Stargrace

Bristlebane Day – and What is my Name Again?

It’s been one of those days weeks so far, you know the sort. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong? Here’s hoping it can only get better from here. My site has been down off and on over the last two days, but I think my host has it figured out. Sure wish they would keep better contact with me, but at least they reply at all. My new video card should be in today, and that’s a huge plus – my internet has been acting up and off for hours at a time, not so cool. Yesterday was ‘early birthday present’ day, and am now owner of a wii – already have a PS3 but I rarely use it. I like the activity of the wii, and I like the selection of RPG’s and other games. I got a game – Rune Factory Frontier – which I’m actually enjoying. Remember, I haven’t been a gamer all my life. I need to be eased into these things slowly! Basically I wander around (as a boy, but I can look past that) and I move into a little farm house. I flirt with girls (how fun), plant seeds, run around talking to people – and plant more seeds. Then I sell my harvests. Obviously there’s more to the game, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten with it so far. I know there’s a little bit of adventuring and even some crafting. It’s got a cute story, and it’s something I can play when I’m not playing PC games – which DOES happen every once in a blue moon.

Aside from all of the real life stuff going on – yesterday was April Fool’s day, also known as Bristlebane Day for those in Norrath. I spent most of my time in EQ2 for once, though I did hop over to EQ to check out the new class specifications that were added to all characters. In EQ2 Wpus and I headed to Antonica to help out Blat Berisen out with an issue he was having. It is the same quest from last year, but I’d never completed it on my mystic before, so it was a lot of fun. Plus it was good to be roaming around in EQ2 again. NOT that I dislike EQ! Everyone always seems to read far too much into my words when I mention my game hoping (I am at this exact moment downloading the 7 day trial to AoC, don’t read anything into it!).

Now, yesterday an announcement was made about new things coming to station access. Because it was the day that it was, the announcement was actually met with a lot of skepticism so take it as you will!

I’m torn over the new items which you can find here. EQ2 has never offered a renaming service before, nor have they ever allowed you to change your characters sex before. I think it’s a good service on some levels. Lets say a friend or a partner of yours decides they no longer want to play. You pay to move those characters over to your account, or you take over their account. Perhaps you don’t want to be known as Fluffy Bunny, the troll who lost all of her hair in a smelting accident. Now you have the opportunity to rename yourself and be someone more ‘in tune’ with your own character selection.

However. This also gives troublemakers a chance to ‘reform’ themselves. Be someone they were not before, giving players a difficult time in tracking them down. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I can see it ending up bad, some where.

I’m also wondering if this will lead to more character sales – because you can now purchase a character and then transform them (at least outwards) to something you may actually enjoy playing.

I’ve no idea of the cost of one of these potions yet, but I’m going to bet they’re quite expensive. Name changes and gender changes (oh great I can imagine the google hits that are going to head my way now) are not something that has (in the past) been easily done. I wonder what sort of stories people will have about this new feature once it goes live (it’s slated to be in game on April 7th at the moment). We’ll just have to see I suppose!

And if none of it’s real, well, at least I’ve helped to spread the fun!

Tonight is my LotRO night, and hopefully I’ll be playing it on the new video card. We’ll just have to see how that goes. I hope everyone has an amazing Wednesday no matter where you find yourself.

More SoD Progression

Today is Bristlebane’s Day. April Fools. It’s also rent day for me and inching closer to my birthday (I’ll be 28 and don’t mind in the least for those curious) and it happens to be the day I won’t believe a word of anything I read online, because we all know how those articles can be. NOT that I am against having fun and games, but I’d rather watch and not partake. I know, what a spoil sport.

Last night my trio dived into some more Seeds of Destruction content, and it was a very frustrating night. The quests we needed to do were flagged as solo tasks, but a few of them were so difficult there was no way we were about to finish it if we were solo. They were also some of the most annoying quests I’ve done to date.

I’m talking about the Bloody Kithicor chain of quests. The ones that make you run around the woods taking down named and then burning their house. Except the very first named you’re sent to kill has a fake in place – and when you kill him this updates for everyone on the quest. Then you kill the real version of him and he drops a piece you need to turn in to Lanys T’Vyl. Only one piece drops at a time. So we actually ended up killing him 6 times (the 2nd version of the named was red to me) and waiting for respawns in between. The fun didn’t end there though. You also need to ‘burn’ down houses – to do this you use a torch you’ve been given and click it on a wooden box you’ll find in the back of various homes. These boxes have a 7 minute respawn timer, and you need a few of them. You also need axes, with a respawn timer, and more chests, with more respawn timers.

