Category: Gaming

Happy Birthday LotRO

Turbine has another promotion going on right now in celebration of LotRO turning 2 years old. Old players will find their accounts active for a week, there’s 25% bonus experience in game, you can purchase a subscription at a discount price of $9.99/m (if you purchase one of their plans, 3 months or more) and there are also gifts to be found in game by means of ‘tokens’ that drop from mobs. I love promotions like these, and Landroval was bustling yesterday during the day with all sorts of players. On one side it was great to see, on another side, the lag was not great to see. I can only assume Landroval is far more populated then the server Nostalgia moved from, since I don’t remember having lag before. It’s short, and in spurts. It doesn’t hamper my game play any more then being slightly annoying as I run through Bree, and it seems to be limited to the big cities.

I played the rune-keeper for a bit yesterday along with Kasul who is still waiting for his character to transfer over. Word reached that Tipa’s characters made the trip successfully, so his should be up very soon. It’ll be nice to have everyone on the same server again.

We completed a few chapters of book one, volume one, inching ever so closer to where we were at before in the series, which was book one volume one chapter 11, the portion where we’d need a group to complete it. Tipa and Malfi will no doubt be dragged into that one to help out.

After it was decided that we’d do our level 15 class quests, mine was already starting to lighten up in colours as I was level 17 by then, but it made me trek out to the Lone Lands and I didn’t want to walk way out there when I’d not yet received the quests that had me adventure that way.

The quest was fantastic, I had so much fun doing it on my rune-keeper. You speak to an NPC outside the Forsaken Inn (I believe that’s the name, if it’s not dead on please forgive me) and get ported to the top of Weathertop. This is a HUGE mountain just North of the lone lands, and when I got there a thunderstorm was raging. I had to take my rune-keeper around and select a number of stones and then watch them each get hit by lightning. Mother nature at her best or some such story. After I’d carefully selected my three stones, orcs began attacking me. The atmosphere was intense, the sky would be pitch black as rain came pouring down and then suddenly everything would be illuminated bright as day time as the storm grew in height and then BAM an orc would charge me from the darkness.

After a time I received the messages that my three stones had been hit by lightning and I should go back to each one and see what remained. Back to the npc who ported me to the Inn and I received my weapon as well as a new class trait that lets me focus on my lightning skills with crits.

I headed back to Bree and turned in 5 iron tokens I’d gathered while adventuring and received a scroll for a weapon smith that allows a one time creation of a purple (not sure what the classification is actually called, heroic legendary etc) weapon! Neat. Most people were talking about how they’d received food from the gift-giver and naught more.

It was starting to get close to dinner after that, so I decided to break there. The rune-keeper is almost 18 and then it’s just one more level to catch up to Hamal once he moves over. Hopefully I can squeeze that in before our next game day the following week. We’ll see!

A Little Free Realms

Of course I had to jump on the Free Realms bandwagon and add a post about the upcoming game here! The NDA was dropped yesterday afternoon and since then there have been posts galore (not to mention tweets) about this brightly coloured world.

There’s really nothing new I could add right now that others have not already said, so I’ll point you in the direction of a few friends:

Tipa writes about creating a character and the basics of this kid-friendly game.

Cuppy gives the low down on the good and bad points of Free Realms, adding her personal thoughts to each.

Ogrebear talks a little about the specific jobs available and a brief review following cuppy’s good and bad points.

My own thoughts on the matter? I’ve been playing the beta a little while now and I’m really enjoying the overall game. Do I think it will ever be my personal number one game, no not really. It’s great as a secondary game, something you can dip into for a short period of time and have a little fun with. I’m not exactly happy that you can only obtain a permanent pet through purchasing one for real money but as Cuppy states in her post above, that could always change.

The price is certainly right, and adding this to the station access plan is a great idea. If you’re a parent who already plays any of the other SOE titles you may want to subscribe just to bundle it all up together.

