Tag: games

Let’s Talk about the Single Button Assistant (spoiler alert, I LOVE it)

Blizzard recently implemented a controversial mechanic to World of Warcraft, where you can attack & cast abilities with a rotation by pressing only one button – but your global cooldown of abilities will be 25% slower thus you’re going to lose some DPS. For example, after looking at some parses, it was a 7% loss in dps on my hunter who uses GSE, an addon that does almost exactly this but also requires a lot of maintenance.

I LOVE this feature. I absolutely love it. This allows people who have disabilities to play. This allows people who are reluctant to try new classes because they don’t know how to play them, a chance to jump right in. Are people going to be rushing M+ with these? Probably, but since they do less dps, it’s going to be painful. Those who are interested in the min/max side of the game won’t use this feature, because it will be a downgrade.

More people in the game is a good thing. More accessibility, also good. Less barriers to playing new classes, amazing.

Don’t like it? DON’T USE IT. No one has to, it’s completely optional. Whether or not someone else is using it has absolutely zero impact on my gameplay – unless I’m doing a high level M+ and in that case I would expect them to be able to keep up with the group no matter what system they’re using, and if they CAN’T keep up in competitive gameplay then I might have an issue.

World questing? Looking for raid? Timewalking? Fantastic.

Does this mean I’ve wiggled my way back into Warcraft?

Well, yes and no. I’ve recently started playing on my EU account – the account that does NOT have all the mounts, pets, or other fun things that my main account has. Why? It has been something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. The time zones are more to my play style, and I have a lot of EU friends. I also gifted the account some game time and the shop sold auction house mount some time ago. While I can’t share bnet balance or gold between EU/NA, I can gift items to the account (has to be a completely separate bnet account). Of course it does make me miss everything I have on my main account so there’s no telling if I’ll actually stick with it (spoiler alert, I won’t) but it has been a lot of fun returning and it feels like a comfortable time to be back. I’m also excited about the future with player housing and all of that good stuff. I’ll just have to take it day by day, and see how things go.

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

Finding Motivation

I think this has been the longest I’ve ever been away from World of Warcraft, and it’s not really because of the game, but it is because of my lack of community within the game. I used to have some very good friends playing, and now none of them play. I have nothing holding me to the game, I’ve got as much gold as I could ever possibly want, and I’m not interested in the gear grind.

The things that keep me playing EVE Online, or Wurm Online, is the players. I don’t necessarily need to DO things in game with others, but I do like the social aspect of it. I’m also awkward, and don’t know how to act around people very well. Having generic goals in these games is simply not enough for me. HOW to go about finding a guild of like-minded people is another issue. It was just so much easier when I had a static bunch to play with, and I miss that dearly.

This rambling post is for nothing other than solidifying my desire to return to World of Warcraft, and the first step to me doing that was to jump right back into the goblin side of things and get my characters selling again. I’m keeping it more simple than in the past, while I do have two separate accounts with auction house characters on each, I’m only posting with one account for the time being. I have no idea how far behind I am, or what I’ve missed. Or where I should be. All of that is a bit overwhelming to think about. I’d like to move my characters to a roleplay server, and find a suitable community before player housing comes out. I used to love attending roleplay events, and I think I’ll have a better chance of finding ‘my people’ that way.

We’ll just have to see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Wurm Online – a LOT of Rifts

Wurm Online is one of my absolute favourite games of all time. I’ve been playing it for over 13 years on a fairly steady basis. I’ve never really done the whole skill grinding thing that so many others have done before me, but I do have a total of 5 characters, 4 of those are priests (one for each deity). I’ve been wanting to obtain a bracelet for myself that comes from rifts, this bracelet is charged up with energy so that the next “moi” (moment of inspiration) gives you a guaranteed rare item. Normally if you get an MOI there’s a chance the item you’re working with WON’T be rare. It sucks. It happens to me often.

I’m not even sure about what I want to use this item on yet, because there are so many options. My knarr? My wagon? A tent just to have it sparkle? Unsure. There are also 2 shoulders I want to purchase, dragon shoulder pads, they cost 1,000 rift points each. At the time of writing this, Faralithe, my Libila priest – has 1300 points (give or take). Stargrace is at around 500 points, but they don’t transfer between characters. I used to have a lot more points on Stargrace but I’ve purchased an item here and there.

