[Xanadu/Xanadu Community: Public Boards/News] EverQuest II News

Farewell, Xanadu.EQ2. You will be missed.

Uyaem — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:09:05 UTC

It's not without regrets that we have to announce the end of the Everquest II branch of Xanadu. After a long time of constant rebuilding throughout the year, on September 20th, 2011 the decision was finally made.
The actual closing might be a surprise to most outside the guild and even some members. However, despite our recent accomplishments and attempts to maintain morale and up the pace again, us long term members have felt the slow and steady decline for a long time, and gear requirements and unlucky drops made it harder than ever to find suitable replacements for those retiring.

What made this guild great is not only what we did in game, but also the sense of responsibility and loyalty that kept many here past their "expiration date". While fielding a half decent raid might still have been possible every odd Sunday, the list of long-term members with good attitude, gear and knowledge of their class who privately announced their retirement in the foreseeable future grew longer every week. It is especially (yet not exclusively) those who we would like to thank - for holding out as long as they did, and for making us proud to be <Xanadu>.

Good luck on finding a new home to everybody who will stick with the game.
Be lootful and don't wipe!

Sentinel's Fate, Epilogue

Xanoth — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:43:11 UTC

On Monday 8th February Xanadu cleared Sentinel's Fate by killing Master Yael

That now leaves us some time to relax a little before Destiny of Velious, farm for a few missing drops that might take some time to replace in the new expansion and generally make sure we enter the next expansion rested and keen.

After the server merger over the 3rd-4th of February we started a fresh Underfoot Depths on Sunday 6th, things looked promising straight away with the server being ~5000 miles closer to the majority of our members. We quickly cleared through wing 2 and were cleared through wing 3 before the end of Sunday evening and at the foot of Yael. Monday seen a little server lag with the heavy load and possibly more guild in UD that evening, but still nothing as bad as we experienced on Runnyeye. Throughout the whole evening working on Yael we had very few issues with members going LD, unlike on Runnyeye where at least 1 person would have a client crash every 5 minutes on Yael, Most pulls usually had at least 2-3 people at a time going link dead, sometimes 5+ people (whole groups) at the same time all having their client lock up and need reloading, Which understandably can cause a lot of problems on fights like Yael, especially when the script seems to know when people are LD and sacrifice them (especially if it's the MT), it really didn't help motivation when 70% of wipes were a result of LDs. With the majority of the issues gone we made some solid progress and after some gentle whipping to get people performing at the top of their game we finally took him down. With one of our community members in the raid on their defiler with legendary legs and shoulders and some unspeakables as jewellery and half of his T3 armour was the scout chain we'd forced on him for crit mit over the past week, quite probably one of the least geared characters ever to face Yael and win. Our kill time was 21 minutes which wasn't bad considering a less than ideal setup, we should be able to nibble that down to around 15 minutes with a more ideal raid and with some more practice.

We're all greatly looking forward to Destiny of Velious and are recruiting to fill up our roster ready to start strong.

Now for the usual tomfoolery with the quotes!

I'll let you decide if I was talking about the birds outside my window...

*shrugs*

This must be an old quote to have Obs in it...

Many of us object to the contested mechanics, some went too far...

How shocking an innocent comment about dreams turns kinky in seconds.

I'd rather over sleep and be late in the morning...

Can't complain, baby pandas are very cute!

Far from the weirdest request's I've had over the years

So where else can peanut butter go...

What I consider normal guild chat really has changed over the years also...

Some people have weird keyboards

o.o

Guess this is why Veena can't raid naked...

Are we there yet?

No comment

Theer today, gone tomorrow.

Xanoth — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:16:31 UTC

It has been quite a while since we had our last news update, that's not to say we haven't been busy.

We've spent many weeks trapped underground in Underfoot Depths pushing forwards with our progress there. With solid progress into the 3rd wing of UD made after we killed Saalax on October 27th (which makes us one of only 5 none Russian guilds to have killed Saalax so far). After that we focused intensely on taking down 4 rune Theer, with some very close pulls in the days leading up to our victory and Xanadu Luck (tm) delaying our kill by a few days and denying us a top 10 kill (I'm sure we're not alone).

Finally on November 9th we took down both Theer's for one of our most satisfying kills to date. A server first and European first to be proud of.

As usual we're light on kill shot pics although we do have one from XYZ the fact there is more than 1 Z involved in the fight makes it a little moot.

We're now left with only 2 mobs unkilled before we can tick the expansion off as "complete" and prepare for Velious which is due to launch in February.
Our next target is Theerax the Enforcer (yeah what's with all the Theers?), after that only Master Yael will stand in our way, both of which are in Underfoot Depths.

I'll leave the news short and just get onto the quotes.

Some mobs have been really cheap on the loot recently...

I'm not sure what Ragamuffin's refering to but I'll assume a typo... and Zneeky ever the pet Rat

I hope he's on about Pizza too...

I sent you a sheep and you did what with it?

Some people will do anything for buffs...

Xaeth is still a traumatised little rat after this, he's hardly left his bedding in weeks

Doesn't everyone?

Sidd so rude he made his snails get naked!

Apparently this strat is too good not to share, it really works...

...but not as well as this strat does

I've tried the latter without success... I'll keep trying.

Sentinel's Fate, Part Two

Xanoth — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:30:06 UTC

With two new raid zones added ( The Icy Keep and Underfoot Depths) not that long ago, we've had a little bit more on our plate to keep us busy.
We also managed to finally take down the hard mode for both contested (more than once, as I've taken so long to write the news!).

Read on to find out what else we have been up to.

