The Age of Discovering a New Freeport #EQ2 #EverQuestII

Age of Discovery released yesterday after a late start, and while there were some issues for people, my account was standing and all characters counted for. Nothing was locked (I have a gold membership) and I had access to my regular characters as well as my EQ2X characters. I promptly created a ratonga beastlord and she meandered her way to level 10 by killing solo mobs in Halas, the starter zone was nice an empty as players moved on to ‘better’ leveling grounds. Veteran rewards were broken for the day but I do have a 200% bonus from max level characters which helped out a huge amount.

The new Freeport is looking pretty nice. I don’t find it too confusing because it’s basically all of the Freeport sections combined into one zone. The items in South Freeport are still there in the southern portion, the places in North Freeport in the northern section. I did have a bit of difficulty trying to find the mercenary NPC’s to hire, I think sony could have done a better job with explaining where to find each one. As it was I had to use a guide that ZAM created in order to learn how they work and the commands to even open the mercenary screen. If you use a guard to search for ‘mercenary’ you end up with some NPC up in the citadel tower, and not the hired ones you’re looking for.

I didn’t play with the dungeon creator tool yet, and I still don’t see all that much for level 90 characters to do in game aside from work on the extra 20 aa that were granted. I started working with a tradeskill apprentice, but was called away so that will have to wait until another post.

I love the fact that the game is now free to play, and I really hope that brings fresh blood to the game. Did you purchase AoD? If so how are you finding the new content? What have you spent your time in game working on? Let me know in comments!

 

Santa Baby..

I know, I’m a little behind this year Santa so I’m sending this letter to your wife. She not-too-gently reminded me that Scarybooster posted his letter December 3rd and how DARE I wait three days before responding but I’m pretty confident you’ll forgive me, because after all I do run a ‘Secret Santa’ every year for gamers, in your name of course. Speaking of which, I still haven’t gotten my paypal payments. Oh, what’s that? You’re upset because even MmoGamerChick, Rivs, Rowan, and Scopique found the time to send off their lists? Well. That’s just how this year seems to be going. I’ll make up for it by being extra good next year. We both know the goodness meter was stuck at full for the past twelve months. I hope you can find time to give me the things on my wishlist, at first I didn’t think I was asking for too much but well, after reading some forums. I think this may be one of the hardest wish lists to fulfill yet.

1. If you could remind people that games are supposed to be FUN, that would be fantastic. I think there are a few sour grapes who have turned this hobby into something like work and they feel the need to shower down their negative thoughts and opinions on the rest of the happy gamers who are content with playing a 15 year old text based game and don’t see anything wrong with the fact that their UI is completely outdated (do they even HAVE a UI?! What IS that?!) and the controls are garbage. On that same note, remind people that it’s O.K. to be having fun in whatever your game of choice happens to be. That’s right, games are choices. What we play are also choices. That’s how hobbies work.

2. Make everyone do one random act of kindness in game. That’s right, I’m complaining about the lack of community and friendship we feel with anyone outside of our own personal little bubbles. I understand that these days there’s very little ‘community’ that we want to be a part of, and finding a place to belong is even more difficult – but doing just one simple little thing can brighten up someones day. I’m not saying you have to be best friends with the person or even talk to them ever again, but if you could remind people that not everyone is bad, that would be great.

3. I would LOVE to see more games like Glitch, A Tale in the Desert, and Wurm Online. I’m a bit tired of smacking things around all of the time, and I’d love to see one of those types of games become REALLY popular. Just to prove all the naysayers wrong.

4. On a more serious note, I just want people to be safe and healthy. Whether I know them or not. More happy days than sad days would be a nice plus, too.

 

Sure, my Christmas list is pretty selfish this year, but that’s what I want. I think I deserve at least a few things off of that list, hmm? I’ll even leave out a can of coke for you, the white cans. Because polar bears rock.

P.S. Don’t forget to collect a list from Tipa over at West Karana.

P.P.S. Please tell Alfie I want to sleep for more than 5 hours a night.

