Category: Gaming

Soaring Through The Skies of Telon #Vanguard #VGSOH #VGD

For those who may have missed the news, you can now explore Telon under the new ‘Free to Play’ model, and while I do have a few.. concerns, with this model, it’s nice to see Vanguard getting some attention.

One of the first things I did was visit the new marketplace and check out what was for sale. It follows pretty much the same pattern as the rest of the SOE games, there’s gear, potions, house items, mounts and the like. I decided to purchase a flying mount pictured above. There are two choices, one is a griffon and the other a wyvern. I was pleased to find out that gold members receive a discount to anything they purchase from the marketplace, although I have to admit I was less-than pleased with my new flying mount. It doesn’t handle very well at all, and doesn’t fly nearly as smooth as the mounts that you can rent in game from NPC. In order to use these purchased mounts you also must be at least level 50 in any one of the three spheres, thankfully I qualify because I’m a 51 mineralogist on my main, a blood mage (currently sitting at level 47 in adventuring).

When F2P was introduced there was also a slight revamp of loot drops for some bosses, and I expect they’ll be nerfed shortly if they haven’t been yet. People were linking loot that was far better than anything else you could obtain in game previously, with stats like 250 crit chance and other obscene numbers. There’s a patch today to fix some glitches and I’m hoping that the lag and disconnects that players may have been experiencing will also be addressed.

Telon is beautiful, and has always been. I’m pleased that more people will give it a shot and perhaps even stay a while. It’s nice to hear channels being used again (when they work), and as a long time player it’s satisfying to know that the game is getting at least a little more attention than in previous years.

If you’ve been away from the game for a while, there’s no better time to see how things have changed, even if it’s just to fill the lull between another game release. As always, happy gaming! No matter where you find yourself.

A Night of Pure (Guild) Win #WoW

The members of Dragon Flight had a really exciting weekend, and it was loads of fun. Yes, the entire guild consists of three members, but that didn’t stop us (that being said, if you happen to play Alliance on Argent Dawn and need a home, let me know).

Our first goal was to reach level 6. For anyone who has a small guild, you know what a feat this is. Most guild experience comes from players leveling up and completing quest, other experience comes from doing dungeons / raids and pvp together as a guild team. In order for these to count as ‘guild team’ events, you have to have a specific number of people who make up the total group. For dungeons, this is 3/5 members. I’m not sure how many you need for raids, but it’s more than 3. We ended up doing three heroic twilight dungeons and with one more turn in we were 6. This grants members of the guild a 10% bonus to experience which is really handy to have.

Later on in the evening we decided we would work on old achievements, in specific raid achievements. Our first stop was Blackwing Lair to defeat Nefarian. This is typically a 40 person raid, but we had very few issues – well, that is to say we had very few issues once we decided to read a few walk throughs. See, the first boss (a room filled with eggs) we didn’t read up on anything and we just charged in and instantly wiped because we were fighting the boss. Turns out what you’re supposed to do is take control of the boss, kill eggs around the room, and deal with 42 adds (keep them away / off of the boss because he’s not supposed to die). It was crazy fun.

I forgot to mention that before Blackwing Lair, we decided to attempt an achievement called “Besting the Black Dragonflight” – basically you need to kill Sartharion the Onyx Guardian along with three twilight drakes still alive. The reward for this achievement is a title “of the nightfall” – along with a mount that drops in the loot rewards (and extra loot). We tried this achievement over and over until we found a combination that worked. Bloodgrip and I (on my shaman, bloodgrip is a paladin) were DPS and Toargo tanked the encounter. No heals aside from my shaman totem. Our challenge was to keep alive after Sartharion hit 20% health, which is when he enrages. It took a few tries, but we did it. I won the mount and eagerly added it to my collection. Achievements like this always make me really happy and excited, the fact that I could share it with my guild mates was even better. We might be small, but we don’t let that stop us.

To balance out the rest of the evening, after doing one vanilla WoW raid, and a Lich King Raid, we headed to Burning Crusade and defeated Magtheridon and Gruul the Dragonkiller. The main reason for doing these zones is not only earning fun achievements, but also appearance gear. I walked away with a beautiful set for my priest, and Bloodgrip won most of his paladin set (which he apparently won’t be wearing, as the bright purple is a bit too much for him). Even Toargo earned some neat pieces, shoulders and a shield with wonderful graphics.

It may not have been the most ‘progressive’ of nights, after all we weren’t doing things like Dragon Soul (the latest round of raids) or anything that requires a super amount of coordination or attention, but it was still one of the most fun nights I’ve had in game, and I think everyone else had a great time too.

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

Counting Down to GW2 #GuildWars2

Gaming these days is still pretty limited, with the Olympics going on and family taking over (Nana is still in intensive care) but I’ve been relaxing at night with a little World of Warcraft while I (impatiently) wait for Guild Wars 2 to release. Not too much longer to go now, I still haven’t decided what I’m going to play.

World of Warcraft has been quiet as well, with MoP releasing in September there’s not really a rush to do anything because I know it is just going to get replaced. I have been working on a few old achievements, mostly from the Wrath expansion. Pictured above is my group trying to take down 100 zombies in one minute. Fun times. I also only need 4 more recipes to reach my goal of 200, which is every obtainable recipe in the game (for now). Two more days will allow me to purchase the final level 85 recipe I’m missing, and I just need to figure out how to spawn the two robots in Desolace to gain two more. I tried last week but didn’t have any luck.