The easier of the two new raid zones is Icy Keep, designed as an entry level raid zone for their tier of content.
We quickly dispatched of the zone on our first pass through the zone, of course we forgot to take a camera and didn't bother going back (the zone had no real worth for us compared to other things we could do with our time).

With lack of any kill shots or screen shots of the cooler looking mobs I'll just give some scenic pics and see about adding more to the gallery at a later date

The second and more challenging of the two new raid zones (Underfoot Depths), has so far proven quite a challenge not only for us but all guilds. We are making steady progress through the zone with the first wing cleared on easy mode with our first visit. The second wing is where the real challenge starts, Regulus and Regulas (a twined encounter) is quite demanding in its current state and bad things can happen quickly in a fight that takes some time even when all goes well. We eventually triumphed but I don't think any of us look forward to repeat kills every 5 days (the minimum lockout for Underfoot Depths). The next named after Regulus and Regulas proved quite easy, the rest of them are still work in progress for us at the moment, we did get Aereon close a few times but the zone expired. More news "Soon! (tm)".

The news wouldn't be complete without the usual quotes. Not many this time around, either I'm just too busy lol'ing to press print screen when the funny stuff happens, or more and more humour is taking place over voice chat.

Regulus and Regulas proved to be so fun, some people took up prayer.

Well... I don't think I really want to see this

I don't want to know how this conversation started...

No wonder everyone likes having an Inquisitor in their group!

...and he did!

Sentinel's Fate, Part One

Xanoth — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:16:19 UTC

Another expansion is here, and I must admit it feels long over due. Sentinel's Fate finally brings us face to face with Roehn Theer, the God Slayer himself.
This of course in turn meant that the Avatars of the gods have finally (hurray!) left Norrath, after 3 years of fighting against them I think few people will truly miss them.

Sentinel's Fate also brought the return of Odus and with it Toxxulia forest, Toxxulia (the Dragon Queen) herself included.

Read on to find out how we've faired against the new content.

Our progress so far has not come easily, but we've managed to clear one raid zone and killed all the default content in the remaining two. With only some "hard mode" versions of the current content left available to us I'll introduce you to some of the foes we've vanquished so far.

I'll start with Perah'Celsis who died by our hand on February 28th 2010 (server first). This fight proved a little more musical chairs than we were expecting and at the time had very little room for error to get to the chair in time. With that aspect aside the fight was pretty standard, although we distributed the spoils and moved on without pause for screen shots. Here is a picture of the trophy so you can all see his oily complexion.

With Perah'Celsis vanquished and the spoils distributed, we turned our attention on Toxxulia (who was bugged for nearly a week and finally fixed by this point).

Toxxulia died on March 2nd 2010 was the second zone boss to fall to us (server first). The fight was a little different to what we're used to, but not really enough to make the fight stand out.
In the absence of the usual kill shot picture (again) I'll offer a picture of something quite unusual, a dragon flying around inside her own stomach... yes a concept difficult to get your head around, giving how spacious her stomach is. I believe it to be the founding principles at work that also make the Tardis possible.

With the other two dead we moved on to the next logical choice, Roehn Theer. This fight proved quite a treat, and while it could have been more involving it was certainly unique and with quite impressive art work/graphics.

We finally took Roehn Theer down on March 7th 2010 (server first), leaving us with only some of the optional hard mode variations left undefeated. With the promise of new raid content with the next Game Update, we should have plenty to busy ourselves with for now. I'm not really sure what else to say, but the trophy looks nice.

Warning the follow paragraph my contain cynicism. :grumpy:

I can't help but feel I would be being neglectful if I did not at mention something about the raid content and the accompanying loot that has been added to Sentinel's Fate. While some of the art throughout the expansion is very impressive, some the raid content feels very uninspired or rushed, we've endured many bugs already some from launch (that were reported in beta), some patched in later and eventually fixed, post launch difficulty rebalancing without patch notes and loot that looks like it was created by a random number generator and thrown into a loot table (over 50% of all loot has been transmuted on the server disco, with a further sizeable portion sitting in peoples bags not getting used). While we can't expect a disproportionate level of development to go into raid design compared to the revenue it's player base brings in, I would like hope the new content will be held to a higher standard than what we've seen so far. Players aren't privy to who dropped the ball when things go wrong or fall short of exceptions and it doesn't matter as long as we don't simply point the finger at the last person to "touch it", suffice to say even with limited resources/budget being offered to the developers in charge of raid content I think we deserve a higher quality. Bugs are a fact of life in an MMO, with a game that big and that dynamic you can't avoid problems. We should be able to avoid the need for loot revamps by doing it right the first time, when a job needs doing twice, players loose content.

Moving on... many of us despite our scepticism have tried Battle Grounds and found we quite enjoy it. We look forward to new maps, new game types and more items to purchase.

I think that's just about everything, just some space for a few random quotes that made us laugh that we can share with others.

is your horse amazing?

Not all adds mid fight are hostile, or in game!

We still don't know why Pling really went AFK, but...

Don't ask...

The beta server really isn't that far away... right?

would you like some more pie?

Yes Obs, yes you will.

This weird even by my standards...

The Shadow Odyssey, Cleared

Xanoth — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:59:08 UTC

On December 6th Xanadu finally cleared TSO with the killing of Munzok.

With the expansion cleared yet again, we can now safely look ahead to Sentinel's Fate and prepare as best we can with a mixture of farming, slacking, alting and weird guild chat conversations.

