There will be a ceremony to say gbye to our dear missed friend Sslipery in game on Sunday the 7th at 6pm eastern time zone. We will be having it at the Fayd spawn island in Timerous Deep. We chose this area for obvious reasons , quiet, privacy and its overall beauty. We will say our Gbyes and toast to a fine player and friend. Coth will be setup at around 5 to get people to the island. Just ride the boat from oasis to the first island and a mage link will be there for you. If you are a mage I will be proving pearls for those of you that can assist in this duty. Reminder to remember to turn your logs ON if you wish to save anything said at the event. Please be respectful and behave accordingly. Thankyou all for caring and I hope to see you all there. luvs ~ Ley.

This week we received some news that our great friend and guildmate Sslipery Wenwet had passed away due to heart failure. This is a hard time for most of us as Sslipery was a great player, but most importantly a great human being. if you knew him you knew about how he would drop almost anything he was doing to help others. Slippery was also know as uhgly at one time, but it did not matter what character he played as you knew just by grouping with him once you met a kind soul.

I can not imagine the pain his wife Jess could be feeling at this time but I can only hope hearing from some of Daves's online friends helps her to realize the positive impact dave has left on so many. You can visit our message boards and post a note about your experiences with dave for Jess to see.

I am not as eloquent with my words, but while reading this following statements I started to tear up:

It's amazing how someone you've never met face to face can touch your life. I knew Sslipery (Dave), but not as well as most maybe. He was always good humored, willing to help, and not just help, he'd often go out of his way to help. It is sad when life hits us with the loss of a loved one unexpectedly. But it is even worse if an illness is prolonged. That's one thing I am grateful in this time of loss. At least he didn't have to suffer. Unfortunately those that are left behind are left with that to deal with. I can only hope that his family and friends can find a way to deal with their grief and learn to make it from day to day without him there. I've never been very religious, I think deep down I believe there is a God but I follow my middle name (Thomas) to much and cannot seem to erase all my doubts. I do know this though, if heaven does exist, or some semblance of life after death, Dave will definitely be watching over those he was close to. Making sure he does everything he can to help them in their times of need. Because that's who he was, and that's what he enjoyed doing. He lived his life helping others and making sure that if it was within his power to help them, he would do so. So long friend. I hope that if there is some kind of afterlife, that you find adventures to pursue, people to help rescue, and all the joy and friendship there, that you brought with you here.

Here's to you Lizard.
Branoic

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Stunned .... Where do I start , sslipery/Uhgly made this little slice of fantasy seem more real to me, talking with you like an old friend, getting into trouble and into places we knew we shouldn't, finding adventure around every bend striving to move forward , grow take on any challenge. Maybe you lived your online world like your real life world, if so you were a strong , loyal, interesting individual who put his friends first over his own challenges , always willing to leaned a hand to help out others, a credit to anyone that knew you in real life or online for sure. Having adventured with Uhgly so so many times I was sad to learn he had started a new character. This sadness was short lived when I found out he created a female iksar SK , ah I remember so many tell's to and from him about how a sk worked and what to aim for, it wasn't too long before he was teaching me a lot of new tricks. The fun times we had trying to complete our secret of the planes, the quest for just that right piece of equipment, the endless discussions on what we could solo or how much power we could squeeze out of that harm touch , all fun times I will never forget. Having never met in RL im shocked at how much sadness this has brought to my life , Sslipery you were one hell of a good guy, I wont forget you and the memories you have given me over the past few years, rest in peace my friend.

Geckonite , Iksar Shadowknight

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The funeral home helped Jess set up a memorial fund for Dave, so please if you would like to help send any donations to:

David A. Curl Memorial Fund
First Bank of Missouri
401 N. Woodbine Rd.
St. Joseph, MO 64506
Atten:Wendy or Carolyn


If you would to send a paypal donation you can send it to ketel@ketelkaotic.com and it will be forwarded directly to Jess.

Died to THE goal a few times. Yes there are many goats in GoD. But at the end of the day, there's only 1 more goat. The Goat. Pixxt Xxeric Kex. The bane of all who enter Tacvi. We've been making decent progress on the event. The last emote at 10% where she heals herself to 40% (gasp spoiler!!) is pretty infuriating but we'll hopefully move past this event soon.

