Adventures in Telara

Last week, Trion’s MMO RIFT went free to play.  I don’t really mind paying subscription fees for high quality games, but in this case I was excited to return because I know this will bring a slew of new players to the game.  One thing about Rift is that there are public events (called ‘rifts’) all over the game and often times they can’t be completed solo. Or if they can, it takes a very long and tedious time.  RIFT is truly a better game when it’s lively and full of players at all levels, so now is the perfect time to hop in and give it a go.

I made a new cleric on the Deepwood server and played her to level 10 and had an okay time of it.  She seemed to level rather slow and I didn’t feel like a cleric.  She felt more like a mage/necro, since my damage spells were all primarily nukes.  I did however have some interesting bugs in which my face and head were missing…

Who needs a head anyway?

I also discovered the Dimensions system, which is Rift’s player housing.  It’s obviously very inspired by EverQuest 2, though I actually think it’s even more user friendly and robust.  It basically feels like EQ2′s housing system with better graphics.  It features the ability to rate other players’ dimensions and view the top rated, and I know that much of my day is going to be spent just browsing homes created by other players for ideas for my own dimension.  Since I am a ‘patron’ (aka a subscriber) I got almost 15,000 free credits to play with and a number of veteran rewards such as a couple dimensions to play around in.  My first one is completely empty and very tiny (I think everyone gets this dimension for free).

My other dimension is much better and features an indoor and an outdoor area to decorate.  It’s a jumbled mess right now…basically just everything I’ve ever gotten plopped down in the space to get it out of my inventory.

I ended up deciding to try out a rogue.  The Ranger class to be exact, which gives me a pet to play with and some more DPS so I can power through monsters and level quicker while solo.  I might end up regretting rerolling but I have a ton of characters spread out all over the level range so I can always go back and try something else if I get bored with the Ranger.  I decided to try out the Guardian side since apparently faction no longer matters in Rift.  You can group, guild, and talk to people across faction now.  So, yeah.

My new Hunter on the Faeblight server.

I joined up with a guild called Deviant which is basically an LGBT/kink/misfit guild that so far feels very welcoming, talkative, helpful, and friendly.  I think I made the right choice to switch to a new server, as Faeblight is the unofficial LGBT server and seems to have a lot of accepting guilds and nice people so far.

Here’s my screenshot dump for today.  RIFT is really a beautiful game and I always enjoy my time spent playing it.  I couldn’t care less about the story and the lore, but I like the combat, the features, and UI, the polish, the music, and the environment.  Click to enlarge!

EQNext Wins Best of Show at E3

It’s no secret that I have more than a soft spot for the EverQuest franchise, the game (EQ1) that introduced me to the world of MMOs and the community that made me fall in love with online gaming.  I’ve also always felt that EQ2 is still in the top 3 MMOs every made in terms of sheer number of features that appeal to the type of player I am (tradeskills classes, player housing, player created books, mentoring, etc.) and not nearly enough people have seen the immersive massive world that it boasts.

So it’s no surprise that I’m excited and proud that EQNext won the Best of Show award from Ten Ton Hammer without actually even showing their game to the public!

While we are sworn to secrecy on exactly what we were shown, what we can say is that EverQuest Next was hands-down the best game we had the pleasure of seeing during E3 2013. Franchise fans and MMO gamers across the globe will be able to learn exactly why that’s the case on August 2nd during SOE Live when EQNext is given its grand unveiling.

That is some exciting stuff.  Normally I try to avoid early hype but I know enough of the developers on the team that I know something truly special is in the making and I can’t wait to see it for myself and experience it firsthand.

 

Gaming all the things

So I spent Saturday doing something really awesome (yay, I’m married now!) and I have had relatives and friends in town for the last week so my gaming time has been random and inconsistent.  I haven’t logged into WoW in about a week, but I definitely need to do that before that thing happens where I never log back in.  I have so many things to do in the game so I don’t want to abandon it yet!  But there are a lot of things vying for my attention right now.

The first is Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  You guys.  YOU GUYS.  I bought a 3DS to pick this game up, and it was so worth it.  I’m pretty much obsessed.  This game is relaxing, funny, sweet, and I just can’t help but feel so happy while I am playing it.  I’m enjoying my time fishing and collecting things and decorating my little house and basically just being the best mayor of Echotown ever.    I love it.

I also picked up The Last of Us on the PS3, which is a good zombie game from Naughty Dog.  I’m finding it pretty difficult (I have to play on easy mode because I find shooting with console controllers to be too difficult) but I like the stealth aspect, the graphics, the characters so far, and the setting is nice.  I am hoping I can continue and don’t get bored with the game, because I had to drive all over San Diego Country to find a copy!

