So About That Game I Wasn’t Going To Play… #SWTOR

I didn’t mean to. My finger slipped! Some how I found myself typing in the user name and password to my other half’s account, and before I knew what had happened, I had created a Chiss Imperial Agent. Before today I didn’t even know what a Chiss was. In fact before today there were many things I didn’t know. Like the fact that Anakin is Darth Vader. Or that the Empire is the bad guys (technically) and the Republic is the good guys. I’ve only seen one Star Wars movie, and apparently it was “the wrong one” to watch (I think it was episode one, and the one that’s labeled episode one, not the REAL episode one). I’m working on fixing that as we speak.

All of my posts involving SWTOR (and I don’t know how many there will be, I don’t have my own account and I’m leery of purchasing a copy of the game for myself) will no doubt have many errors and come from the perspective of someone who is still learning so please have a little patience.

Anyhow.

I created a Chiss. Character creation followed the path of every other MMO out there, and I found the options a bit limiting. It felt odd to go back to a race / class restriction after going without in many games, but I assume that this is due to the ‘laws’ of Star Wars. After browsing through the class options (which I knew absolutely nothing about) I decided to just go with an Imperial Agent, which is a sniper type class (so far at least). I get to use rifles, and I throw bombs and for the first 7 levels at least I’ve taken great delight in hiding behind every little object on the ground while I pick off mobs one at a time.

The story so far is fantastic. I love having options in my responses and I love that they influence my character. I also love the voice acting. I may not know anything at all about Star Wars, but I do know about MMOs, and I know what I like and don’t like. So far, I like this.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Holiday Events In Our Games of Choice #MMORPG #EQ2 #WoW #Rift #W101 #GW

Hard to believe that today is already December 15th – where does the time go! My apologies for those who may have been trying to access MmoQuests these past few days. My host was hacked and so the site has been less-than-stable while they resolved issues. It looks like everything is a-go now, so I should be able to get back to posting here on a regular basis, so long as something shiny doesn’t come along and distract me along the way.

There are numerous holiday festivals taking place in MMOs this time of year, and I love hearing about them all. A few of my favorites happen in Guild Wars, Wizard 101, EverQuest 2, Rift, and of course World of Warcraft. That by no means lists all of the events out there though, so make sure you take a peek into your GoC (game of choice) and take part in the yearly events (if there are any, not all games have these).

Dragon Flight (my Argent Dawn alliance based guild) managed to take down a few more encounters in some Outlands raids last week. This was quite a feat for us because we’re still only three people (actually, now we’re five, but two of them are too small to participate in these raids). We’ve been doing them for appearance gear and my shaman won herself a pair of neat shoulders that have a graphic of glowing broken up molten infused rocks.

Aside from that I’ve been working on leveling both a DeathKnight and a Druid. The druid managed to grasp on to level 62 tonight, and the DK is 61. I do have a recruit a friend account, so they’ve only got a few hours played if that. While getting to ‘end game’ is not everything, I’ve taken my time and enjoyed the ride on a handful of alts and this time I just wanted to get to Cataclysm content.

In true nomadic gamer style I haven’t really settled on a ‘main’ although I tend to play my shaman more than my other characters. I also spent some time playing Plants vs. Zombie, and Skyrim. The majority of my friends are all playing SWTOR – and it’s been really hard to hold out and not just pre-order the game for myself. In fact, there is a copy in the house, belongs to my other half. He’ll be playing and I can make a character on his account and play while he’s at work to see if the story actually does suck me in as everyone says it will. A few friends have pointed out that Star Wars has very little to do with ‘space’ and has far more to do with fantasy and magic, which is a big point in its favor (for me at least). I even sat down to try to watch the Star Wars movies today, so who knows, give it some time and perhaps that will be my GoC.