Munzok proved a tough fight and while there were many frustrating hours spent learning the encounter and perfecting what we all had to do, I certainly enjoyed the fight and look forward to future kills and I know many more of Xanadu feel the same. Despite some shockingly long pulls spent learning the fight I think we were all quite pleased with our first pull lasting a little over 14 minutes and went a lot smoother than we probably all expected it to be. I honestly felt it was quite refreshing that control was given back to the players with this fight and with less luck dependence involved.

I hope Sentinel's Fate brings more fights like Munzok, if not a little scaled back so that everyone can enjoy them.

I'll not make this news too long, so I'll move onto loot and quotes. :)

No news update would be the same with out a brief insight to the weird and humorous comments and conversations involving various Xanadu members.

Too much info can really flush away our focus

I hope Woodlore's GF doesn't read this...

This does seem as though it might follow on from the previous screen shot...

well...

So this is where focus goes during raids sometimes...

Very believable...

Sometimes raiders need to eat what they find...

No wonder some people can ninja bio so fast...

I don't like going out much... can you tell?

I didn't ask...

Last but not least...

Long time, no news: Miragul's Planar Shard

Xanoth — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:41:30 UTC

It's about time we had something to post some news about, and with Miragul's death on November 1st we finally have something new to post about.

The fight wasn't too complicated and we killed it with only a few hours of real pulls. The adds certainly have an Echoes of Faydwer feel to them which wasn't too bad on its own but everything combined to be quite problematic at times.

Our loot wasn't really the best he has to offer, but I'm happy with what I won and we'll have to wait to hear a verdict on how useful Amnepoh finds the charm.

The rest of the zone filled a similar gap that Shard of Hate filled, back during the Rise of Kunark expansion. With the earlier mobs accessible to most guilds and progressively getting more difficult, with the first 2 named in the zone comparable to mid difficulty mobs from Tomb of the Mad Crusader or Palace of the Ancient One such as Xebnok and Tythus Tinzok. An interesting touch was the mobs having multiple difficulty modes being available to provide content for a broader player base with appropriate loot while also providing something for the more hardcore guilds to sink their teeth into and be rewarded appropriately. This was coupled with dropped items from the heroic Miragul zones that can make raid mobs easier in one way or another, either adds removed, or damage reduced.

All in all an enjoyable zone, for those guilds who haven't yet checked it out I'd certainly recommend a break from your routine to check it out.

Our item database still needs a lot of help to get it populated. We're missing at least 1 item from Miragul himself, and several from the rest of the mobs. Regular Version of Haladan will be tricky without outside help as we won't ever kill him again. For information on how you can help, please see the sticky posts in this forum.

We are currently recruiting: Coercer, Mystic, Troubadour, Warlock. For more information please click this link.

Time for the quotes, not as many as usual. I'll add more quotes if people send me them, these are the only ones I took myself.

Some times when people go missing from a raid they really do have an excuse, no matter how unlikely.

I've heard of people waking up in strange placed after a night on the booze but this one was new to me

Riding can be harder than it looks and when you get it wrong...

You can spot Tigous in the bottom left explaining about his fishing trip and the size of the fish he caught.

Warlord Ykesha bites the dust!

Comalv — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:06:26 UTC

Galvanized by our complete Avatars annihillation, the fierce penguins marched on one of the last two enemies that still refused to give us shiny loots in this expansion, Warlord Ykesha. While his officers were no threat to us as we'd been killing them easily in the past months, he had some lame trick up his sleeves (hail, reset mid-pull) and managed to keep us busy for some time, but in the end he fell and we put his head on a stick (nicely covered by a pedestal) and placed it in hour guild hall! Woot!
Goes without saying that this another SERVER FIRST by Xanadu.

Wanna read more about this, read some kinky quotes and support Bear Humping (c) in Norrath? click the following button!

So what about the master of Guk's main stronghold? Well considering he has lots of friends that do a lot of stuff (and that should organize themselves better), and he has some nice tricks that have been used and abused in this expansion, once things starts going the right way he won't be that much of a problem.
This leaves only Munzok the Corruptor left to kill for us in this expansion, and a lot of fancy stuff to get till next expansion hits!

Here's our usual grouphug picture (and yes, SOGA is still > u!)

The loots were a nice fighter belt (gratz me) and yet another Dark Void BP (grats Veena)

As usual i'm not leaving you without quotes, here they go!

What's bio breaks really about...

Erotic Highlander?

A meanie misunderstanding my innocent tells (or at least that's my version!)

Whatever floats your boat...

What everyone knows about paladins, but is too afraid to ask *exposed*

Heroes shall be greatly rewarded

You shouldn't believe commercials THAT much...

What Americans think about rugby..(or is there something to read between the lines? mhm)

Quite a peculiar excuse to logout

That's all for today, stay tuned for more news!

All Avatars Dead, Fear Down.

Xanoth — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:30:18 UTC

A few of our members decided we had spent enough time with 13 out of 14 Avatars killed with only Fear remaining. With the faction bump made it was only a few days before Avatar of Fear spawned on May 3rd and was soon dealt with. This completes our Avatar kills, all TSO contested killed. With only Ykesha, Gozak and Munzok left for us to kill.

It's been a while since we last posted a video for one of our kills, but with thanks to Krantz for filming and Slacka for producing we have one (I think Slacka uploaded 3 in total due to complaints about choice of music). I wasn't going to put this on the front page as it will most likely download the video in full every time people load to the forums, but the only other media we have is a stamp sized screen cap of the Avatars health at 1%.

There isn't much else to report other than that. We are approaching that stage in the expansion were all cleared content is completed in one evening, I guess this is were all the three day lockouts come in handy, as we don't go too long without anything to do that doesn't involve getting our rears handed to us by Gozak or Ykesha, both of which are just a matter of time.