In World of Warcraft I did quite a bit during the last play session before taking my brief hiatus.  I found out that leveling cooking is way easier now that you can just go to Halfhill in Valley of the Four Winds and buy the ingredients right there, so I ended up leveling that up for quite some time and getting a few achievs out of it.

I also joined a PUG and killed Galleon in Valley of the Four Winds.  I didn’t get anything out of it except some gold and this fancy achievement.

So that’s it for me in WoW.  I’m still trekking toward level 90 and should have more time to play this week.

This place in Krasarang is so pretty.

 

 

Baby Tauren Tears & Healiemonk Mechanics

Oh my goodness you guys, no one warned me about the quest in Krasarang Wilds with Dezco and the baby Tauren!  I was all teary and I won’t spoil anything here, but jeez I was not expecting this.  Though it’s like the most common trope in any game or movie ever, but whatever.  I’m a sucker for adorable baby Taurens!

I’m still just questing along in Krasarang, but I did join a guild on Treetopsy!  I’m excited to have green text again and it seems like this guild is friendly.  It’s like, one of the top raiding guilds on Hordeside, but it’s also full of social/casual members so there are always people to chat with.  I’m hoping I can get over my fear of queueing for LFD so I can work on my mad healing skillz, and having a guild should help me out with that as long as there are guild groups going around for normal dungeons.

My fiance and I also spent some time last night playing around on our Gnome Monks.  We ran the Deadmines dungeon, which was our first dungeon together (we’re level 17 now).  I don’t know that I love the Mistweaver spec yet.  I mean, supposedly when I’m in my healieform, I’m supposed to be able to jab and kick and have it heal the lowest health person around me, but it doesn’t seem strong enough to do any healing worth talking about.  So basically, it’s just me doing some extra DPS and then casting my green healiebeam spell whenever our tank gets low enough.  Am I doing something wrong?  I kind of miss Druid & Priest healing.  But maybe it will get better as I get more abilities in my arsenal.

I also visited the Darkmoon Faire and did a few dailies, and couldn’t resist capturing a shot of Fiancemonk hanging out on the playground.

 

And one more adorable shot because newborn Tauren are SO FREAKING CUTE!

Lonely Times in Krasarang Wilds

Leaving Valley of the Four Winds for greener jungles.

Treetopsy dinged 88 last night, shortly after her first time stepping into Krasarang Wilds.  I love jungly zones, they’ve always been some of my favorites in WoW (Feralas is the best zone ever, hence why it’s in the header of this blog) and Krasarang is no exception.  Though I haven’t seen much of it, it feels like a real ecosystem with the tigers attacking the birds and so on.   I like it.

I’m still having a distinct lack of a guild and people to play with.  My previous guild, Reckoning, changed their guild name to Momentum and the old guild leader stepped down.  It’s now a rather empty guild, with pretty much only 2 people ever online at a time and not a whole lot of organized events that people actually attend.  I really miss having people to talk to and get to know.  I know that things like cross realm raiding and LFR are supposed to help out with these things, but I just feel so purposeless without a guild.   Server transfers are 50% off right now and I’d even be totally down to transfer somewhere with a more active and exciting guild.  I would maybe even consider faction-changing, but I think I’d be more likely to level up an alliance alt.  I do have a level 80 Night Elf Druid on Moon Guard that I could transfer somewhere, but she has 50 gold to her name and her gearset is all Guardian and there is no way I am tanking. I don’t even know why I chose Guardian on her in the first place (she was one of those insta-80 characters).

I really wish all the bloggers and people on Twitter were on the same server so there weren’t any decisions that had to be made about stuff.  But if you have a suggestion for a server or guild for me, Alliance or Horde, please leave them in the comments.  I’m fine paying money to play with nice people who acknowledge my presence when I log in.  I feel down in the dumps and alone.

 

Done with Valley of the Four Winds

Though most of my time has been spent on my Panda Shadow Priest, I decided to hop over to my ‘main’ Treetopsy and see how life in Pandaria is treating her.  It’s kind of difficult to remember where exactly I was in the scheme of things, but thankfully I had logged out in Nesingwary’s camp with a slew of quests to kill various animals, so obviously I was working on Nezzie’s quest line.  I spent much of tonight killing various foxes, deer, and turtles to finish up the questline.  Lo and behold, that was my last quest line in all of Valley of the Four Winds!  So, I’m finished with the zone and moving on to Krasarang Wilds!  Who knew I stopped playing when I was that close to finishing the zone!

