Category: Gaming

Soul Combinations #Riftgame

I didn’t intend on playing beta 3 of Rift that much because I’ve already determined that I want to purchase the game. Playing it a lot now means I have less surprises to look forward to when it goes live, and I don’t want to experience burn out before I’ve even started. On that same note there was really nothing I wanted to play this weekend except Rift, so I did find myself in game more often than not.

I started beta 1 with a sentinel warden combination. Basically a pure healer combined with a druid who used elemental attacks and heals over time. I had a lot of fun, the warden has a few attacks that push mobs away from you, and the casting of the sentinel was quite fast. With a few buffs under my belt I actually never died while playing. I created on the defiant side since it was beta 1. Beta 2 I did not participate in, being caught up in WoW and – I forget what else. Looking back I wish I had of played more, but I don’t feel like it was that bad of a thing that I missed it.

Beta 3 I decided I would create a different class, and I would play the Guardian faction instead of Defiant. I instantly fell in love with the dwarf race, enough so that I think it’s what I’ll be playing at release, on the PvE-RP server. I really miss role playing. I created a Beastmaster, which is one of the tank classes. Much like the Beastlord of EQ they come with a pet, and you have the ability to wield a number of weapons right from the start including dual wielding, sword and board, and 2 handed. Unlike beastlords (from what I saw in any case) the pets are mostly for dps and not for tanking purposes since you are a tank class and you generate a lot of threat. It was nice to have the added dps. Once I had quested along enough I added a second soul to the combination, and I picked a paladin. It wasn’t one of the suggested soul pairings, but I figured being able to use heals and magic attacks along with my pet attacks could only lead to more awesomeness. Having such a gigantic amount of choice when it comes to character customization (via souls) is really what is sucking me in to Rift.

The tank was fun. I mean, really fun. Considering I rarely play tanks and they’re always my 4th (or 10th) choice in a game I was pretty happy that the idea appealed to me at all.

Before I go too far I decided to try another character combination. This time I went dwarf (guardian) rogue, and picked bard to start. Things were a little slow until I got my second skill which allowed me to use my points (much like a rogue has points in WoW or a paladin has holy points) and expel them all at once in a big attack. For my second soul I decided to try a ranger and was given a pet. This pet (unlike the beastmaster) tanks, has a charge, and holds agro very well – at least from what I saw. I never had it lose agro once, although I did find that it tended to pull mobs that had not agro’d me, as though it’s on it’s own agro leash. Fine but I’ll have to keep that in mind as I go running around. The ranger and bard combination was working fantastic. I could heal a little, buff a little, had a pet to tank while I pelted the mob with arrows. Things were good. I did die once because some how my pet gained agro on .. well. A lot of creatures that bee-lined for me but aside from that it was pretty smooth sailing.

I was going to log back in and play my healer some more, but alas, all good things must come to an end and beta 3 was one of those things. I’m pretty excited about this game (as you can probably tell) even if it doesn’t stick, I’m looking forward to beta 4 and whatever it brings.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Finally Flying #EVEOnline

I’ve been wanting to fly an Orca for a very long time now. This came with two hurdles to cross, number one I had to be able to train and afford the skills to fly it. Number two I had to be able to purchase one of these massive ships which sell for roughly 450,000,000 ISK give or take. It wasn’t really worth while for me to try to invent and build one myself, so I decided to go the “saving up” rout. Thanks to some help from Ethomas in corp, I was able to afford one yesterday – AND fly one.

This ship is amazing. I have to admit, she is now my ultimate favorite. First of all the ship comes with a lot of fleet bonuses. Mining bonuses. Good thing I started up that 2nd account again eh? Now I can box my mining runs. The room that this ship has is astounding, and the bonuses to cargo just make it even better. It comes with 31,000m3 of room in the default cargo hold, which I brought to 40,000m3 by adding one cargo expander. There is also an ore hangar, which carries 50,000m3 of ore. A corp hangar can be found on the ship with another 40,000m3 area. There’s also a maintenance bay with 400,000m3. That’s right, need a place to dock? We can do that.