I’ve been completing the LFRaid finder once a week simply for the valor points, there’s very few upgrades from the raids any more for my priest – and yesterday I was lucky enough to win an axe for my shaman. I was a bit sad to see that the second axe went to a caster shaman instead of melee, but I’m hopeful because the loot system also changes in MoP and it should prevent these sort of things from happening in the future.

What is everyone else who plans on playing GW2 keeping busy with? I know a good portion of my friends are playing The Secret World right now, and I would have given it a try on their free weekend, except I’m already very close to my internet cap for the month and I can’t download anything more until it re-sets on the 12th, or I’ll face fees for going over. I normally don’t come close to the cap, but this month I’ve reformatted so there was all sorts of goodies I needed to get again. I’ve managed (so far) to stay away from TSW despite hearing nothing but good about it, for the simple fact that I know myself and I know my game style, and I don’t think it would appeal to me. That doesn’t mean I won’t try it in the future, but for now with GW2 so close, I think I would be better off waiting.

I hope everyone has an awesome week, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Talk “Community” #MMORPG

I have an issue with how people are using the word ‘community’ lately in discussing MMOs, in specific Guild Wars 2 and the incidents that happened yesterday during their live chat. If you weren’t around, there were many unfavorable and immature comments made during the chat, directed towards those hosting it.

Now, immediately afterwards came a whole slew 0f “wow if this is the community I don’t want to be a part of it!” comments – and the thing that bugged me, or rather, bugs me, is that when you’re talking about an MMO community to a game that you play or are contemplating playing – you are talking about yourself. You’re not just talking about those rude obnoxious people who disrupted chat, you’re talking about a whole.

Those people don’t represent the whole, and they never have. They represent a group of people who are able to speak louder than the ‘regulars’ that we see. Because the regulars, are people like you and me, who are calmly making blog posts and counting down until games go live. We’re the ones who are hyping up a game because we’re excited, even if that excitement doesn’t last.

THAT is your community.

What we should be doing is bonding together to raise our voices louder than those who are disrupting game play. Not giving them the satisfaction of having accomplished anything negative. Outweigh the balance, in other words.

So what can we do to counter this negative community that seems to form?

Patience. Have patience with every single person you come across, whether they are negative or positive. They’re just looking to get a rise out of you, don’t give it to them. Ignore their comments, and go about being the best person you can personally be. Help others, organize server events, make an effort to get to know the other ‘regulars’ on your server and not just the loud ones in open channels.

Understanding. People play video games for multiple reasons and you never know what a persons real life stance is. They may be a complete asshole in game, but are dealing with multiple things in real life and they have no method of coping. I’m not saying this is an excuse to be an asshole in a video game, but I am saying you just never know what someones situation is. When someone is being a jerk to you keep this in the back of your mind, and don’t let what they say get to you.

Be active. You can’t say a community is poor if you don’t get involved with it! If you’re never talking to anyone else, always group alone, never want to deal with another player – how on earth can you complain about those who are communicating (be it in a good or bad way). I realize that there’s all sorts of game styles and I’m not saying you have to be incredibly social all of the sudden, because I am certainly not a social gamer, but there are ways to get ‘involved’ with the community and push forward a positive vibe without having to leave the comfort of your play style. Some times you just have to put forth that little bit of effort to make it work. It is much easier for a small handful of people to put out a negative vibe that grabs attention than it is for a large handful of people to put out a positive one. That’s just the way things work (ie: bad news spreads faster than good news).

Just remember, when you talk about the ‘community’ of a game, you’re talking about yourself. You’re talking about every person who plays that game. There’s far more ‘good’ and ‘regular’ people who are quietly playing than there are the small handful who are creating noise. It’s up to us to be louder than them.

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

Counting Down To MoP #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

First, my apologies for a lack of posts, but my Nana is in the hospital on life support so I haven’t really been in the right frame of mind to post anything here. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been gaming, I have, it’s a great way of relieving some stress and occupy my mind for a bit.

I thought while I waited for GW2 to release I’d be playing nothing but GW1 – but that hasn’t been the case. When Blizzard announced the release date of MoP (September!) I started excitedly playing again. The first week ‘back’ (I say that in quotes because I never really left, having been subbed for the last year) has been eventful. My priest (who I consider my main) managed to pick up a lot of gear in her LFRaid groups, winning both the main hand weapon (healer) and off hand, as well as shoulders, helm, and gloves which I already have in my holy set so I added to my dps spec.

Of course when I ran my warlock and shaman through those same raids they ended up with nothing but the valor points you’re guaranteed for the win, for some reason my priest has always had fantastic luck and the other characters I have not so much.

I mostly just ignore raid chat these days, it’s typically one person moaning about a random other person in raid and what they’ve done to offend them, or moaning that their main could do this raid solo and why do we all suck and how we should vote out half the raid because they’re horrible. When I first doing raids in the raid finder these comments bugged me, my under geared warlock was even voted out once but as time goes on I’ve developed selective reading and pretty much ignore anything said that isn’t mechanic related.

My paladin also managed to inch her way closer to 85, I’ve been 81 for a really long time and just couldn’t find the motivation to push to the end. She’s now happily sitting at 84, and I even healed my first dungeon with her. I’ve spec’d the character as holy / protection, and have been having a lot of fun.

Aside from that, I’ve still got smaller characters that are a blast to play. I’m looking forward to mounts and pets being account wide, and I’m excited to see if perhaps today’s downtime is for the patch that’s on test. We’ll just have to see. In the mean time, it’s really nice having a very simple easy game to play when I only have a short amount of time and need to unwind my brain. I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.