gushue.net

For some reason this morning I decided to renew my EverQuest II account and check out how things have changed. I’ve done that a few times since I quit playing it a few years ago, but never stayed past that one month at a time. I did play the game for the first 9 months or so, starting on release day. I levelled a Wizard up to 45 (Provisioner level 50 – max level was 50 at the time), and switched to World of Warcraft mostly because of video card issues at the time, and my backup card just couldn’t handle EQ2.

I was hoping to log in after downloading/patching the game this afternoon, but for some reason the download just stopped part way through just after I went to bed. Oh well, maybe it’ll be done by the time I get home from work in the morning.

The game does seem to be much more solo-friendly than it was at release – that’s partly why I stopped playing. I wasn’t much into grouping back then, so it was hard to actually level after a certain point. Apparently it’s much easier now. And this feature from the newest expansion is sure to help future alts: “All of your characters will now receive a 10% experience bonus for each character at the maximum level. (Up to 50% max)”. WoW should have that… well, at least if it wasn’t so boring, I’d care.

My new computer had almost all of the new parts it needed to be complete, and I did have some spare parts around to make it usable for now. But here’s what I’ll probably be getting at some point soon to make this a really nice gaming system.

• Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME GTX 280 video card cooling
• G.Skill TITAN 128GB SSD – I was considering a Velociraptor, but if I’m already spending that much, why not go SSD and get even faster times and much less noise (well, NO noise)?
• Logitech G19 keyboard (or a new G15, though I don’t like the amber backlighting)
• Logitech G7 laser cordless mouse (maybe… I really want to test out some mice in my hand before deciding)
• Probably a Blu-Ray drive of some sort. Might as well, since my monitor can do proper 1080p and my TV doesn’t.

Right now, I can barely hear my computer at all. Except when playing a game, the video card fans are noticable. But that might be partly because everything else is so quiet. At the moment my digital cable PVR is the loudest thing here, being louder than both of my computers combined. Of course, I’m not counting my Xbox 360 here – that thing is fucking loud.