Category: Gaming

Streaming? STREAMING!

I’ve never been what I would consider a ‘streamer’ even though I’ve done a handful of streams off and on over the years. I did some videos of Vanguard before they shut it down, a few of the Sims and other odds and ends. Of course now that my time is even more limited I decided that now is when I wanted to dive head first into it. Figures.

I’ve got about an hour an evening of ‘free’ time at the moment that’s pretty much guaranteed unless something drastic happens like my son of 8 months decides he’s just not sleeping (it’ll probably happen). I decided that I’d like to stream from 7-8pm PDT Tuesday to Friday. Last night (Friday) was my first attempt.

I’ve got a twitch account but I also have a Mixer account, and I’ve been having a pretty strong debate with myself over which I want to use as my streaming platform. Twitch is well established, but lacks some of the nice new shinies that Mixer has, including co-streaming, easily accessible teams, FTL interaction with your audience, and a really neat layout just to name a few. I feel that Twitch has gone without any real competition for so long that they’ve stopped providing an innovative product and instead seem to be focusing on what makes them more money (new partnership stuff, etc). Still, there’s something to be said for an established product. For a while I was using Forge and I absolutely loved it, but they removed the streaming aspect, so that idea flopped.

Twitch doesn’t allow me (as a Canadian) to set up donations through them, and I don’t have nearly enough of a following on either Twitch or Mixer to apply for partnership so that’s out of the question. There’s a few pieces of gear I’d like to save up for, including a green screen, a video capture card, and a computer chair. Donations would help a long way, but again these will probably be things that I just save up for and pick up myself. I’ve set up a StreamJar account, the overlays are pretty neat and at least I can do donations through there too.

I’ve been looking at channel bots to use for moderation, and while Twitch has a lot of options Mixer has only a handful right now. StreamJar works but is not a channel bot and doesn’t handle any moderation options, while Scottybot sort of works – I experienced a lot of issues with features not working (auto tweeting, and follower alerts where you can attach a sound / image to a follower wasn’t working for me). Either way, there’s a ton of things to look into and set up before I’ll really feel that I’m up and running. Last night was my very first “official” stream, and I did it on Mixer, where I had a pretty great time playing RimWorld and interacting with a friend as I streamed.

I think streaming is great interaction for those of us who may be very shy in real life. It teaches me not to be so afraid, and gets me to branch out a little from my comfort zone. I know it seems like everyone and their dog takes to streaming eventually, but it’s a lot like blogging. I know with persistence it can pay off, and hopefully others will enjoy my streams too. For now I’m just doing it for me – just like with my blogging. Even if zero people read / respond / interact it’s still a method of venting and being creative.

Once my son is sleeping through the night I may be able to expand past the 1h stream, but for now I’ll be holding steady at the Tuesday-Friday schedule 7pm-8pm PDT. If you want to check out when I’m streaming next be sure to follow me on twitter (I’m @stargrace as always) or if you have any questions or comments feel free to post below!

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

EverQuest Adventure – 2

Last night when I jumped into game I was greeted by Angelkakes who offered to help me out if there was anything I needed, and so I added my first FV friend to my list. I managed to visit the loyalty merchant and pick up a handful of plat with crowns (I think that’s what the currency is called, I might be wrong) so I didn’t need anything, but it’s always nice to have a few friends around.

I’m still looking for an active guild to join, not so much to participate in anything going on, but to watch guild chatter and have an active group of people to ‘hang but not hang’ with. I imagine that will take me a bit more time.

Continuing my adventure in Crescent Reach I made good use of the temperance (hp buff) spell that was placed on both me and my warder, hanging out in the bear caves it didn’t take too long to blast past level 10, and inch my way towards level 13. I haven’t checked to see what other spells I should pick up yet but that’s next on my list of things to do.

It turns out that I had a level 48 beastlord on FV previously, but I decided to delete that character because she was a Barbarian and I wasn’t very attached to her. The good thing is that she had some gear and bags that I got to transfer over, along with a bit of coin. It’s always good to make use of that sort of thing, bags are something I’m always lacking in EverQuest.

Tonight I plan on picking up the spells I need, checking if there are any skills I need to get (I don’t think so, not at this low level at least) and continuing my adventures in Crescent Reach. I think I can level to 15 there comfortably before heading off to Blightfire Moore. I may go some place else though, I haven’t decided yet. There are a ton of options and I’m certainly in no rush.

I was concerned that my subscription would be up soon and I wouldn’t be able to continue it, but it looks like I have 180 days or so left. I don’t own the latest expansion so I’m going to try to save up so I can pick it up. That probably won’t happen this month, but maybe July. I think you get a new tab for your mounts and I know that would be pretty helpful. Other than that, I know very little about Empire of Kunark. Still, it’s really nice to be back in game, playing for the (small) amount of time that I have. Feel free to say hello if you happen to also be playing on the FV server!

