Everquest II

Do all the quests on otter iceberg for your +50 stat gear (you get all new armor/jewelry/weapons) and then head back to SF until the quests dry up.

XP gain in DoV is pretty slow in comparison. If you don't plan on buying a flying mount from the cash store, you'll want to do the flying mount quest in DoV as soon as you can because it takes 5 days (iirc) to finish.

You can swap back and forth between SF and DoV to break up the boredom.

SF quests go quickly if you have a flying mount.

If you just want to get to 95 and max your aa/prestige the fastest way is grinding in skyshrine contested in a group. You can pick yourself up a good suit of level 92 gear doing that as well as there's a lot of nameds in skyshrine contested. Once you get 92 you can do the CoE questline and start running those dungeons instead for even better gear and similar XP.

How many AA and what quality of gear do you have? If you have DoV quality gear like rygorr or something similar you will be fine. Tanking is pretty straightforward especially as an SK, your only issue could be aggro if you don't have some aggro management in group (like a coercer or dirge).

Link me your u.eq2wire.com character and I'll have a look if you like.

You'll be able to tank skyshrine fine as long as you have an ok healer. The gear in skyshrine will mostly be better than what you're wearing (especially jewellery) so you can get some nice upgrades there. The key to doing contested SS is having a lot of dps in group so you can massacre everything and really rake in the XP. You may have aggro problems if you have a high DPS person in the group and no dirge/coercer/other aggro control class.

When skyshrine was new I was duoing SS contested with my friend, using my coercer and his SK who was not much better geared than you, and a dual boxed warden healer and it was pretty easy. We're now duoing CoE dungeons using the same group makeup (with 3 mercs) and can clear a lot of the content. SKs are really powerful heroic tanks, especially given that due to our powerful dualbox healer and the aggro control of a coercer he can tank in reckless stance.

Depends on if you do all the sidequests or not.

If you do everything you will hit 94/95. Do it on double xp and youll hit 95 before leaving the first zone if you have other bonuses due to how they stack oddly.

My experience was there wasn't enough quests to go from 92-95 in eidolon/obol. I completed every quest in the xpac and I think I was only just 94 when I finished. The heroics are great xp though, about 30% or so for a full clear which doesn't take long at all.

I've thought about coming back several times but since I have been in S. Korea the past year, I couldn't play at times with virtually anyone else being on. Couldn't get into battlegrounds or dungeons EVER, and rarely saw anyone on (AB server). Almost makes me wonder though whether or not its possible to get into dungeons by queueing or into battlegrounds? Is there anyone left to play the game with?

I think I've had one or two groups with their utterly craptacular LFG tool. Took forever to form and lasted maybe a few minutes total. EQ2's LFG tool is junk, so don't depend on it for a group.

I play on Nagafen which has a much lower pop than AB and I get groups without too much trouble in Aussie prime time. I don't use the LFG tool though, groups are organised in 1-9 on Naggy.

Yeah, their LFG tool was half assed and no one uses it. It's also possible the playerbase doesn't know it's there, it's like 80% old rednecks.

The dungeon finder has never been updated past velious part one and the original lfg tool has never been used.

SOEs introduction of 'The marketplace' destroyed the community and the game itself. You could see the shear greed with every decision they made. They brought in some guy to run the game who specialized in micro transactions and he just nickled and dimed everything. The actual game component was simply ignored and replaced with new furniture/cosmetic gear on marketplace. This must have done well initially but over the course of a year or so the playerbase declined to silly levels.

I raided hardcore in EQ2 for almost four years and the final year was just horrible beyond belief. The itemization was mindblowingly bad, this coupled with people leaving the game in droves eventually decimated the raiding scene on my server. It's a real shame as I LOVED the game in the first three or so years, it was my first MMO and I couldn't get enough of it. Raiding was amazing and I loved the lore.

As for the combat, yes there are a LOT of buttons to press but this did tend to separate people who knew what the fuck they were doing from people who just seemed to hit whatever was up. Between this and the fact you actually had to time your casting in between your auto-attack strokes added a lot of depth to the combat in my opinion. I used to play a Dirge for my last few years and timing temp buffs such as rhythmic overture that recorded your damage over ten seconds and then used that damage as a proc for the entire group for ten seconds when you hit victorious concerto took a lot of group coordination. So I never really had any issues with the combat itself, it wasn't wow which I think most people who complained about it didn't get.

What I think of EQ2 though, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. It was obvious to anyone at the end that the developers had been told to focus on micro transactions over everything. EVERY decision, VERY new feature seemed to totally revolve around getting people to buy new stuff on the marketplace. I have ZERO faith in EQNext, it will be littered with just BS rather than solid gaming features.

Check out EQ2emu in a few years when that shit is complete. You can play on a server without all those microtransactions running everything.

The servers are stable right now and a lot of the abilities work but most of the content hasn't been scripted yet. Shit takes time, but it goes faster if people with skills help out.