Keeping Up With The Gamers #MMORPG

If you’re one of those gamers who likes to taste a little bit of every game, this has probably been an expensive year for you. Whether you’re only interested in MMOs or if that extends to single player, it doesn’t much matter. There’s a lot of games out there and the costs can add up.

Right now I’m reading everyone’s excited squeals for Neverwinter, the ‘early’ release starts today – for people who decided to buy the $200 package. Needless to say, I simply can’t afford to spend that much on a game that I may or may not enjoy well into the future. At this moment I have been contemplating the $60 package, but I’m still not sure if it’s a game that I truly enjoy more than anything else I already have on my plate (that comes at a lower cost). So what is on my plate?

I did get my $60 out of Guild Wars 2, and even though I’m not actively playing that right this second I know it’s not going anywhere. I’ve dedicated more than $60 worth of hours to the game, and I’ve had a lot of fun. It will still be there when my interest leans that way again.

Wurm Online is $50 a year (until the price goes up in May). You rarely ever get MMOs for that price, and I’ve certainly got a lot of played time on my characters. I think my main is over 100 days played now. Plus you can play Wurm with in-game currency, which I do for my 2nd account. I just purchased a year of game time, wanting to get that settled before the price goes from $5 EU a month to $8 EU.

My EQ account is compensated, as are all of my SOE accounts. This makes them an easy go-to choice for many genres. I’m having a lot of fun in EQ, and I still dip into EQ2 and Vanguard. Me and SOE (the company, not the people) may have had some rocky times, but they’re a solid game choice for me and have been for many, many years.

Rift is active for 30 days. I haven’t poked in yet and I’m not really sure why. I just haven’t felt the urge, even after claiming the latest expansion and a handful of other goodies.

There are loads of other games on my desktop that I could technically pick up and play at any time, and haven’t felt an inkling to do so yet. There’s Wizard 101, Pirate 101, The Secret World, Star Trek Online (I have a life time subscription to that one), and of course EVE which I still have some unused PLEX for. These are just the MMO games. There’s a whole steam library of single player games that I haven’t beaten yet, and a few that have no ‘end’ like The Sims 3.

With such a selection it’s hard for me to justify spending even more money on a game that I know didn’t exactly call to me in the beta – but – so hard to resist because pretty much all of my friends are going to be playing it. I never want to be the one left out of all the fun. So for those who ARE going to be playing today – I look forward to living vicariously through your adventures!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Why Own Just a Guild Hall – Why Not The Whole Zone?! #EverQuest

EQ000057Why decorate a simple guild house – when you can own the entire neighbourhood! This is exactly what I decided to do for the small guild I belong to in EverQuest. The station cash store has an option for you to purchase not only a guild hall (that can be accessed through the guild lobby) but an entire guild neighbourhood. This instanced location will belong to the guild as a whole, not any one individual person, which you’re warned about before you purchase it.

Other people can enter the instance, tour the houses and poke around, but they won’t be able to purchase house plots.

EQ000058

 

So it was that I ended up with an entire area to decorate and then some. The guild halls are nice, spacious, and they come with a handful of NPC to help make your stay there more comfortable. So far I’ve not done much decorating, Oger has added some weapons and shields to the walls as well as some very nice looking paintings. We have a crafting room off of the main entrance, complete with some of the more ‘unique’ craft tables, like alchemy and even an ice cream churn. There are some extra NPC down there so you don’t have to go racing all over the place to collect items from your bank, and I really like how things are looking so far.

I’ve also set up a few houses within the zone for my alts, you can use these for storage or whatever else you would like. I haven’t gotten around to any massive decorating yet, and certainly nothing on the scale of EQ2 housing (yet) but it’s in the works and as I make some progress I’ll be sure to share pictures.

Speaking of progress -the ranger on my second account is now level 85. I’ve paused her leveling here for now, 100% of experience is going into alternate advancement. I don’t want her to be useless, so the more aa I can get the better. Plus this gives me time to work on getting my epic completed, and a few other (ie: older) quests that I want to do. My rank 5 mercenary quest is pretty high up on that list as well.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Time for Faction! #EverQuest

EQ000044There have been a few things I’ve been working on with Oger in EverQuest, but the two major projects have been working on the Dragons of Norrath progression (evil), along with the Trials of Mata Muram. Both are quite easy these days especially with mercenary, and the trials more so since the lock out timers have been tweaked slightly. You can now complete each one every 2 hours – 3 day lock out for completion (or winning), 2h lock out for a failure, and an overall 2h timer before you can move from one to the next. Oger and I managed to complete all 6 over the weekend which raised the base resists we are able to have by a small amount each trial. The hardest one required special spells to open chests scattered around the room and since I did’t have my spells at the time (they’re now sold in PoK, quite easy to obtain, but I didn’t know that at the time) we failed it. Returning later that evening netted a win at least.

