Well i havent posted anything in a while and prob lost my loyal readers, but hey lets see who is still out there.

Anyways not too much has been going on in my EQ2 world just working on Cinderbella she is finally lvl 70 and 58 sage, so i have been grinding her out. I have said this all to much but i love the shadowknight class and cant wait to work on her some more.

Also on my Origional toon Kuzab, me and a few Real life friends have created a New Guild and this guild dates back to the day of Eq1, “Heart of the Black Dragon” we had this guild in eq1 for the longest time and we accomplished so many differernt things before Eq2 was launched, we ran into each other in game a month ago and started the idea of bringing the guild back and see where it takes us. I am still part of my other guild i only took 1 toon out, i will always be part of my Knights i do not want to leave them.

However the new guild is going well we have 10 members and are working on getting the guild leveled up as of last night we are at lvl 9 or 10 i cant remember but is going well, of course no guild hall as of yet, just alot of Heritage quest and tradeskill writs are being done as well as collecting as many status items as i can. i must of spent 30plat on status items so far. the guild last i checked has 15Plat saved in the bank and we are working on saving for a GH and some basic aminities.
I feel the nastolgia from the past living again in this new day and age and enjoying the paladin class with Kuzab.

The guild is more or less a east coast guild looking for players that want to enjoy the game and proceed through it different challanges, we are Freeport based at this point and that makes it difficult for Kuzab to enter being only lvl 55 and KOS. But these are some of the challanges that we must face to make our mark on Norrath once again.
Sooner or later the Name “Heart of the Black Dragon” will strike fear in the eyes of Norrath once again.

Also i wanted to wish my readers a Happy Holidays at this time of the year what ever ritual your family may celebrate i hope it is the best one yet and remember to kiss and not kick a gnome during this time of the year, gnomes need love too.

untill next time, Happy Hunting in Norrath.

~Chubby~

Elite Master Bleakwind (or is it Bleakwing?)

‘Twas the hour before Christmas,

And throughout my house,

Computers were stirring,

And so was my mouse.

It just so happened that on this very morn,

What I thought was an ear pimple, was an infection born

Of much too much cleaning with cottony buds

And now I can’t wash my right ear, not with soapy suds.

Antibiotics are needed for recovery speedy

Can’t eat fatty foods. Is that sadness? Indeedy.

Yet to a gamer like me there is bliss to be found

In friends and adventures from Middle Earth bound.

Whether hobbit or dwarf, or man or elf,

It’s the heart of the warrior that beats in our selves.

Killed one hundred and ninety Ram Duath worms;

Some Drakes, and their matron, and Rare Elite Master burned.

Needless to say, it’s been a long day,

Doctors and LOTRO, and blogging, hoo-ray!

This simple poem shall now come to a close.

May the season see you well, and heavens willing, may I write better prose.

I haven’t been playing much of anything over this holiday season in the lead-up to Star Trek Online starting Open Beta in January. For me, half the fun of starting a new MMO is getting immersed in the lore, the community, the sites and podcasts and blogs that I’m going to visit for the duration, and this time is no different.

Most of my time these days is spent at the following:

Jupiter Colony: This is the forum for the Jupiter Frequency crew, who put out the STOked! podcast, of which I am also a fan. The people on this board are funny, friendly, and on top of their STO news, posting links with lightning reflexes. Most importantly, they are positive folks, which seems harder to find in a forum community these days.

The Older Gamers: This forum is less active, but I am sticking around because I guilded with TOG for Warhammer Online and I intend to guild with them again for STO. This is another nice, friendly crew and I look forward to being able to see some familiar faces/names when STO gets started.

Youtube: This has been an excellent source of leaked beta footage (spoilers ahoy!) in recent days, especially with user adarons (may his closed beta account rest in peace) who has done more to get me frothing about STO than even the official trailers.

MMORPG.com: The crew at MMORPG.com recently had their NDA lifted, so they have been doing a number of articles and features about STO that have opened the floodgates for even more curiosity and excitement. I enjoy camping out here, as long as I stay away from the forums….

…Which brings me to my main concern about STO: the community.

I am no longer worried about space or ground combat, or exploration content, or which pre-order gives which bonus or where I’ll fit into the holy trinity of ship design. I’m worried about the sheer levels of negativity that cloud the official forums, MMORPG.com forums, and Massively’s comment pages. I probably shouldn’t, because it’s not as though the comments have swayed my view of the game. I suppose I have a fear that the negativity will drive other people away, and I want to play with those people! The un-driven-away people, that is.

I’m just tired of the overuse of the word “fail” and the most dire predictions at the drop of a hat (or subscription). By no means do I think one can get a balanced view when surrounded by yes-wo/men and fangirls/boys all the time, but the dooming and glooming is too far over the top. It happens with such regularity now that I wonder if some of the people commenting even like any MMOs at all.

So I will be here, snug in friendly supportive communities who actually have hopes for a product to do well (and why wouldn’t I? Why would I want a product to fail just because I personally don’t enjoy it? Other people have families to feed, too, even Blizzard employees), and in the end keep my fingers crossed that there are simply more of Us than Them in the end.

