Stargrace

Almost Happy Birthday EverQuest #EQ

It’s coming up on EverQuest’s 14th birthday, this March (16th, to be exact). I always like to delve back in around this time of year to see what new things are going on as far as birthday events, and this year is no different. Well, it’s slightly different. I managed to convince a friend to also return to the game with me this round, and so we decided to start on a completely new server, from scratch.

I looked at the SOE status page to figure out where we should play, home server is Drinal. After a bit of debate we decided to go with Firiona Vie, the roleplay server. This server is a bit different than regular ones. Number one, characters are created knowing their ‘home’ languages, and no others. That means in order to communicate in group you need to learn other languages first. So the first few moments in game were spent making macros so our characters could talk to one another. There are some other differences on the server, like items not carrying the ‘no trade’ flag, and the ability to place those items for sale on the broker.

The general channel was bustling with over 400 people which was really great to see. A quick decision NOT to complete the Mines of Gloomingdeep (again) meant that we were off to Crescent Reach at level 2 (I wanted to stick around the tutorial long enough to pick up the skull charm that characters can get).

While we are starting on a new server without an influx of older characters to provide us with bags, gear, and coin, we do have the knowledge that we’ve acquired over the years. As well as veteran rewards. This really came into play tonight. We turned on our lesson of the devoted which is a boost in XP and hired two mercenary (one each). A dps and a healer. It wasn’t long before we were level 8 – and I purchased my first beastlord pet. Oger is playing a shadowknight.

Despite our knowledge of the game, and veteran rewards, things were still tricky. Oger died once due to an over excited bear, and I decided that I’d summon a miniature Bristlebane who promptly gave me wine and bread – and like a fool I took a bite of each. This poisoned me with a dot which normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I had switched out my healer mercenary for a tank one, and I was unable to switch back unless I could be in the “resting” position in game. You can’t properly rest with a dot on you. I couldn’t cure it with my low level cure disease, so I slowly bled away until I died.

Still, it was a great adventure getting to level 8, and I’m excited to see where this takes us. EQ holds a very special place in my heart, and I’m constantly trying to get others to come back and play with me. Who knows, maybe this time it will stick.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Games I’m Currently Playing #EVEOnline #GW2 #WoW #WurmOnline

I’ve got four games on my plate lately, and I can’t help thinking about what each one adds to my over all ‘wants’ out of an MMO.

First, I’m still playing Wurm Online. Sandbox game where you can shape the world around you, but the game requires a LOT of time and dedication and that time only rises if you incorporate things like animals into game play. See, animals need food. Grass eventually becomes packed, and thus animals can starve. Also everything in-game aside from your personal inventory can decay. If you take off for a week it’s not that big of a deal, but any longer and your virtual items in game are going to suffer. Lately this has been more and more of an issue for me, feeling ‘tied’ to a game is a good way to make me not want to play it. I shouldn’t feel like I’m going to lose my time investment if I have to step back from playing for a little while. Still, this game just reaches out to me and it’s held my attention far longer than I would have thought when I first started playing.

Second I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2. I think this game is fantastic, especially since it has no subscription in order to enjoy it. Buy the box, and play it like a single player game if that’s your preference. Of course then you get to level 80 and realize that there’s no way for you to do dungeons unless a mass of your friends are playing OR you PUG them. Plus these are not your typical dungeon where everyone has a role and can act on it. There are no tanks no healers you’re all just bodies and it can be a whole mass of confusion and a lot of deaths. It’s a game where (imo) there’s a lot of ‘go go go’ constantly happening. There’s very little relaxing I can do, if I want to harvest I’m going to have to engage in combat, there’s typically always a mob or event going on by every node I come across. Beautiful lands, with a lot of puzzles and vistas, and yes I could work on zone completion in the cities, but it’s still not the quiet I look for.

I’ve recently resubscribed to EVE Online using some plex I had stored up. EVE scratches my sandbox urges as well as the quiet time I look forward to, or exciting ‘go go go’ time if I feel like it via PvP and missions. It’s almost the perfect game for me, except as much as I love EVE I’m not a giant fan of science fiction – so I still prefer to have a fantasy genre game on my plate. Today I’m making a run out to my PI planets to collect all the goods I’ve been stock piling, and then I’m going to put a few more manufacturing jobs active before I begin doing some missions. I’m almost able to finally fit the heavy missiles on the Tengu that I want to use, but in the mean time it’s back to my old ship until those are ready.

