Category: Gaming

Simply Not Enough Time

Ellithia is sporting the Shard of Love headgear that dropped for us earlier this week – and that’s been the extent of my time in EQ2, which hasn’t happened in literally, months. I haven’t logged in. It’s not that I don’t have things to do in game, because I certainly do but I just don’t have enough time lately to do everything I want to do. Isn’t that always the case?

EQ2 is always my home base, and I’ll always return there. Especially after I glanced through this HUGE list of patch notes that are currently on test. Wow. Some pretty amazing stuff is finally getting fixed. This has been a very long time coming. Earlier this week I also transferred my 80 swashbuckler over to Antonia Bayle, so I can get back into boxing. I had closed my second account for a little while but decided that 12 alts was simply not enough, so I’ve got both accounts once more.

Vanguard is my home away from home. It’s the game I play for pleasure with a few friends when we all happen to have time, and I really love the game. The problem is it’s not one of those duck in real quick for a minute or two games, so it looks like it gets a lot of back burner time.

Aion is what I’m playing a lot of lately, mostly for work. I play during the day, when it’s quieter then normal and I can’t say I’m hating it. Leveling is slow, quests are grindy but it’s beautiful and still new, and I’ll be sticking with it.

Torchlight and Dragon Age are still on my play list as well, but I’ll probably be playing those more on the weekend when I’m not busy with other things. The weather is getting much colder and it’s almost time to hibernate for the winter. No doubt my adventures there will be fun as always.

NaNoWriMo is eating up a lot of time. I’m just over 12k words right now (although I completely slacked yesterday and didn’t do any writing – today I should be making up for it) and I’m excited about my story. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time, but simply never got around to. Now that the motivation is there I just need to stick with it for the month of November. I’ve also been very excited watching all my friends work on their stories, and the inspiration and motivation that bounces off of one another is fantastic.

There are five games that are on my “dang I wish I had more time” list currently. These are the Lord of the Rings Online, Fallen Earth, Wizard 101, EverQuest and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Thankfully DDO is free to play, so I don’t exactly feel like I’m missing out by NOT playing right now. The Lord of the Rings Online recently extended their special Mirkwood promotions until mid November, so I’ve been debating whether or not I want to get in on that and plurge on a life time just because. It’s one of those games I’ve really enjoyed playing but just can’t seem to find the time. Fallen Earth I managed to score a 15 day trial for, and never logged in – sighs. Wizard 101 is something I should be playing a lot more of next week, fingers crossed. EverQuest currently has their closed beta ongoing for Underfoot – and if I could convince a few of my friends to play with me, I’d probably be there a lot more. I really love EverQuest, always have, even 10 years later. It’s just not fun for me to play alone.

After the list of “I wish I had more time” games, there are a few games that I wish I could simply afford to take a peek into every so often, even if I don’t have the time. These include Warhammer (I loved the game, but lacked friends to play with), Free Realms, and Champions Online (which I played a few times but honestly never got into it, I was right about it simply not being the genre for me). Of course there’s those games I’ve tried but never stuck with (and I’ve tried them multiple times), EVE and World of Warcraft. I even bought the latest EVE game and never actually installed it (it went on sale for $5 if I recall) because I just don’t have the time right now to learn another game. I’ve played WoW off and on since release, and I just think it would have been neat to make it to the level cap at least once. My highest level is 50.

Don’t get me started on all the free to play games out there that tickle my fancy.

There really is just not enough time for everything.

Yes, I’m playing Aion

While most people have been spending their time in single player or co-op RPGs this month (how can you not, with big titles like Borderlands, Torchlight, and Dragon Age all releasing at once) I have managed to squeeze in time to play Aion on a fairly steady schedule. There’s one main reason for this considering it wasn’t that long ago that I said I wasn’t going to be giving the game a shot. Turns out I need to write about it for work, which is why I haven’t talked about it until now.

I’m leveling up a cleric as both  Asmodian and Elyos, and yesterday I reached level 15 with both characters. The game is exactly what I thought it would be, offering nothing ‘new’ to the table but then again it doesn’t really have to. There’s a pretty heavy population on both servers that I find myself on especially later in the day. I spend most of my play time between 9am-4pm EST so servers are a little quieter, but there’s still a lot going on in channels and on the PvP front.

The quests so far have been your usual ‘go kill x number of y creatures’ and ‘go to x location and bring back y object’. I haven’t had to do any grinding at all to gain levels, I’ve had more then enough quests to get me through. I am enjoying the story lines, and adding campaign quests along with ‘regular’ quests give a nice feeling and flow to the over all picture.

