Ranger and a Necro? The combinations are endless and each have their pluses and minuses.

Of course even thinking about creating a new combo requires the idea that I am sticking around for more than a couple of months. It is great fun, but like I said it is Evercrack and real life sometimes needs to take control.

I am also toying with the idea of playing EVE — I have tried the game innumerable times in the past, but each time I shrugged and said, “I don’t get this” and went back to a more traditional fantasy setting. Perhaps this time will be different.

Back to Everquest, the game will not see its first expansion — Kunark that debuted in 2000, if I recall right not until June. That is still a fair amount of time away who knows where I will be then. Kunark was a great expansion, as was Velious and Planes of Powers — after that they pretty much went down hill. I did really like the Lost Dungeons of Norrath, but that must have been much later. I cannot imagine playing the game until then, but who knows.

I am often torn between having fun in a game and doing something more constructive — writing, reading, working on new games, modding, that sort of things. It is a constant battle; at present Evercrack is winning.