Simply Amazing

It’s late and I’m completely exhausted, but I wanted to make a quick post before I finally went to bed only to get up in 5 hours and tackle the day. I spent most of this holiday playing Wizard 101. Ok, I spent all of this holiday playing. I met up in game with Kasul and Tipa and they helped me defeat a boss I needed for a Halloween quest. Tipa very literally (along with her alt) saved the day. Later on, Hudson joined in the fun and he and I and Kasul headed off to do a Halloween tower. Unfortunately Hudson died (I am so sorry!) and didn’t get to do the final encounter with us, but it was still a LOT of fun and everyone had a good time all around. We all walked away with some pretties, some levels, and it was just one of those perfect gaming experiences for me. Being able to play games with members from the community of writers we have is something that I treasure so much. 

I played way too much. I was level 7 this morning and managed to creep into level 11 (not that I can say that in Wizard 101, numbers are bad words). Levels really don’t mean a whole lot that I’ve come to realize, it’s not about the grind to level, at all. The stories and quests are fun (even though I dislike running to and from each person) and the battles are just plain fun to watch. I love not having to button smash. I’ll have a better write up about the quest chains I’ve been going through tomorrow, but the adventures today were just as fun (if not more) as grouping up in any one of your regular mainstream MMO’s. This is a game that doesn’t even have groups, it’s all open concept. How cool is that. 

Hope everyone else had fun too.

Continuing Through Wizard City

I decided to subscribe to Wizard 101 for a month, and see if I wanted to continue to play it after the month was up. So far I’ve been playing pretty frequently, I really wish Xfire recognized it. As it is now, I set my status on Xfire by hand and load it up on the laptop so I can still talk to people while I’m in full screen. I reached level 8 in W101 by doing the wizard city quests (the ones I had available at least) and a handful of the Halloween events. I’ve got a slightly better grasp on things now, watching where other people are attacking so that I can either help them or move on to the next encounter if their hit is going to kill it. My little Angela is a life / storm wizard, so while I don’t have an amazing amount of damage dealing cards, I do have a few. I’ve had a few good and not so good experiences wandering around wizard city and finding others to play with. One not so good was a Halloween tower, one of the more simple ones. I think it was Malfi I was with. Two of the other people decided to just sit in on the card playing rounds and do no moves at all. We would have beaten it if it were not for that. 

I bought myself a dragon companion, and have been playing in Fire Cat Ally for most of the morning. The game is simple enough that I can do other things while playing (or sit and watch the cool spell effects and listen to the little imps I have cackle gleefully as I vanquish another foe) and the only thing I find more addicting then W101 itself, is the mini games you use to replenish your health and mana. 

I haven’t really been in the mood to play EQ2 lately, I just don’t have the time to sit for 2-3 hours in a row working on something in particular. I have been playing WoW for short bursts (an hour here and there) in between trying to keep NaNo going. I’m up to 18,565 words now and the story seems to be slugging through this section, or maybe it’s just my moods. I’m just barely on track with being able to finish on the 26th if I keep up with my 2k words every day. Since the 30th is our last day I’ve been trying to give myself a little more leeway, but it hasn’t quite been working out. 

For the first time ever, I am not excited about EQ2’s next expansion. I can’t exactly say why. I’m just not feeling it. I played in the beta and I didn’t feel it then either. Instead of saying ‘wow this is amazing’ I spent my time saying ‘Wow this is it? Why is it so empty?’ The one overland zone was a lot of empty space and then groups of mobs spread throughout and very little ‘stuff’ to me personally. Of course every one will come up with their own personal views on it. I have pre-ordered the retail version (I wanted the bear) and I’m sure the crafting bits will entice me, but we’ll have to see about the rest.

It Doesn’t Matter What Event You Remember – Just that you Do

 

In Flanders Fields 

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) 

Canadian Army


IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow 

Between the crosses row on row, 

That mark our place; and in the sky 

The larks, still bravely singing, fly 

Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead. Short days ago 

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 

Loved and were loved, and now we lie 

In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe: 

To you from failing hands we throw 

The torch; be yours to hold it high. 

If ye break faith with us who die 

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 

In Flanders fields. 

My father was stationed in Egypt on a Peace Keeping mission when I was still really young. Between 1-4 I believe. I don’t remember after all this time. I remember seeing pictures of it though, pictures of him riding camels and letters back to my mom who was dealing with both me and my baby brother underfoot. I am sure it was difficult on everyone. When I was 7, we were stationed to Germany for five years. We were there for the Gulf War, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was too young to really get a good grasp on either event, I lived in Germany from ages 7-12. We did have air raid drills though. Bomb shelters. We lived on the military base where everything was painted a dark green to blend in from the air. We had bomb threats called in and had to stay over night at a shelter in some school gym, and I was in school at the time. They called students from particular buildings to go meet up with our parents so we could be evacuated, and my building was called. I remember my mom left a pot of spaghetti on the stove, and she had to tell the military men that it was on. I remember we packed a bag of baby supplies and left it by the front door in case we ever had to be evacuated again when my other brother was born. It was scary some times.  

