So here’s another side of EQ2 (yeah, I’m on a bit of a kick). Last night, after a crappy day at work, I was able to get job #2 done pretty early and by 9 pm I was ready for some relaxing gaming. And when I say relaxing, I mean just that… I wasn’t in the mood for stress or excitement.

It was the last day of TinkerFest in EQ2 and I had an incomplete quest, so I logged in to finish it up. All I needed to do was collect some gnome grease and then craft a battle-bot, so no fighting. Finished the quest (my bot lost 🙁 ) and then wandered around GnomeLand Security picking up quests and taking the time to read the quest text (or listen to the NPCs) as I did so. There’s some amusing stuff there if you take the time to appreciate it.

Then we had a surprise visit from a GM in the guise of a semi-broken tinkered robot named Firstaidomatic. It was attempting to repair itself and needed spare parts. I hesitate to call this encounter a quest, but it was a fun diversion and after we satisfied the robot’s needs we each got a personal light and some level 100 food and drink for our troubles. One of the strengths of EQ2 is that they do a lot of these micro-events where a GM controlled character just appears at a focus point (ie, the last day of TinkerFest, at the hub of all TinkerFestivities) to interact with the players.

Having finished with TinkerFest for this year, I headed to Kelethin for the City Festival, and took a quest to harvest ingredients for the troll that was running things. Remember how I’d been intending to level up harvesting the other day? Yeah, I was getting back to that. I spent the next hour and a half or so just roaming around the outskirts of Greater Faydark. Everything was quiet; I never saw another player out there. But that was ok. I just kind of flowed into the world, letting real world stress drain away as I fished and chopped wood and got really good looks at the creatures that I’d always had to fight during prior visits. It’s amazing the detail you have time to notice when you aren’t swinging a sword. And the ambient sounds out there just kind of drew me in. It was all very soothing, and I got all my harvesting skills up to where I can go harvest Tier 3 next, as well as completing the harvesting quest a few times and getting tokens for Kelethin City Festival goods.

I played until midnight, never drew a weapon in anger, though I was tempted after a Fae played a practical joke on me in the guise of teaching me her language. I didn’t do any serious crafting. Basically I just roamed around while my real self unwound.

I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and for me to ‘go off’ EQ2 again. I always do eventually. But for right now I’m really enjoying the game a lot (again). I’m taking care to only do things that are fun and to not pressure myself. For instance Angela asked me if I wanted help in doing all the TinkerFest quests I hadn’t done, since it was the last night of the Festival until next summer. My first instinct was to say yes, not wanting to miss out on anything. But then I caught myself because I knew I wasn’t in the mood for trying to pound through quests, and just let that content go until next year. Basically the way I look at it is this: I have two real jobs. I don’t need my games to become a 3rd. Everything comes ’round again eventually, right? And if not… well there’s more than enough content to keep me happy for years at the pace I play.