I start randomly bungling around again since I’m not sure where I should be going, and end up finding a newbie helper and some more quests.  However it still only seems I am leveling up by killing mobs and the quests barely move my exp bar, at all. The NPCs all seem rather angry and all all yelling, being insulting and such.

At one point I find old Magister Gallant  demoted to standing outside the “administration offices”.  That doesn’t sounds very fantasy like to me.

Mobs are dropping a little bit of adena and pots but I still have not seen a single DROP.  Not even worthless stuff I could vendor for a bit of money.

My character name, as it has in warcraft, has sparked a conversation with a player named SrDerp who was attempting to help me with the game.  I asked leading questions about dungeons and battlegrounds which he says this game has,  but did not understand me when I asked how to queue for them, even after explaining how WoW does it.

I also mention the utter lack of armor upgrades I’ve seen on quests or mobs and he said you really don’t have to worry about gear.  Well ok then good. I also asked about raids and he told me to youtube Freya, and I asked what level you have to be for that.  He didn’t know, said he never killed her. I asked if he tried it before and he said no.  Clearly I know Freya is extremely high level, but I was looking for an answer like “why yes you can do dungeons at 10 and raids at 50” or something.

I was also told this game is a lot better than others, but they either could not explain in what way, or they were not a native English speaker and didn’t understand what I was asking.  I find out later they are from Brazil so that explains that.  I ported to Dark Elven Village and roam around, finding the area completely different.

Currently I am stuck at the npc called Pantheon who shows a quest on the map, and a scroll above his head,  but his dialog shows it’s been done already. When I click it he just gives some plain text with no other options.  I found it a little curious that some rare npcs are common now too, like Frintezzas “nurse” (http://l2.eogamer.com/wiki/Devorin) is just roaming around Talking Island now named “Ann”. I remember all the starter quests use to give you soul/spiritshots right off the bat, but out of the 3 quests I’ve received I’ve gotten nothing, and can’t seem to find any other quests. Haven’t seen a lick of English in shouts yet either. I got to the area where you get  a mount that looks exactly like the gnome mounts in WoW but otherwise, I really don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, or where I should be going 🙁  Are there guards or something that should be telling me what to do?

I ran into that kookarua race and I got there before the other person and it says I beat them, then says I lost. But once I won 50 adena, I think, the other time 5 soulshouts. Then got 50 adena.  I mean, the hell? I’m a mystic soulshots don’t do me any good and I’m already thoroughly irritated. Before I quit for the night I ported to those ruins and finally found a newbie helper who gave me wind walk, shields, bless the soul, acumen, conc, and empower.

I’m really confused that I don’t have quests that are leading me one to another like it did before I quit a year ago. Ported into the ruins and was killing ok until a Husk Crawler cast something that one shot my 169 hp. Back at town, buffless, still level 5, I talk to Pantheon again and he has no options.  I give up again for now.

Well Lineage 2 finally went free to play so after I got my account reactivated, which I had to do through support, I updated it and tried it out a bit. I haven’t played for at least a year and prior to that had created 2 new characters to test out how new players would see things.

The first thing of note is that the login screen now shows an active town with npcs talking, pathing guards from what it looks like, etc. We’re up to  5 servers after being down to what was it… 2 or 3?  Bartz, which was one of the originals when the game was in open beta, is back as well. It marks that as recommended so I figure hey why not.

The character selection screen and creation is quite a bit different now. Instead of both male and female standing together at the start you only see one at a time per race and class type. They are also not in starter gear but in high level stuff I don’t recognize. The screens look a lot like World of Warcraft (yeah sorry haven’t playing Aion or anything else related) where it talks about their base stats and race characteristics. My first ever character was a light elf female so I create one of those.

In the movie after starting I see what looks like Gludio being destroyed. I start in ahh… I don’t even know where? And there are a LOT of new players all over.  It starts matching me with a party soon as I start but I don’t feel like doing that and cancel it. The Npcs in this area have greatly improved animations and don’t just… stand there.

I realize, with a slight bit of horror, that all races are starting in this one area.  Starter towns to me, are a huge part of a games charm.  I see a npc say “Talking Island is really beautiful” and another says something about every race building a part of the village.  Say what now?  That doesn’t seem very chaotic.

The npcs look quite a bit better now. I see players running around on horse mounts which is new (to me).

I see a red (pk) character sitting in town with a sell shop up, apparently guards don’t… care? Ok?

And, I’m not sure what is up with the statues like “Number of Monster Killings” with a players name and statue under it.

I totally do not recognize where I am going at all.

I kill enough mobs running randomly around to hit level 5, but in that time do not receive a single drop.  I see someone flagged for pvp just running around randomly.

Looking at the map, all the familiar places I knew, are gone. No Elven Ruins, probably no Singing Waterfall, the academy, etc.

I head back to town and see at least 3 more red characters on the way. I have to go into my chat options to turn on white text in my chat window, otherwise I am missing nearly everything people are saying. I head back to the quest marker.

The guy mentions it must be weird to start in an area that isn’t your home.  No kidding. There is talk of catastrophic events, hm where have I heard that before? Cough Cataclysm cough. I get a combination of the old quest pointer plus “bread crumb trail” to show me where to go.

I’m randomly getting cut scenes where I go to and from the big building. The only thing in trade and shout are adena sellers and PL services. The next quest guy tells me how all the races worked out their problems and are all friendly and stuff. Ugh. I mean, there was never any faction based hostility ever anyway but c’mon really?

I complete 2 starter quests but they don’t appear to give exp worth anything.  30xp.  Oookay. An elder fox gives me 176xp.  I head over to the orc trainer, I guess, and she tells me to keep “practising” and when the time is right she may tap me on the shoulder.  What’s that supposed to mean?  Why not tell me to go find a Ti Mi Tran eh? Keeping the map up I go to the first quest guy and get 40 xp.  My bar is literally not moving at all. The quest I do at that point doesn’t give me any pointers but the scroll symbol remains on the map so, hm.  Well, I log for now.

I haven’t logged in for quite a while but did so today to look around.  My friends list is empty, not sure if that is because of the merge or because people removed me. I refresh my noobie buffs and see 5 other people clustered around Captain Lucas, the Kama guy.  I see an orc looking for 25 kama and I yell that I am too looking for a kama, but he vanishes shortly after, probably into said kama.

The other people vanish and one walks off until I am the only one standing at Lucas.  I shout a few more times for a 35 or 39 kama. After four shouts I get a little discouraged.  I get a pm from DarthUader who is also 40 and looking for a raid or a kama and says if we get two more we can do the kama.  I ask if they think we can get two more and he says sure.  However, after a time his/her shouts stop occurring so I send a PM asking if they have had any luck and the player is offline.  Oh well.  Better luck in the US morning?

Neither of my friends are logged in, so I sell my kama loot and get up to about 400k, then buy bolts and CSS for my new weapon, which was gifted to me by a kind soul earlier in the week.

I’ve not logged in at an ideal time today, as it is in the wee hours for most euros but I try to get together a kama anyway. 20 mins later, there are no takers and very little activity so I log out.