One thing I did back when I was blogging on MMORPG.com was challenge myself to trial 12 MMOs in 12 months. I failed in terms of quantity – I only trialled 8 games in 2008 – but the experience was overall positive, even if I played a game I didn’t like. It let me see a wide range of titles (some of whom are no longer with us) and also let me go back and try out some ‘old’ MMOs that I’d probably otherwise never play. The great thing about playing older MMOs is that it gives you the ability to maybe see what people were talking about when the forum warrior talks about how Asheron’s Call was so much better than MMOs today and also provides the perspective about how much nostalgia colours their vision.

Given recent restructurings at EA Mythic (the ‘EA’ may be gone from the official Mythic name, but it is clear who calls the shots) I thought it was a case of now or maybe never to try out UO, the great granddaddy of the mainstream MMO and alleged BEST GAME EVAH according to a myriad of MMO forum posts. As with all of my trials, I try to just play the trial – I’m not out to read special short-cuts to max level or to get handouts from others. If I can, I avoid reading about how to play on websites.

Unfortunately I couldn’t avoid reading up on how to play UO because the tutorial doesn’t teach you how to talk to vendors. For a while there I thought that trial accounts couldn’t talk to vendors since right clicking and double clicking on a vendor didn’t achieve what I wanted, but a search pulled up the fact you have to type “<vendorname> vendor buy” or something similar to buy from vendors. Strike one in the negative for UO’s tutorial.

The black samurai has a long and proud tradition...

I created my character – a Samurai on the Oceanic server, since that is the server the game recommended – and did the tutorial, which was light on for the some of the reasons explained above. Leaving behind the Black Knight and now with some kind of stone, I wandered out in the world to find that I could only escort one NPC at a time and that NPC escorts had a 5 minute timer between repeats. “That’s fine,” I went. “UO is the home of the player created experience. King of the Sandbox. I’m sure it won’t be too long before I’ll be doing something interesting.”

I was wrong. UO might be King of the Sandbox MMOs, but it is Arch-Duke of the Skill-Grind MMOs as well. The basic quests – the ones given to every newbie who wanders in – is to get specific skills to lvl 50. Some are very easy – Focus skills almost every time you move or use another ability, for instance. If you fight enough minor undead who hang around the area, your weapon skill will go up to 50 – takes a little while though – and if you hang around even longer, your Parry will hit 50 too. Turn in the quest and you get some items. Neat.

But it was after I’d gotten to this point that I’d found that my Samurai quest giver required a skill level of 50 in Bushido and the only way to get that was to go back out and fight another heap of undead, this time using particular skills I had no idea the character possessed. So, another graveyard slaughtered and back I go for a sword that was inferior to the one the swordsmaster gave me. Plus I still only had access to the basic Bushido skills, so it was a lot of repetition for what felt like very little reward.

And then came the fishing. Oh, the fishing.

Down on the docks is a fisherman who lost his rod and wants you to catch some fish for him. It took me a while to work out I had to buy a fishing rod and fish for him (the lack of instruction on buying and selling to vendors strikes again!) but when I worked it out, I got to it.

All the realism of fishing with no return. So exactly like fishing.

And very quickly it turned into one of the most boring game experiences I can remember in a long time. Players often complain to devs that drop quests – where you have to kill a certain type of creature to get a certain item from them, with the item received potentially being randomly allocated so you have to kill an awful lot of Giant Boars to get 10 Giant Boar Hooves – are boring wastes of time. And often they are. But here was a drop quest where all I was doing was waiting for the skill to refresh without even the diversion of slaughtering some innocent woodland creature to pass the time.

It was a very dull experience catching five green fish (sometimes you caught fish that weren’t green, so they didn’t help). And then I tried to turn the fish in (through the annoying “Set Quest Item” process that was another roadblock to fun) and it turns out that either I read the flavour text wrong or the quest text needs to be updated because he actually wanted 20 fish, or something. Fortunately my newfound ability to speak to vendors let me buy those fish off another fisherman and turn them in instead.

And then there was the carpentry quest that required me to produce a factory line of footstools before I could make a chair. And in order to get wood for the carpentry, I needed to build up my Lumberjack skill to successfully harvest wood from trees.  Or the ninja quests that required me to hide enough times to get my Hide skill to lvl 50, but not every hide attempt was successful, so it was another exercise in waiting for skill timers to refresh. And their stealth quest that requires you to be in hide mode in order to use stealth, which you can’t do until Hide is skill lvl 20 (or something) and then you can start trying to grind out Stealth in 0.1% increment lots during the occasional times you successfully hide.

It was at this point my interest in UO didn’t so much die as it took my ego hostage and threatened to do bad things unless I stopped playing.

I’m sure there are people out there who will say that I’m not doing it right, or that UO wasn’t about the massive skill grinding but about what you could do after you’d completed all that massive skill grinding. They might be right. But having experienced UO, I completely understand why skill grinding macros were common in-game. It’s a huge barrier that will stop UO ever coming back into mainstream popularity.

The early UO players may have had access to a unique and special wonderland that may never be repeated, a world where almost anything was possible, but time has moved on. UO doesn’t offer anything to the new player to encourage them to stay and the grind is an active barrier to play. There might be hugely sophisticated systems waiting for those who understand the game, but the majority of players are never going to get there having quit after failing to catch a fish after the hundredth attempt.

(Author’s note: I may have got the name of some of the skills wrong, or the colour of the fish. I don’t really care since those are minor points to the main issue of UO’s trial not being fun.)