Our item database is pretty much done now that all items have been discovered, but please do report any out of date or missing items in the loot discussion forums.

Our roster is a little light but still very healthy, at the moment we're only looking to recruit and Illusionist and a Coercer, for more information please see our recruitment thread.

I guess I'll keep things brief and move onto quotes and usual silliness.

Some people have been getting a bit to relaxed now that the expansion is starting to loose its edge.

Cheeky Ratonga have been causing an stir lately with inappropriate advances towards other races

Ever wondered how some people are gone for only seconds when they take a bio?

Sometimes your ceiling gets thirsty too!

...

Penguins are a remarkably versatile biscuit, but there have their limits

Added as a reference for none UK readers.

Down to the last

Xanoth — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:10:24 UTC

With a few recent new Avatar kills we're now left waiting for just one to finally spawn (we will probably have to resort to forcing the spawn via faction). So having started at the end, what have we been up to that leaves us with only Avatar of Fear and Ykesha unkilled this expansion?

I'll continue how I started and work from the present backwards through what we've killed. On April 9th Avatar of Below finally spawned again, without lag being an issue and with plenty more critical mitigation gear the Avatar felt extremely weak. We had some teething problems which included people running past him forgetting they were agro, but he didn't last too long.

April 6th seen us finally bring down Avatar of Flame, the lag on this mob can be quite unbearable despite the recent fix, I'm sure most of this is due to the new quest line that was added to the zone causing more people to be present. Even then that fight often lagged with less than 50 people in the zone, eventually I resorted to just jumping on him Mario style while on my dire bear, unorthodox but effective!

A day earlier on April 5th we managed to bring down the contested version of Anashti Sul, we were all expecting her to be named something like "Avatar of the Forgotten One" or similar. Still expectations of her name aside we toyed around with a few different tank spots and eventually found one we liked (although I still had a lot of people moaning about it to me). There were certainly more portals than we expected, but that did kinda make life more interesting.

Obviously for the contested version to spawn, first we had to take down the instanced first. Which we did on March 26th, with many elements borrowed from other encounters it didn't take us long to familiarise ourselves with the fight. It just became a matter of putting knowledge into practice. We've since gone on to now first pull her once or twice, although more often than not someone falls asleep and blows the raid up... still it passes the time.

Well some of this happened nearly 3 weeks ago now, and for such a brief new posting. Hopefully you'll all enjoy the quotes!

Also, GU 51 seen many minor alterations to TSO fabled set armour. Those that can spare the time people check this post and see if we still need an update of your class set. As always please make sure the images are good quality, white and cropped appropriately if needed. If all you have is paint, don't be afraid to bring out the GIMP! Tutorials on how to use GIMP can be found here.

Almost time for the quotes, but let's see if you can find what is wrong with this picture. Think of it as a kind of "Where's Wally" but with more butt rub!

OK quote time!

Some people have made an extra effort to be quoted over the past few weeks

Some people are a little too keen to perform tasks asked of them

You know how annoying it is when people go ninja afk and don't try to offer an
excuse when they return after making people wait for them?
Well, sometimes you don't want to know. Especially not in detail

Just another days work for Xanadu guild chat

Yeah...

More... seriously...

Peoples sexuality is their own business who and what they do is up to them...
..but masturbation has never sounded quite so homoerotic

Cold Justice

Xanoth — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:51:55 UTC

The past two weeks have seen three new kills for us, I would start with the oldest first but really who wants a news update with the main picture being a giant ugly halfling?

Yesterday (March 25th) we finally managed to bring down Avatar of Justice, it's almost enjoyable at times... no really, it is! It requires a lot of focus and there is little margin for error, while the usual Avatar timer is a little more lenient with this encounter the excessive lag and the amount the avatar heals for really makes it difficult to make the kill in the time given, not to mention individuals getting the fail mechanism after getting resurrected unless you take a few precautions. With no lag this could be fun fight, almost enjoyable. Right now with server performance what it is it feels more like torture, the constant agony of the fight and the constant threat of catastrophic failure...

On March 23rd we also managed to down Avatar of Valour (I'll just go ahead and spell it the English way rather than American way as my spell checker keeps protesting). The fight proved a lot easier than expected, although we did have to finally move out of the pond and find somewhere a little more convenient. It wasn't much different than before, the new mechanic is pretty easy to pick up once you realise what needs doing exactly, it was quite smooth after that and we got our loot and were on our way.

On March 3rd we killed Avatar of Mischief, it really should have died weeks earlier and some would argue this news should have been posted earlier too. On March 11th we finally got the overdue kill and I put off making any news knowing there would be more to follow that would all be better written in together. It's a bit of a shame that I mob we managed to get a WW first on last expansion was unkilled by us for so long this expansion, there was nothing really new about the fight that wasn't there before other than a new need for critical mitigation. The requirements of the fight certainly don't make it one of the more enjoyable or challenging but we've since killed again and at least it dies pretty quickly and we can be on our way with some extra loot.

Loot as usual, congrats to those that won these latest drops and all others not shown here :)

As always, we try to keep our loot database up to date, please post if there is anything we miss or if items have been changed and we have yet to update them.

I'll wrap this up quick with just a few quotes, I'm try to finish off this news update while people bicker about Anashti Sul...

One letter can make all the difference

No comment

I don't even remember what was being discussed, but it's certainly worth quoting

War and Peace, without the peace.