I also found a rare named Jonn-Dar and decided to try killing him.  It look awhile but he wasn’t difficult, and I ended up getting a surprise achievement for it. Turns out he’s part of that Glorious! achievement that’s going to have me chasing down rares all over the damn world.  Oh well, one down I guess?

It was nice to be back playing my druid, but I really dislike playing Boomkin.  Obviously it’s not feasible to quest while Resto, and I’m real bad at Feral (and don’ t have a gearset for it).  This is why I wish I could level something else up to experience the quest content and then just do instances/LFD/LFR with my druid.  Maybe I’ll do that….keep leveling up this Panda Priest. Or maybe a Hunter, since they seem to be great for soloing & questing…and collecting pets would give me another fun thing to do.  This game just has SO MUCH TO DO, it’s ridiculous!  I wish I didn’t always get distracted and leave the game for months to years at a time, so that I could keep up with everything.  There is no way that little ol’ me can keep up with it all…  Oh well, at least I won’t ever be bored!

 

A Dungeon Sunday & My Wizard Hat

I didn’t get nearly as much time to play this weekend as I had hoped, but planning this whole wedding thing (mine!) is taking up a lot of my capacity to be organized and focused.  I played for a couple hours last night, and my goal was to venture to Hillsbrad and quest there to try to get more of Loremaster completed.  I queued up for the Dungeon Finder and ended up getting several achievements toward Classic Dungeonmaster.

I was finding myself kind of disappointed at how low my Shadow Priest was on the damage meters until I inspected the gear of my dungeonmates.  They were all decked out in those legendary Bind on Account twinking gear pieces.  Since I was mostly in level-appropriate greens, it’s no wonder that I was lagging behind so much!  Getting those pieces of gear has never been a priority for me.  I’ve never had a max level character that didn’t use the badges on themselves instead of on heirloom gear.

I did get a Noble’s Robe which I think is a pretty yet simple robe that drops in the Stockades.  It has the same model as a lot of other robes, but I believe its color is unique  It looks kind of good with my Faded Wizard Hat, which I am wearing until I get a hat item with stats but then never deleting.  This hat is awesome!  I got it after a long quest chain in Azshara, and it turns you into a random illusion for 30 minutes on a 30 minute cooldown. Meaning that I could be transformed 100% of the time if I actually wanted to do so.  Apparently the transformation used to persist after taking the hat off but this was hotfixed.  Making it less useful if I’m trying to do Serious Stuff ™ but perfectly satisfactory for goofing around (which is what I do 90% of the time anyway).

I put on my robe and wizard hat….

And look what the hat does….

Azshara complete, onward!

This game, you guys, this game.  Just when I think I’m done and I’ve moved on to either a new MMO or single player game, I find myself sucked back into Azeroth.  This game is just so good.  I’m not shy to admit it.  I was away on a business trip for a few days this week and pretty much every moment I was wishing I was playing World of Warcraft.  I just feel like I have a whole lot going on and so many things to do!

The good news is that after questing around last night, I’ve finally completed 100 quests in Azshara for the achievement!  I’m not actively trying to complete Loremaster, but I’d love for it to happen someday and this is a start.

I found most of the quests in Azshara to be generic and not terribly exciting.  However, all of the quests with Azuregos were awesome!  The entire quest chain including the Mage Trial quests was actually really great and it’s worth doing Azshara just for this quest line.  Plus the Mage Trials offer up a few achievements!  Somehow I only got two of them though.

Little Zenniya (my Pandaren Priest) is now level 24, which means something else exciting.  Shadowform!  Yep, that’s right, I finally look like the Shadow Priest that I am.  I kind of think Pandarens look silly as Shadow Priests though, but maybe it will grow on me.

I’m trying to decide which zone to go to next.  I still have a lot of Kalimdor zones left for the questing achievement so I might head to another Kalimdor zone and see if I can’t get myself into trouble.  A new zone is exciting because it means…..new battle pets to catch!  Woohoo!

I’m having a pretty lonely existence on my Pandaren since the guild I was in fell apart and seems to be nowhere to be found.  I’d like to find a different guild but I’m looking for the most perfect situation and I’m not sure I’ll find it.  I just want to find a group of active people to play with who don’t mind me popping in and out, like to do old zones for achievements and transmog gear, and run dungeons and do fun stuff.  I don’t care about raiding (at least right now).  I’m still on Wyrmrest Accord but I’d consider rerolling or transferring if the perfect guild out there is waiting for me elsewhere.  Comment and let me know!