Not to mention the portion where you talk to an NPC and four or five mean mobs who hit for 1.2 or so each spawn and attack an npc – your goal is to keep him alive. That didn’t work out so well the first round.

So I decided to do the quests another time while we completed them for Ninga and Ultann. Doing these quests unlocks further tasks along the progression, and last night I was just not in the mood to work on it.

I was thinking back to a post that Cuppy made about questing in EverQuest. She’s exactly right. While questing to level is my typical method in EQ2 it was never my main method of leveling in EQ. I grinded in experience groups at camps, and that was what I was comfortable doing. This whole task method of progressing through an expansion and especially The Void because there are so many tiers is just something I’m not comfortable with. I enjoy having a puller, and sitting and talking with my group while we lay waste to things. I dislike being constantly on the move, constantly roaming around. It may sound odd, but I suppose it just comes from my perceptions on what is ‘normal’ for me to do in game.

That being said – I have no idea where the population of Drinal stands, but the players there claim it’s fairly low. In Bloody Kithicor there was only my group and perhaps three others. I realize the expansion came out in October (so it’s been a while) but I had expected a little more of a population. Though I suppose the decrease could also be attributed to fabled going on right now and people working on that.

It was a nice quiet evening though, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. On a completely unrelated topic – good luck today Ninga! He has some fairly exciting real life stuff going on and I wish him the best. Hope everyone has a great Wednesday today, and don’t fall for any of that April Fool’s Day stuff!

Looking for GU51 patch notes?

Look no further! You can find all of the patch notes over on MMO Bin. Enjoy!

Another MeMe

Peter over at Dragonchasers tagged me in a Meme – a big thank you for that.

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

Obviously Peter has been brain washed, because I don’t fall into that category, but I’ll reply in any case! Here were the rules:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

I’ll be some what skipping step two, sort of. I’m going to list some bloggers who I read every day who I find amazing and who have impacted my life in one way or another. Please don’t consider this me ‘tagging’ you though, you’re under no obligation to respond with a meme of your own, I just wanted to give a shout out and some recognition.

The folks I know online who have influenced me, and my life in general are as follows:

Tipa – West Karana, suggested me to Beckett as a writer, and who has motivated me to grow far beyond what I ever thought possible. There’s no way you’ll ever know just how much you’ve changed my life.

Cuppy – Cuppycake, I started reading her blog when she was writing about Vanguard, way back when. Her posts inspired me to keep going with my own. It was a long time ago. I’ve loved watching her career and her life change over the years.

Rao – Gestalt Mind, He inspired me to partake in NaNoWriMo this year, which I completed and raised $250 for. It was one of those really proud moments in my life.

Mythokia, Malfi, Kilanna and Kasul – Four very good friends of mine, who each have influenced and inspired me in ways they probably don’t even know. Thank you for always listening.

On to the last portion! Lets see. This is difficult because I’ve been partaking in the surveys over at Grinding to Valhalla, and I feel like my life (lately) has been one open book.

I enjoy liver (eating)
I talk to my cat (often)
I played / coded for MUDS for 2 years before I started playing EverQuest
I don’t enjoy bars, or parties for that matter
I fell in love with the Medieval Festival here in Ontario last year, and I’m looking forward to going again, I may even dress up this year.
I prefer doing my photography in black and white rather then colour
I’ve never watched The Matrix before (or Star Wars of any sort)
I constantly keep note pads by my desk, I have them all stored away when they’re full. So many note pads filled with random notes that make no sense to anyone but me
I have a very little personal pet peeve with males who play female characters in game and females who play male characters (please don’t ask, it’s just ‘a thing’ of mine!)
I’m allergic to gold – and pineapples.

There you have it! Nothing really that unique since all of us have our own ‘stories’ to tell, but it was fun.

LotRO: The Minstrel Hits 15

Last night was my night to play Lord of the Rings Online with Kasul, and I was looking forward to it. Not that I don’t deeply enjoy all of my other games, I certainly do. The game is fresh and new to me, and the graphics (although they bugged a LOT last night due to my faulty card, it was no fault of the game) are absolutely incredible. I actually run the game better then I run EQ or EQ2 which surprised me.