Xanoth — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:16:41 UTC

Over the past week or so, our Avatar progress has finally started to take shape. On February 27th we managed to bring down Avatar of Hate for the first time since TSO launched. It proved a frustrating fight, it's zone location further adding to our issues (as I'm sure is the case for other guilds), Nektulos Docks function as a mini hub to access several other zones. Due to the new server lag that came with TSO which causes a brief period of lag every time someone enters the zone, if two or three people zone in quick succession this can turn what otherwise looked like a good pull into a complete nightmare. I could go on with my complaints about server performance, but I have two more kills in which to do that!

March 2nd also seen our long over due kill of Avatar of War, we had been close many times before but never quite managed to attain the kill. Once Axe of War stopped being a problem everything soon fell into place. I mentioned lag earlier, well with Zek being a empty zone we never really had much of a problem here with lag. No more than what is considered "normal" for raiding in EQ2 these days.

Last but by no means least, Avatar of Health Finally fell last night on March 8th, the only new contested that we'd have so far this expansion. The script was basic and straight forward, adds were strangely familiar... almost like we'd seen them before, but where? Seriously though, it was an enjoyable fight. However this was by far the worst lag we had ever experienced on a contested to date. We regularly just had to abort before anything had even gone wrong, the server was just responding so slowly that 2-3 minutes of combat equated to 1 minute of actual spell casting. 3 minutes of a flawless pull with only 10% damage dealt to the avatar, no players dead... Seriously SOE, EQ2 is an awesome game and we all enjoy I greatly but please give us back the performance we once had. When you put a time limit on fights like these at just 6 minutes 30 seconds (AoHealth it really is a limit, next sweep AE that hits after you get battle weary and it's nn raid), the least we expect as players is that our success or failure is in our hands and not purely based on if the server will respond in a timely manor for the 6 minutes needed.

If you made it through my ranting about lag and want to know what we looted, or perhaps you just like reading our freaky quotes?

We only have the one high resolution kill shot, but I'll post the rest even if they are quite small. Before anyone blames me for lack of more screens I have a Radion 3400 that cost me a whole £40, you don't want to see what my EQ2 looks like while raiding!

I was only given one screen shot for War and it was corpse shot with Comalv stood in he centre spamming hail on a warmonger as though that would make it go away faster... There have been plenty of other discoveries from the other Avatars we're still killing, but I'll just post what we got from our 3 new server first kills.

We're always keen to receive new item links and drop locations for our EQ2 Item Database, for information and what we would like screen shots of or items we're missing, please visit our Loot Discussion Pages.

Now time to wrap up with our usual quotes.

It's never a good idea to get on the wrong side of the guild leader...

I've heard of some strange buffs, but this one is new to me

Honesty isn't always the best policy

Did I mention earlier that we started to get a bit sick of lag?

No comment

We always suspected, but now we know

EQ2 can change more than your social life, it can change your sex life too!

It wasn't me...

Calm Before the Storm

Xanoth — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:23:10 UTC

We've had a busy week, so much so that 3 kills are going to have o be squeezed into one news update. Friday the 13th turned out to be quite lucky for us, with a quick kill of Avatar of Storms marking a good start to our evenings raids. That said it's still probably one of the most frustrating and annoying encounters that we'll be forced to repeat for yet another year. Who'd have thought constantly getting interrupted, loosing target and being unable to heal would be unpopular with players...

Sunday the 15th also proved quite productive, with a strong turn out we spent some time re-familiarising ourselves with Avatar of Tranquillity and were rewarded for our efforts. Probably one of the more enjoyable Avatars, even with the charm it's still hugely preferable to storms! note to any developers: random charms are still lame!

On Monday night we finally found time to spend a second evening on Zarrakon - yes, yes we know... Bad Xanadu! What on earth have you been wasting time on?! well other Avatars that weren't as fruitful as those listed above. - anyway, with decent positioning and a little practice the encounter proved quite fun, the scripting was pretty easy to follow with visual queues and text hinting at what you need to do. Hopefully this will prove enjoyable to kill weekly, rather than annoying... time will tell.

Obviously these new kills yielded a few server discos, here are a few (Congratulations to those who made the winning bid).

As always many more items can be found in our database and we do encourage anyone to aid us in keeping our database up to date and with appropriate good quality images. For information on what you can do to help and how to upload items please follow this link.

No news would be complete without quotes of our members being weird or embarrassing themselves.

Yes, quite...

Something about EQ2 seems to cause issues with sexuality

You often find that raids can try a little too hard sometimes to get the job done

Some things are surprisingly hard to find, and can leave you wishing you didn't know someone went looking for them

I've often found that EQ2 often requires you to turn off at least part of your brain, or busy it with other tasks... others seem to agree

Motivational speaking has never been my strong point, neither has finding desirable rewards

Slight growth during the winter months

Xanoth — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:17:33 UTC

Winter has proven quite a slow period for us, but on February 1st we killed the new version of Avatar of Growth. While only our second Avatar, we've made good progress on many others and are continuing to farm Mynzak and Gynok for the critical mitigation gear many of us are missing. I'll keep this update brief as I expect there will be more news soon to follow.

Yet again we didn't have a kill shot, or even a living shot... I think some people are missing screen shot buttons, or have me on ignore. The later could be true.. Congratulations to Jingizu, Nickolet and Wizardx on their recent Avatar loot.

Not many quotes this time around, this hasn't really turned out to be much of a news post at all really.

I guess two really is too many... who'd have thought.

I think this quote speaks for it's self.