Just so everyone knows, Final Fantasy XIII isn’t the only show in town from Square Enix. The company recently announced that it had opened beta signups for PC users who want to test Final Fantasy XIV.

To sign up, just visit the following site, create a Square Enix account if you don’t have one, and follow the prompts to sign up for your chance to enter the beta. Just make sure to read the fine print.

Source: Kotaku

Candaith's Camp

I don’t have as many pictures as I’d like of the new Lone Lands, but I do hope the pictures I happen to have suffice for the time being.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Turbine revamped the Lone Lands with rome additional quests and NPC movements to make the experience of questing in the zone flow better through the overall story of your character. After going through Othrongoth and beating the stuffing out of some baddies, Tom Bombadil tells you to visit Saeradan, who will then tell you to go visit Candaith’s camp in the Lone Lands.

Normally, this would require an immense amount of backtracking through Bree and the Midgewater Marshes, but if you talk to Saeradan again, you’ll get the option to take an automated horse ride through the backroads of the weather hills to get to Candaith. Along the way (not pictured), you’ll also see some additional questgivers in a small encampment, that ask for your help in getting their stuff back.

You follow the quests of Candaith, which make you go through a couple of additional steps to get to Radagast the Brown. Specificallly, you must now retake Weathertop as part of the book quests, and also gain sufficient reputation with the Eglain, a new reputation group, to proceed. While you could always just take the road to Ost Guruth, you’ll be gimping yourself out of some much needed experience to get past the enemies, as well as some potentially interesting rewards from the rep vendor.

The Eglain tell you of Radagast's whereabouts

Going back to the path, you’ll notice that some NPCs have been moved to Eglain encampments, one of  which you’ll get to as part of the book quests.  After proving yourself to them, you’ll be told where to go, and also be given a secondary quest: to visit an underground ruin known as Iorvinas.

The Front of Iorvinas

What happens in Iorvinas? Well, the dwarves give you some additional quests that tie into the orcs and dwarves in the area. You’ll get a mix of the old, previously existing quests, as well as some new ones to hunt down orcs and Dourhands inside the ruins. It should take all of 30 minutes to do, and gives dwarf and Eglain rep as well.

Inside Iorvinas

Moving on, we find ourselves at Ost Guruth, where some changes have also been made. There’s now a Skirmish Camp right outside the exit leading to Haragmar and the Circle of Blood, so if you hit level 30 here, you’ll want to try it out.  Relating to the Eglain reputation you’ve been building up, there’s also a reputation vendor available in the outpost that you might want to visit.

Basically, the Eglain reputation vendor (located a few feet away from Friederic the Elder) has some nifty new rings and pocket items (including a set) you can use to get the upper hand on your foes, if you have 100 or so silver (per item) and the appropriate rep level. They’re a bit numerous so I didn’t take pictures of them, but if you’re in the 22-32 level range, they should be helpful. The Eglain rep vendor also has those repeatable crafting quests if you wish to take them, and I’m sure you will, if you want to hit kindred with them.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been able to do so far. I’m currently level 29 now, so I should be done with all of Lone Lands very soon. I just need to spend a little more time at it, is all. Keep checking here for additional Lone Lands impressions as soon as I take more screenshots.

Our clearing ICC is not a fluke in any way, shape or form. We went ahead and did it again. This time with (techinically) no wipes on bosses. I say technically because we had a clean one shot on Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper and Saurfang but we did lose our take during the Airship Battle and decided to flush the attempt and retry. We also tried a different tactic on Saurfang but with the boat docking being fixed, it wasn’t possible to do and Saurfang reset – which is fine.

As has become tradition, I used Distracting Shot on Saurfang instead of one of the adds that spawn, FDed and got people to call out, “Let the tanks get agro!” or maybe it was the other version, “Watch agro!”. Hehe

We did have one wipe on trash were we got a few groups and triggered the traps for activating the big giant skeletons.

Raid logs… I’m back on top!

For awhile there I was trying something out with gear and it didn’t quite work out. With some feedback from our DPS advisor, I got back on track and sorted out some issues. The two big things were dropping Arcane Shot from my rotation and not ’saving’ my cooldowns.

Dropping Arcane Shot was a big one, it means Improved Steady Shot will pop more often because you’re using Steady Shot more and it also means you’re consuming less mana. Because I’m consuming less mana, I don’t need to shift to Viper as much. I only switched to Viper once in that raid and it was only for a short time.

Making use of 30 seconds of Rapid Fire haste bonuses definitely increased my DPS (Rapid Fire for 15 seconds, Readiness, Rapid Fire for another 15 seconds). I also took more control over my Pet’s Call of the Wild ability so that it will going when I’m using Rapid Fire. Knowing the fights, it was easy to pick times for when to use this. I even used it for the 10-15 second breaks between adds on Lady Deathwhisper thanks to the raid leader calling out how much time we had. Of course, use of Rapid Fire also provides mana regen so not skipping out on that helped a lot too.

