Today I ran some alts to the New Halas starter area to get the nice looking Halas starter gear, you know, horny hats and all.

Did the first few quests, and noticed the armour looked all different and non-halas-y. Then I got to the quest for the hat, and my tank was offered a boring looking standard barbute, no horny hat.

Aparently SOE ninja changed all the starter gear so it's the exact same gear with the exact same appearance in all the starter zones now. I remember when they added New Halas, everyone I talked to was saying how cool the starter gear there looked and how nice it was to be able to get something good looking from quests as opposed to paying for it for a change...should have known it was too good to last.

So what happened to those cool graphics? They added new appearance only stuff (with the original New Halas starter gear graphics) which is sold in New Halas by two merchants for gold and status points. Great, except those merchants won't sell to me because I am not Halas aligned.

Oh, but the stuff is heirloom so I could just buy it with a Halas aligned alt right? Yeah I could, if I had any Halas aligned alts on that account (which I don't) or if I had any free slots (which I don't). So instead of questing for my cool looking gear I would have to either delete a character or pay SOE another $10 for an extra slot or do the betrayal quest.

All this hassle to get something which I could have gotten without wasting any money/deleting characters/betraying my city a couple months ago.

Aww, I remember my test swashbuckler having a nice little armor set from there. It was one of the few things I actually liked about Halas (I still think TD is the best starting zone content wise). It sucks that they removed it. Makes me wonder too about the future of new armor sets and appearances. Hell, I bet we'll find some Halasian stuff on marketplace soon if its not already on there. That way people have a shortcut if they don't want to grind Halasian faction! Brilliant! Cause apparently it would kill them to just have more armor styles available to players through means that aren't terribly grindy or cost station cash

While we are airing gripes, I still have a hard time with the whole EQ2x thing and their response to criticism over it since they announced it. Hell I don't even mind F2P or some RMT if its implemented right, but the way they did it was just so much: yeah we got our thing we are doing it this way, screw you guys if you don't like it.

On a related note; I read a quote the other day from someone who said that one of the prerequisites for being a comic strip author was the ability to get upset about tiny little things. I should channel my rage into more strips instead of posting it all here...

Hey! Anger is a great creative tool. Might as well put it to good use.

Hah, and then I check my mail and there's this from Codemasters:
I wish there was a game that I enjoyed as much as EQ2, but with a subscription model and absolutely no microtransactions.

Alfeo: I absolutely hate EQ2X and Station Cash. The fires of fury eventually lead to the ashes of apathy, that's the problem. Every time SOE screws up EQ2 a little bit more, this feeling I have that I should just give up on it for good grows stronger.

mmm i bought all that armour ages ago, i noticed they un-attuned it but never checked what theyd changed. damn ninjas everywhere.

Wow. I didn't even know that they changed this. I have actually made characters in New Halas to get the gear, and then moved them to another city. Which city depending on which housing I wanted that character to have.

I'll admit that I am pretty bummed to hear about these changes. It seems that all of this cool looking stuff is coming out on SC these days, or is being shifted to be acquired in a different way. The new SC heritage armor is nice, but it would be even better if it was offered in game as some form of racial quest or something. Instead of giving the crafters the ability to make this nice stuff, it's simply being put up on to the SOE cash ....

I still love EQ2, though. As long as I can stay away from the marketplace, that is.

I'm really big on decorating houses, i'm currently doing my Wardens house, who lives in halas, working on the docks, yey for breaking boundries of houses.

My main, Taylen, is a Necro so lives in North Freeport...they really need to make those houses either bigger, or better. You can fit 2 rooms from the FP in one room of the Halas house..which totally sucks.

Also...i liv at 7compassion road, which is at the end of the street, if you go on the new terrace, apparently i live at 5 compassion road... it's even worse, my other half lives in South Freeport and when you go on his terrace, he lives in North Freeport.... it's only a little thing, but attention to detail is always good.

I'd type more, but i'm at work, and this keyboard sucks ass.... i go away for 5 months and they change everything about my desk

QFE.

It was bad enough when they introduced the bazaar server. Then comes that bloody card game. Then microtransactions, which they once swore would NEVER be a part of the live servers, and now of course they've implemented GaiaQ2.

Smegley and Smokehumper should run off somewhere and spend the rest of their days comparing epeens or something, and let SoE hire someone who:

1) Knows how to properly manage projects
2) Knows how to deliver content the fanbase wants on-time
3) Is more interested in growing the brand's popularity through quality software and experience than trying to nickel-and-dime the rapidly-diminishing playerbase to death
4) Actually understands MMO's
5) Isn't completely full of

Yeah, the seriously need to stop spending so much effort "fixing" things that aren't broken. They spend more time redoing a set of levels (1-20) that they have gone out of their way to make sure takes as little as possible of time to get through. I don't get it. Yeah yeah...attracting new players...there are better ways to do that, especially when the methods used might be responsible for chasing away an equal number of existing players, or at least frustrating them into disliking the mismanagement of the game.

/rant