Disease, sickness and ill health

Xanoth — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:58:42 UTC

We were due another news update and thankfully on Sunday 25th January we were given something to write news about. We downed our first avatar since they got fixed before Christmas, we came close several times since the fix but ultimately never finished what we started. We killed Avatar of Disease with surprising ease, for once the script didn't bug out too many times (although the old bugs are all still present).

Unfortunately we didn't hang around to pose like we sometimes do, with more police on their way we felt it prudent to leg it with our loot. Congratulations Uyaem and Amnepoh on their new treats.

Recruitment
Some of our members have moved on, either back to reality, playing a different class or joining friends on other servers.
This of course has left us with a few spaces on our roster that we would like to fill.

We are currently recruiting the following classes:
Dirge & Monk & Troubadour

Just a short news update this time.

Hopefully there will be many more avatar kills to come as we get back into shape and start performing as we should.

We had quite a long break over Christmas and we've taken some time to get back on form with all the roast dinners, chocolate, beer and spirits. One of the first avatars we tried when we came back was Avatar of Tranquility, this screen shot may give you some indication of why we didn't quite kill it.

There are some images I could live without...wtf fried eggs...

Eve since this conversation I no longer care why people are late coming back from an AFK break, I'd rather not know

I reported this to social services immediately, this is not the sort of "respect" the youth of today should show their elders

I always wondered why Uyaem acted strange around me...

The suburbs just aren't what they used to be...

Yet again Uyaem provides quality screen shot material that comes under the "I wish I didn't ask" category.

That's all for now, hopefully plenty more news to come!

The Shadow Odyssey, Chapter One

Xanoth — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:55:12 UTC

It has been quite some time since our last news update, so long in fact that I've had several people inquiring what on earth we've been doing that has left us with no news to post. We have just been too busy since the launch of the fifth Everquest2 expansion The Shadow Odyssey to put any news together.

On Sunday 21st December we finally killed Gynok Moltor and his merry bunch of friends, leaving us with our first full clearance of a TSO raid zone and a server first. This finally gave us something significant enough to write about.

Gynok was certainly a tough encounter, but a return visit a few days later showed us just how easy it should have always been with only an unlucky failure mechanic preventing us from killing Gynok on our first pull. As is often the case with encounters like this, the hardest part of the encounter is belief that you can beat it and keeping morale up long enough to make that belief a reality.

The loot from Gynok like so many other hard encounters in TSO wasn't anything to celebrate as the same item drops from other mobs in the zone which are vastly easier to kill. Other than a TSO set leg pattern we didn't get anything new, how much that pattern can be celebrated is up to our favourite trout Slaan who got the server disco.

I guess I should also mention that like many other raid guilds out there we did take down three contested Avatars since the launch of TSO , unfortunately due to a developer oversight these mobs were not the difficulty there we intended to be. SOE have since boosted Avatars to what should be their intended difficulty and we look forward to seeing the ones we killed again in the new year to see if we are up to the increased challenge just yet. Some of the Avatars that we've not yet killed certainly give you a forceful example of why critical mitigation is an important part of raid progression in TSO.

Our members (or Penguins, as some would prefer) have been hard at work outside of raid hours running group instances, questing and doing their best to reach the new AA cap of 200. Two of our members have suffered enough to reach this new cap already, Siddartus being the first, and Wizardx following soon after. A lot of us have already lost the drive once we maxed out the new Shadow tree, all too willing to leave gaps in previous AA trees that had a lot less desirable bonuses in them.

While there are mixed feelings about TSO and it's popularity with player base at large. Most agree that there are some very nice group instances with some beautiful design and art work put into them as well as some quite original scripts and encounters, with good itemisation as an added incentive to keep players going back. The Palace of Ferzhul being the most challenging of these new heroic zones in particular the Valdoartus Varsoon encounter, which proved to be one of the most enjoyable and challenging heroic fights I've experienced in EQ2 to date. Of course now that I'm on the subject I'd have to mentioned that Xanadu were the first guild on Runnyeye to defeat Valdoartus Varsoon on Nov 28th, as well as being the first to complete the signature quest for which Varsoon serves as the final update.

Last but by no means least... Something that certainly deserved it's own news is our Guild Hall. Xastia and Angbeleg have gone through a lot to decorate the guild hall to a high standard, with many of our members chipping in with crafts, harvests, LoN, quests and many other furniture and resource needs. Visitors are welcome to look around, although vagrants, squatters and troublemakers will be removed.

Xanadu news just wouldn't be the same without quotes and other tomfoolery, so I'll not disappoint.

A brief not so scientific study has shown an increased performance from drunken Ratonga, although if left to lead raids they may have trouble finding the chest and opening it as the screen shot below shows.

Some people share fantasies that you often wish they would just keep to themselves...

I've always found it best to let members have what they want every now and then so that they can remain focused...

Some things just can't be cured, even so it's best to keep people informed...

When you really want be cured, this isn't quite what you want to hear...

Not everyone lost sleep due to grinding AAs, but it's best not to ask what they did get up to...

I probably should talk less...

<possibly more quotes to come>

...And Justice for All (Rise of Kunark Cleared)

Xanoth — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:16:24 UTC

Justice was served a few days ago on Runnyeye, when Avatar of Justice finally made another appearance. Another Server First, this now completes all twelve Avatars from Rise of Kunark. We have now defeated all current content and can consider the expansion cleared at last.

Unfortunately someone wasn't happy with what the chest had to offer and ran off with the corpse, to what end I'd rather not consider. Anyway, this was the closest thing to a group photo we managed to get from the occasion.

Qiss is now the proud owner of our 3rd Silken Robe of Al'Kabor, 'grats Fluffle.

