Gaming – Page 363 – A Pixel Nomad

What Landmark Is – and Is Not

I wasn’t expecting the NDA to drop so fast, and the game is currently down for patches at the moment so you’ll just have to use your imagination since I have no screenshots. As someone who has played countless alphas, I have to say that this one has absolutely swept me away. My steam account is full of them, so many that I decided just after Christmas that I wasn’t going to purchase games any more unless they were the completed versions. If they were all in the state that Landmark is in, I would probably purchase every single one that interested me.

You’ll have to take this blog post with a grain of salt. First of all keep in mind that my favorite MMO is and has been for some time – Wurm Online. This is a creation game in a survival setting and it takes hours upon hours to play it and to level skills. It is a game that has many bugs, a tiny dev team, and captured my heart so hard that I pretty much never have anything but good to say about it. Expect the same with my opinions on landmark.

Right now Landmark is:

crafting
creation
harvesting
exploration

Landmark is not:

completed
bug-free
particularly exciting – UNLESS – you happen to be a die-hard harvester/crafter/creationist which I am
Does not currently have combat

Landmark is a sandbox. YOU will create the game. YOU will decide what parts appeal to you and how to make them exciting. If you don’t like exploring, creating things, harvesting, or crafting, chances are you may not like Landmark – at least not in the current state. Keep in mind that as the alpha progresses more aspects will be added and thus what you can make of the game will expand.

I can not stress this part enough. It is alpha. There are LOTS OF BUGS. You need LOTS OF PATIENCE. Post on the forums, let the devs know what the issues are. Can’t log in? Just sit back and go do something else. Lose all your stuff? Stuck? Attacked by giant robots? It’s alpha. You have to relax.

I can say with absolute certainty that the game is perfect for me. I am already incredibly in love with it and so very excited. It is what I have wanted in a AAA title for so long now that I feel absolutely giddy now that it is here. It is beautiful. It runs well. The mining process is mind-boggling, I have no better words. When you tunnel you create an actual tunnel that looks different and adjusts every time your pickaxe hits the ground. You must explore to find the different resources you need. Become familiar with how the terrain looks, how ore looks, if you want to create that castle or that house in the woods you need to go out and harvest those supplies. The possibilities of what you can craft are as vast as your imagination.

I think people who will enjoy this game play are people who are fans of games like Wurm Online, Starbound, Minecraft, and Terraria. You’re not going to love everything but expect a lot of Landmark posts in the upcoming months.

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

My Wurm Online To-Do List

The work in Wurm Online is never done, and it can be hard to keep the list of chores straight. I was pleased when I logged in this morning, there were two baby chicks waiting for me in my pen. That means out of my collection of 44 eggs, two hatched. I’m now the proud owner of Toast, and Joseph. Wonderful names if I do say so myself.

Things go much easier if I break them up into separate days and work through a schedule. For example, my main character Blesse is focusing on working the deed, along with fine carpentry, and shipbuilding. I try to dedicate each play session to a different thing, that way I’m not getting bored, my skills are leveling up, and stuff is getting done. Yesterday I spent the day working on my deed, today I will work shipbuilding, and then tomorrow I’ll focus on fine carpentry. The same can be said for my priest, I generally spend time on the alt praying and working up meditation. Today I burned sleep bonus and worked on natural substance which is the ability that lets me create dye. I created healing covers that I sacrificed for a bit of deed bonus, and I created candles for my snow lanterns which were a christmas gift.

Reinforce Les Reveurs mine
Reinforce Starcrossed Outpost mine
Wooden houses at Starcrossed Outpost
~~Finish horse pens at Les Reveurs~~
Build 10 bsb at Les Reveurs
Build 10 small barrels at Les Reveurs
~~Find Blesse’s affinity~~
~~Make Kurwer a lantern~~
~~Make 2 beds at Les Reveurs~~
Finish iron balcony at Les Reveurs

I also had a bit of a scare as one of the avatars made his way to my deed to hang out for a while. These things are gigantic, and can easily catch a player off guard. Thankfully they’re not aggressive.

I love how relaxing Wurm is, and the pride I take in creating the deed and then running it. Working skills is rewarding, and makes the characters worth something. It will be interesting to see how Landmark stacks up as far as a creation game goes.

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

The Wombats Prepare For Dragon’s Prophet

To the surprise of a few people I’m sure, there are a handful of SOE games that I’ve never played before. Dragon’s Prophet is one of those games though people should keep in mind that the game is only published by SOE, another company works on the development. A group of my online friends called the Combat Wombats have decided that a Friday night game session is in order. A vote was put forth, and the game that pulled ahead ended up being (much to my surprise) DP.