EverQuest Adventures – 1

Did you know that wood elves can be beastlords?

I had no idea!
Of course that meant I had to make one.

I decided to create a character on a completely new server. I’ve already got a full stable of characters over on Drinal, but the server is pretty quiet these days. I know nothing about any of the other servers, but FV (roleplay preferred) has always been pretty popular, and it works the same as a regular server except that the majority of the items on the server that are marked as no-trade can actually be traded. That doesn’t make or break the game for me – nor does the language barriers, so I happily created there.

Stargrace is the name of my wood elf, and I decided to start over in Crescent Reach rather than the original home cities. Why? No real reason. Crescent Reach is ancient these days and can hardly be considered new any more. It’s home to the dragon people, and it was bustling with 40+ people roaming around.

Unfortunately there were some login issues so I was unable to use the /claim command. I had hoped to get a few bags and maybe some defiant gear, but instead I’d have to make due with the /veteran command and move from there. That gave me enough rewards to get a pretty good start.

I was hoping to reach level 8 because that’s when I get my first warder.

It’s a tree.

I love it.

Just as I was about to log out for the night some kind stranger who spoke a language that I didn’t understand gave me and my warder a temperance buff for over three hours (major lowbie hp buff). That’ll certainly come in handy for my next leveling adventure.

I stuck to the spore caves in Crescent Reach, out of the way of the crowds and enough mobs for me to clear without too many issues. I also snagged both a healer mercenary and a melee dps mercenary. I started out by using the healing one because I was not able to tank too much before being squashed, but as I looted a few pieces of defiant gear I swapped over to the melee one so we could kill faster together. All the while I listened to the general ramblings over on … well, general chat. Things are EXPENSIVE on this server. Krono sell for 3+ million platinum each, and I regularly saw gear being sold for 20+ million.

Ouch!

Still, I had a blast playing for the small amount that I managed. I don’t know that I’ll play every night, but I’ll play for a while and we’ll see how far I get. At least this time I settled on a character (and a server) to play.

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

How Much Time do you spend Deciding What to Play?

Honestly, it depends on the day.

There are times when I know exactly what I want to play. I’ve planned it out, I spend the day thinking about it, I wait for my allotted game time to come into action and bam, there I am playing exactly what I wanted to play.

Then there are days where I have the time to play, and I end up playing nothing at all because I don’t have the faintest idea of what I want to play. I debate all of the games in my head, the pros and cons of each, make up lists on what I would want to accomplish, and before I know it two hours has gone by and it’s time for me to get some sleep.

Tonight is one of those nights.

I started out thinking that I would play some EQ. Make a new character on FV and see how far I could get. Then my mind wandered to WoW and pet battles. Then I thought maybe I’d load up Gwent and play a round or two. 22 minutes have passed by out of the 1.5 hours I get an evening to game and I haven’t loaded up a single one. In fact now I’m here making this blog post and post-dating it to tomorrow (yes, I share my 2 hours of allotted gaming with my time to make a blog post). I wonder how much time I’ve spent thinking about playing a video game only to not have played anything at all.

Anyone else suffer from the same?

EQ – Got No Time for That (but oh well)

It never fails, I tell myself that I just don’t have the time to dedicate to a game like EverQuest, and then before I know it I’m logging in and creating a character. Nostalgia, it’s powerful.

I know I don’t have the time to play, but I do have an hour every night after my Son goes to sleep and before I have to get some sleep myself. I typically use that time to make a blog post or two and post date it to the next day, and then with whatever is left over I get some gaming in. Is that enough to play EverQuest?

Well, on a regular server, maybe. On a progression server where experience is greatly decreased, especially in a game like EverQuest, I’m probably crazy to be trying. Yet that’s where I found myself for a portion of my free time.

It’s Memorial Day weekend in the United States, so there’s bonus experience going on. It runs until Tuesday and I’m going to miss it once it ends. I created a magician. A class I’ve never really played before that I know is “easy mode” as far as leveling goes. There are a LOT of magicians out there. I mean, a ton. So many. The ground is littered with magician corpses.

After getting my gnome to level 3 I started thinking to myself that a shadowknight might be fun. That’s something else I tend to do, I’m unable to settle on a single class to play so I get a handful of characters to level 3 and then end up quitting.

I got a shadowknight to level 3 and then thought to myself “what am I doing!” I don’t have time to level a magician up let alone a tank! So of course I did the next logical thing. I went back to the magician. She’s now level 5.

Will I stick with it?

Maybe.

I love EverQuest. I love the excitement that comes with playing on a progression server. I love how busy they are, and watching chat channels fly by. I love the community and the fuzzy feelings I get when I think about that time in my life. I’ll keep playing it for as long as I can but chances are that may not be very long at all. I do plan on enjoying every second of it while I can though.

You can find me on the latest progression server as Stargrace (gnome magician) or if I’ve changed my mind by then (again) you may find me there as Quail (dark elf shadowknight). Either way, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.