 

 

 

Adventures Back in Azeroth

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, I patched up WoW and logged quite a bit of hours spread across a couple different characters.  Every time I take breaks from WoW and come back I am greeted by such a vibrant and deep world and I always wish I’d never left.  This time was no different.  All it takes is spending a bit of time in another various MMO to make you realize why WoW is the titan that has had such longevity at the top.  Cue the haters — but it’s such a brilliantly crafted game.

Half of my time was spent roaming around Azshara on my Pandaren Priest, who is now level 21.  I’m a bit overleveled for the zone (since I ran a dungeon the last time I played her) but I’m about 70/100 quests through the zone and I want to finish it with Loremaster in mind.  I just love that all of this is accountwide now so I can play all sorts of different characters and end up getting achievements anyway.  I also did a bit of pet battling with her, though I didn’t catch any rares in Azshara.  I do think the Turquoise Turtle is so darn adorable, so I was happy to pick that one up for my collection.  Since I dinged level 20 I was able to pick her up a mount, which speeds up our traveling around just a little bit.  Every bit helps!

I also managed to convince Mr. Cuppy to log in and play by telling him that we could make new little Gnomes.  We decided to both make a monk, him a tankymonk and me a healiemonk.  So far the class seems interesting, though I’m only level 11 so I don’t have a whole lot of abilities in my arsenal to play around with yet.  The chi mechanic is interesting, though it takes awhile to get used to the fact that you’re not supposed to hoard chi like you do with rogue energy.  I also introduced my fiance to the world of pet battling and he found it pretty addicting!  I even managed to pick up a rare Fluxfire Feline and a rare Alpine Hare!  Who knows how long we’ll continue to play those characters, but I had a blast roaming around with him, questing and finding pets to battle.

Hey, it’s a little cameo from everyone’s most (least) favorite League of Legends champion!

Why MMOs keep drawing me back in

I don’t really have many wants for games to purchase and play.  I’m pretty fortunate in that my budget set aside for gaming has allowed me to buy just about every game on Steam that I could possibly want, leaving me with over a hundred unplayed-yet-purchased games that I could install at any time.  Even right now, I’m sitting here with a pit of guilt for not finishing the last 2-3 hours I have remaining in Bioshock Infinite.  And there is currently a sale on The Witcher 2, a game that I’ve had on my Steam wishlist for awhile.  I’m avoiding buying it though, because I know that I won’t actually get around to playing it.  Iwill end up going back to various MMOs instead.

I have a few standbys that I stop into and get relatively invested in for weeks at a time before disappearing again.  WoW is the biggest culprit here, as it’s a game that feels dear and familiar to me every time I log in.  My characters are always there waiting for me, the world is vibrant and I love the lore and the achievements.  I have been subscribed to this game since 2004, so clearly I have a tie to the game.  Another common culprit for me is EverQuest II, a game that always feels like the best complete package of features that appeal to me — great character outfits, the most robust housing system, tradeskill classes, achievements, the old familiar EverQuest lore.  My current hobby is actually EverQuest 1, where I’ve started a little Half Elf Druid and I’m enjoying exploring EverQuest in a whole new way (they have actual QUESTS now!).  Another common one is LotRO, where I stop in now and then and sightsee but have never gotten over level 15 (much to my dismay — as it’s a pretty damn great game).

I think I know why I do this, why MMORPGs always pull me back in and seem so exciting even if the excitement is fleeting.  I just love the feeling of knowing that while I’ve been gone, a world and its community have continued to flourish without me.  I know that my character is a part of something bigger, and even when I’m not making meaningful changes to the world (after all, who really does in MMOS?) I still feel an obligation to see what has changed and who is inhabiting “my world”.  Single player games just exist in a vacuum for me.  No one knows if I logged in, if I finished the game.  There aren’t conversations happening around me, people to interact with (even if wordlessly questing in the same zone with them), monsters dying while I’m gone and loot being acquired.  I just love how I can stop in and the game has changed since the last time I played — new content, new players, new forum posts to read, new quests and achievements and expansions.  They feel like dynamic growing pieces of art that I can dip in and out of to smell the roses and expect them to feel familiar and cozy and wonderful.

Who knows how long I’ll be playing any given MMO.  I do wish I could get to max level in more of them and hop around from game to game at max level instead, but with my gaming style and my waning excitement I know that I probably will be doomed to alts in various worlds forever.