I haven’t done much but hang around HQ asteroid belts so far with my little retriever working hard not too far away, but I am planning on scanning down some sites later today with the helios and getting more use out of her. Ethomas is also working his way towards a hulk so we’ll have a few more taking advantage of her fleet bonuses.

I named her Asteria, after an amazon. The name means “in the sky” which I thought was quite fitting. I’m actually planning a few roleplay posts centered around obtaining this ship so look for those in the future. For the people who follow me on twitter and who have heard nothing over the last two days except me go on and on about this ship – I apologize, hehe. It’s just one of those grand moments in MMO gaming that we all wait excitedly for. Where we accomplish some major goal, take down a massive encounter, or something else on our personal agendas.

I hope everyone has a very happy (and safe) new years – happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

If You Could Only Play One #MMORPG #MMO #Gaming

It’s almost impossible for me to play just one game – there are far too many choices out there, and I’d be out of a job. What if you were forced (that’s right, gunpoint baby) to pick just one game to stick with for the rest of your life (or the life of the game). What would your choice be? Would it be the game you’re dedicated to now or would you venture down a completely different avenue? What process would you have to go through to decide what this game of choice should be?

Personally if today someone told me I could only play one game, it would be EVE Online. We’re talking MMO’s here, other wise I’d have to go with Sims 3 because it’s given me the most replay ability out of every game I own. Anyhow, if I had to pick a single MMO to stick with, it would have to be EVE. My reasoning is quite simple.

  • There are no “levels” so I wouldn’t have to keep starting an alt once I maxed out and grew bored of current content
  • You could train skills for years and years and still never finish them all
  • There is an incredibly robust craft system (even more so now that PI is firmly in place)
  • There is PvP for when I have those urges (don’t let the sweet exterior fool you, I enjoy a good round of pew-pew every so often)
  • I have a choice in what I want to do, between PvP, PvE questing, exploring, crafting, security, etc.

Those are my top 5 reasons. I’m sure I could make up more if I wanted to. What are your top choices of games if you were forced to only play one? Also – if you DO only play one MMO which one is it (and wow, kudos to you for sticking with just one). One at a time is something all together different, I mean one MMO *ever* for this particular article.

What Would It Take #EQ2

A good question was asked to me yesterday in the comments of my ‘Goodbye EQ2’ post.

“Could you try to find it in your heart to figure out what it would require to get you BACK into EQ2? The reason for me asking is that I got that question from my wife, who still plays. I quit… months ago.”

What would it take for me to start playing again? Well. Some definite changes would have to take place. I’m not saying that all of these would have to happen, but enough so that my opinion of the game and those making the decisions changed.

1. Large and In Charge – I want to know beyond a doubt that the people working on the game and making the decisions actually care about whether or not the game is going to succeed or fail. That they are openly communicating with their player base, and taking players consideration into account. I want to know exactly how they are getting the idea that “most of” the player base wants or does not want a particular thing. I want to see constant progress and a real attempt at improvements. If those creating the game don’t care about it on a very personal level, why would anyone else.

2. Pricing – I don’t mind that EQ2 has a market but I’m not going to blow $25 on any one thing when I already pay a monthly fee and expansion fees. Entice players to spend more by offering lower prices. $55 to rename a guild? $65 for a Vampire Package? I understand that games may not be making what they should be profit wise, but high prices alienate your loyal consumers. If everything in the store was 1/3rd of the price it normally is on top of my subscription fee, I would be much happier.

3. Us vs. Them – The separation of the EQ2X servers and EQ2 servers has to go.

4. Not everything has to be a marketplace item – Almost every single announcement of anything going on in the last few months has revolved around the marketplace. The neatest looking gear, the coolest house items, they are all marketplace items. This point actually goes along with my first point. It doesn’t feel like anyone cares about the game any more they only care about creating things for the marketplace.