For Lady Deathwhisper, I was on the adds. You can see the where the other Hunter was on the charts, that was about where I was. It’s not easy to get the DPS numbers up while on the adds because you’ve got to switch targets and move a bit more than if you’re just focused on Lady Deathwhisper. I did keep a Sting going on her while dealing with the adds and we got the adds down with enough time to switch over to her and get some shots in. Keeping a Sting going on her is ideal for Hunters. It’s fire and forget. You do more damage with Serpent’s Sting, but if you fire Viper, you get a fair bit of mana back from her while affecting her shield which is powered by mana. Ideally you’d alternate Serpent Sting and Viper Sting if mana is an issue, if it isn’t then using Seprent Sting is better.

I walked away with some upgrades again; a new cloak and a new belt. Thanks again to Tim for helping get the gems in order! I also managed to gather up materials to finally replace my boots with an Ulduar recipe drop for Leatherworkers which I should get sometime today. Of course, I’ll have to enchant them and get two gems for them too.

I suspect I’ll be farming for a the next little while…

Wotcha everyone,

I remember reading an interview with some of the developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (that’s the first one, not the sequel that’s just been released) shortly after it was released.

From a game design theory stand-point it was really interesting.  Yes, I do find that sort of thing interesting, special geek that I am.  What was most revealing was their design philosophy as to player “rewards” during the single-player campaign.  They stated that rather than give a big payoff at the end of a level (most usually done by virtue of the end-of-level boss fight and a cut scene), their aim was to give out a “That was cool!” moment, every thirty seconds of gameplay.

With a constant drip-feed of reward, there are no “dead” parts to the game; parts that you endure, in order to get to the good stuff.

It worked for me; I was hooked, and that game remains one of my favourite gaming experiences.

MMOs are usually all about the big payoff.  Get a new level, and BANG!  New Stuff!  Then there’s instancing and raiding; it’s all about the boss fight, to the extent that anything else in the instance is automatically termed “Trash”.  I suppose that’s how much we care about the bits between boss-fight payoffs.  The trash is there to be endured…

I’ve finally realised what the underlying reason for my enjoying Fallen Earth so much is.

The post-apocalyptic setting, the humour (that just clicks with me in exactly the way that Blizzard’s doesn’t), the crafting, all of these are things that add to the enjoyment, but aren’t the main reason.

I’ve finally figured out that the reason that I really, really like Fallen Earth is that I get rewarded so often, and sometimes it’s over the smallest things.

I don’t need to get to the next level to gain a reward; every time I do something new, or craft something new, or gather from a new node, I get a reward.  Every time I peel back another layer in the fabulous crafting system, I get a reward.  And the best thing is that I feel like I’ve earned it, because Icarus have chosen not to make it easy for me.

I’m being rewarded constantly, and that gives me such a warm feeling in my tummy.

Cheers,
Hawley.

I’m talking about the Twin Valkyries encounter in Trial of the Crusader.

Old news?

Yeah, it is since we’ve been beating them on regular 10 and 25 man runs, but we just managed to be the Heroic 10 man version of that encounter last night.

If you know the encounter, you know what I’m talking about. We all had a giggle when the raid leader was talking about and assigning people to ’suck white balls’ and ’suck black balls’.

For those that don’t know, in this encounter you’re facing off against two valkryies; one is black and the other is white. There are four portals around the room, two white and two black. If you click on the portals you get assigned a color which acts as a buff that doubles your damage against the valkryie of the other color.

During the encounter you may have to switch for  a couple of reasons; one puts a shield up and will heal if you don’t get the shield down and interrupt or they might start doing AOE damage to anyone not using the same color buff as the valkryie that is casting it (i.e. if the white one starts AOEing, you need to have the white buff). Their HPs are linked so you can do damage to either one and you always want to be targeting the one opposite your color. As mentioned, you can and have to switch colors by clicking on the portals.

On top of all that, there are these black and white balls zipping around the room. They randomly bounce off the walls and change direction. If you have the white buff and get hit by enough white balls (you sloot) then you get a temporary buff to damage. If you get hit by black balls (while you have the white buff) you take some damage. The reverse is true when you have the black buff; you want black balls and don’t want the white balls hitting yout. To make it even more fun, when these balls hit you, they explode and do a very small AOE effect.

Now in Heroic mode, you might be able to eat two of these hits which means you want some people in differnet colors protecting the damage dealers for the balls of the opposite color. So they get to suck balls.

We actually had a really productive raid night. We started by heading back into Icecrown Citadel and taking another shot at Lady Deathwhisper. We got pretty close but needed more DPS so with flipped a healer to DPS and took her down in the second attempt. That got me a sweet bow upgrade – which was surprising.

We then moved on to the Airship battle; getting some of the faction required to actually get a free ring from the Ashen Verdict folks. The ring is SWEET! I’d say it is better than the one I got from EoTs and raid drops so I’m using that and the Dextrous Band thing. Oh right, the airship battle was good fun too. We one shotted it, regrettably. We should have wiped just to do it again and again. You’re on an airship when another one attacks. Your cannons are supposed to damage the enemy ship while part of the raid deals with the boarders. At certain points a Mage will step out and freeze your cannons so you need to use a rocket pack to rocket jump over and kill the mage. You need tanks to also occupy the enemy Captain. Then you pop back over and start using the cannons again.

got to use the cannon and jump over to the other side. It was actually pretty fun.

Like I said, we downed it on the first try though we did lose two people who were still on the other ship when it went down. Sorry Tim!

We hit a bit of a bug there where the ship didn’t continue and dock where Saurfang is so we all died and popped back in.

