In the end, though, I never managed to finish the quest. I'm not sure if my group had actually been formed from the ranks of the mentally disabled but, if not, they certainly fooled me. The first part of the quest involves killing 4 named ghostly ogres, who unfortunately are rare spawns. This in itself is nothing unusual, but the placeholder monsters roam as freely about the zone as do the actual quest mobs. So not only do you need to spend an eternity camping spawns, just like the old EQ1 days, you've actually got to track down the spawn every time you clear it. Now, despite knowing this, my group did not bother to recruit any scouts who could track the ogres. This meant that we were running about all over the place trying to find the placeholders (with half the group afk), and then when we did find them we had to get everyone together to actually fight the damn thing - the placeholders were triple heroic mobs, just like the actual quest mobs. Needless to say, the two hours of my life spent on that quest were wasted entirely. Thanks, SOE - I thought we were meant to have moved on from EQ1?
Despite this bad experience, however, I stayed in the Feerott until level 42 - while I do generally prefer the expansion zones over in Faydwer to the old-world zones, the level 40 Faydwer zone is still the Steamfont Mountains (and I'd spent quite a while there already). The visual style is okay, even quite good in places. Yes, it is just another forest twisted by evil forces, but I do quite like the tropical rainforest vibe. In the original EQ the zone was the starting area for the Ogres and some trolls, and it's the kind of place you could see them hailing from. Appropriately, there's quite a few troll/ogre type monsters running about alongside the infamous lizardmen and some quite cool plants. Beyond that, though, the choice of monsters is just like every other old-world EQ2 zone - bats, spiders and snakes. When compared to a game like World of Warcraft, the repetitiveness of the monsters you fight in the old-world zones is quite striking.
The quests, too, are the standard 'go kill x monsters' fare leave you feeling rather underwhelmed, seemingly no matter where you go in the zone. And there are a lot of areas to go - the Feerott another giant zone that stretches across two map pages, just like the Commonlands (and naturally you can't switch between the two halves of the map without physically walking there). The size of the zone does mean there's a lot of Achievement Experience up for grabs for exploring it, but it also leaves the place feeling a bit unfocused - it just seems like an endless series of monster-infested roads, trees and steams, all liberally dotted with ruined temples and lizardman camps. As there's no named creatures in most of the ruined temples/camps, there seems little gain to be had in bothering to clear them - it seems more sensible to have only put two or three into the zone, and actually made it worthwhile attacking them.
You also can't help but notice that the zone is PACKED with monsters, probably more densely than any other place I've seen in EQ2. Irritatingly, most of them are hostile. It's pretty much impossible to do anything in the zone without getting jumped by something, which is a real pain if you're harvesting or trying to run to one of the dungeons in the zone. What makes it worse is that many of the creatures in the zone are either linked, heroic, or both. A lot of the humanoid camps are linked heroics that would need 3-4 people to take on. Given the fact that there's little reward for clearing said camps, why would any group do it when they could just visit one of the two dungeons in the zone instead? All that the heroic content in the Feerott does is close off large areas of the map (and a lot of quest chains) to solo players, and result in incredibly annoying deaths when you're fighting/harvesting/walking and a triple heroic WHICH LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME as all the other non-heroic monsters of that type. A lot of EQ2 veterans who played the original say the like the risk this brings, like in EQ1 where there were level 40 monsters wandering through level 20 zones, killing everyone that came near. I remember stuff like that well, like when I was crossing the Desert of Ro and I was killed by the Terrorantula. What's the difference between that and EQ2's version? The Terrorantula was FIFTY FEET TALL, that's the difference. You couldn't really miss it, and it was quite clearly something you wanted to avoid. In EQ2 triple heroics and non-heroic monsters share exactly the same name, level and model (and often spawn within a few feet of one another). By the time you realise your add was actually a triple heroic, you're dead.