In sadder news, Beckett MOG shut its doors today. For those who don’t know I’ve been writing MMO related articles for them for a number of years now, as well as moderating their forums and writing news articles for the web site. They just weren’t pulling in enough money (or so I assume) and in this age of digital media, it’s not a big surprise. I hope that everyone who is now searching for new work (I’m looking at you, Jason) finds the job of their dreams, and I personally am incredibly thankful for the experience I’ve gained while working there.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

 

So Very Excited About A Game I Won’t Be Playing #SWTOR

 

I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty left out. See, a lot of my good gaming friends are playing SW:TOR as we speak, reserving their character names and making their claim to servers and guilds while I sit here writing this blog post, looking at my usual ‘GoC’ (game of choice) wondering “Why didn’t I pre-order?!” and then remembering that I really just don’t enjoy science fiction, and I don’t know anything at all about Star Wars (or Star Trek). It has taken ALL of my willpower not to give in and blow $60 on a game that I know from the get-go doesn’t interest me, because guess what, my friends are fantastic at sharing their excitement for all things shiny and new. I think the fact that they’re making me so excited about a game that I know doesn’t actually interest me at its core is amazing.

So as I browse through my twitter stream, my RSS, and my G+ feed, I hope you all have an amazing time and keep that excitement spilling over to us non-players! I really hope the game has an incredibly long life span, and I hope the guilds that I see forming up last longer than the ones that I saw in Rift (no offense to Rift, great game, but didn’t have the staying power we all wished was there). I’m looking forward to reading numerous blog posts about the early access, and I hope the official launch on the 20th goes as smooth as everyone wants it to. Just because I’m not playing it, doesn’t mean I want it to fail! Keep the excitement coming, folks!

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Changes to the Darkmoon Faire #WoW

The Darkmoon Faire is a topic I actually meant to write about last week, when it was around, but alas time slipped away from me as it so often does and so you’ll have to deal with this post being a few days late. Remember that festival that came at the start of every month and has for years but no one actually participated in? Well, the good folks over at Blizzard finally gave it an overhaul, and boy did they do a fantastic job. The Darkmoon Faire now actually feels like a festival. There is an entire zone dedicated to the happenings now, which you can access by being ported (there are NPC in the capitol cities) or by visiting the front gates:

There is an all-new selection of things to do at the Faire including some awesome new games, loads of quests, and new pets and mounts to collect. Wowwiki.com has a great write up of the new event and if you’re an achievement seeker you’ll find new ones added to your achievement window. I had a blast in the shooting gallery (literally), although I did discover that I’m not very good at the human cannonball. Maybe next month I’ll finally be able to get that bulls-eye.
My favorite part of the faire this year was fishing up a little seahorse that is trapped in a bubble players can drag around as a pet. Of course it does inch me closer towards having 100 companion pets, so I am a bit biased.
If you didn’t check out the faire while it was in town this month, don’t worry, there’s always next month! If you did manage to check it out, what did you think? Is it an improvement over the old version?
As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

 

Christmas Cheer #WoW

While I’ve been wishing that people would simply be nicer to one another, some others have gone a different rout. I’ve been doing the new twilight dungeons quite a bit (for both gear upgrades and valor points) and have come across some folks that I think could use a little Christmas cheer.

Player 1: “Wow DPS sucks.” – a few things to note here. Number one, not a single thing went wrong with this group. We killed everything, there were no deaths, in fact the entire run was as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen. If there was DPS lacking I certainly didn’t see it. The person making the comments threw out a number of snide remarks while the rest of the group said nothing at all (well, O.K. that’s not true, I did mention that if they found the DPS lacking they could leave. Remember folks, it doesn’t matter what role you play in a group, you ARE replaceable).

Player 2: “Look at all my cool stuff I am the awesomesauce” – Do you REALLY need to link every piece of your gear into chat before we’ve even started the dungeon? Is this supposed to make me think that you are amazing? A better sign would be to move out of the gosh darned fire that spreads on the ground instead of dying.

Player 3: “LULZ TANK FAIL” – This actually comes from one of the Dragon Soul raids. They’ve been a great test in my patience and my skill of selective reading. The first four raids go incredibly well, there’s not really a lot to them. The next four raids I have had little to no luck with so far. People are either incredibly impatient and start the encounter before half the raid has arrived on the scene, or they decide explanations are not required for new players. Or something else happens like they ‘forget’ that the entire encounter is based on clicking on a single button in the center of your screen when the mob casts twilight. Whatever the case, the blame is NEVER theirs, and ALWAYS someone else’.

There are a few other types of players that I think could use a little Christmas cheer this year, hopefully I get my wish. If not, that’s what selective reading is for. I rarely ever let someones comment in game get to me, I can always change it to something pleasant in my mind.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!