Saurfang was a challenge, but we got him in the second (or was it third?) attempt which got us an achievement for doing so. I won’t lie, it was pretty damn close and we called to wipe it up but the remaining few managed to finish him off. His encounter wasn’t too bad aside from needing to do a lot of DPS and dealing with some adds that spawn and could really screw things up. That was fun; I got assigned as one of the people on that duty which involved kiting it a little.

Surprised at how smoothly all that went, we then decided to take a crack at the Heroic 10 man version of Trial of the Crusader where we had stalled on Lord Jarraxxus simply because we weren’t getting the portals down in time. In the heroic version, the portals and volcanoes that spawn adds stay open and keep spawning stuff if you don’t destroy the portals as opposed to only one Mistress or two Infernals, they will keep coming. If you get two Mistresses, you’re almost guaranteed to wipe because of some of their abilities.

It was pretty close but we pulled through just as a portal appeared and started spawning Mistresses which meant we got the achievement for having two Mistresses up while LJ died. I think we two or three shotted this one.

I’m too lazy to look it up – I do know I died early in one of the first attempts because I got the Legion of Flames thing just as a portal was coming up so I had to move away and we didn’t get the portal down. That isn’t ego talking; you really need everyone to execute or you wipe. There is no carrying people through the heroic versions.

Next was Faction Champions which we two shotted, the second time going handledly. Nothing all that exciting here, it’s sort of like PVPing against people only they have about 10-20 times your HPs hehe.

And then we got to the two Valkryies who really like balls. As I said above, we beat them and moved on.

The final boss just wasn’t happening. It’s different enough from the regular and 25 man regular version that you have to practice it so we’ll practice it some over the next week.

Overall it was a successful night.

I wasn’t overly pleased by my DPS and I haven’t been for a little while. It’s like I hit a bit of a wall at 4k. I’ve been running my gear and stuff through various spreadsheets and calculators and they’re suggesting I should have about 800-1000 more DPS based on my gear and rotation. I had a talk with one of the guys who is knows DPS and has a lot of raider friends and he suggested some changes to my spec and rotation (namely dropping Arcane Shot from the rotation, replacing it with Steady Shot). I did seem to do better, but still not where the sites are telling me I should be.

I think I know where I’m going wrong; I’m saving the cooldown items for a rainy day when I should get used to using them regularily. I tend to hold off on Rapid Fire, Readiness and my Trinket which means I miss out on some potential DPS.I think I might macro Rapid Fire in with Steady Shot or put a modifier on there, same with Silencing Shot; I might macro that in with the others on a modifier where as before I was always firing it when it was up – with the modifier I can get a little more control over it in the times I might need to have it up. I think I also need a little more Haste Rating, RAWR is telling me to gem for Haste only, even losing my metagem bonus – heh. Which I’m not going to do but there are some tweaks I need to do because I appear to have too many Yellow gems.

I’m going to have to spend a little time on the target dummy and see if I can work all that in.

Seven years ago a story began in the world of computer gaming. A classic RTS series began to branch off into attempting to tell a story via strategic gameplay, a story that would capture the minds of a generation of gamers, and introduce more people to the world of Azeroth.

The fate of Prince Arthas Menethil is not a unique one in the canon of storytelling. The trope of the tragic, fallen hero is as the earliest known oral histories. From Lucifer to Sauron to Darth Vader, our mythos are replete with the story of the hero whose very pathological failings, whose hubris, leads him or her to the path of darkness. Gamers watched, helpless behind the fourth wall, as Arthas slipped from the tightwire of righteous vengeance into anger, hatred, madness, and finally, desolation.

From this...

Since November of last year, the entire game world of World of Warcraft has been focused on a single theme: the Lich King, that malign entity that has absorbed the identity of Arthas Menethil. The story begun in Warcraft III has finally come to its apex: the gates of the Lich King’s stronghold are open, and the path to the Frozen Throne has begun to clear.

The game itself, however, is what has evolved the most. When World of Warcraft started its run five years ago, the MMO genre was a particularized, specialized genre more familiar to those that had played early social gaming experiments like MUDs and MUSHes. The allure of the social world is that traditional gameplay and structure can be sacrificed for what is called “emergent gameplay,” or inventive or interesting ways to play traditional games.

World of Warcraft changed this by opening up gameplay to those who were not willing or able to sink massive amounts of time into the game… slowly. The myth of the “hardcore” gamer is slow to die, or the idea that raiding requires a significant investment of time, persist even in the much-more casual friendly world of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. To that end, the WoW developers have undertaken a mighty endeavor: make the endgame content accessible to all players, regardless of “dedication,” while retaining enough high-difficulty rewards to fascinate more intense players that desire more of a challenge.

The third (and presumably final, cough Sunwell cough only a setback cough) patch of Wrath of the Lich King is Patch 3.3.x, “Fall of the Lich King.” The introductory cinematic is simple, yet tremendously emotionally effective: Terenas Menethil appears in ghostly form to speak to what is left of his son and heir within the Lich King. He warns him that justice is coming. Arthas’ soulless eyes of blue fire crackle with intensity, contempt, and… fear? Worry? His plots have been foiled at every turn, from the Nexus War to the Wrathgate to Light’s Hope Chapel. His lieutenants Kel’Thuzad and Anub’Arak are vanquished. Even the driving force behind the creation of the Lich King, Yogg-Saron, rots in a pool of his own vileness in the Titan vault of Ulduar. These are strange aeons indeed.

