New Swashbuckler On the Scene (and Bruiser)

This morning, half awake, I decided to betray my monk to a bruiser. Nothing new there, I’ve been betraying classes back and forth since as long as I (or anyone else for that matter) can remember. It’s one method for me to keep the game fresh. I gave it some thought and then decided not only would I betray my monk, but I would also re-activate my second account (I really do like having the ability to make alts and box in EQ2) and, I would take my 45 brigand and betray them to a swashbuckler at the same time (boxing via the laptop and synergy) as betraying my monk. 

It worked out pretty well, though I’m not quite done working on the faction I need for the monk. They both met up in Haven where one tried to convince the other that where they were headed was a path of wrongness and other variables, but ultimately betrayal won out for both of them. 

Aside from that, I also got to welcome Ardwulf to Nostalgia! Surprised me, I was almost (almost!) tempted to re-activate my Vanguard account after reading his post but decided to go with the EQ2 boxing rout instead. After some careful consideration I decided I actually miss settling down in one game. I enjoy playing a large amount but it never really let me ‘finish’ anything. With a new EQ2 expansion coming out on Tuesday, I want to say ‘yes, I play EQ2 as my main game of choice’ rather then ‘well I play EQ2 and EQ1 and WoW and Wizard 101 and and and and’ listing game after game. Once the novelty of the new expansion wears off no doubt I’ll go back to game hoping. 

So far it’s been a great weekend. I managed to get my paladin a few levels (24!) and some new weapons (thank you Shadowgeist) as well as getting my brigand swashbuckler some new weapons. For some reason when I attempt to /claim my 5 year reward I’m met with an error (that’s not restricted to me either might I add, everyone is getting it) and hopefully it’s fixed before too long. As far as I’m aware it’s meant to go live on Tuesday along with GU50 and the expansion. Guess we’ll see!
Tomorrow I’d like to get a few craft levels, finish betraying the monk, and we’ll see what else from there. 
NaNoWriMo is going well, after my huge flop of only 500 words yesterday I sat down and added another 2,000 on top of that this morning at 6am and will do another 2,000 once this post is wrapped up for the day. That will put me at around 28,000 and on track to finish around the 26th. The experience has been interesting for me. I’m not sure if it’s been a good one or a bad one yet. I’ve never written this much before, ever. My longest stories have only ever been a few pages. I’ve hit page 41 with my NaNoWriMo story. I can’t even say whether or not I enjoy it. I don’t think I really do, but it has opened up doors for other stories I wouldn’t mind writing, or at least other types of stories. Guess that’s enough procrastinating here!
I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend!

A Little of This, Some of That, Lots of Just Plain Fun

 Yesterday was a fantastic day and not because of any significant amount of gaming that went on (though I did manage to find myself some time to play W101 and make my way through most of level 11). Two points of interest. First of all, Tipa brought up this amazing little application she had found called ‘write or die‘ if you’ve ever had issues feeling motivated to write, or if you’re doing NaNoWriMo (which I am, 24,244 words in) then this may just very well save your writing career. 

 Aside from that, you may remember a comment a while back from Lars talking about a simple program called Synergy. This program lets you move to the left side of one monitor, and your mouse will ‘jump’ to the other pc (in my case the laptop) allowing you to control both computers with one mouse and keyboard. So I have the laptop set up to the left hand side of my pc when I’m at my desk working, and I control both of them with the mouse / keyboard from my pc simply by moving it over. 

It’s by far one of the most amazing things I’ve played with in a while and I completely geeked out over it. Since I was so used to boxing by alt tabing to the other screen and using one pc for two accounts, I was finding it difficult to box with two computers. After giving it some time I decided to try synergy out and now I know there’s no way I could ever go back. I realize the program is quite old, it says it hasn’t been updated since 2006, but it works with vista just fine. It can also work across multiple OS and linux, mac, as well as pc. So now I can have my laptop running with whatever I’d like while I keep my pc running and not have to be reaching over to any other keyboards or mice. 

The only downside to this is that if you are playing games you need to be playing windowed. If you’re playing in full screen it will force you to desktop when you jump to the other monitor. I did experience a very small amount of lag at one point but it was barely enough to be concerned with. I know this program has been out for a while and I’m probably well behind the times and everyone already uses it, but for me it was a huge find, and I couldn’t have been happier. 

Anyhow, I did get a chance to play Wizard101 last night. I defeated some fire elves and took all their stuff. I have a few quests that send me all over Wizard city looking for particular objects. One of them is to locate these little men who hide out in each zone. I’ve been unsuccessful at finding the current one I need, I think it’s in triton avenue. Tipa informed me that the Halloween quests were on their last night, and she would be freed from doing the Master Tower battles, I hope she got her spider! 