Kasul and I started at level 13, we had a handful of quests that took us out killing spiders, bears, wolves, and a few undead. We had a few close encounters, it seems at later levels crowd control comes in handy. Or I need to learn how to not cause so much agro from adds. Being a minstrel and constantly watching the health of others would mean that at times I would fail to watch my own health and suddenly look at it to see it dipping around the 10% mark. Woopsie! I’m still getting the hang of my skills, but it’s not too difficult. Right now I have some tier one and tier two ballads. I have ballads that trigger when I use a tier one, and then others that trigger when I use a tier two. So I’ve tried to put them into some semblance of order. I have two heals, which I keep together as well. I’ll admit now, I haven’t had a great deal of use for the heals yet unless I’ve been working on the epic quest line, some of the instances we did in progression last night were a little painful with 4-5 mobs rushing our little NPC guide at once but the majority has been fairly easy – not to mention our questing has taken us quite far in levels, so the encounters we’re currently dealing with are below our levels. Some quests are quickly turning grey – NOT that I mind, I love quests.

I’ve got explorer as my craft, mostly so I could make light and medium armor as well as gather resources to sell. Kasul picked up Tinker, and has been making us some nice jewelery to wear. We spend a lot of time taking down the creatures of the woods and running after mines, all in the hopes of gaining a few precious points in crafting.

It wasn’t long before we found ourselves at level 15, and each of us had a class quest to complete. Mine was fantastic, I had to head off to Bree to the Prancing Pony to meet up with Piper Prescott. Seems that he was short material for a new song so he would be sending me off with Leland Underhill to find new material. This was a solo instance, and I left the Fellowship a little while in order to complete it. Kasul went off on his level 15 class quest as well. I’ve mentioned before how engaging I find the quests, and that holds true still. I love the stories, and I love being drawn into the stories. For those who typically may not read the quest text, I find that LotRO’s method of presenting the quests to you makes you want to read them. Even if they are not all instanced with flashy backgrounds. I typically read quest text anyhow, just because. What can I say I’m weird that way.

So it was that I followed Leland Underhill (hobbit of course) through some murky underground area swarming with bandits. I wondered what we could be after. Stolen goods? It must have been some precious family heirloom. He trudged on with determination. Each time we met with the bandits they relinquished their evil ways and fell to the side, this fearsome hobbit dragging an elf behind him who was frantically taking notes in order to compose some material for Piper. I had this huge ballad made up in my head, about this brave little (har) soul, and this monumental task he was undertaking. Through it all I eluded that the item must be of great importance and so very special – and then I learned what it was.

Leland Underhill was after his lunch.

Apparently that was the ‘precious’ stolen item that had been taken from him.

I glared at the hobbit after that and refused to speak to him. Risking my life for his lunch was not how I had envisioned this afternoon going. I hastily scribbled more notes, left the hobbit to whatever the bandits had planned for him once the lunch was evenly dispersed among the troops, and headed back to Piper, who presented me with a very nice weapon, as well as the ability to wear medium armor – except I can’t find that ability anywhere and it seems that I don’t even have it.

Eh?

I have no idea what happened to it, if it was something I physically obtained and some how lost (I assumed it would be passive) but I clearly have no ability to wear medium armor. I know it was on the list of rewards, some where. Ah well, a mystery to figure out some other time.

Edit: Thank you to all the comments below! I went back to the traits person and noticed the tabs across the right hand side – and low and behold there was medium armor under class. Thanks again! 11 silver? Ouch! Things are so pricey right now!

Kasul was feeling ill by the end of the evening, so he left early and I did a little crafting before switching over to my rune-keeper. She was level 7 and I played her to level 9, picking up the Historian craft along the way. Rune-Keeper is a lot of fun so far, the graphics to her spells keep me entertained, watching little runes fly around and huge bolts of lightning shoot from the sky. I haven’t played her long enough to be able to delve very far into the character, but again, so far it’s fun.

In other news – GU51 goes live today (baring some huge disaster) in EQ2! I know a lot of people are looking forward to that. Should be great! Not sure when I’ll get a chance to explore it, but I’m looking forward to the Lavastorm revamp (much as I did the Everfrost revamp).