To this.

The patch itself brings a major overhaul not just in the story of the World of Azeroth, a story which has remained somewhat static since the end of The Frozen Throne over half a decade ago. Players are now encouraged to run dungeons more and more often, able to link with players from all across their battlegroup via the new Dungeon Finder interface. Tanks and healers (understandably) have an easier time finding random group: waits of over a minute are uncommon, and waits over over ten seconds (!) are rare for well-geared players. Getting the gear necessary to play at the highest levels of PVE and PVP play has never been easier: with unlimited dungeon runs rewarding literally handfuls of in-game gear currency (Emblems of Triumph and Frost) at a time, outfitting a newly-leveled character to Icecrown-ready gear levels is a matter of hours and days rather than months. Accessibility of the endgame has been increased.

This has generated no small amount of ire among those who feel entitled to unique or special status for being an “endgame-minded” player. On the other hand, there is a greater “investment,” emotionally, in the conclusion of the Lich King’s story arc than there was for the original World of Warcraft endgame, or even the slightly-retconned Outlands storyline, and for that, giving up some hardcore exclusivity at the highest levels for including more people in that story is not just good business… it is good storytelling. And that is the most impressive thing about the “Fall of the Lich King” patch: the presence of a satisfying conclusory arc to a story that has enthralled us for a long, long time.

My gaming partner and I have been rather inactive on the MMO front recently, due to Real Life(tm) constraints. We play infrequently enough that we only racked up 7 days played out of our 14-day free Vanguard trial, and did not make it off the trial island during that time. I also logged on to the Allods Online beta a few times, playing a different race, class, and faction than I planned to at launch so as not to burn out; unsurprisingly I was then unable to form an attachment to the character I created specifically for its disposability (although those Gibberlings sure are cute).

The more I learn about Allods, the more I realize it won’t be a game I will be able to enjoy due to its open-world PvP and group/guild-driven content. It looks and plays beautifully and I wish it every success – especially in breaking the common stereotype of free-to-play game inferiority. Given the limited spans of time in which I have to play, however, I simply cannot get heavily involved in a game that requires large amounts of group collaboration to proceed. This will probably result in my playing anyway, but having several characters parked around level 20. This is actually fine with me.

We miss Vanguard, and intend to return to it at some time in some capacity, but with Star Trek Online on the horizon we don’t consider it worthwhile to potentially maintain two subscriptions for games we barely have time to play (again I register my protest with the subscription model for requiring me to make decisions like this). Instead I am brushing up on my STO information, watching vidcasts and leaked beta footage, reading every piece of news and every interview that the developers see fit to release.

The last time my better half was excited enough about an upcoming MMO to pre-order it was when Warhammer Online was about to be released, and we had nearly six months of rip-roaring fun in that game. This was before shifting populations, class imbalances, and the server-merging tango caused us to cancel our subscriptions. But on the scale of Game Chosen to Fun Had, he’s 1 for 1, so when my partner makes excited noises about commanding the U.S.S. Enterprise via Gamestop pre-order, I know well enough to simply follow along and offer the services of my Borg bridge officer (courtesy Amazon.com pre-order, of course).

I still have reservations about several aspects of the game:

• Ships are boring: Space combat looks boring to me, though I realize there are several complicated factors taking place at any given time; I am certain to suck at it because I suck at things I find boring and complicated. No, I never really played space games as a kid. Heck, I even sucked at Asteroid.
• Moving like a plastic doll: Ground combat still looks a bit unpolished to me, but it’s getting noticeably better. The more beta footage I watch, the better I feel about it, so I’m open to changing my mind about this one.
• Pretty Pretty Princess: I love the Star Trek franchise, for watching, but I’m not sure how much I will enjoy living in it. I haven’t had much success getting excited about games outside of a fantasy setting (sorry, Fallen Earth!), largely due to the lack of resources to dress my characters as prettily as I like. If there is a social clothing option for hanging out at the spaceports/Quarks equivalent, and/or the ability to dress my Captain in a TOS skirt uniform, this will go a long way to alleviate my worries. (I’m not a fan of the miniskirt per se, but do I like skirts and it certainly is a skirt)
• What do you mean, “content?”: Will this game suffer from the lack of content issues that plague(d) Champions Online, and how will this manifest in a game that is said to have procedurally generated planets for exploring and episodic mission content? Would that mean that there are no planets to explore at launch, or only three out of thirteen Episodes are complete? How will this impact me, a 5-10 or fewer hour per week player?

However, I do love the following: 

• NPC Bridge Officers/Away team members: Oh, Guild Wars henchman model, please allow me to make out with you for a moment. Thank you for letting me have the option of joining my better half’s away team, or join up with him with my own team of NPC pets for planet exploration. I think I love you.
• Art style: It seems most people are either in the love or hate camps for the Champions Online graphic style, but I was rather on the fence about it once I realized I could turn cell shading off. The style Cryptic has gone with for STO is much preferred, however, and I find myself wishing they had gone in this direction for CO as well. I especially like the look of space – I don’t care if space isn’t as busy in real life – this is worlds more fun to look at, and I’m here to have fun.
• These quotes:  

“Some of the systems you discover will have combat and others some will have non-combat missions. Many involve acquiring and delivering certain commodities like industrial replicators or medical supplies. There are also thousands of points of interest throughout space and on planet surfaces that can be scanned.

