Vanguard: Lotus Hold
I decided to head over to Lotus Hold, which is southeast of Nakai Dojo. Nao Tak said I should go there and find a man named Bautali. It seems they need some help over there. On the way over, I found a Pegasus Trainer just west of Lotus Hold who will rent you a flying pegasus at the rate of 25 copper for five minutes. I also found a Riftway right next to Lotus Hold.
I found Bautali inside the Hold and he had a bunch of quests to give. Standing next to him is Hai Tang who also has many quests to hand out. I picked a few from Bautali and got started on them. I had to go kill a bunch of tigers, ostra’s, varana’s, and others. The varana and ostra were easy to find, but just like back in the starting areas, the tigers were extremely rare. I got so tired of running around looking for the tigers that I put that one on hold and worked on some other quests.
Located on the beach which is down the hill from Lotus Hold is a bunch of burned out houses that the orcs have taken over. The quest Orc Assault: Martok Deadbringer wanted me to go kill a few of the Deadbringers, so down to the beach I went. The beach is crawling with orcs, so it was easy to quickly find what I needed. The quest netted me 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.
Back at Lotus Hold, I discovered that the stress and fear of constant orc attacks have caused some of the villagers to go crazy. Some guy named Mung decided to take a group of them away from Lotus Hold to find some other place to live. It seems that the crazed villagers took Tao’s Idol of Focus with them when they left and they didn’t ask permission to do so. I was tasked with getting the idol back.
The crazed villagers are found up on a high hill that is a ways south of the Nakai Dojo. They stand close to each other, so I had to use Nature’s Calm in order to pull a single. The very first one I pulled had the idol. Nice luck. Returning the idol to Tao resulted in me receiving 1 silver, 40 copper, and 3220 experience points.
I then started a quest that tasked me with retrieving some treasure boxes that the orcs had stolen from Lotus Hold. These boxes are located around the burned out houses down on the beach. I had to clear the way of orcs in order to get to some of them, but I also found that I could sneak in behind the houses and get to some of the treasure boxes with minimal combat. There is a wooden wall behind the houses that has gaps in it and I found a couple gaps that I could squeeze through.
I ran back to Lotus Hold and turned in the treasure box quest and the kill animals quests. They all gave about a silver each and 3220 experience points each. I dinged level 16 while doing these quests and here is a list of spells that my Druid received:
- Barbwood Talisman III: AC 60, HP 120, 17 damage shield
- Wild Growth I: 935 to 986 damage over 24 seconds
- Solar Flare II: 297 to 319 fire damage & 107 to 118 over 4 seconds
- Restore II: 503 point heal
- Summon Earth Elemental II: Summons a pet for 3 minutes
- Quelling Wind I: Lowers hate by 3%
Tell Sony About Your Player-Run Events
I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things that can make an MMO truly great is the community that builds up around and in the game. If game developers can make it so that players want to communicate with each other, and make it very easy to do, then you add an additional draw that keeps people coming back for more.
There is not a single game out there that has it right. That is not to say that some don’t try, but their attempts have been half ass and weak. You will see announcements from companies stating that they care about player-run events and that they fully support them, but those good wishes disappear after a couple of weeks and things fall back down to the status quo.
Now Sony has decided to help support player-run events. This comes about 10 years too late, but what can you do? I saw this post from Massively, which points to the official announcement, that tells players to run more events and they will come up with more ways to support them. This probably sounds great to guilds who like to do such things, but I have no doubt that just like in the past, these things will fade away with nothing of substance coming from the game developers.
Speaking of events, some of the neatest moments in my Everquest career was participating in GM run events. Some of them that followed the lore and made sense game-wise were great and got people talking. The problem was that the GM events were few and far between, and just like you would expect, eventually stopped altogether. GM run events are so rare these days that I wonder if they happen at all. It is a shame because they added flavor to the game and a neat change to the standard day to day MMO grind.
Giving the players some variety gets them enthused about the game. GM and player-run events create the sense of a living game world where neat things can happen at any moment. If Joe MaxLevel is running through the newbie yard on auto-run while watching television, and he suddenly gets attacked by a 100 foot tall rooster who shoots laser beams out its eyes, you can be damn sure that word will spread quickly and draw many players into the fun. It will create buzz that will keep people talking about the event and they will look forward to the next one. If the developers follow through with a series of them, ane the players keep talking about it, then you have created something special.
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