It’s Good to be a Sarnak

I know you have all been waiting with baited breath for my personal thoughts about the Rise of Kunark newbie experience.  I’m sure you’ve seen both Keen and Cuppy’s experiences in the new content, and I have to say I’ve enjoyed it as much as they both have.  So with a solid week to let the gameplay sink in and my mind grasp what I want to say, here are my impressions and thoughts regarding the level 1-20 newbie experience in the RoK expansion.

1. Launch Day:  It was a smooth as a baby’s bottom, at least for me in the newbie zone on Kithicor.  No lag, no server crashes, and not the 1000 Sarnaks that I thought might be crowding the place.  It was like…almost any other day in EQ2 except for the fact that I was piloting a really cool Sarnak character and exploring the new vistas of Timorous Deep.  I have to really applaud the SOE team on how smoothly the expansion launch went.  Not even a hiccup as far as I could tell.  So that really freed me up to focus on the game and enjoy myself rather than spend the evening wishing the servers were up or surfing a technical forum to resolve some new glitch. 

2. The Sarnak:  Cool race!  I had fun in the character creation process for quite awhile before deciding on my final look (I made a Brigand and then later a Defiler).  I like the various options you can select, from various horn styles to scale patterns to colors.  I did wonder for a bit how they would wear a helmet until I finally put one on – it basically lays over your snout, but preserves the unique look of your head and horns.  Good move.  The only thing I had to get used to was constantly seeing my Sarnak hunched over as he ran around.  It’s like they all have scoliosis or something!

3.  Graphics:  The graphics of EQII continue to impress and delight me.  I know that in some areas they need some work (character models of some races), but overall the art direction and style has been a welcome change from my almost 2 years of WoW.  Timorous Deep boasts ocean spray on the rocks, huge cliffs filled with colorful and dangerous fowl (!!), sweeping vistas from atop mountains, huge broken bridges over chasms, ancient temples and much more.  Yes, that’s just the newbie zone hehe.  It was definitely a fun zone to explore from a visual perspective – completely different feel than anything I’d seen to date.

4.  Quests and Leveling Up:  Timorous Deep is designed to take a character from level 1-20 in a story-driven series of quests that explains some of the backstory and conflict between the Sarnak and the Spirroc.  I found the quests to be somewhat easy to moderatly challenging given my level – so all in all I think they were appropriately focused at the right level.  I don’t think I ran across one quest where I thought, “Man, this is tough!”.  That may be because I was playing through the content as a trio vs. solo.  The quest stories are interesting if time is taken to read them, and I ended my journey through Timorous at Level 19, 98.6% to level.  So it was right on target to get me ready to face Butcherblock.  My one complaint is that it had to end at level 20 – you have a 50 level gap before you can really go back and experience the rest of RoK content.  So that’s a bummer, but it does provide some incentive to level up.

5.  RoK Gear:  I must say that the one thing I wasn’t expecting, and was completely amazed by, is the gear that you get out of Timorous Deep.  You get a TON of items from completing all the quests – from armor to weapons to jewelry.  And these items aren’t just your run of the mill newbie items.  These are top of the line stuff for their level – they are loaded with stats, health/power and resists in a lot of cases.  They are so good in fact, that even in the lower to mid 20s we were hard pressed to find any upgrades via Butcherblock quests or even via the auction house.  Now that’s saying something when you are 27 and still using level 16 or 17 items because you can’t get quest rewards that are any better (and in most cases worse).  I’d really expect that more at the higher level, but at the newbie level?  I was pleasantly surprised.  Now I just wonder if newbie gear in EoF and the old world will be revamped at all (a huge task I’m sure).

Overall, I found the RoK newbie experience to be the best one yet – better than Greater Faydark, Darklight Woods and certainly the old world (Antonica).  I continue to enjoy EQII and this expansion just proved to me that SOE is doing a lot of things right.  I plan to enjoy the world of Norrath for many months to come, and I encourage you to give RoK a try.  I’m telling ya, it’s good to be a Sarnak.