“You can bring this data back to planet Memory Alpha. Collect the right data, and you may learn how to create something new, or you may peak the interest of a prominent Bridge Officer who may offer to join your crew.

“What you can expect is that your Bridge Officers will often work something like mission Contacts. For instance, if you fly by a spatial anomaly, your science officer may speak up and say he detected some unusual activity, and prompt you to explore it.”

            Oh, please be like that for real, and not like the “bears, bears, bears” of Warhammer Online. If you can do this, Cryptic, I’m yours.

Hi folks,

This is Victor Stillwater, coming to you live from the future. Present Victor is currently indisposed as he was/is writing a paper on the possible effects of dividing by zero and was/is thus stuck in the fabric of space-time between parallel universes. For that reason, instead of the brand-spanking new computer I was supposed to use in December 11, 2010, I am instead using our reliable gaming computer from 2009, which is a dedicated Windows XP machine.

ANYWAY…

I just wanted to update folks on what’s been happening to me, Future Victor, in the year so since the time-space warping or possible reality distortion of Present Victor.  It’s been a pretty exciting year for gamers, what with the many great releases and other life-altering events that occurred since… well, I’m not even sure if there is a “since,” given that I may be from an alternate future reality. Who knows, really?

Anyway, after resubscribing to Lord of the Rings Online, I spent a good couple of months just enjoying the content, trying to get myself to 65. Apparently, Present Victor’s gamble paid off, and there was a Christmastime discount on subscriptions and Mirkwood, so I got to enjoy Mirkwood for a little while.

I also learned to juggle multiple games. I’m not a multi-tasker but for some reason, when February rolled around, and White Knight Chronicles came out for the PS3, I knew I had to learn how to adapt to multiple awesome releases, especially since Final Fantasy XIII would come out four weeks later.  I did manage to finish White Knight Chronicles and skirmish my heart out in LOTRO, just in time for Final Fantasy XIII’s release, and I can safely say, Final Fantasy XIII’s storyline is just as good, if not better than Final Fantasy VII’s, thanks to the inclusion of Day One DLC for Final Fantasy XIII: Sephiroth.

Of course, I had to take a change in subs as I was extremely curious about Final Fantasy XIV, which came out a week ago in Future Victor time. It’s still got some of the nagging issues of requiring some miniscule amount of grinding, but crafters will rejoice, as it manages to enhance the crafting system found in EVE Online and Fallen Earth by allowing people to queue up items to be created through an online application that can be accessed through internet-capable phones.  Best of all, in Final Fantasy XIV, you don’t even need to store items in your inventory to create them! Just log out near a bank and you can craft using anything you have in your inventory AND in your bank vault.

Sadly, I, Future Victor, never got to play Fallen Earth again. Connection issues still remained.

In any event, folks who’d want to try blogging from the future may best be served by writing a paper on the possible effects of dividing by zero and see where it goes from there. There’s a lot of game space out there in 2010, and there’s bound to be a gem or two that I’ve missed, and a couple of dead MMOs that I’ve not discussed for fear of destroying the barrier that surrounds the parallel universes.

Cheers,

The Future Victor Stillwater, who’s reportedly just as awesome as the present one, albeit slightly slimmer.

Introducing Civrot, My new Warden

So, two days ago, I decided to start over with an entirely new Warden that had all the money of my old one. From Civrotian Stillwater, I am now Civrot. I abandoned my older, smaller house, and decided to work towards getting myself not only a new mount, but also a bigger, better,  house.

In addition to attempts to amass gold, I also decided to take pictures of my adventures, making sure to note down any changes that have been made since Mirkwood got up and running (or at the very least, since the last time I played).

These include the addition of the following horse stables and faster-travel locations, which I have taken the liberty of capturing below:

Wes Brittleleaf, Stablemaster at Adso's Camp

A stable master named Wes Brittleleaf at Adso’s Camp. Alas, poor Adso’s inn still has yet to be built.

A faster-travel station available from Saeradan's Cabin

There is now a faster travel station available from Saeradan’s Cabin. As far as I can tell, it only leads to Candaith’s Encampment, as seen above, and only if you’ve traveled to Candaith’s place to begin with. If I’m mistaken, and Saeradan offers rides elsewhere, please let me know.

Earl Beechwood, Stable master for Hengstacer Farm

And then, there’s also Earl Beechwood, who is now a Stable Master at Hengstacer farm. Related to this, I also noticed (but forgot to take a picture of) the horse seller at Hengstacer was selling a starter horse for people who’ve hit level 20. So long as you have 220 silver, you can actually purchase your own horse already. Sure, it’s got low HP and is marginally faster than a Warden’s Forced March technique, but at least you’ve got a horse.

Also, Questing while mounted!

Another nice thing about it is that you can quest while mounted, as noted in the Mirkwood patch notes.

On another note, it’s nice to know that these are available even if you haven’t bought Mirkwood yet. As Mirkwood seems so far away, I’ve yet to purchase the expansion for myself. So far, it’s working fine, and I’m able to enjoy some of the awesome changes brought about by the recent expansion without the need for the actual thing.

