Category: Gaming

The Great Adventure (Part I) #WurmOnline

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Arysh looked at Stargrace, wrinkling her nose as she stuffed 10 large nails into a backpack.

“Yes for the millionth time, I am sure!” Stargrace giggled and playfully tapped her sister on the shoulder. The decision had not been an easy one, Stargrace and Arysh had been together for as long as either girl could remember, even if they were not true sisters.

“Explain to me why again. Why on earth would you want to leave what we have here and go wandering through the woods!” It was something Arysh could just not understand. The priest of Fo loved adventure as much as the next wurmian but she also enjoyed her nice comfortable pinewood bed, and a roaring fire in the oven to take the chill out of her bones at the end of the day.

“There’s no adventure here! Come on now, we barely see two young brown bears a day, if we’re lucky a wolf.”

“You know Moumix has seen a troll not far from here….” Arysh shivered.

“He was probably seeing things. You know how he is.” Stargrace grinned. “Anyhow, I shall not be gone long. Warriorheart will keep me company, and I’ll write about my adventures every day.”

“You know I’ll support you what ever you decide to do, but I still think you’re crazy.”

“It’s just something I must do, sister. Trust me I’ll be alright.”

With that, Stargrace strapped on her backpack, and started leading her new foal to whatever adventures awaited her. Getting started would not be easy. She had packed only the basics of survival, a few nails so she could set up a home without having to look for iron right away, a frying pan, two eggs from the hen that had been recently laid, some sheets, and a handful of tools. She also packed away two potatoes and onions, it would do her no good if she wandered off only to starve.

As she walked the well-worn path from Fippy’s Keep she ran into problems almost immediately. The fog was so thick she could barely see three feet in front of her, and Warriorheart stumbled down the cobble road, raising such a clatter that creatures from all around poked their nose out to take a bite. She limped through the woods, using up her meager supply of cotton rags almost right away. Taking refuge in Jesse’s house she planned out her next move which was to climb up a nearby hill and scout along the top. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but she would know when she found it.

 

Ding Level 80! Instantly. You Win. #WurmOnline #WoW

I couldn’t help but give a little gasp of surprise yesterday (not in a good way). Reading my RSS I discovered that Blizzard has revamped their ‘resurrection’ scroll, you know the item you could send out to recruit your friends to the game. This time 300% experience was not enough, they had to allow those people to instantly move one character to level 80.

Really?

Is that what it has come down to? I don’t want to hear ‘well it’s world of warcraft, what sort of people did you think were playing!’ – because I play the game, and I’ve never in all my time gaming wanted anything like that. What happened to games being about hours of enjoyment and working on a character instead of all of this instant gratification that players seem to be demanding.

It left me feeling incredibly out of the loop, especially with my latest Wurm adventures. I have two premium characters (the cost is so wonderful that I have no issues with this) and I decided that “city” life such as it were, was too ‘easy’ for one of my characters. I packed up her belongings and set out in search of adventure. I found it, too. I’ll be writing about that in a separate post as I didn’t want it cluttered by the rest of the negativity that I’ve mentioned here.

What are your thoughts on instantly leveling up a character? I realize that everyone is entitled to their own method of game play, and it certainly doesn’t affect my way (except there will be a nice influx of people who have no idea how to play a level 80 character) but honestly it’s a method that I can’t even grasp because it’s so far beyond my own realm of personal enjoyment. It honestly baffles me.

 

More Carnival Goodies #RiftGame #Rift

Even though I should be working towards getting on of the four awesome balloon companions available, I couldn’t help but spend my glass beads on this carnival mask. A bit scary, no?

I moved all four of my defiant characters to Faeblight yesterday, deciding that I’d much rather be on a heavily populated server. So far, I haven’t regretted the decision to move, nor my decision to come back to the game. There’s a lot to do!

A short post today, so as always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Lets Go To the Fair #RiftGame #Rift

I stopped playing Rift a few months ago because I had reached level 50 and not being a fan of raids I found myself with very little to do. Those months were not spend idle, and Trion has added a lot of content to the game since then so I decided to log in for free on my lower level characters to poke around. Needless to say the sirens call was too strong for me to avoid, and I ended up signing up for 3 months (I love multi month deals).

