No particular reason for this update really, I for one got fairly fed up with watching the same old Vishimtar picture each time I loaded the page. Speaking of Vishimtar, we are still doing our upmost to kill him in a position that might actually resemble a decent corpseshot, though as of yet, such an oppertunity has all but eluded us.

Content wise, and I believe I am speaking for practically every high end guild out there, the weekly agenda is quickly becoming pretty repetitive, more precisely a Tacvi Clearing, Anguish clearing, selected dragons within the new expansion (read:two), and potentially an occasional MPG trial should the nostalgy arise. Add a day or two of working on the Overlord Mata Muram encounter, and you have the raiding schedule for the next few months laid out pretty plainly. Further content is sorely needed, and should this fail to be addressed within a reasonable amount of time, further server mergers will most definitely be required, i.e announce more raiding content!

Everquest recently celebrated its six year anniversary, and with it, by popular demand, Fabled mobs were introduced anew, this time in the Kunark expansion zones. Familiar faces such as Venril Sathir, Gorenaire, Talendor and Trakanon were all somewhat buffed up and made for an entertaining reunion, and as the search for presentable Vishimtar picture is still undergoing, the fabled celebrants will have to do for eyecandy.

A decaying dragon withered to the unrecognizable by the corruption festering beneath the mountains awaited a wary raidforce amid the eerie setting of the nest. Summoning an array of unDead servants to his aid, Vishimtar sought to spread the taint that seemingly had consumed the once lithe dragon, to no avail.

This encounter is possibly the most captivating challenge of DoN to date, not necessarily due to the difficulty involved, the dragon himself is quite easily bested once the correct strategy is applied, though the involvement of every member present definitely makes this fight one to remember.

Unlike the Mata Muram encounter, one slight neglect will not render the fight all but impossible, but merely prolong an already lengthy fight. As of yet we have not been able to allocate further content in the DoN expansion, and while the newest addition to Everquest has of yet been all but euphoria, one can only hope that further raiding content will be revealed. If not, completing an expansion in less than three weeks will surely be somewhat frowned upon, time will tell. Extremely poor screenshots this time around, one could almost think they were supplied by Finnemann!

Still mostly praise to the Dragons of Norrath expansion, albeit the lockout timers are somewhat excessive. Having to wait for nearly four days prior to repeating a 24 player event is all but disconsolate. Having said that, most of the encounters we've attempted so far are highly enjoyable, most definitely the Guardian of the Sands event, which proves the programmers have taken an innovative path in regards to expedition design and strategy.

Upon reaching Yar'Lir we discovered an apparent vanity issue, the dragon having indulged himself with several titles, most pertaining to weather related elements, though we will merely refer to him as Yar'Lir. Knowing that defeating this event would set in motion a one time dynamic event opening up the nest for our server, we all agreed that our weekly Anguish farm could easily be postponed to permanently alter the state of Antonius Bayle.

Through unlocking The Nest, we obtained access to the following monstrosity, it seems the Yar'Lir model is a popular choice for high end DoN mob design. Traits found amid the earlier Gates of Discord encounters were recognized upon playing around with the event somewhat, and hopefully we will return soon to engage the guardian of the dragon spawning grounds.

European servers have long been neglected in comparison to the American ones. I could mention GM events being arranged at 4 am, patches ending at midnight, pretty much rendering the entire day worthless for raiding. These are things we have long since learned to accept, our server being the oddity amongst the pack, located on a foreign continent. However, leaving the Arch Magus Vangl event broken on Antonius Bayle only is hardly a minor issue, it is pretty unbelievable considering the fact that we have two high end guilds located here, both deeply involved their learning process against Mata Muram. Having spoken to several raidleaders serverwide, they've all confirmed the encounter is working perfectly. Set aside five minutes of your precious time to patch the Anguish zone on the server that most likely utilizes it the most...I usually refrain from ranting about such issues, but this has been postponed for way too long now.

Prior to the Dragons of Norrath release, the general opinion was that the content of the new expansion would merely be an extention of the adventures found in the Lost Dungeons of Norrath, initially festering a hesitation amongst the players when deciding whether or not they would actually purchase the expansion.

While the mission system is highly reminiscent of the adventures found in the predecessing expansion, the DoN counterpart offers a very innovative and compelling progression quest, adding a sorely missed aspect to the game, namely an active player base outside of the normal raiding hours. The lack of new alternate advanced was somewhat frowned upon by many already at the peak of personal improvement, though the quest mentioned earlier has proven itself to yield quite significant rewards, a definite aid to any raiding guild.

Raidwise we have attempted two of the five dragons residing in the newly discovered lands beneath Lavastorm Mountains, more precisely Tirranun and Rikkukin. The latter supposedly offered quite an amusing encounter, though sadly I was not able to participate in the fight. Off the bat, Dragons of Norrath appears to be an entertaining addition to the Everquest saga, dissipating the faineant periods between actual raiding content, while having upgrades that will sough after by high end as well as low end players.

And to potential developers browsing this page; FIX THE AM ENCOUNTER IN ANGUISH !

Concluding this update, one of the most inappropriate zone crashes we have experienced of late, though as someone was kind enough to remind me of, it could have been much much worse, i.e during Jelvan. The actual crashing process did not occurr until Warden Hanvar's hitpoints moved from 1% to 0%, in other words, perfectly timed.