One thing I noticed (and Tipa has said a time or two before) is that the mini games are quite mouse intensive. I realize that I am a minority here but I’m left handed, with a right handed mouse (mostly because that’s how I grew up and now it would just be incredibly odd to use a left handed mouse) and that means that for these games I feel that I am constantly under performing due to using the ‘wrong’ hand in order to play them.

So what I did was plug my wacom tablet in so that I could use the pen to play the games with my left hand rather then my right. This worked out far better and I’m having a much easier time with it – not to mention I’m enjoying playing the games more rather then struggling to spin a pot with the wrong hand.

I’m looking forward to seeing the game go live, and it will be quite a treat to see it grow from there.

If you’re looking for me in game, remember you can find me as Stephanie Stardreamer – though both people need to be in game at the same time in order for you to add them to your friend list. You can contact me via email, twitter, or Xfire to meet up!

Exciting News All Around

Wow, yesterday was an overload of new happenings in games and lots of excitement came out of it. I’ll be making a post later about Free Realms now that the NDA has lifted (I have to jump on the bandwagon after all!) and if you’re looking for me in game you can find me as Stephanie Stardream – though both people DO have to currently be online in order to friend them.

Also, housing has gone to the test server in Wizard 101! I have really been looking forward to this. Even though I don’t play Wizard 101 as much as I’d like, I still dive in a few times a month and find it a great casual game when you’re looking for a bit of a break from your ‘main’ MMO. Plus it’s perfect for families and who doesn’t enjoy that.

Now, the main bit of news I’d like to focus on at least for this post is the new user generated content coming to EverQuest II! If you haven’t heard of it yet, be sure to check out the blog post made by Rothgar yesterday on the EQ2 dev blog. Basically this will allow players to write their own books in game, pick an appearance for them, and even make copies of them. They will be tradeable and you can put them on the broker.

This will be an amazing feature for people on role play servers to start. I’m absolutely excited about what people will come up with on those servers in specific where everyone has a tale to tell. I think the idea of collecting volumes of player-made books is fantastic. Lets say you’re an author in real life and you want to promote these little books in game, you could develop a whole marketing scheme for them. Now, I have no idea if this would take off on servers OTHER then the role play ones to any great degree. But housing enthusiasts and book lovers can certainly be found everywhere.

There’s also ascii art you could fill the pages with. Poems for friends, Christmas gifts, your own personal Norrathian stories. You could write guides for players in game, leveling guides, how to make money, a method of gaining achievement points, LOTS of things could be written within these pages for players to enjoy. Dungeon guides even if your character is perhaps an adventurer who explores the deep caverns and writes about what they discover. You could collect rare issues of books from players who left the game since their names are written as the author. You could try to convince devs or guides or GM’s to hold events where you could win a one of a kind book created by them.

Obviously my own personal excitement is pretty high. I’m all for making MMO worlds more personal and involving the players in such a way that they become a part of the world itself. Vanguard has this to some degree by allowing players to purchase actual plots of land in the game (no instances) CoX has this with their new user created missions (If I played I’d certainly be all over it).

Of course, there are down sides. As Tipa pointed out, what about gold sellers. Will they just mail you books filled with links to plat farming sites and spam. The books are created by crafters and I’m not sure what level you have to be or what sort of a hassle that may be. Until it goes live there’s no way to really tell if this will become a valid method of promoting gold sales. Also, what about those naughty books that people decide to write. There’s no real way to sensor a player written book – and I don’t think there should be. Sure, you’ve got the choice to read it or not, but do you really want 100 books of how to mate with an ogre covering the broker? Well, actually, maybe you do.

In any case, I think this is a fantastic idea.

On the down side, the next post after the announcement of these wonderful books, is the Research Assistants who are going to help you learn your master spells. I dislike this idea, a lot. I think it’s just another method of dumbing down the game, to just hand out master spells to players after an amount of time has passed for the NPC’s to “research” it for you. While you may think to yourself “well, YOU don’t have to take advantage of it then!” it will be far too easy to be left behind if you don’t have your master spells when it comes to groups and raids. On the Kithicor server there’s already a very high bar set for players. If you don’t meet a certain quota you’re excluded from a lot of going-ons. It only takes an hour or two in 70-79 to see what direction most people seem to head, every “LF” (looking for) message is followed by “must be mythical” “must have such and such gear” “must not suck”. One of the issues with the server that makes  me wish server transfers were free again for a short while.