One of the current in-game festivals is their one year birthday celebration, and Meridian is decked out with a fair for players to enjoy. The fair reminds me a lot of the one you find in World of Warcraft, with games for players to enjoy. One game in specific is almost exactly alike, where you toss a ring on a critter that is penned up running around in circles. They do have a unique game that I absolutely loved, it involves the screen shot above. You speak to the NPC and pick a team to cheer for (I picked the red team). As the horses run around the tracks, you jump on the platform and the horse pulls forward. Jump too much and your horse will run out of steam and fall behind. I had no one against me, so I naturally won (woohoo). I loved this little game and found it a lot of fun. In the background of the screen shot to the left hand side you can see players mounted up jumping on balloons. Pop 30 balloons and win a prize, was the basics of that game. There are also vendors with treats for players, and fortune tellers, and even an NPC who will try to guess your weight if you stand before him. He of course has nothing but snarky comments to toss your way in return.

The fair is not the only new thing pulling me in game, there’s also Ember Isle, which I have never explored before. I headed to the zone briefly yesterday to poke around and was astonished to realize that it is actually an entire zone. I thought perhaps it was just a small area. I did a few of the beginning quests, and then headed back to Meridian, content that there’s enough content to last me a little while (not to mention my alts, and all of those quests I never did).

Getting a feel for the game again is a bit difficult, I wouldn’t want to jump right back into a dungeon without at least re-familiarizing myself with my class. I’m also contemplating moving to a heavier server, for now I’m on a medium population. There’s also my guardian characters that I haven’t played yet, they’re sitting at level 4. All in all? I’m quite happy to be playing again.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

Rescue Mission #WurmOnline

One thing WurmOnline still has that many other games do not (Vanguard also still has this feature) is corpse retrievals. I’m talking full out when you die you lose everything except your deed and merchant papers retrievals. All your tools, keys, weapons, gear, gone. When you die you also lose skills, a lot of games still have this method of death penalty, where you lose skills or experience or your armor takes some damage. In Wurm it is VERY dangerous to die because half of the time if you’ve been out wandering you have no idea where you are. You also re-spawn at Green Dog if you don’t own a deed, or you can choose to spawn at your deed. If your allies are close by you can also chose to spawn at one of their deeds. I was not so lucky.

It was 1:30am and I was incredibly tired. Arkenor was nice enough to sail be down to the area where I had died, and once I had retrieved my corpse (it was spiders who got me the first time) I decided that to make the trip worth while, I would attempt to charm a raging bear and bring her/him home for the bear breeding program. Now, bears on their own are not too bad. Raging bears, were a mistake.

The bear went into a frenzy on me right away, hit me four times in a row, and down I went like a sack of potatoes. Dead. Again.

Ouch.

Normally death doesn’t bother me, it’s a natural part of this game, losing my items is quite painful these days because they’re high quality. They also include useful items like my Fo statue which I use to cast spells. No statue means no spells. Having no back up weapons was probably also poor thinking on my part. Because I was frustrated I logged off, that’s just the normal thing to do. I came back to the situation this morning with a clear mind (and some sleep) and felt much better. I now had a choice. Do I go after the corpse and risk dying a third time (it was a good 30-45 minute walk through dangerous lands) or do I start from scratch.

I probably wouldn’t have minded starting from scratch except for one thing. My keys. I really didn’t want to leave the keys to my boat and my deed just floating around the lands of wurm. So I grabbed.. well, nothing. I headed out without armor, no compass (I’m getting much better at figuring out where I am without one these days), no creature by my side. I was able to walk without having to regenerate any stamina because I had no weight.

I found my corpse, grabbed all my belongings, bee-lined straight for my boat, and sailed home. Lesson learned, stay away from raging bears. Even if I had of been able to handle a hit or two, there’s no way I would have been able to continue with that as the bear aged and grew in power. Animals hurt more the older they are.

It was still a great adventure.