There are some bugs, of course. There are quests that don’t work (I’ve stumbled into a few) drop rates at times are exceptionally low, and there are bots galore. While NCSoft has taken some great initiative in blocking spammers from channels (I typically only have to block one person a day if that per server) that doesn’t stop the masses from swarming on mobs. Thankfully, you can also switch ‘channels’ in game, which basically allows you to switch zones to a less populated instance of that zone. There are five ‘channels’ open at any one time (once you’re out of the starter area, there are 10 channels to those areas) so if you find yourself unable to kill the mobs you need for whatever reason you can switch to one of five channels. It will port you there (3 minutes between ports) and you’ll be in the exact same location. This is also ideal for farming named that may be up, although I haven’t encountered any quite yet.

I don’t dislike the game, but I also am not in love with it either. If it were not for the articles I need to complete for work I’m fairly confident in saying that I wouldn’t be playing the game, and I’d find my spare time eaten up by LotRO or some other MMO as my 3rd choice (VG and EQ2 being my first two choices). I do have a friend playing with me which makes a HUGE difference, there’s no way I’d want to play this game alone it would just be.. well, not fun. Thankfully I don’t write reviews, not that this would get a bad one but it’s just another game, imo.

Dragon Age Ramblings

Today was one of those horrible days where I barely got anything done, real life kicked me around and so for most of the evening I decided to just do absolutely nothing and sat down with some great story telling from Dragon Age, and a little Torchlight – that’s right, I didn’t even play an MMO (brr, feel that? Hell just froze over). I am absolutely LOVING Dragon Age – which is a giant surprise to me, because while I do like RPGs I’ve never really been a HUGE fan. I’ve never played another Bioware game before, and discovering how much of a fan I am now is a lot of fun for me. I’ve heard a few people complain about the graphics, but the stories are SO interesting and so involved that I can easily look past the flaws in graphics and lose myself in the story line.

The one issue I have is when I play in 3rd person (scrolled in) I wish the camera followed my character instead of me having to right click to rotate it. I’m getting used to exploring in the furthest view, and then scrolling inwards for combat or if a specific item requires me to, or simply to look around a little at the scenery. It’s just something I’m personally not used to, nothing game breaking.

I won’t give any spoilers, but I wish I had started playing this at the beginning of NaNoWriMo – the story I am currently writing would have probably been a LOT different then. It’s so easy to get involved with your character based on the decisions and actions you make throughout the game, and I’m just having a lot of fun with it. For those who use the Bioware social network you can find me on there as Stargrace and add me to your friends lists. I’m currently playing a Dalish elf, rogue, and I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone else is playing!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Oasis Rat Race

If you haven’t been paying attention to the EQ2players web site, you may have missed the announcement about Kiara and Amnerys hosting a rat race on each server for players to partake in. By now most of the servers have had their rat race, but last night it was Oasis’ time to shine, and shine we did! It was an amazing time had by all, and I think that although the crowd was small, they were filled with just as much spirit as every other server. There were prizes given out to everyone who took part (or observed!) and goodies for those who came in first, second, third or fourth place. They were mostly house items, some fire works and the orange halloween robes, fantastic prizes for anyone.

I absolutely love anything that brings a server together like this, and of course have to extend a HUGE thank you to Kiara and Amnerys for hosting the event, as well as the guides who stopped by to ensure that everything got off smoothly (because we know how those two can be). I got to meet Squeecha finally, who may or may not have become the object of many a pillow and snow ball fight afterward.

There are still a few servers that are running their Rat Races so if you haven’t managed to stop by one yet, there’s still time (as long as you have the character slots to create a new character that is). If you did manage to partake in one, how did it go? Isn’t it fantastic that we have these sorts of events?

I’ll be posting more pictures as well as an article on the Beckett forums later today, so be on the look out!

Wandering through Telon

Looking down at Renton Keep, working on the United Races of Thestra (URT) quests that reward some pretty good armor at lower levels. I’ve done these quests a lot, and each time I love them more and more – all except the one that we were working on today that involved hunting invisible mushrooms that simply refused to spawn. I was using my disciple which is a monk healer and a character I haven’t played in a VERY long time. If a disciple is not hitting a mob, typically that means they’re not healing. You have to melee in order for your heals to go off. This is difficult for me, as I’ve become accustomed to staying at range as a healer. Being right in the middle of the combat is breaking years of training to remain ranged.

With our duo we managed to defeat level 18 mobs without too much issue as long as they came alone (two dot) and three dots a level or two higher then us were also dealt with fairly easily. We wiped a few times when (usually do to some bad pathing) we found ourselves with a handful of brownies eager to eat us (how odd does that sound) but dying in Vanguard isn’t as heart wrenching as it once was. You do still need to recover your corpse to pick up the extra gear that’s not currently bound to you, and recover some experience, but you don’t have to do it naked any more.

I spent most of my time mentored from 23 to 13, but Hampooj hit level 14 as a Dread Knight, and we had a blast exploring Telon. Now if we could just find those mushrooms.