Children’s Week #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

I’ve been enjoying my time in WoW these days, I don’t know how long it will last (probably about as long as it ever lasts, 2-3 months before I move to another game for 2-3 months etc) but I’m enjoying it while I’m there. A few things changed this time while I’ve been playing. For the first time in 5 years I’m in an actual guild. A rather large one at that. They’re level 25 with over 600 members – and while I would typically be afraid of that sort of guild in this sort of game, the guild has some hard fast rules about maturity and profanity (the first being requested, the second being disallowed in guild chat) that have made my stay quite pleasant. They’re not hard core raiders but they’ve been known to raid as well, and they plan guild events. The web site is well designed and I will admit being in a level 25 guild (max for now) comes with some incredibly nice benefits. The experience bonus is lovely, but something I notice more is the bonuses to both harvesting and crafting skill ups.

I’ve been playing multiple alts (as always) and enjoying them all. I am still considering a warrior tank, but in the mean time I have a paladin who just hit level 40 and is holy spec’d. Out of all of the healers I have played at lower levels, the paladin is by far the easiest. I’ve never ran out of mana thanks to two specific spells, and I have yet to have to need a mana potion (unlike my druid of the same level, who has more mana, but is constantly running out). I’ve been feeling a bit of an itch to try my hand at tanking, but I’m still quite nervous, so we’ll just have to see how that goes. At the moment I’ve got:

  • Ellithia (85 discipline priest) enchanting / tailoring
  • Minxes (83 Affliction warlock) engineering / mining
  • Arysh (77 Restoration shaman) inscription / jewelcrafting
  • Velours (40 Holy paladin) herbalism / alchemy
  • Faydai (37 Restoration druid)
  • Seduisant (10 Assassination Rogue)

This week is Children’s Week! So I’ve been bringing my little orphan around Azeroth. Not exactly the safest of trips (at least some of them) but it’s fun and cute. Today I flew kites and ate ice cream with little orphan “Roo” and then I picked up little orphan “Randis” from Shattrah.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

Multi-Housing Excitement #EQ2 #EverQuest2

I’ve always thought it was important that games play upon their strong points. The strong points are what set them apart from other games, and cause them to be ‘unique’ even if the remainder of the game duplicates something else. In EverQuest 2 I feel that this is player housing. The latest update allows players to own up to 10 homes at one time, and if you own a prestige home you are able to link all of these together via portals.  Prestige homes come in a variety of ways, you can earn them from veteran rewards and you can purchase them from the station cash store, as well as earn them through legends of Norrath.

I’m really excited about this feature even though I haven’t been playing that much EQ2. I have my Norrathian museum on the Antonia Bayle server and it takes up the entire 7-year veteran reward home that I own. Thanks to these linked portals I will be able to link a ‘regular’ house to the museum, allowing players (and myself of course) to tour each of them. Decorating homes and “owning” a piece of the game is a really big deal to some players (not all of them, there are always those who are simply not interested) and I think the fact that EQ2 is willing to explore and upgrade these features is fantastic. There is a LOT of housing available in the game, and a lot of housing items. In fact even if you don’t enjoy housing at all it’s almost impossible to avoid that potion of the game because you get housing rewards for numerous quests, there are vendors all over, and the station cash store is filled with awesome furniture you can purchase. Having an option of ‘something else’ to do in game aside from slaughter creatures is a really important ‘hook’ to keep people in game.

If you are into housing, don’t forget to /join antonia_bayle.homeshow for great discussions with other designers. Have you decided what you’re going to do with this new feature yet? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

The Sims Medieval – Patch 1.3 #TSM #SimsMedieval

A lot of people have been looking forward to this patch, although there is apparently a bit of an issue if you have the digital version of the game vs. the CD version. I updated without any issues – but keep in mind when you do an update like this you lose your quest progress. I wasn’t particularly enjoying the quest I was on so I didn’t think it was too big of a deal. The screen shot above is using the new camera feature that allows you to move 360 degrees around your character even while in the castle – no more barbie house view. This was probably the biggest change for me and the one I was looking forward to the most. The only issue I still have with the camera views is that I’m constantly right clicking on my portrait in order to change the view back to how I’d like it. It seems to flip between camera abilities too easily (ie: right clicking the portrait puts you into the ‘follow my character’ view, and the arrow buttons allow you to swivel around that character, rather then the base view which is more free form). Below are the patch notes (since for some reason my update didn’t come with any notes for me to read) and in italics are my comments about the ones I’m most looking forward to. Enjoy!

Here is a list of what will be included in the new update!

  • New Feature: Free Play Ambition – Set up your perfect kingdom without worrying about long term goals. In this special ambition, you can play quests when you wish, or control up to four heroes at once in a more open free play mode. (Very excited about this! Some times I just want to do things ‘free form’)
  • New Feature: Child Succession – If a Hero Sim dies, but already has children, you can choose to have one of the children grow up and take over their parent’s job!
  • Camera improvements – Have you ever wanted to get a better view of the action? The camera now allows tighter zooming and full 360 rotation in buildings. (The most important thing to me in all of these updates)
  • End Game Improvements – Similar to the Free Play Ambition, can now play quests, earn XP, and build buildings even after your ambition is completed!
  • Hero Leveling Improvements – Can now gain XP beyond level 10 for all heroes, giving additional benefits.
  • Brave New World Quest Improvements – When you complete the quest “Brave New World” and start a new ambition with that character, he or she will now retain several abilities from their previous profession!
  • Kingdom Aspect Improvements – Can now gain additional benefits when increasing aspects beyond their maximum capacity
  • Ambition Improvements – Certain ambitions now allow one or two additional buildings to be placed at the start.
  • Increased the maximum number of residents in a household from four to five. Go ahead and have another child!
  • Implemented game stability improvements that affected some players.
  • Adjusted several quests for clarity.
  • Fixed several bugs related to staying on a quest for a long period of time.
  • Improved detection of monitor resolution for some hardware configurations.
  • Fixed a variety of issues in Create-A-Sim.
  • Fixed several text and art inconsistencies.