Linked content, too, is badly utilised in that zone. You can quite easily accidentally aggro two mobs and suddenly find yourself fighting eight (and then die) because they were actually both parts of linked groups of four. You can't even escape from the spiders, thanks to their snare spells. But anyway, enough complaining. The zone has potential, but sadly it just demonstrates all the hallmarks of the appalling original EQ2 design philosophy that got this game lambasted on release. It needs a revamp, badly.
So, at 42, I headed to one of the two dungeons in the Feerott, the Obelisk of Lost Souls, whereupon things got even worse. You know how I said Fallen Gate was a rubbish dungeon? Well, this one is much worse. It's quite possibly the worst dungeon I've ever seen. It is HORRIBLE. Basically, when you zone in, everyone gets sent to different places in the zone. Obviously, split up, you can't do much because the monsters are Heroics. You can all end up in the same place by dying, or using an evac spell (sadly mine came at 44, not 42), because there's only one spawn point in the zone - right at the bottom. So I had to kill myself to meet up with the rest of my group, which is possibly the worst concept I've ever come across in my entire life. Believe it or not, though, things actually managed to go downhill from there.
So, from this spawn point at the base of the Obelisk, you have to do a quest to reach the dungeon proper. The quest involves killing five named monsters in the great big cavern you're in but, guess what? Yeah, they're not always up. Once again, you have to camp placeholders to get the quest target to spawn. As far as I'm aware, there is one other named monster in the cavern, but another group killed him before we could attack him ourselves. I spent the best part of an hour running around killing things, trying to make these 5 named mobs spawn, but at the end of it all I had one. Yes, that's ONE of the FIVE I needed. We saw a second one spawn, but another group got there first and killed him (naturally the dungeon isn't an instance). Thus, if you want to do the Obelisk, you have to spend two or three hours camping the cavern BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN START the dungeon. I can't even begin to imagine what the designers were thinking when they dreamed the Obelisk up, but I can't think of even one good thing to say about it. Even the visual style is awful, unless you really (and I mean REALLY) like purple. Seriously, if anybody was at all in the dark about why World of Warcraft completely destroyed EQ2 on release, all they need to do is to go and take a trip to the Obelisk.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, things picked up after I left the Feerott. I was Level 43 and I decided to go along with a Deathfist Citadel group searching for a plate tank in world chat. The Citadel is a very popular zone for the early forties, and it's easy to see why. It doesn't get to crowded, either, as it is an instance. I've been screaming out for instanced dungeons for a long time, and the Citadel simply reaffirms my opinions. Respawns are on long timers so, unless you mean to stay for hours, dead orcs will stay dead. Patrols will respawn fairly quickly, but they're only single mobs and easily dealt with. This is superb if you lose a party member and need a replacement, or if you need to go back and forth through the citadel for a quest (and you will). The amount of tedium it cuts out is unbelievable.
Secondly, the zone is a rather cool concept. When you first break in, you do a circle around the base of the keep and clear the orcs there. There's plenty of Achievement exp on grabs for exploring and killing named (expect 2-3 AA points if it's your first go), but while you do this you will find archers on the towers above shooting down at you. It's a nice touch, and leads logically to the next section where you head to the tops of the towers and clear the archers and siege operators from the catapult towers. Then once you've done that, you head into the interior of the castle proper. Overall, the design of the zone is excellent and the visual style is also good (I'm not sure if I prefer it to Crushbone, but it feels very orcy). The linear progression through the zone also helps keep it focused and exciting - there's no quibbling about where to go next, you just keep on fighting.
The third attractive feature is the challenge. Once inside the castle, the bosses are generally pretty hard. My first group wiped once on each of the first two bosses before wiping conclusively a little further in, and it's because the bosses aren't just the run-of-the-mill EQ2 bosses that act like tougher heroics. The first one were tackled was a Priest who will heal himself unless you interrupt him, and the second was an orcish Prince who had an AOE fear spell and a powerful melee attack. Both fights were far more interesting than any in the other EQ2 dungeons I'd visited, so I returned a second time with a better group later that day.