Today is FRIDAY *cheers* I hope everyone has an amazing day and an incredible weekend.

This Just in – Grimwell Throws Like a GIRL

What happens when you add a bunch of alcohol, pie, dancing halflings, 52 players, and one very fine looking community manager to three rooms together? Pillow fights of course!

Last night at 5pm PST one of the (many) birthday bashes took place on Najena. Each server will be having their own party so be sure to check here to see when your server is having theirs. I thing events like these are really important to communities, and it’s not just because we all got some cool prizes to take home. The rooms were decorated wonderfully and there were people (quite literally) everywhere. 

We were even granted a special treat when the famous bard herself, Tipa, stepped up to the piano along with some background singers and sang her rendition of screaming cats happy birthday to Norrath. What a delightful experience!

There were items people could click throughout the room ranging from drinks, to throw pillows, to throw pies. A wishing well sat in the center of the main pool where people could harvest goodies. A word of caution though, you do need to have a fishing skill in order to harvest from this pool. 

Grimwell played out his part well, especially for someone who has to do parties all week on multiple servers. He interacted with the players and switched forms every few minutes, keeping things interesting. Gee, I wonder which illusion the players liked the most? 

Everyone gathered together at the end for a photo opportunity. I spent most of the evening wandering around taking screenshots (just over 50 of them) to remember the occasion by. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I’m glad Nostalgia had fun too. 

I wanted to hang out a little more, but once Grimwell left I was reminded that I still had 1,000 words to write for NaNoWriMo (22,635 words total now) and then by the time that was done I had time to watch a little tv and then it was bed. 

Less then a week to go until the new EQ2 expansion releases, happy birthday!

W101 and EQ2 Birthday Bash

Continuing along the Wizard city quests yesterday, I was pretty amazed at how big the world feels. I’ve never been particularly good at remembering where areas are, and I found myself getting lost often, or getting sent to areas I’d never even heard of before. I have one quest that sends me out to located these little tiny men scattered all over Wizard City. I’m stuck on the one in the shopping district. Or maybe it’s Triton, I can’t remember right now. As my life / storm combination progresses, I’ve learned a few things. Number one, I really need to make a deck for playing with friends. I’m not sure if there’s any way to do that or if I should just switch out some cards. My typical deck is perfect when it’s just me. It includes only a few heals, and a lot of attacks. I haven’t had any issue with it now that I hit level 10, things have been going pretty well. Until I group up with a bunch of friends and I’m left searching my deck frantically for a heal to toss out on them. 

Wizard 101 is so very different then every other game I’ve played (for a number of reasons that I’ve hid on here and there) that it’s actually made me change how I think about games in general. Their completely open grouping concept (which is not really grouping at all so much as jumping into battles with up to three other people) means that if you’re looking to get those harder encounters done you will either want to have friends online to play with, or be quite social. It’s very common for people to spam group invites, and for the most part I decline them. I accept of course if they are someone I already know – or if I happen to be doing a battle and they seem to know what they’re doing which was the case yesterday. After I cast a group heal on everyone (it was needed) one of the players expressed their thanks and we finished off the encounter fairly easily. I don’t enjoy being spammed with friend invites just like I don’t enjoy being spammed with group invites in any other game, but I’m more talkative in this game, and when I’m in the zones I know people have paid to gain access to, I’m a little less cautious about who I make my friend because I know they at least have enough of a grasp on the game (or their parents do, either way) to have invested some coin in it. 

Aside from changing my tactics on interacting with other players, I love the way this game makes me think about my next move. When I’m not thinking about my next move I’m thinking about the moves after that. Can I survive a round or two of trying to gain pips so I can pull out some uber card next? Do I let the giant cyclops whump me because I neglected to fill up on health and mana ahead of time? Exactly how long can I play the mini games before I need to blink (there’s one I’m completely addicted to in particular). 

 

Another amusing point to me is the fact that on more and more blogs these days I’m not reading about WAR, or EQ2 or any other popular mainstream MMO – I’m reading about Wizard 101. Now, that has a large amount to do with my choice in reading, I know. I subscribe to quite a few blogs via google reader and then tend to snoop the comments on the more popular blogs (you all know who you are) and read the blogs of those who have left comments. 

On a completely unrelated note – TODAY is the EQ2 anniversary party on Najena at 8pm EST (That’s 5pm PST). Tipa, consider this your official reminder! I’d like to see as many Nostalgians show up as possible (yes, all five of us) though I completely understand if people have other things to do. I’ll be there as (of course) Stargrace, hopefully I can get a few good screen shots in to write about tomorrow. 

No worries about me missing out on any ‘other’ game time. That’s what the laptop is for.