Category: Real Life

Harbor

The harbor of Khal is an amazing sight. Especially when people’s boats are all parked in various places along the docks (as pictured above). Last night I dipped into Vanguard for a short while with Gozad and Growlius. Not on mains this time though – for once we all played lowbies. I was on my 18 psionicist, Growlius his 22 disciple, and Gozad on his 22 necromancer.

We all got the diplomacy necklace we needed to work towards our mount, and headed to Qalia to work on hunter’s league quests. We did not have a tank, but things went fairly smooth anyhow.

Shoulders were first, and it was very little effort despite the more interesting pulls we had from time to time.

Psionicists work slightly different then enchanters in EQ1/EQ2 in that they can only mez one mob at a time (or at least, that’s all I can do right now at level 19) but we can also charm one mob, and AOE stun for 8 seconds. When we mez (I’ve mentioned this before) we actually phase the mob right out of exhistence – and in order for anyone to actually attack the mob again, we have another spell that phases them back in. That’s right, no more breaking mez – at all.

One of my favorite tactics is making sure I cast my duplicate spell (it taunts the mob and replicates it, but basically does 0 dmg) before I unphase it. That way when I do unphase, the mob is already attacking the duplicate of itself, and I have a chance to snare it and nuke it a few times before that breaks / wears off.

Psionicists also have a world wide channel attached to one of their spells, it’s called ‘mind’ and it’s great. When you have the buff on you’re auto joined to it. A handy tool to ask others questions you may have about your class.

After we’d completed the shoulder quest I decided to take a break for a bit – being exceptionally worn out after a fairly exciting day. Thanks to Tipa over at Westkarana, I’m now writing for Beckett Massive Online Gamer – about EverQuestII. A writing opportunity came up and she happened to mention my name. Wow how amazing is that? I have my first interview next week, and yes I’m very nervous. These newsstand magazines are actually printed and sold in multiple places, you may have heard of them before for their sports magazines. My first two articles (as long as everything goes well) should come out for the September issue.

I think I’m still stunned over that one.

Xfire

Of course I’ve been following Ardwulf’s adventures through Vanguard, and subsequently his adventures with Xfire as well. Being as nicely computer inept as I am, figured I may as well add myself to it. So feel free to add me to friends on there, user name is stargrace. Be warned, I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m doing, but I do like the idea of tracking games played / hours etc. and maybe since Vanguard absolutely refuses to work with print screen most of the time for me unless I window in and out, I’ll get better luck with this.

Civilization Revolution

Now for something completely different, from me at least. Aside from the mmo’s I play, I’m not really a video game person – unless you count the sims. I used to play Mario games with my mom when I lived at home, and when my dad had his radio station job, but that was long ago. I’m not fond of racing games, or shooting games, or even puzzle games. I dislike complicated games that make me remember 100 processes in order to get something to work.

I’d never played civilization before, any versions of it, but I’d heard good things from a few people, and so when it came out for ps3 last week I decided sure, why not. It cost a total of $5 since there was money on the EBGames card still. Can’t go wrong.

So far, I have to sheepishly admit – I’m loving it. There’s just something completely awesome about creating cities and destroying other people’s towns and building.. well, everything. I suppose it’s my love of all things sims that helps me enjoy this game. I don’t have any friends on my ps3 network, so if you’d like to add me, let me know!

Aside from that – today I got my hair cut. Not such a big deal, right? Well, it was almost to my waist, and now it’s above my shoulders (slightly). Big deal to me! Had to be done though, it was just too warm. It’ll grow back by the winter.

I also played around a lot tonight with DAZ which was a whole lot of fun. I’ve figured out just about everything I’d need it to do so far – except applying textures. I’ll work on that next. I also haven’t quite figured out lighting yet, but I hope to with time. It’s been a learning experience that’s for sure. As long as I keep up with it I figure I’ll buy a kit or two a month from DAZ studio, maybe get some new outfits to render. Eventually I’ll be able to tweek the images in Photoshop. The only downside is the bridge from DAZ to photoshop is a whooping $199 american. That’s right, if I want to be able to save / open my DAZ files in CS2 I need to shell out $200. Ouch. Still working on a way to fix that one.

On the EQ2 front, Kasul is back! Pleasure to have him around again too, he’s been missed. Leaving this a relatively short post tonight, and I’ll write about the EQ2 adventures tomorrow.

Then and Now

Just for fun, I searched through my site to see what was going on almost two years ago today in game. I had this post here, about my new necromancer, Willamina. In the two years since I made that post, Willamina moved from Najena where I created her, over to Antonia Bayle, and just yesterday or so, moved back to Najena. Creepy. She’s also hit level 80 as a sage – but never made it above 58 so far as a necromancer. The other characters mentioned in the post, Calicia has been deleted – and Ricotta? Well that’s Goudia. Who is of course no longer a dirge, or a jeweler, but an 80 troubador, and a 62 weaponsmith.

It’s amusing to see how things have changed – but in the end they’ve also stayed the same. Particularly this quote, “I envy those who can create one character, or even two, and stick with them for so long without a break. I’ve never been like that, even on EQ1 I had a plethora of alts that I would randomly log on to play. I wish I could settle.” Which I ended up giving up on.

Just last year, there was this post. Misako has since been deleted, she stayed on the same server, but moved accounts which I decided to deactivate when I got station access. I believe she’s 72 now though. I created another defiler recently to make up for the loss of that one. Of course I still talk about housing just as much as I ever did. Friends have changed slightly, as have guilds since that was me on Antonia Bayle and not Najena. The game has stayed the same though.

I enjoy reading through the older posts. I’ve been writing here for so long now. I had multiple blogs before this one hosted on wordpress, but never managed to stick with them. I like to think that for the most part I keep MmoQuests a possitive blog – specifically because there are more then enough people ranting and raving and griping about all of the bad aspects of mmo’s out there. That’s not to say I ignore the parts I dislike. There’s just no reason for me to go on and on about them though unless it’s “one of those days” and it’s something that really gets under my skin. I think some times bloggers forget just how much influence they have over their readers – and that badmouthing a game over and over will eventually get to other people. In my methods I prefer to speak as highly about the game as possible – and if the reader chooses to play they can form their own decisions and memories while playing. If they don’t play, how will they ever know if THEY enjoy the game since every play experience is different.

With the griping on forums, and other forms of media, there’s just no reason for it here.

Last night I was unfortunately busy with other non game related things, and didn’t get to play too much. Checking sales though and wow are the provisioner items selling like hotcakes. I’ve decided to write down what I sell out of each time I check the market, so that I can restock on those specific items. I’ve always been keen on keeping track of things like that.

I also logged into EQ1 to do some Nostalgia guild invites, since no one else was around. Welcome to those new members (and alts of course!) I’m sure you’ll have a blast.

Ah Ha!

For a few months now, I’ve had some issues with people being unable to post comments on my site.

I’ve finally figured out what it is – thanks to Borgeo. Now, I need to figure out a way to fix it.

The folks who can’t comment are typically on from work, and I’m going to naturally assume you’re using some form of IE. Well, that’s the problem, apparently. Borgeo couldn’t post from IE, but he switched to Firefox, and posted a comment just fine.

Grr. Annoying.

So, anyone have any solutions on how I can fix this? I’ll try to google a solution in a bit.