Contrast it to some of the previous games that I’ve played. Leveling in Lineage 2 is a constant, on-going affair. Your level is noteworthy, and if you’re sitting on the level cap, it is a bragging right. Most people don’t hit the level cap, yet they are able to participate in the game just as much, going through more or less the same content that the players who are closer to level cap does. In L2 raids and PvPs, you have players spread over a span of levels. Having a character that is higher level than the mean brings bonuses to the table, but if levels aren’t on your side, you can compensate for it in other ways.  In EQ2, you won’t even considering bringing someone 5 levels below cap to a raid. Having the level cap be illusive also acts as a safe-guard against boredom. Even if game content has been exhausted, you can always fall back on leveling.

Having levels and leveling disassociated from the game is a trap that most modern MMOs fall into. After awhile, there’s nothing to but create alts after alts. Soon enough, you have ten character all sitting at level cap, and you wonder what there is to do.

Now I can finally turn my female elf obsession in L2 into a reality and go rename my character into ‘PrettyElfGirl’ from ‘Computerz’ and turn my pansy looking elf male into the opposite gender! Woot! Oh wait, I don’t play the game anymore.

Lineage 2′s expansion, The 1st Throne, goes live today. One thing I love about L2 is that expansions are absolutely free. I’m not sure if my account is active, I’ll have to check it later. I’m excited too, but between this and Frostfell, I’ll have to say I’m more enthusiastic about Frostfell sadly. I really don’t see myself playing L2 full time again. I really do want to be on the moment it goes up however, as there’s almost guarantees that fights will occur the new err… whatever, clan hall or fortress I think it was, haven’t quite been following the patch notes.

But oh, before I get myself even more hyped up, remember my post about having to miss the MMIS raid due to midterms? Probabilty couldn’t be more against me than to place both the MMIS raid and L2′s expansion launch on the same day where I can’t attend either. I’m pretty upset over it.

Anyway, Office 2007 SP1 is being released also, so grab it here if you’re running Office 2007. I really should be studying, but I can hardly concentrate at all. I love my course, I love what I’m studying, but studying for a test, which is based on nothing but pure memory work really kills any enjoyment I would otherwise have.

The technical issues that the Antonia Bayle server is constantly experiencing is rather irksome, but not to be unexpected. With 6 instances of Kylong Plains alone and at least a hundred in each of them, I doubt the server has had any more population at any one time than this. Zoning has to be biggest issue, with about half of the time resulting in either a 10 minute zone or me getting booted from the server.

The new legendary set pieces in RoK aren’t too appealing, and their set bonuses are feeble compared to what came along with the EoF pieces. Also, their stats seem kind of low compared to what I’ve seen on other random armor pieces. I’ve already broken my 6-piece EoF bonus from replacing a few slots with newly quested ones from Kunzar Jungle.

Questing in RoK is a great and new experience to me. For the first time, I actually have to attempt to figure out the quests as they go along, instead of just looking up EQ2i and inputting the waypoint into the game directly. Of course, this also means that for some quests, I get stuck at a certain point and look around for hours before finding the objective, or yell for someone that has done it to provide me with directions.

So whats one do when the EQ2 servers go down? Hop on another MMO of course! I volunteered to help my old guild with raiding Baium. I hate Baium, especially when you only have a small force for it; it takes ages. I either get the job of kiting around the angels for an hour, or stand in my nice little corner. This time, it was the latter.

Speaking of RoK, I wish I could skip school and be home right when the server goes up, but I’ve lab sessions on that day and it wouldn’t be possible. I’m actually rather busy throughout the entire week so I’ll probably be missing the chance to get item discoveries. Calreth still does not have a single discovery to his name yet.

Also, Lineage 2′s test server for the new chronicle came out a couple days ago. However, by the time I finished updating and patching, which took about 2 days on my terrible connection here in Singapore, the servers went down for some unknown reason. From the screenshots I’ve seen and from the 5 minutes I spent looking at the login screen, the revamped interface looks amazing.

Logging back into Lineage 2 for a short while today, I immediately noticed this loss. I wanted to greet everybody, to let everyone know that I’ve returned even if it was just for a moment, hoping that someone I knew was on, but I was robbed of the opportunity to do so because I didn’t have access to global chat. In Lineage 2, global chat is exclusive only a few ‘heroes’ – one of each class that wins the olympiad competition monthly.

Without a global chat, to look for one group, one would have to physically go out to the safe zone in the outskirts of a hunting area to congregate and shout for a group. This isn’t so much of a problem back during the early days of Lineage 2, as there were only 2 main exp areas. Right now, I don’t even know how one gets groups other than already knowing someone through social circles. I’ve never took a huge notice of this previously because I usually group with guild members only, and almost never do pickups, and I still don’t.

After all that’s being said, I can see one reason why having global chat would actually be a disadvantage in a PvP-centric game like Lineage 2 – the kind of chat that goes in there would probably annoy a good number of the population who aren’t board warriors.