Game wise last night was pretty relaxing. My trio did Crypt of Agony which was fairly painless, we also did Obelisk (no, the shield still has not dropped) and Nocbot managed to get a few levels and some aa. It wasn’t one of the busiest days in game but it was still lots of fun and I think everyone had a good time. This weekend I believe we’re attempting to get Nocbot to 80 (he’s sitting at 76 I think) so that he can get started on his epic. I also want to finish harvesting on my mystic, so I can start her epic as well as my illusionist’. We’ll see how that goes!

I hope everyone has a fantastic Thursday in the mean time!

A return to grouping, and miniature decisions

As always when time goes by I start to wonder about all of these alts I have. Sure, they’re great fun but are they really worth the hassle? Should I just be concentrating on one character (or two, one from each account). It’s due to a restlessness I tend to have and is not exactly game-related as real life has a tendency to disrupt things.

The point is I found myself cringing when I looked at the paladin adept3’s for 71-80. They’re going for 7p each and I need 28 of them. The loams are no better even if I had happened to find myself an alchemist, at 4p a piece plus fuel and raws. I do miss having all of my characters on one server so that I can take advantage of my crafters but when friends are spread all over this becomes increasingly difficult. I can’t afford to move 20 characters around for $50 each.

I decided not to play the paladin last night, and went back to my illusionist / mystic duo that I team up. The group (Ultann, Wpus and I) decided to head to Obelisk to attempt another go at the shield that has never dropped. We’ve been there at least 30 times I’d say by now, and have never seen it. It was a fairly good run, no wipes. The final encounter even dropped two items of use, a nice earring for the conjuror, and a master also for the conjuror. I have yet to see a master drop that I could make use of, but I’m hanging in there and waiting. It’s bound to happen sooner or later.

My next ‘goal’ is to start the epic for both characters, of course to do that for the mystic requires harvesting that I have not bothered to work up as much as I should. That will be todays goal until groups are formed. It would be nice to have them both sporting their epic, at least fabled if not mythical (which I have no grandure hopes of obtaining any time soon). I still need shards for the illusionist who is only sporting her T1 void set thus far.

Crafting is something I’d also like to get back into – both in game and out. Inspired by Kasul and his return to miniatures, I decided that I’d like to try my hand at it as well. I’ve painted a few in the past back when I was in school and it feels like ages ago. He’s going to help me out and send a few spare models my way, and this weekend I’ll be taking a trip to the local Games Workshop to see what I can find. Now, I’ve never really been interested in playing the games, but I do love the whole ‘before’ process. We’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll give away the models to people who are interested.

I’ve been working out every single morning for the last week and as such I’ve been going to bed early (around 11-12EST) in order to wake up at 5:30-6am (depending on when Princess thinks I should wake up at). We wanted to do Vaults of Eternal Sleep last night but I wimped out and called it a night, read a little more of “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro (great book by the way) and fell asleep. It was still a pretty great night.

EverQuest II Hotfix – April 21st

EverQuest 2Hotfix April / 21 / 2009
GENERAL
The friends list on the welcome screen will now ignore offline friends if that option is enabled on the community window.

ITEMS
The 4-piece bonuses on the Paladin, Monk, Berserker, and Defiler Shadow Odyssey raid sets have been improved.
The Lycanthrope Bracelet’s effects in PVP combat have been slightly lowered.

QUESTS
One of the lists of names for the Task “Hidden Agenda” could appear in an unreachable spot on a bookshelf. This has been fixed.

WARD OF ELEMENTS
Elemental bosses in Ward of Elements now drop non-stacking encrusted gems. The encrusted gems can be unpacked to yield stackable elemental gems. This change allows the gems to be split between players when dropped.

Also remember all those new items are coming to the station market some time today, so be on the look out.