 

A Weekend of Dungeons #WoW

As I do every year the week that NaNoWriMo finishes up, I took a week off and decided to do nothing but relax and game, and a LOT of gaming was done. It was basically my ‘calm before the storm’ as December gets under way with the hustle and bustle of Christmas holidays and everything that entails. I had a lot of time to spend working through the finer points of 4.3 which released last Tuesday, and this weekend was spent doing as much as I could with guild mates (a huge thank you to Toargo and Detch who put up with more PUG dungeons than anyone deserves to see in a single weekend).

I enjoy the latest WoW patch but there’s one small issue I have with one of the new features that was added. This probably comes as no surprise to those who are playing, but for those who are not, it’s void storage. See, void storage is supposed to be considered ‘long term’ storage. The problem I currently have with it is that you pay 100g to unlock the void storage slots – and then you pay 25g for every item you put into storage, whether or not you’ve put it there before or not. Also unique items can not be placed there (such as some tabards that you may actually wish to store long term). I’ve come to the conclusion that this is nothing more than an annoying money sink for those who have too much coin. Thankfully I don’t suffer from such an affliction.

The three new dungeons are fun but a little quick and quite simple. You need to do them in order the first time to unlock the next, and out of the three the first one is probably the hardest. ilevel 378 gear drops in abundance and I managed to boost all three of my 85 characters to raid-capable (ilevel 372 using the LFRaid tool) in short time. My favorite encounter is the hourglass fight on the first dungeon where one person in the group gets to re-set time (and you can do this up to five times in the encounter) and you watch everything roll back at hyper speed. It’s a great fight because you get to blow all of your cool downs at once and you don’t take any durability hits for dying because sooner or later someone is bound to die and time will be re-set. I also love the second dungeon, where you stealth around the zone avoiding demons and then eventually fight masses of them all at once while being protected by NPC. The third dungeon is also quite a lot of fun, you escort Thrall and he helps your group. In fact he managed to defeat encounters that my groups have some times wiped on. I think he should just solo the entire zone.

Thanks to all of these amazing dungeon runs the little guild of three managed to ding level 5! This was a huge accomplishment for us, it means we start earning cash for completing dungeon runs and we also earn a little for each mob that we kill and loot (5% goes to the guild bank). It has taken us quite a lot of work to get there, but I’m pleased.

I hope everyone had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself! As always, happy gaming!

 

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It #WoW

O.K so maybe I didn’t exactly kiss a girl, but I did decide it was time to try the Looking for Raid tool that came out with the 4.3 patch – and I have to say, I didn’t hate it. Even though I was in a raid with 24 random strangers, for the first time in a long time I saw communication going on. People were discussing the encounters and what tactics players would need to use in order to survive and win. The first LFRaid dungeon involves four bosses. Players receive 250 valor for defeating the first ‘wing’ and each time you see loot from a mob it locks you from rolling until re-sets on Tuesday – whether or not you actually WIN a piece of loot. I didn’t win any, but the 250 valor was really nice, and I’m looking forward to going again next week. You can continue to run the raid and earn a little coin each time if you’re interested in just learning mechanics or have some sort of raid-craving that doesn’t get fulfilled by your small friendly guild. The encounters are not THAT difficult, but it does require people to know what they’re doing, especially the third boss which involves some slime that needs to be killed in a specific order. If someone calls out the wrong slime that can be a recipe for disaster (as I found out).

I also managed to clear my way through the three new twilight dungeons, which were a lot of fun and quite simple. The first zone is by far the worst of the three, the two that followed were much more simple. The first zone involves some random named and depending on which one you get it can be a bit of a pain. The finally fight in that zone is one of my favorites though and I’ll get into more detail about it in another post this weekend.

For now, it’s time to play! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

2011 Gamers Secret Santa Under Way!

This morning 65 eager emails were sent out with care, in hopes that secret santa, soon would be there. That’s right, I finally kicked off the 2011 Gamers Secret Santa and wow what a fantastic turn out! If you’ve signed up be sure to check your email to see who your recipient is, and if there’s any mistakes or issues or for some reason you are unable to participate this year, please don’t hesitate to contact me and let me know! After all, sending out so many emails means I’m bound to make a mistake here and there! If you’re having issues coming up with something to send to your gift-receiver, don’t forget that we’re all gamers at heart. We share a secret bond of game related history that few others ever comprehend.

I hope everyone enjoys this round (the third year running) as I have putting it together, and I’m already excited about next year! Thank you all for taking part, without you I quite literally would not be running this small event.