I installed it throughout the day and logged in tonight to make my way through the tutorial and learn the keyboard controls. Of course the first thing I really wanted to do was learn how to hide the UI (it’s F7) and take screenshots (uncomplicated, it’s PrtScr). Things so far are easy. Left and right mouse button are my current two attacks, and they can also set off combos. I do own two dragons from previous claims, but I have no idea how to use them or what they’re even for, so for now I am just keeping them in my bags. I also got a title, and a cloak. I discovered the game has achievements, something else that I had no idea about.

It’s pretty, though the controls are not the most comfortable for me. I prefer using only keyboard commands where possible. In this game, much like Neverwinter, you use WASD to move about, and the mouse controls your view range. You ‘unlock’ the mouse from view by hitting escape which will pop up menus.

Why have I never played before? I’m honestly not sure. The best reason I can come up with is that the game released at a time where I was completely content with whatever my game of choice happened to be, and I had no reason to branch out. Don’t let that confuse you, I’m not unhappy with my games of choice now, either, I just want to try to be a bit more social this year, and that involves playing with some friends (although I will admit that in Wurm Online I am part of a large active alliance, I still spend most of the time playing by myself). How long will this fascination last? Knowing the group of people I’m playing with, I guess a week. Alright, I’ll give us a bit more credit than that, perhaps a month. If we continue past that I will be delighted. We’ll just have to see.

Yes, I’ll be playing EQN Landmark

As an early Valentines present I received a Trailblazer pack to EverQuest Next Landmark, which I am pretty happy about. At first I was reluctant about the idea of paying for alpha – but then I thought back to my steam games and how many of those are also in alpha. I gave more consideration to the idea that paying for alpha helps to fund these games and enables them to kick off the ground and pay their employees. I looked at the items that the Trailblazer pack comes with and I felt that I was getting pretty good value, name in the credits and all the rest. Plus when it comes right down to it some of my favorite games involve building and creating locations, especially games like Wurm Online, Terraria, Minecraft, and others of that genre. Chances are pretty good that once EQN Landmark releases I would have wandered my way over no matter what, based on that alone.

There is still a lot of confusion out there about what EQN Landmark IS. Developers have been teasing and there are only a few days left before alpha is set to begin. How things will go still has yet to be seen, but yes, I’m excited.

Is it foolish to get excited? It feels like over the years many of my friends have decided that hype is a silly idea, one that we are better off without. However, I am glad that I still get excited about video games. I’m happy that I can still find that sort of passion in a hobby that I really enjoy. Do I think Landmark is the next big thing? Eh, not really. I think we’re past the days where there is ‘one game to rule them all’. Gamers are too diverse and every game eventually becomes niche to some extent. Still, I am looking forward to playing, and creating.

A Sunday of Pet Battles #WoW

I decided to spend most of Sunday in World of Warcraft, working on pet battles. There were a few key achievements I wanted to finish off, not to mention it’s an incredibly relaxing endeavour to partake in. When I had to step away I would just mount up and fly into the air to hang out.

One of my main goals was to defeat 40 master pet tamers so I could earn myself the safari hat. This hat gives a 10% bonus to all experience gained while leveling up pets, and I really wanted to make the task as painless as possible. In order to earn the achievement you have to basically defeat every pet tamer out there – but – you only need to defeat TWO pandaria tamers because the horde and alliance each have their own tamers starting out before you get the quests for the continental ones. I wasn’t aware of this at first, and I was hammering my way through the panda tamers slowly counting down the number of battles to go. I relogged to my 71 deathknight, did her lowbie tamer quests, and before I knew it each character had a safari hat in the mail. I also picked up a handy addon that will automatically swap the hat when I enter a battle.

That wasn’t the only accomplishment I had throughout the day though. I also managed to finish off Raiding with Leashes thanks to help from Kanad. This granted both of us Mr. Bigglesworth, an incredibly cute kitty with magical whiskers. Then I slowly worked through other pet achievements, taming in all of the Pandarian zones, in all of the alliance cities, Northrend, and Cataclysm. It was glorious.

Will these achievements help my character in the future? No, not at all. They don’t grant gear or any special skills and they’re not a true method of progression – but they’re incredibly fun, and I had a great time spending my Sunday this way. I can’t wait to see what fun pet battles I come up against next. I’m working on getting 15 of my pets to 25 so that I can participate in the Celestial Tournaments, but that is quite some time off still.

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