Take a little time today to remember those who gave their lives so that we could have the life we have now. I’ve never had to fight in a war, and I can only imagine what it must be like. I count myself very, very lucky. Enjoy your Veterans Day (US), and Remembrance Day (CAN).

Beckett MOG Exclusive TSO Interview

I was working on an interview for the upcoming issue of Beckett Massive Online Gamer – but due to the fact that there are so many expansions all releasing at around the same time, there wasn’t any room for the article (No worries, there are still two articles for EQ2 in the issue). Not wanting to waste the interview nor the time spent with the designers, BeckettMOG posted it online for readers. 

Link to the interview

Enjoy!

Lets Give Them a Try

I’ve said this a few times in the past, that I haven’t really been a ‘gamer’ all my life. My brief adventures with The Sims hardly counts as having a finesse for games. I’m quite particular about what I like to play. Starting off with MUDS (I played a local one called Redemption for a number of years) before breaking off for EverQuest, then breaking off that for EverQuestII. When I gave Wizard 101 a try I was astounded at how much fun it was. Of course it’s exceptionally unique compared to all other games I’ve played, with turn based card game combat rather then a button mashing experience. I’m fairly certain I’ll go with the life time subscription as soon as I can (not for a few months yet, but it’s in the works). It’s one of those great games you can just lose yourself in for hours, and don’t let the bright colours and funky text throw you off, it may LOOK like a game for 10 year old children, but creating your deck and defeating encounters is hard. 

Along those same lines I decided to try out two more ‘free’ to play games. One of them was ‘Shaiya‘ by Aeria games. Like your typical ‘free’ game in order to get the really cool stuff you’re going to want to subscribe. Character creation is limited between two races on either a good or evil side. I made a human priest and was dumped in a world that reminded me VERY much of guild wars  except not quite. The very first things you do is go grab a number of quests that follow the straight and narrow ‘kill X number of Y’ creatures. In this case it was thief monkeys and a few foxes. To loot items that dropped on the ground it was exactly like guild wars as well. 

I ran around and picked up four quests including a time one, and then thought to myself why would I want to play this when I already have a game that’s almost exactly like it and actually looks a lot better. Logged off and uninstalled it. You remember those group of spammers who sit in the middle of the community areas in GW and spam about their sales over and over? Well those same people hang out in Shaiya in the common area, spamming their wears too. The game may change, but the people and conversations do not.

After giving that game a very brief try I decided to play Mabinogi, which is a cute anime style game by Nexon. The only problem right from the outset with this game is that even though it claims to be ‘free’ you have pretty much 0 control over anything at the outset without paying for a subscription. Want to customize your character to something other then the very base default character? Well you’ll have to subscribe. Faces, eyes, hair, mouth, outfit, everything was based on having a subscription. Want pets? Need a subscription. Want better spells and access to unique quests? Again, need a subscription. The game was also completely filled (at least from the start) with a LOT of intro movies. Every 10 seconds I’d have to watch another 5-10 minute movie about the world, I spent a lot more time doing that then anything else.

I also have a quirk with ‘click to move’ type games. I hate having to click my mouse for anything at all. At least the previous game let me use my wasd keys, this one was mouse controlled only from what I could tell. W101 is by far the ultimate winner letting me use my arrow keys. You’re dropped off in a little community and have to wander around learning how to do various things. I made my first encounter with a group of bots. Ok, it was more like 10 groups of bots. One of the very first quests sends you to discover your ‘smash’ skill and learn basic combat. Go kill a few foxes that are over the way. Immediately as soon as a single fox would spawn, a train of 10 people following one another would rush past me and demolish the mob. It was funny to watch them all run after one another. 

I hear that the game is quite popular, but for me it just didn’t do anything. Needing a subscription to customize anything at all, not to mention the very clunky UI and all the bots just made me realize what an amazing game Wizard101 is for being a ‘free’ one that actually delivers. I had fun stepping out of my box and giving a few other games a try, I imagine I’ll continue as I hear about other games. This is completely new to me, I typically settle into the ‘popular’ MMO’s and stick there without giving anything else a try. Actually, playing all these other games makes me appreciate what I do play so much more. 

Hope everyone else had an amazing gaming weekend!