Dragons of Norrath progression is a bit more difficult because it’s a faction grind. Faction in EverQuest can be a long and tedious task, as shown here by EQresource:

-3000 to -1999 – lowest faction points
-2000 to -751 – Scowls at you ready to attack! (KOS) (approx. 1300 point range)
-750 to -501 – Glares are you threateningly! (KOS) (approx. 250 point range)
-500 to -101 – Glowers at you dubiously. (Not KOS but very close to) (approx. 400 point range)
-100 to -1 – Looks your way apprehensively. (approx. 100 point range)
0 to +99 – Regards you indifferently. (The majority of NPC’s have this neutral standing with you) (approx. 100 point range)
+100 to +499 – Judges you amiably. (approx. 400 point range)
+500 to +749 – Kindly considers you. (approx. 250 point range)
+750 to +1099 – Looks upon you warmly. (approx. 450 point range)
+1100 to +2000 – Regards you as an ally. (Highest level of faction attainable) (approx. 1000 point range)
+2001 to +3000 – highest faction points

At the moment I am kindly faction with The Dark Reign, and have completed up to tier four in progression. I also managed to pre-loot the pieces for the final tier, completing them the previous week with Nonpoint and Xoxox who were completing the raids for another friend. These days the group tasks can be completed solo (especially with mercenary) so the faction grind is not quite as bad as it once was, but the raids still take a little bit of finesse.

You earn a few useful things for completing faction, the first tier unlocks the passive ability to increase your max stats by 10. The second tier grants 250 hp / mana / end and the third tier increases your buff slot limit by one. The fourth tier which is the one I’m currently trying to complete increases the critical chance of melee / magical attacks and heals and finally the fifth tier increases your ability to resist a detrimental spell.

I’ve been enjoying myself as we go through these older quests and factions. They’re still relevant and while I may not be able to handle doing much alone in the current content (just the way EverQuest is) at least I’m not completely useless.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Enchanter Levels and Crafting – Oh My! #EverQuest

EQ000054With Shadow of Fear released yesterday, I found myself happily wandering through the new zones, attuning myself to the new portals. This will come in handy when it comes time to actually adventure in these zones, and for now I can go invis and collect shinies since some new ones were added (but the rewards are not any better).

The new prayer shawl 3.0 was also added to game, and components for it seem to be dropping quite frequently. Or at least my group found a few of the drops yesterday without too much issue. People were also selling them to vendor, unsure of what they are for. Oger has been purchasing them and saving them for later use.

My enchanter managed to ding level 94 in the Feerrott (which has become my home away from home for a number of levels now) and is well on her way to level 95. Then begins the slow climb to 100. It seems like such a daunting number.

I decided the guild needed a neighbourhood of its own, so I purchased one from the station cash store. A guild neighbourhood allows only those guild members to buy plots within it. It also came with a guild hall to decorate – enormous! The hall has all sorts of convenient NPC you can place – things like bank, parcel, and travel. It will take me quite some time to decorate it the way I want, but for now at least the NPC are all placed, and there’s a portion dedicated to crafting (with bankers close by so you can run to and from).

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in EverQuest.

Shadow of Fear #EverQuest

EQ000041

Shadow of Fear launch today, the second part of Rain of Fear, the latest EverQuest expansion. This second half of expansion goodness brings a few new zones, missions, and raids to the table along with new spells and alternate advancement. Since my enchanter is only level 93 there’s not a lot I can do with this latest update yet, but it won’t be long before I’m in the midst of it all (I believe around level 95 is when most things will come into play).

That doesn’t mean I’m not excited though, all of my friends and their level 100 characters will certainly be exploring the new areas that will be cram packed with other adventurers. I’m excited to see what will affect me. The new spells and aa in specific. I wish I could have gotten closer to 100 while I had the time, but that’s alright, I’ll get there eventually.

I’ve been having loads of fun playing EverQuest lately (as you can tell by my blog posts). I’m really glad I’ve returned. The game is still hard, and some classes are insanely over powered at the later levels (berserker decap and ranger headshot I’m looking at you) making it seem like my class is utterly worthless, but that’s alright, I just keep playing.

I’m not sure what else I want to play these days. I’ve always been a nomadic gamer and it seems a bit weird to only be focusing on one MMO. I’ve all but given up on Wurm Only, for a few reasons but the biggest reason being that I felt coerced into play because there were sever repercussions. If you don’t log in every single day, your animals / buildings / items suffer decay, and waste away. After playing for so long I disliked that penned in feeling, that feeling that I was going to actually lose my time invested if I wandered to another game. I LOVE the basics of Wurm, the creation process, the terraforming, all of it is amazing – but I don’t like being punished for not being there 24/7. I think I’ve finally broken free from that painful cycle.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!