Anyway. Right now I have Faralithe doing rifts (since they show up on each server I can attend them fairly regularly) and then Stargrace and three other alts are currently parked at a holy site, a mag fissure, on Exodus. This fissure spews archaelogy fragments into your inventory once an hour (so long as you’re premium) and I always try to attend them when I can. I’ve gotten some pretty interesting bits from doing it so far and it’s a lovely way to gear out the alts with good tools.

Anyway. I know I’ve been quiet lately, but I’m still here, still gaming, and occasionally posting. You can find me in Wurm Online as Stargrace, or Faralithe – happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The Heroes’ Journey Continues (The Ruins of Old Paineel)

Right now my paladin/monk/berserker character is level 46, with 155aa – it’s almost time to unlock Kunark. There is no cap on aa but now that I have 150+ I do lose the bonus experience, and until I defeat Nagafen and Vox, 50 is my level cap (I have 100% going to aa at the moment). I believe the guide says I should be reaching 250aa before going further, but I am really only loosely following that anyway.

The first 150aa were done in Castle Mistmoore, where we continued to level until around 40, then we went off to search for new lands. We’re currently parked in The Ruins of Old Paineel – also called ‘The Hole’ by most players. The encounters here are significantly more difficult than they were in Castle Mistmoore, with a LOT of casters who wear damage shields. I’m doing my best to land stuns on everyone but unlike Castle Mistmoore I can’t pull 10+ red mobs here and expect to survive. Things are starting to slow down, which is what I expected. There really isn’t any rush at all, so we’ll probably stay here for a few days and reach our 250aa, then level to 50. Once that is completed, it will be time to take on Nagafen and Vox. I’m excited for that fight. The unlocks are account wide, so that will give my alts access to Kunark. I’ve been thinking about creating a mage/x/x combination, having pets doing most of the work for me might be nice.

Right now there is 50% experience bonus due to the April Fool’s event that took place yesterday. All of the character models and players were flipped upside down (there was an easy fix on discord for anyone who didn’t want to remain this way) – the bonus lasts until Sunday, which is lovely.

It’s not exactly the same thing as playing the original EverQuest, but I’m enjoying myself, it’s nice to hang out with my husband in game like we used to back when we were just starting to get to know each other. I enjoy reading everyones stories in /ooc, the game typically has around 3000-4000 playing at any one time and it feels very full of life.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

A Day in Castle Mistmoore

I’ve been playing THJ EverQuest EMU for two days now, and it has taken me some time to settle down with a selection of classes that I actually fully enjoy but I think I’ve finally found my combination. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed with having to purchase spells for three different classes, so I remade and I’ve been playing a berzerker/monk/paladin combination that seems to be everything I was looking for, at least so far.

My husband is still playing his berzerker/monk/rogue combination, and we’re currently level locked at 30. The advice from most is to lock here, and reach the current cap of 150aa before proceeding, so that’s what we’re doing. We created a respawning instance of Castle Mistmoore (this has a 2h timer, everything respawns but you won’t get any big named, the other version is a despawning version, big named will only spawn once, and I believe that instance is on a 14h timer). We can then farm the entire instance just the two of us – and experience happens to be zone wide because you’re in an expedition. While the husband is at work or doing chores, I can continue soloing the zone, and vice versa.

Right now I’m sitting at 82/150 aa earned. There’s also a gear leveling system, so we’ve been taking advantage of that. As you earn experience, any piece of gear (minus augments and bags) that you put in your ‘power’ slot, will level. Gear can come in 3 different flavours, the base version – an enchanted version – and a legendary version. It takes a long time to reach the legendary version of a piece of gear. These items can also drop in their base/enchanted/legendary versions, and you can sell them. I’ve been slowly working on my gear so that all of it is enchanted, and then I’ll contemplate working some to legendary (again, long process). I’m also thinking of starting some tradeskills, because why not.

The players on this EMU are lovely and helpful. All chat goes to the OOC channel which is also replicated on their discord server, so if you have a question about pretty much anything, you can search discord because chances are it has already been asked.

Once we reach 150aa we’ll go back to leveling and attempting to reach level 50. Our ‘big’ goal is to take down Lord Nagafen, and Lady Vox. We’ll see how that goes. It’s required to unlock the next stage of progress, and I’m pretty excited about it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!