Over all I’m pleased with the patch, and I hope to see more coming. I’m almost sad that there is no store attached to this version of the Sims franchise, unlike Sims 3. I got a few free sims points with my Sims 3 purchase (Generations is coming up soon and I’m looking forward to that expansion) and enjoy browsing the stores for new goodies. Ah well.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

4.1 Arrives #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

I wasn’t expecting the big 4.1 to hit yesterday, but hit it did along with a lot of issues which are being hotfixed this morning. As with any major patch there were all of the now outdated UI addons that had to be updated, and while most of mine are there are still some which are not. This patch added a few key things that I am really pleased to see. Number one would have to be the new looking for guild interface. While EQ2 does have a LFGuild tool – it doesn’t allow players to communicate and apply to a guild that they see in the window unless there’s an officer online currently recruiting. The tool also does not allow players to see what level the guild is, something I find very handy. I applied to a casual guild on my warlock, and left a little blurb about what I was looking for. My other characters are already in a pretty nice guild, level 25 and casual but also do some light raiding and other organized events. I wish leveling a guild solo was more of an option (a la EQ2) but blizzard makes this just about impossible, or at least impossible to earn the achievements because you need to have a group majority of guild mates in with you. Don’t get me wrong, I love my guilds, just some times I like things quiet, too.

Guild challenges were also put in, which I do not really like. There are three types, one requires you to kill one boss of a level appropriate zone and your guild bank will receive 1,000g (each week). The second is to do 7 group dungeons in a guild group, your guild bank earns 250g for that one. The final is PvP and you earn 500g for that one. My problem is that this coin just goes into the guild bank for – for what purpose? Whatever the guild leader decides? For their own personal use? To cover repair costs? I have no idea. I still feel that sort of money is a large amount – but I realize I’m probably wrong.

With this patch also came the rise of the Zandalari, two revamped instances for level 85 characters who have an item level of 346 or higher – which I do not. In fact I doubt I even come close. I am excited about exploring them eventually but for now I’ll be content to listen to everyone else talk about it.

Dungeon finder: call to arms was also implemented. This is the incentive program to get queues to move faster. There are some restrictions on it: “to be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss” – so I haven’t had any experience with it yet. I do like the idea of rare mounts being a reward, but I dislike that once again WoW focuses entirely on the end game.

A LOT of class changes too place, fixes, and updates. So if you want to read up on what else changed be sure to head over to the patch notes. In the mean time I’m having fun just doing my thing. The paladin is now level 36 and I’m having no issues healing my way through dungeons. Hopefully I can keep that up, but we’ll just have to see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

 

I Ain’t Afraid of No PUG #WoW #WorldOfWarcraft

I’m interested in seeing how the latest changes to the LFD tool bring about faster queue times (especially for DPS) – I don’t think they actually will, even with an extra incentives. What I personally think will happen is that all of those people who really want to play DPS but are too impatient to wait for groups will suddenly decide they are healers / tanks and queue up, creating larger issues for groups. Issues like not being spec’d properly, and not having the right gear. I see it all the time on my priest; tanks who are wearing no tank gear but only PvP gear, or paladins who want to heal but they’re not wearing any int / spirit gear. I’d rather this not happen but honestly I don’t hold very much faith in it.

I’ve been playing my (now) 33 paladin, who is holy spec’d with a protection off spec. I carry around two complete sets of gear depending on what I think I’ll be doing. I haven’t picked up any glyhps yet because that’s the crafting I’ve decided to pick up and I didn’t want to spend too much cash on it. I have done a lot of pick up groups on all of my characters, every time I play World of Warcraft, and I haven’t had too many horror stories. I mean, I have the usual ones where no one pays attention to the tank and runs around crazy doing their own thing. I’ve met some rude people, and I’ve voted people out (though I myself have not been voted out of a group yet). I refuse to let other people dictate whether or not I will have fun in a game. I’ve also had some wonderful groups where the players were patient and listened, and we had no issues. I typically play a healer in all PUGs, on my discipline spec’d 85 priest or my druid / shaman / paladin who are all also spec’d as healers as their main spec. I have tanked a little on the paladin, but it really depends on my mood, I’ve just never really been one to want to tank in any game it’s certainly not WoW or LFD tool specific.

This is the highest I’ve managed to level a paladin, although I have tried many times in the past. I want to stick it out for once – my one concern is my healing abilities later on when things get difficult. I have no idea if paladins can still measure up or not. I suppose we’ll just have to see!

If you happen to play on Argent Dawn be sure to look me up, I’m typically on Velours (the paladin) or Ellithia (85 priest), Minxes (83 warlock), or a handful of smaller alts. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!