Stargrace

Playing What You Love #VG #Vanguard

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but I don’t actually play games based on their populations. If I enjoy a game I enjoy a game and honestly I spend 80% of the time doing my own thing to begin with. I have other means of social interaction and I value my quiet space. This is one of the reasons that it is so easy for me to fall back into playing Vanguard on a steady basis, especially because there is just so much to do. I don’t begrudge anyone else the game they play and I would expect others to do the same. That being said – Vanguard is NOT dead. There is a very tight community there and yes, it’s quite small but it is active. No, Vanguard isn’t being worked on development wise and players have known this for quite some time now – but honestly, there is so much to do that it doesn’t bug me. When I play Vanguard I just have to keep my mind open to the possibility that the game may not be around next year. Personally, I feel that it will be here for at least 1 year more, but I don’t like to predict any further. I’m playing it because I absolutely love every aspect of it. Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy give me such a sense of achievement. Even though the game has been out years now the graphics and views still sweep me away. I feel that my characters are unique, blood mages are a LOT of fun as are disciples and they’re completely different then shaman and clerics – even though all four I just listed are healers.

Always the nomadic gamer, I spent most of yesterday between EQ and VG (and logged into Rift to claim the free goodies bag while I had the chance). In Vanguard I played my 31 shaman along with a 31 Deathknight that a friend was leveling up. I run a guild there (called, you guessed it) Nomadic Gamers, and I have my personal home in game set as the guild hall. We explored Craigwind Ridge for hours, and managed to ding 32 and most of the way in when we finally turned in all of our quests. Personally I’m really looking forward to moving on to a new area, Qalia was never my favorite continent. I’m trying to get my harvesting caught up with my adventure level but as I learned yesterday two very important vanguard sites have been taking down, vgcrafters and vgtact (diplomacy site) and this left me wandering around trying to search for the zone I was supposed to be in to harvest.

When it comes to gaming, remember. You’re allowed to enjoy whatever game you want, for whatever reasons you want. If you’re not having fun from the moment you log into game until the moment you log out – then why are you playing.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Miniature Action Lashun House Item #EverQuest #EQ

I love house items, it doesn’t matter what game I play (although to be honest, only so many games I play actually have housing). House of Thule (the latest EQ expansion) introduced player-housing to the game and while there are a lot of merchants as well as the market place that give players some creative purchases in which to build their homes, there are very few quests in game (yet) that reward players with house items. There are a few! Don’t get me wrong. My first experience with these quests was actually the April Fools day quest – it rewarded the mini jester for my home. Yesterday I discovered three more quests while browsing the forums, including the quest for the action figure pictured above.

The incredibly neat thing about these quests is that the house items have very detailed lore explanations added onto the item. What I mean is that when you examine the item they have two tabs, one is the general description, and the other is a lore tab with the details. The action figure pictured above also happens to have adjustable poses, talks, and plays music. It is one of two rewards from a quest involving The Nonad Brothers which you can begin in Sunrise Hills. You also receive an awesome looking replica of a shield with the Qeynos crest on the front of it. The quest involved one of the older ones available in game, collecting taxes from random NPC through Qeynos. My favorite part was when I had to collect taxes from one disgruntled Halfling – he actually stole the tax money from another, and made me tell him that I was a gnoll loving weakling unfit to comb his feet. After I gave him a good chuckle he kindle handed over the coin.

There are two other housing quests as well, but I won’t get into details about them in this post, going to save that for another day. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

EverQuest Emergency Update Notes #EQ

*** Emergency Update ***

– All EverQuest servers have been brought down for an emergency zone crash fix. We apologize for the inconvenience.
*** Items ***

– Newbie weapons on Progression servers will now start at 60 percent of their normal stats and gain 10 percent per unlocked expansion.
– The Jagged Orc Slayer Sword will now behave like other newbie weapons on Progression servers.
– Merchants have raised their sale prices on many potions that were mistakenly re-priced. They have not changed the price they will pay for them.
*** Quests & Events ***

– Fixed tradeskill combines for Felwithe Defender, Pine Scout, and Pine Druid armor on Progression servers.

Are You a Fan of Using Guides and WalkThroughs?

I have to admit, I’m a little undecided when it comes to whether or not I want to use a guide or a walkthrough. On one hand I do love exploring a world on my own and I think games have come a long way to allowing me to do this without having to resort to guides and walkthroughs. Adding locations to the mini map, and allowing for better directions in the quest text all allow me to remain submersed in whatever world I happen to be playing in. Then there are the ‘harder’ things. For example, crafting in EQ1. How many people have tried to craft from scratch without resorting to a single guide. Where would you even start and how would you even know where to begin. There’s little to no indication in-game of where a player would go if they were sitting in their home city and wanted to pick up a craft. For these types of games I feel that guides and walkthroughs enhance the experience. Sure I may not be 100% involved in my game when I have to resort to using a browser to look up recipes – but I don’t really seem to notice it.

There is also something to be said for the communities involved in creating these guides and walkthroughs. After all, it’s a forum players use to bond with one another. It gives you a platform to ask questions (typically) to others who may have come across the same sort of issues. You know that the people posting on these guides are perhaps players just like you who enjoy the games at the base core.

There are numerous guides and walkthroughs available for every game imaginable; like this CardsChat legal poker guide. You can find them for games ranging from Farmville to Street Fighter. One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot more guides published online these days then there are in paper. I own a few guides for games like Little Big Planet, and really liked being able to follow them.

So how do you decide whether or not you want to know everything there is to know about a game, and when you want to simply wander along your own path? Is there some deciding factor for you as a player? Are some guides ok where others are not?

Let me know your thoughts in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath.

Event Stuff (Or Not) #Rift

It was just by luck that I heard about phase 2 beginning at all on Saturday, I was convinced the date was set for the 17th (Sunday) – but I happened to tab over to the Rift forums where they announced that the EU event had already taken place, and that the next events would be staged between 1pm-3pm PST. I quickly let friends know, and watched as many of them attempted to log in (and met up with horrible queues). Myself? I decided not to log in at all. I heard that phase three would be taking place in a higher-level zone, a place I would have no access to port to, and I wasn’t about to walk there at level 25. I also didn’t really want to deal with masses of angry players all trying to figure out what was going on.

I happily watched friends participate, take their videos, and it did look like a neat event for those who managed to make it in game and participate. It opened up a new raid rift, which is pretty awesome. After a two week phase one I felt a little let down by the 30 minute phase two and then the nearly instant phase three.

It didn’t take long before the forums were filled with outcries of players who were all upset about how things had run. Trion decided to compensate everyone by making a post stating that if you have an active account, they are going to assume that you meant to take part in the event, and will be mailing you your goodies. These goodies include achievements (minus the final phase three achievement because you can currently go out and bow to the npc required still), goodies ranging from common to ultra rare, and some sort of quest satchel with enough time to complete it – as well as 250 shards, and the shards shall continue to drop for a bit for those players who wanted to collect more items from the vendors (myself, I’d like the companion pets at least. I own one but there’s still three more to collect).

Congratulations, you didn’t even have to log in or do anything (except complete phase one?) in order to end up with a mail box full of goodies. It’s a learning experience, and I appreciate the effort that went into putting on an event like this, but I think simply handing out rewards diminishes the importance of the event to begin with – whether Trion considers portions of it a mistake or not. It may also come to be something players expect, to be handed out free goodies when things don’t go their way.

While it would have been neat to have been involved in something on that large of a scale, I just didn’t want to deal with all of the other headaches that went along with it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.