The rest of the bosses are equally cool and compelling, like the alchemist boss who mind controlled me and set me attacking the cloth-wearing caster classes in my group. There was also the Arena (the devs obviously having taken some inspiration from UBRS in WoW), where Emperor Fyst appears on a balcony to lecture you and then set his minion on you. The Arena Master was the penultimate boss and was great fun to fight, as he has an absolute ton of hitpoints and deals out a lot of damage. I'm pretty well geared for my level, but the priest was having to work overtime to keep me alive. Also, in addition to his punishing melee attacks the Arena Master has an AOE knockback attack that can knock players into the spikes mounted on the walls of the Arena and killing them instantly. That didn't come into the fight too much as we negated it by fighting him in a corner, but again it's treating the players with a bit more respect than most of the EQ2 dungeons do. The players aren't idiots, so it's just patronising to have the bosses as simple and straightforward as in most of the EQ2 dungeons I've played thus far.
The final boss in the instance was Emperor Fyst himself, back on his throne on the roof of the Citadel. He's surrounded by bodyguards, but the devs have not linked them together - thus, a skilled puller can get them one at a time. Once we'd cleared them, we took on Fyst himself. He turned out to be just as hard as the Arena Master was, with a similar knock-back attack. We had to pull him indoors, because if you fight him outside his knock-back attack will throw you off the roof of the castle, but even with his special attack negated he took an awful lot of punishment before he went down. When he did die, he dropped a frankly awesome sword that I had the good fortune to win. I left the zone extremely impressed, and not just because the previous dungeon had been the Obelisk of Lost Souls. Deathfist Citadel is a fun, well-designed zone with excellent exp, AA and drops, but best of all it's a zone that actually challenges your player skill. Well worth a visit for every EQ2 player.
Now, as DFC is in the original EQ2 zones, you're probably wondering how it can contrast so much with the Obelisk mentioned above. The answer is simple - DFC was revamped in a game update somewhere around the release of Echoes of Faydwer, turning an underused zone into an excellent and fun one. Thus, the zone is the work of the NEW dev team, rather than the old one. That's why it rocks. I only hope they continue to revamp the dungeons, starting with the Obelisk and then Fallen Gate. They also added new tradeskilling recipes using Blood Iron Ore that drops in DFC, giving crafted armour sets to all classes (and it's damn good stuff, too). So, full credit to the dev team for DFC as it's an excellent zone, and I'd particularly like to see the light respawns continued in other zones.
After I finished DFC I was about a third into level 44, so I headed to Lavastorm to hit 45. This zone is a mixed bag, to be honest. Visually, it's excellent. It's an island volcano, with fire raining from the sky and lava and heat haze everywhere. It all looks superb, and you genuinely feel that you've made progress from the newbie zone level 1 when you land there and take a look around. The zone itself, though, is much like I imagine Zek used to be. As the original level cap in EQ2 was level 50, both Lavastorm (and Everfrost) seem designed as outdoor dungeons for high end players to stomp about in. Most of the content is double or triple heroic, so you can't get far by yourself, and there's not many quests. Those that there are involve killing a LOT of goblins or whatever, with nothing interesting about them. The monsters are reasonably varied, though you'll have seen all the models before, but overall the zone does put across the feeling of raw and untamed energy brilliantly and I'm willing to forgive it a lot for that. At the very top sits a dungeon, Sol's Eye, another returning zone from EQ1, but I wasn't able to get near it (though I intend to return in five or ten levels or so). In the end, you have to conclude that Lavastorm suffers in the same way that the Feerott does - it's a product of the old-style EQ2 design school. It's intended to serve a purpose that's now defunct - nowadays level 50s just want to level on up to the new level cap, so they don't need a place to pass time and hunt level 50 heroics. EQ2 has changed with the new expansions, and Lavastorm (and the Feerott) need to be updated to reflect that.
All in all, level 40-45 was okay. It had its high points (Deathfist Citadel) and it's low points (Feerott and Obelisk of Lost Souls), but most was just average (everything else). At this point my internet connection went south as far as gaming goes, so I took a three month hiatus. In the next entry, exploring some of the content of the first expansion, Desert of Flames.
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