What's been keeping us up is the new expansion, whose incredibly smooth lauch has surprised us as much as the amazingly fresh quality of the zones..... or should I say retro. They finally seem to have brought together what they've learnt from all this years and years of expansions and world building all packaged in one expansion. Only one locked zone ala Kunark/Velious/Luclin. Awesome huge zones with lots of named with reasonable loot for casual players and enforcing tons of social interaction like the best time of Kunark and Velious, especially in Walls of Slaughter.

All this infused with the instancing success of LDoN and GoD with awesomely detailed and HUGE instanced dungeons off of Dranik including some pretty hard dungeons... hopefully they will get the RvR right as well. Easily accessibly (NO CLEARING, OMG!) roaming named mobs in a lot of zone offering raid challenges, as well as tough trials with awesome rewards in Muramite Proving Grounds which offer challenges for both raids and single grps and here the raids are limited to 54 to fine tune progression while the majority of the boss encounters are accessible for all and you may bring as many as you like. This seems to me like the perfect balance....... finally!!

And then the zones where the big boys go to play. Had some fun in Riftseeker's Sanctum and I am sure Anguish (the only locked zone) will probably provide lots of fun. We (like all other guilds) are focusing on leveling, getting new AAs, and new spells. Hopefully the increasingly depressing looking Gates of Discord will be over asap with the help of the new levels/AAs and we can focus on the new fun stuff in Omens of War. Here are some pics from Muramite Proving Grounds and Riftseeker's Sanctum. See you all around in the game. Ciao.

And so we come full circle yet again. Another expansion. Another final zone. And new challenges around the corner in Omens of War.

A fantastic few days of learning on High Priest Nkosi Bakari concluded with an asbolutely exhilarating beatdown of the painful encounter. I wouldn't be exaggerating too much to say that while half of Txevu is occupied by Aneuk Nyrt Ymosa, Aneuk Rilst Uskst, Ikaav Hsek Syat, Ixt Quall Nalnn, Ixt Kial Ivesi, Ancient Cragbeast Matriarch, Ikaav Nysf Lliev, and Ukun Packmaster, the area reserved for Mr. Bakari is almost as big!

Another refreshingly challenging encounter. Gates of Discord's best asset is the way it has managed to infuse new design elements and innovations in the boss fights unlike almost any before in EQ. Each fight actually feels like a new challenge with elements not seen before or being used in a new way, and we're having a hell of a time learning them and breaking them down.

 

Thanks to our 'friends' in Lotus Cult, Zun Muram Tkarish Zyk, the boss of penultimate zone, is not up which allowed us access to Tacvi, the expansion's final zone. Tacvi seems to be a refreshing departure from the mindless clearing of Txevu and a return to the genius of Inktu'ta. Make the event itself the challenge, and not the mind-numbing clearings, which is what Txevu is chockful of. In Tacvi we ran into this

Quellious has consistently been one of the busiest of all servers, being the first one with 4 guilds in Elem Planes or 5 in Time etc etc, and then again 4 in Qvic this expansion......... so it's sad to see that multiple events in Txevu have not even been beaten (or even attempted seriously) as the guilds have moved on to Tacvi straight away. I can speak, atleast for myself, that it's not challenge of learning or dying on the events that holds folks back but the mind-numbing clearings and often hard CRs which coupled with the fact that Tacvi and Txevu are farther from a bind point than any end game zones in EQ history makes for one annoying time. Most servers have had guild's pass up completely on one or more of the Txevu events. What a waste of time developing such exclusive content that most of the game won't even see as they won't have access to this zone and then design it in such a way that those few it's developed for, choose to pass up on it as well.

Lets hope SoE takes the strengths of this expansion, which includes the challenging innovative and fun fights/encounters, and removes all the mistakes they made which includes mind-numbing clearings, blocked progression due to unbalanced content, incredibly tough CRs due to hard access, and too few mob models (something PoP was incredibly rich with).

Cheers to Wraith / Reviviscence on some well earned progress and it's time to enjoy Tacvi on what seem to be a lot of unique and challenging encounters without the stupid clearings for once.