Category: Gaming

A Look At Crowfall

Crowfall has been on my radar for years now, but because I had been burned in the past (Landmark, Greedfall) I opted NOT to back the game. I sort of wish I had, but that’s alright.

It has been MANY years since I delved into a new-to-me traditional MMO. There have been multiplayer games like ECO, sure, but my last new MMO I’m pretty sure was ArcheAge. Nothing else has grabbed me, and I’ve been rambling through older MMOs for 15+ years.

Anyway, the game is in beta, and thanks to a 20% discount (available only until August 23rd) I grabbed entry at a not-too-high price.

I created a guinea pig vessel (that’s what they call characters, you’re not an actual character so much as you are a deceased the Gods have picked to return in a vessel). This allows you the freedom and back story to play any race/class combo available, simply popping into another vessel. Classes are restricted by their race, and in the case of the guinea pig folks, there’s no females. I know this is a deterrent for a lot of players, but it doesn’t really bother me personally, so I created my Knight with gusto, and I love the little dude.

First quest in the pve section is very typical – kill 5 wolves. There you learn how combat works and follow breadcrumbs from quest to quest, learning of the world around you.

The game has a crafter driven economy, and is full pvp orientated despite the added pve section. That’s more niche market shenanigans that others may not enjoy but I decided to wing it anyhow. There is also full looting of your corpse, none of which I have any experience with because hey, pve section.

The crafting is simplistic to start out, and fairly intuitive. You harvest trees, rocks, animal pelts, ores, plants, take the goods to a craft station, craft stuff. You have failure rates and you can create better than normal goods or poor quality – the better the stuff you harvest, the more those chances change. You can also re-name your crafted gear, which was interesting to me.

I did not get into the housing zones (also pvp free, called Eternal Kingdoms) but that’s on my list of to-do. The game play and new player experience was pretty smooth, and general chat in the pve section at least was friendly and helpful.

Release date? None given yet, but it’s supposed to come out in 2020. I’m pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed myself, and we’ll see if the whole pvp aspect of it turns me away. I’m thinking that since it’s on a grand scale I may even enjoy myself, much like I did with Warhammer. We’ll see.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Catching Up

This game just couldn’t possibly get any prettier. Goodness I love the graphics! I’m working through the MSQ stuff that I left off at, still behind everyone else (it feels) but I’m confident I can get there. I’m taking my time and enjoying the story for once.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

What Am I Doing With All That Gold?

I bought my auction house mount back in January (or so records show) and since then I’ve purchased a second one for my husband and I’m back up to 9 million gold after purchasing some TCG pets for my personal collection – so what do I DO with all that gold?

These days I’ve been using it to shuffle characters around through the battlenet store. Anything digital that you can purchase there can use bnet balance (I wish the physical store also employed this, but that is not the case) so I’ve been moving my horde characters that were on Hyjal (some, not all) over to my main server of Argent Dawn. Over on AD I have my collection of alliance character, and I’m trying to build up my stable of horde characters. Ideally, I want 1 of every class as each faction.

Honestly, I wish Blizzard would just do away with these factions all together and let us mingle, but since I doubt that will be happening any time soon, this is my method to make sure I don’t miss out. I bought over a million gold worth of tokens this week and moved 5 of my characters. I like to have everyone together for crafting / harvesting purposes, so it feels good to have them all gathered again.

What about you, if you’re making gold what are you spending it on these days?

Where Did I Leave Off.. (again)

A few friends have been playing GW2 and of course I got the itch, too. It wasn’t as simple as just jumping into game for me though, first I had to patch and with my 5mb/s internet (0.5mb/s upload) this takes some time. Especially since if anyone else is using the internet, things lag. We don’t have cable, so that means a lot of downloads are done overnight while the family is asleep.

Anyway, I patched up, and then was told about an addon called Tac0 that adds map overlays to your UI. This can help with a number of things, like quest objectives, harvest nodes, and paths to get places. Jumping puzzles, all that good stuff. I’ve never seen addons for GW2 before, let alone installed one, so I took some time to set that up. I honestly haven’t made use of it yet, but at least I have it.

Once again I was left looking at my screen thinking “so now what” – I have no idea what I was working on, what I was doing. I don’t have the faintest clue what the parts in my bags go to. It’s such a mess of confusion any time I go back to a game that I haven’t played in some time. I really wish there was a better way for games to handle this. Maybe letting me know when I first enter the game what these bits go to, what the last 5 zones I was in was, or what I completed last so I know what to work on. Some sort of direction besides just having the story quest chain to follow.

I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but it will take some time. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Bricks & Mortar

I’m well on my way through the second floor of my house – but still have so much to do. There’s a staircase leading to the second floor and two bedrooms, as well as some open areas where they will reach into a third floor while the rest of the house will be roofed. It’s hard to describe what I have in my mind, but I’m hoping I’ll near completion before too long. Then I need to complete two towers that I have on deed, and two hanging rope bridges. Once that’s complete everything else is just details, like finishing floors, decorating the home, adding racks for stock in the warehouse, that sort of thing. The kitchen needs some sort of gate or doorway, as well as an oven (or two) and some storage options.

Overall I’m incredibly pleased with how this build is going, and it really feels like home.