Finally I’ve decided to resubscribe to World or Warcraft. I know, an odd choice when I’m playing two sandbox games and a non-subscription game, but WoW is like a comfortable sweater to me. It’s ultra causal and you’d never wear it out of the house, but it’s great for those sleepy cold days where you’re huddled down not doing much of anything. In other words it fits the ‘relaxed’ bill that I was looking for above. I can solo some dungeons if I feel inclined to do so, I can PUG dungeons and raids (which I frequently do), work on alts, craft or harvest, etc. It’s not new or innovative, but some times that’s just not what I want. Plus pet battles are just plain fun.

There are other games I still dive into here and there, like Vanguard, but I’m not currently playing them on a steady basis, so I didn’t count them in this post. There’s also a bunch of single player games I’ve been enjoying such as Sim City (March 5th can’t get here fast enough!), The Sims 3, Triple Town (a cute puzzle game from Steam), and Skyrim. Of course there are always a handful of games I wish I were devoting more time to, too. Those include The Secret World, Pirate 101, and Lord of the Rings Online. Sadly, there are just not enough hours in the day to play them all.

What games are you playing lately? Share below in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Another Trip to Caudecus’ Manor with the Combat Wombats #GW2 #GuildWars2

Ah yes, Caudecus’ Manor. It wasn’t that long ago that the members of Combat Wombats were taking our first stabs at dungeons, and while we may not be the ‘top dog’ type of player, we’re still having a lot of fun. Last night was another dungeon run evening, which is all the more important these days because they’re a requirement for the monthly achievement. I’d almost rather do the PvP achievement than the dungeon one, but that’s got nothing to do with the guild and more a personal preference of my own.

We ran the dungeon twice, and while it was easier this round because we knew what was going to be going on for the most part, there have still been some tweaks. For example you can no longer ‘zerg’ fights any more, when you’re dead you have to stay dead until someone else revives you or until combat ends so you can port to a waypoint. I remember when we did Ascalionian Catacombs zerg was an important part of our combat. It will be interesting to see how it works out now.

Of course with time also comes knowledge. Our characters are better geared, and we’ve all developed at least some sense of what to do, that just happens naturally over time.

I’m still not ‘feeling’ the guardian as much as I had at the beginning. I’ve started playing an elementalist, which is a LOT of fun, and more suited to my play style. Of course the issue with this is that I’ve put a lot of time and coin into the guardian, so switching characters or even simply leveling up another character is not that simple. I’m sure if I can just manage to stick with it for a while the class will eventually become my new main. We’ll just have to see!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Tengu Flying #EVEOnline

A few months back I decided I was going to work towards flying a Tengu for PvE missions. I had more than enough funds to purchase the ship, and just needed time to train for it. Right when I finally achieved that goal I set the game aside and moved on to Guild Wars 2. So of course I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic as of late, and I remembered I had some PLEX stored up. Before I knew it I had resubscribed again and was out and about in the beautiful Tengu.

I can’t quite finish fitting it the way I want, I need some more training, but that will (of course) come with time.

The rest of my visit back so far has been spent getting familiar with what I was previously working on. I checked out my PI productions, the market, and took inventory of my current ships (I’m up to 15). I also noticed I had a lot of festival items in my claim window, so I loaded up on a bunch of fire works and snowballs. I have no idea what they’re actually for, but hey free stuff is free stuff!

It’s nice to be back. I’m looking forward to raising my factions and getting some missions under my belt although I’m not sure which faction I want to work on next. I was doing mining and working towards earning loyalty points with a few places but I’m not really sure what in specific I was after.

In any case, it’s great to be back.

Wurm Assistant Introduces the Granger #WurmOnline

One thing I really love about Wurm Online is the community that has spawned from it and how each of them contribute to the game in their own little way. Quite a few people have developed helpful programs that you can use alongside Wurm to gather information about your sessions. One such program is called Wurm Assistant and while there are a LOT of things this wonderful program does, the one I wanted to focus on today is the brand new ‘granger’ feature.

In a nutshell what it does is when you smile at and then examine a horse (within 5 seconds) it will record the horse in a chart pictured above. It will make note of all traits that the horse has (that you can see), who the parents are, whether or not it is being cared for, and if it’s pregnant when it will give birth. Then in live time it will tell you when you’ve groomed the animal.

When you highlight a horse it will also try to pair them up optimally. You can assign a point value to each trait, so what I’ve done is assign every speed trait a 10, so I can simply look at the chart and see that if my horse is a 40 it’s a 4 speed. 50 a five speed, and so on. It will highlight brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers in a pink shade so you know not to breed them together and potentially obtain negative traits.

For horse breeders everywhere this is a must have program (IMO). It takes care of me having to use a spreadsheet to keep track of my horses, and even lets me organize them by herd. If you breed animals in Wurm Online, you should really check it out.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!