A Pixel Nomad

I have to admit, I’m a little undecided when it comes to whether or not I want to use a guide or a walkthrough. On one hand I do love exploring a world on my own and I think games have come a long way to allowing me to do this without having to resort to guides and walkthroughs. Adding locations to the mini map, and allowing for better directions in the quest text all allow me to remain submersed in whatever world I happen to be playing in. Then there are the ‘harder’ things. For example, crafting in EQ1. How many people have tried to craft from scratch without resorting to a single guide. Where would you even start and how would you even know where to begin. There’s little to no indication in-game of where a player would go if they were sitting in their home city and wanted to pick up a craft. For these types of games I feel that guides and walkthroughs enhance the experience. Sure I may not be 100% involved in my game when I have to resort to using a browser to look up recipes – but I don’t really seem to notice it.

There is also something to be said for the communities involved in creating these guides and walkthroughs. After all, it’s a forum players use to bond with one another. It gives you a platform to ask questions (typically) to others who may have come across the same sort of issues. You know that the people posting on these guides are perhaps players just like you who enjoy the games at the base core.

There are numerous guides and walkthroughs available for every game imaginable; like this CardsChat legal poker guide. You can find them for games ranging from Farmville to Street Fighter. One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot more guides published online these days then there are in paper. I own a few guides for games like Little Big Planet, and really liked being able to follow them.

So how do you decide whether or not you want to know everything there is to know about a game, and when you want to simply wander along your own path? Is there some deciding factor for you as a player? Are some guides ok where others are not?

Let me know your thoughts in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath.

It was just by luck that I heard about phase 2 beginning at all on Saturday, I was convinced the date was set for the 17th (Sunday) – but I happened to tab over to the Rift forums where they announced that the EU event had already taken place, and that the next events would be staged between 1pm-3pm PST. I quickly let friends know, and watched as many of them attempted to log in (and met up with horrible queues). Myself? I decided not to log in at all. I heard that phase three would be taking place in a higher-level zone, a place I would have no access to port to, and I wasn’t about to walk there at level 25. I also didn’t really want to deal with masses of angry players all trying to figure out what was going on.

I happily watched friends participate, take their videos, and it did look like a neat event for those who managed to make it in game and participate. It opened up a new raid rift, which is pretty awesome. After a two week phase one I felt a little let down by the 30 minute phase two and then the nearly instant phase three.

It didn’t take long before the forums were filled with outcries of players who were all upset about how things had run. Trion decided to compensate everyone by making a post stating that if you have an active account, they are going to assume that you meant to take part in the event, and will be mailing you your goodies. These goodies include achievements (minus the final phase three achievement because you can currently go out and bow to the npc required still), goodies ranging from common to ultra rare, and some sort of quest satchel with enough time to complete it – as well as 250 shards, and the shards shall continue to drop for a bit for those players who wanted to collect more items from the vendors (myself, I’d like the companion pets at least. I own one but there’s still three more to collect).

Congratulations, you didn’t even have to log in or do anything (except complete phase one?) in order to end up with a mail box full of goodies. It’s a learning experience, and I appreciate the effort that went into putting on an event like this, but I think simply handing out rewards diminishes the importance of the event to begin with – whether Trion considers portions of it a mistake or not. It may also come to be something players expect, to be handed out free goodies when things don’t go their way.

While it would have been neat to have been involved in something on that large of a scale, I just didn’t want to deal with all of the other headaches that went along with it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

 

I’ve been leveling really slow. I mean, REALLY slow. It’s for a few reasons, the main one being that I haven’t actually played Rift a great amount in any one sitting. It’s a few hours here and there in between playing a lot of EverQuest. As such, I just hit level 25 last night, and myself and Ogur (pictured above) just hit Stonefield when I reached 24. Someone asked me how I managed to stay in Freemarch for so long, and it was quite simple. I did a LOT of rift fights when the game first released. Now they’ve slowed down a considerable amount, I haven’t seen the map crowded like I once did and I find the large invasions have become a bit rare. Whether this is due to my server specifically (I play on Deepwood) or because everyone is crowding the higher level zones thus leaving mine barren, I’ve no idea.

I wanted to make sure I finished all of the quests in Freemarch before I moved on, and I think I managed to complete all of them but two. Those I deleted because I was tired of the same zone, I’ve been there since release, after all. Stonefield is pretty and the quests I’ve done so far are enjoyable. One had me battling gigantic trolls, which really made me feel incredibly small and powerless – which was great. In the same chain I then had to turn myself into a troll and read some glyphs scattered throughout the area – towering above everyone else was a fantastic feeling (until an invasion landed on my head, combat morphs you out of the transformation). Crafting supplies seem a bit sparse compared to Freemarch, but it could be that everyone else has been collecting (except plants, those I found in abundance). I’m finding a new difficulty with playing a priest in Rift fights. When everyone first started the game this wasn’t an issue, because there were no level 50’s running around completing level 20 rifts. I was healing a LOT, and there for contributing a lot. As time goes on I see more and more players above the level of the rift participating in the events – which is fine except that my personal contribution goes WAY down because no one is taking any damage for me to heal.

My only solution has been to switch to my DPS spec (Justicar / Druid / Shaman) and wail away at the mobs. Then when the invasions are over I switch back to my heal spec so that I can keep my tank alive as we plow through our quests. I’m not really surprised at healers having a harder time, the same happens in EQ2 public quests as well, healers are second rate citizens (especially lately, there have been major issues with heals not counting towards contribution) and making a contribution to what is going on always seems hard. My tank friends on the other hand is always way up there in contribution. I would really love to see some sort of magical ‘easy answer’ to this problem but I doubt very highly that one will come.

In the mean time I just try to participate in every single rift and invasion that I see. I’m toying with changing my spec’s around a lot. I find myself not using warden (thinking of switching to druid for the pet but I’m unsure) and on that same note, I’m not fond of the shaman build either. Perhaps that’s a goal for today, to play around with my builds some what and see what appeals to me on a greater level. I love playing justicar for DPS, and I love sentinel for healing but I would enjoy branching out a bit. Then there’s also my 10 scout and 10 mage to level up eventually. For now they’re acting as crafters, I have Stargrace (25 cleric) who is my Artificer / mining / forager – then Kameeko (10 scout) is my Outfitter / butcher / armorer, and Velours (10 mage) is my apothecary / runecrafter / misc (I haven’t decided yet). It’s one more thing that makes me truly appreciate EverQuest where I can focus on ONE character, and work on aa to unlock every craft that I’d like to work on. I wouldn’t have the alts if I could do it all on one.

P.S. WRU player housing. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!