5. Learning from their mistakes – I want to see proof that when something goes wrong, or doesn’t work out the company LEARNS from this and improves upon it and makes it better. This one is a little harder to prove, I know. Lets take expansions for example. Lets look at world of warcraft (I know, bad example but it’s what I have to work with here). Personally I felt BC was a poor expansion. I didn’t enjoy the quests or the dungeons. Then came Wrath, which I loved even though there were things that could be improved upon. Then came Cataclysm which I loved even more. With each expansion I felt that Blizzard was actually learning from their mistakes of the previous expansion. I could see a clear line of “oh, this didn’t really work out too well, lets make it better”. I want that very badly for EQ2.

Those are my major issues. I don’t see any of them changing any time soon but I would LOVE to see it happen. I don’t hate EQ2. I don’t hate Sony. I feel sad and upset over where the game has gone direction wise but I don’t think that it’s anything more than the game just not being “for me” any more. I played it for 6 years and enjoyed it for countless hours. I have over 1,150 blog posts alone dedicated towards the game. I understand that times change, that games change, but there has got to be a balance of bringing in new money and players vs. losing all of your old ones. Veteran players are not supposed to be sacrificed for new changes.

Holiday Gaming Goodies

The holidays are finally rounding up, and with it hopefully a little more time to write here on MmoQuests as well as NomadicGamer. I’ve settled into a semi routine with my gaming and I’m happy for that. What am I up to at the end of 2010? Nothing all that exciting, but I’ll list it in any case.

Rift – Today the 3rd Rift beta starts and runs until the 31st of December. Chances are if I were participating in it a lot of my time will be spent there.

EVE Online – I’m also three days away from flying an Orca – my dream hauler. I can’t afford one quite yet but I know that will come with time. I can’t wait to fly one of these. Ever since I got my hulk and saw my friend David flying on I’ve wanted to be able to fly myself.

WoW – I haven’t been playing in the Cataclysm zones (80+) all that much. Both my priest and my warlock are at a comfortable 82 and I’ve been working on their crafting skills as well as playing lower level alts on the opposite faction. I have been having a great time with the new quests in “vanilla” WoW. I just finished Redridge mountains on my paladin and I thought it was really well done, gained a few levels even though the quests were gray and worked up my enchanting skill. I’ve been enjoying the slow walk towards 85 and I mean it’s more like a crawl than a walk. I’ll get there eventually. I’ve unlocked and completed two dungeons (Throne of Tides and the one in Blackrock) which were quite fun. Healing PUGs is always stressful but I’ve enjoyed the challenge.

Sims 3 – This game continues to hold my attention in a big way. I wish there were less bugs would be one of my major complaints. It feels like EA just likes to push expansion packs out the door and rarely fixes any of the issues that they come up with, so it’s all about me dealing with bugs from a few expansions and packs that they’ve sold. I really enjoy and appreciate the amount of options we’re given in game, and though at times it feels a little “too real” for a video game there is enough humor to keep me trucking along finding out what happens next.

Neverwinter Nights 2 – This game was on sale at Steam for $10 including two expansion packs. I own NWN but haven’t played in ages, and while I have heard there was a lot of bugs at launch for NWN2 I decided why not, and picked it up. Still a few hours left to go on the patcher, but it should be a few hours of fun none the less.

As pictured above I also got a brand new Logitech G700 gaming mouse for Christmas, and so far I’m really liking it. The fit of the mouse is perfect to my hands, and unlike my previous razor, I can very easily hit the buttons and what’s more important to me – feel the buttons while I game. I found with the razor it was impossible for me to hit the buttons because they didn’t exactly stand out to me. I don’t want to fumble along the mouse or have to look down in order to hit them. Fully programmable with different profiles, I’ve already set one up for WoW. My attempts at learning WASD are going alright. I’ve completely unbound the arrow keys as movement keys in all of my games so that is at least forcing me to use them. I own a Steelseries merc keyboard which has a special gaming pad section on the far left that emulates the WASD keys as well as a few others. It’s not something I’m used to quite yet, but my right wrist is MUCH happier with the new set up.

How about all of my wonderful readers, get anything new and shiny for Christmas? Any new games on your horizon? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.