We're now left greatly looking forward to what the future brings with The Shadow Odyssey due out on 18th November.

The news just wouldn't look right without the customary supply of rude comments and innuendo, so I'll not disappoint.

Sometimes it's a good idea to actually follow the conversation before making a comment

Well...

Anything taken out of context can seem rude, some more so than others.

A well timed Jesters Cap can do wonders for your performance, but in the bedroom?

I don't even want to know what the rest of this conversation was...

...hopefully this wasn't it. If so, it is not the love of food I want to know about.

I'm sure this was funnier in context, but I'm not in the habit of taking screens of weird things I say, so will never know.

Too much down time?

Deadheading in Greater Faydark

Xanoth — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:33:05 UTC

This news update seems somewhat late, but better late than never. Last week Avater of Growth finally made another appearance and proved disappointingly easy after the recent changes. Still, it was quite a fun fight. Very similar to how it was during EoF, but with added wiggling (which is always fun). This Server First leaves only Avatar of Justice left before we can finally say that we have cleared all of RoK.

Due to the lateness of the news I've no idea what dropped, as we've killed a few avatars since AoG and gained several pieces of avatar loot. Apparently it was Darlock's Pauldrons of Good and Evil, although even he was unsure when asked. Lets just move onto the quotes before this gets any worse...

I've often wondered why it takes some people so long to get to a contested, I regret finding out sometimes

No news update is complete without a derogatory Salgor reference

erm...

Erm again...

Unfortunately no one did...

It's no surprise that people still didn't respond too quickly

Tanks always have issues with sharing

Raiding the English way

Who Spanked the Monkey?

Xanoth — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:36:03 UTC

After much procrastination we finally put in a few evenings on a much known giant gorilla called The Tangrin. When asked if he had any last words he offered these few words of wisdom, Ooo Ahhh Oooo Ahhh!. Despite our low numbers over the summer months, The Tangrin finally succumbed to his wounds. This Server First brings us yet another step closer to finishing the expansion, with only Avatar of Growth and Avatar of Justice undefeated.

Unfortunately we were offered little reward for our efforts, which has been sadly too common this expansion for us.
Never the less, congratulations Oraxor on your new toy, may you find many a kinky use for it.

With the expansion starting to feel all too familiar now, there is little more to report. Growth and Justice will be our next focus, until they spawn again we'll continue gearing up and keep in shape. We have sadly lost a few members who moved on to that other MMO with better graphics... the real world. More information on our recruitment can be found here.

That's all for now, I'll leave you with the usual selection of quotes.

Sometimes you get a little more than you expected...

Some of our members are very open minded and willing to try anything once.

When someone has a bone to pick with you, I'd hope it doesn't end up like this

I don't even want to know...

I often fell asleep during math, I clearly missed this lesson

It's rare that people follow orders straight away, but its even worse when they are a little to keen

Ever wish you'd never said something?

Poor Salgor, even playing alts he can't escape the abuse.

Diseased Ratonga Down!

Comalv — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:50:04 UTC

Penguins are getting closer and closer to their goal! In fact yesterday we had the big diseased ratonga known as Avatar of Disease show his putrid ass in Antonica once more, and this time we didn't make him leave untouched. In fact he got taken care of pretty quickly and antonica is once more the usual shiny greeny stuipd place it used to be (gladly D'Lere will take it over sooner or later and transform it to a more appropriate zone). Anyways, one more SERVER FIRST for Xanadu, 2 Avatars to go.

Keep reading for some more rotten news.

So one more new Avatar down, one more pretty unintuitive script (other than lame), but in the end we just sent in some emo pallys to snuggle him and he died of shame while trouts and gnomes were getting sacrificed, healers were learning to fly and dps was just wanking about. But what's dead is dead and sadly the loots were nothing new, but grats anyway Slaan on his orange Raiment

Here is our daily grouphug screenshot! (SOGA > u!)

Stay tuned for more updates, here's some quotes for this time (just 1 actually, as the others would be censored i guess!)

For someone urgent AFKs mean your house is on fire, for polish dwarves it means something else

And cats have to show their wisdom in the matter

Your Fear is the Key...not really

Comalv — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:56:22 UTC

New week, new SERVER FIRST for Xanadu. This time it was Avatar of Fear who fell again under our sharp weapons, who got downed yesterday pretty quickly and easily. One more to our count. 9 Avatars down, Justice, Disease and DanceDanceRevolution to go!

Want to read more? You know what you have to do!

So another unique avatar down to us and easily dispatched after less than 2 hours of pulls. This ugly faceless... thinghie proved once more to have some new tricks up his sleeves, but nothing that can't be overcome by our penguin army. Fluffle got some nice treats, grats her!

Hoping missing avatars show their faces soon, i leave you with the usual quotes (yes news are getting shorter and shorter, but nothing really new to say, avatars die so fast that they don't leave me time to make up stuff for news!)

Our dps comments on one of our fighters' abilities

Kinky stuff going on as usual

And ppl trying some strange positions for fighting

That's it for todays, hoping to get some new content soon or news will become 3-lined at best!
*penguin huddle*

Blinded by Hate

Comalv — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:38:27 UTC

As another week begins it's already time to write some news. In fact yesterday we were about to go to Shard of Hate and hope to get some bodydrops finally but as we approached the portal we saw a ugly-looking troll blocking our way. As we quickly dispatched him another bigger and uglier troll spawned and attacked us saying some blabbing about hate and stuff like that. Even the non-fake Avatar of Hate was defeated for yet another Server First and we could finally zone into SoH without anyproblems, just to find out, that for the 7th (or is it the 8th?) time neither the sisters nor the maestro wanted to drop the bloody rare item... Oh well at least we killed one more avatar and now we have only 4 waiting to be slaughtered.

