So over the last few months, life had become quite busy: having major deadlines at work, as well as having two active students each in a different sport. I spent a lot of time out and about at functions, and much less time at home playing games on the computer. So I had decided to cancel my EQ2 subscription until things had calmed down a bit. Well guess what, school is out, sports are done and work has chilled out quite a bit, that means its EQ2 time once again!

The last time I played, Ruins of Kunark had just come out, I picked up the box and leveled my main (71 Wizard) a couple times to get up into the new final tier of content. Right about then is when I had to cancel and withdraw for a few months. This time around I decided to start a new character, and since the hubbub of the new expansion had died down, I decided to create a Sarnak in Timorous Deep.

I wanted to experience the newbie zone content and see some new sights, as I've got a bad case of altisim and have experienced the 1-20 content for every other starting zone. I also decided to try out PVP again, last time I played PVP was on Vox - which you may or may not know is a server set up to allow players to purchase in game items and characters with real money, which kind of off-set the balance being as I wasn't going to spend money on stuff like that. So I decided to give Nagafen a try.

Before Ruins of Kunark my favorite 1-20 area was the Greater Faydark, it was a huge zone with all sorts of fun stuff and quests to do, even had a sub 20 heritage quest you could do! Not to mention you could quest, hunt and sell without ever having to zone. It was quite the handy-dandy experience for a new character. Coming from the old zones in Qeynos where you would have to zone at least once, between selling/banking and hunting/questing, this was quite refreshing.

In Timorous Deep it’s a very similar experience to the Greater Faydark, the zone is huge, you can sell/bank and hunt/quest in the same zone. There are tons of quests to do, the story is entertaining. I had absolutely no problem getting my Sarnak Shadowknight to level 20 in the matter of a couple days, having a blast the whole time. Even grouping a few times to rid the deep of those pesky Qeynos invaders trying to prevent us from leveling.

After hitting 20, I decided to venture out into the Butcherblock Mountains and start the quests out there to continue my leveling glee. Unfortunately, Butcherblock Mountains has a 8 level separation for PVP, as opposed to the 4 level separation of Timorous Deep. Meaning that at my lowly level 20 I was easy pickings to the plethora of 25-28 players that had a distinct taste for disrupting my questing. I managed to take out a couple of those attackers over the next few days, while leveling up to 22. Then I decided that it wasn't worth the effort without having a play group, so I'll be camping him there until I find a group to play with, or decide to go and PVP in some of the lower end zones where I have a better chance of surviving.

So I decided to journey back to my home server of Najena. Not wanting to get into the high end content yet on my 71 Wizard (Kaedal), I decided to blow the dust off of an old character I've had since the beginning of EQ2. A level 35 Dark Elf Ranger. I created him back when you had to pick your archetype, then a class after that, and then your final class after that. And I also betrayed him back then, that's right, I had to run around Antonica killing hundreds of Gnolls, as well as a hand full of named Gnolls. He still proudly displays his "hunter of gnolls" title.

That's where I am now, the beginnings of leveling up my Ranger in hopes to have him in the 50's before the middle of July, which is when some of my friends will be coming back to EQ2 and we can get a group running around terrorizing Norrath together once again.

If any of you out there are interested in grouping up on either Nagafen or Najena just hit me up at Gartok (Nagafen) or Drist (Najena).

-ciao