Playing EQ2 like a Korean dictator

Another day has gone by, where I have spent several hours on Everquest 2 and not gained a single level. Or killed more than maybe a dozen enemies. Fucking housing system!

I don't usually care for housing in MMOs. Housing was dreadfully boring in Final Fantasy XI and Runes of Magic. It sounds more exciting in Rift, but I've never tried it there. Now it's coming to Elder Scrolls Online and... meh. I had houses in all TES games since Daggerfall, even had the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim and while that stuff certainly wasn't bad, it was really just a little something to add to the immersion. You know, give your character a place to store his loot, the wife and kids or the severed heads of random people.


Everquest 2 has exactly five million different pieces of furniture, plants, house pets and gadgets you can put in your home. I've counted them all, personally. And there are just as many different kinds of homes you can rent or buy. It starts with shitty little inn rooms and goes all the way to your personal mage's tower or a fucking pirate ship. That's right, you can live on a goddam boat and sail the seas and die of scurvy or something. Yohoho!

Housing is a little nuts in some places.

Every city in EQ2 offers different housing possibilities. Claire's mother lives in Kelethin, a city in the trees, where people live in hollowed-out acorns. We helped her set up her very first home last night. We even donated a hot tub, since she's playing a frog. And then I watched my fiancee's mother take a bath. Welcome to the internet.

She kept her armor on, mind.

In between crafting rugs, chairs and other things to make a cozy home, she's explored town and located the bank, shops and a restaurant. It was like some weird, virtual vacation. We've also linked her home to ours through portals, so now we can invade each other's privacy or release an army of 200 killer robots in somebody's living room while they're offline.

It's a frog. Living inside an acorn. With stairs made of giant leaves. 

We've spent all night looking and pointing at things. Found a prestige home named the "Personal Grotto", which has a bit of a Zora's Domain flair to it. Looks amazing, corals, waterfalls and everything, but I wonder how you turn a place like that into a cozy home. Or whether you should even try. Probably doesn't need much more than a bedroll, candles and few books or something. I mean, you can totally set up a bar in there, with butlers, a distillery, mirrored walls and everything. Not entirely sure if it works well with that particular setting, though.

Some windows would have been nice.

I'm not entirely sure why we're so crazy about what's basically a waste of time and money with no real benefit other than having a place that looks nice. I guess it helps express and define your character's personality. Every player gets prefix and suffix titles, a surname, a biography for others to read - why stop there? Make your toon a real pirate with their own ship, a grumpy old wizard in his own scary tower on a stormy island or a cave-dwelling ogre hermit.

You can even rate people's homes, there are contests and leaderboards and you can check out the community's favourite places. Unfortunately, there are no guild cities or entire player-driven outposts like Star Wars Galaxies had, but it's still the closest to an SWG housing system I've seen in a while. You can even set up your own shop for people to visit, so they can buy their stuff from you directly and avoid paying the broker (read: auction house) fees.

"We craft the finest shit in the land."

I think I'm gonna go kill some monsters today. Maybe finish an entire dungeon. Spend some gold on a new weapon or something. Not furniture.

-Cat