Keep reading for details

AoH was a pretty nice fight back in T7 and even if now everything is a bit easier due to overpowered gear he's still surely not the easiest avatar out there also thanks to some added tricks. Only crappy thing is that being it on top of SoH zone in the fight suffers additional lag unless you pull when noone else is around (last time it spawned for us was the sunday after SoH got released and lag was the big factor which prevented us from killing it), but then again now that it's dead who cares :p

Killshot is missing once more since my personal killshot provider was not online and of course adds always spawn when the mob is about to die >< Will try to get one

Lootwise our fluffy fury Qiss got this nice belt

So it's 8 Avatars down, 4 to go, be sure to check this site frequently cause i think news won't be late
Of course it's now time for our usual quotes! Enjoy!

Did you know templars have a buff similar to viagra?

Everyone hunts what they prefer...i guess

Salgor and Obsidian's relationship

A couple of trout macros i missed in the last news...Group Feign Death...

...and single FD

That's all for today, stay tuned for more!

Death to Below! (wasn't it from above? /shrug)

Comalv — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:58:24 UTC

Woooh ohh! Yesterday big bad drunk dwarfie finally showed his hairy ass (why do i know his ass is hairy? Piki told me, and no i didn't ask), aka Avatar of Below finally spawned for the first time after RoK release, shame he only stayed up enough to get pulled twice to get sent back to his grave....oh wait he's not a vampire....to his planar pub? Something like that i guess. Most importantly, he died, dropped us phat lewts (c), granted us another SERVER FIRST and leaves us with only 5 unkilled avatars for this expansion.

Fight is pretty Dance Dance Revolution (=not really heterosexual) style, but not as much as the yet undefeated AoG, and i guess it's a pain in the ass for casters, but what do i care, i'm a melee :p

No penguin huddle pic today because we were so eager to go finish clearing VP that we forgot about it (i know u'll never believe this), but i can show you some phat lewts we (Tholar) got:

Short news today, but nothing relevant to say really, and it just means i'll leave u with more quotes than usual

Here they come!

Salgor showing once more his feelings

U know...trout (=Slaan) keeps Group FDing me, so when i had to play him for some door-opener business, i thought it was fair to pay him back for the effort, so i made some innocent macros for him, who ofc didn't notice them till it was too late (too bad i wasn't in group with him so i don't have the FD and GroupFD screenie, but i'm sure someone will add them :P)

Kaizan is still pretty uncertain about his sexuality instead....(also notice how stable Vanguard servers are...)

And while our High elfs and queer anfibians try to find their soulmate, oraxor is trying to aim for a greater target, but some size issues arise!

Salgor finally dinged another level and learned a new fearsome skill! Beware! (luckily i wear plate greaves)

Here's an example of some diligent member who follows given orders (even if he took lots to)

And last but not least...well i won't comment on this :P

That's all for today, stay tuned penguin lovers!

The Avatar and the Lightning Rod

Comalv — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:15:49 UTC

Lots of news in these days as well as lots of SERVER FIRSTs. In fact yesterday another Avatar bit the dust for the first time on our servers, and this time it was Avatar of Storms who saw his demise by our penguin hands....paws....wings...whatever... So i've kinda lost the count but we should be at 6 Avatars down, 6 to go, already half way there! GoGo Penguins!

You know you want to click that [more...] button!

What can i say about this avatar? Really challenging if u think that playing in the water with a guy who evokes thunders and has a lightining rod is a good idea, otherwise it goes down to more or less "fighting a Dominus in PoA hallway with repulsors" (c). So after getting electrocuted a bit we decided we were no masochists (except Oraxor) and we killed him fair and square in a couple of pulls.

I also found a neat place to take our penguin huddle pic!

Lootwise we got this ring, grats Siddartus on another Server First :p

Waiting on another avatar to slay (and still waiting to see bodydrops from SoH), i'll leave you with the usual few quotes of the day

For once i'll fade the name since this one is not really polite

a comment about this fight

Kaizan loves me so much that he assigns loots that belonged to me to dirges... (time to write Xanothian Language Volume III imo..)

That's it for today, stay tuned penguins!

Divide and (get) Conquer(ed)...

Comalv — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:54:13 UTC

After only 2 days from our last Server First, here we go get another, it's the time for the Avatar of War to fall under our swords and spells in one epic battle!
This avatar changed quite some from T7 and it got even more fun (at least for a zerker :D), but of course we couldn't have fun all night long, so when we got bored of toying around with this plated orc we put his planar life to an end

Keep reading for the full report!

Not much to say about this avatar it was fun, we enjoyed it and we killed it. Here's our usual penguin huddle pic (i really wish SOE engine would allow 24 chars at full detail instead of capping it at 10 even in highest resolution)

Lootwise our emo pally got this bracelet, grats Obsidian

So another avatar down, hoping for some more to spawn (a couple never showed up since RoK got released, wtf?).

Be sure to stay tuned cause news hopefully won't make you wait too much!
Before leaving you to the usual quotes, for the many people who liked Xanothian Language Volume I, here's the second volume for all the people who want to learn this grumpy language:
\aITEM -473062723 -551755550:Xanothian Language Volume II: Why the Grump Hated Frostfell\/a

*rolleyes*

More quotes-on-demand to fill this section!

Imo we should rename Xanadu to...

...or at least add it like a tagline!

Stay tuned penguin lovers!