With the first week of Darkfall, an expansion and a hotfix behind me it’s time to write a small review! The expansion was a great addition to the game, the magic spam was reduced to bearable and everyone now can choose some of the melee and archery specializations! The ai after the hotfix is pretty much ok and scalable! Enjoy the pve with good loot and a dose of difficulty! I have yet to see naval combats and sea fortress sieges but this will come with my recruitment to a clan!

Moreover my toon, as an orc i have reached the skill of 2h axe at 40 with lesser magic at almost 80 and archery at 50. I spent most of the time exploring the orc lands doing quests and socializing with all the new faces. The starting areas are quite populated the last days with the expansion and the greek-only trials so you can always get pked from some random dude!

Although the expansion and it’s additions were succesful and many people returned to the game, it’s necessary to pinpoint the problems AV facing with the patching process and the poor work of the QA department, especially the wandering mobs don’t work very well for the moment and they are pretty much de-synced but after the first week of patching everything will be as it should!

And for the ending we have…iHope and his pvp awesome sauce :

http://www.wegame.com/watch/darkfall-pvp-ihope-ugotlewt-5/

PS: Thats why sandbox mmos are great

Since there are no bullets in Middle Earth, I suppose I’ll have to say that I bit the arrow instead of the bullet.

I resubscribed to LOTRO, as the ISP was taking way too long in remedying my Fallen Earth-related issue, and they also weren’t giving feedback about the status of my ticket. Since there’s nothing keeping me from playing LOTRO right now, I decided to just jump back in again, except in a different way.

I’m going to start over on the same server, with the same guild, and with the same class (a Warden). The reason for this is that I want to take screenshots of any changes I come across in my travels, such as the addition of new horses and stable masters. Hopefully, this trip of mine to get a character from 1-65 will be an interesting one as I encounter new and old things that seek to stand in the way of my butt-kickery.

In any event, a screenshot post will follow, with some of my observations from Bree and its surrounding environs.

EDITED TO ASK: How do I create posts on WordPress where the pictures are thumbnails or smaller versions of the original picture that link to a full version of the picture?

Or dwarf.

Yesterday’s raids ended up being a crack on older WotLK content. We took a stab at Sarth 3D. That would be Sartharion (or whatever) while all three drakes were up. This means we needed to kill him, fast. If we didn’t, the raid would wipe.

Now, they had done it before and even I was present and tanked the Sarth 2d attempt (I believe I was on drake duty), but that was as Lannister. As Smaken, I had not yet set foot in the instance. In fact, it was the last raid I needed for the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.

We took several stabs at it but ended up wiping for various reasons, we were close every attempt, but not close enough. Until the last attempt, we were so close by the time the second firewall came up, but people started dropping like flies until there was only two people left; the Spirit Healer form of our Priest and…

Go figure, the title was a spoiler.

That’s right, I was the last person standing and I finished that damn dragon off!

Truth be told, I didn’t have to stay alive for too much longer, just a few seconds more and down the dragon went. Because of the firewall, I had to get in close so I couldn’t use my ranged attacks until I Disengaged out and fired off my big hitting abilities.

I have to say, it was pretty awesome.

Five achievements completed:

1. Besting the Black Dragonflight – 10 man raid complete
2. Champion of the Frozen Wastes – a ton of other achievements required…
3. Twilight Assist – defeating Sarth with one drake up
4. Twilight Duo – defeating Sarth with two drakes up
5. Twilight Zone – defeating Sarth with three drakes up

That last one got me another title on top of,  “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” which was, “of the Nightfall”.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

There is something to be said for losing yourself in an alternate reality. Sometimes though, when we want to escape the realities we’re given, but we’re forced to choose from diverging paths. we have a tough time choosing where we want to go. This is how I feel right now.

I have to choose between fighting the forces of Sauron or surviving a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Let me tell you, the choice isn’t easy. Even though I’m leaning towards one world already, I have no idea if it’ll stay that way.

You see, as much as I love Fallen Earth, my ISP hasn’t given me a timetable as to when my issue will be resolved, much less whether it’ll be resolved to begin with.  At the same time, I love Lord of the Rings Online, and don’t have connection issues there, but after Fallen Earth’s crafting system, it feels as if everything pales in comparison.

Both have intriguing storylines, one serious and steeped in existing lore, and the other with a world that’s constantly being developed and expanded upon.  Both have satisfying systems of progression, and make an awesome ding sound when you level up. Both have tons of loot begging to be taken, and I’m still weighing my options.

Right now, I’m leaning towards going to Middle Earth, since the connection is relatively stable for that game, and it’s been revamped with the Mirkwood expansion, and I have an established guild waiting for me on one server and some trusty blogging friends on another.  Still, I’m thinking of what to do, seeing as I don’t know how long I can maintain playing the game. I guess I’ll just have to be patient and wait a little while longer for some sort of answer to come to me.

Arguments for either world would be much appreciated though.

So we have patch notes! Servers are up and running! GG AV!

I am thisclose to throwing the biggest temper tantrum about Guild Wars 2’s release date, on the heels of this new trailer hitting the internet. Why can’t it be 2011 yet? Why do I have to flounder about, sampling every MMO under the sun, when I know my one true love has yet to even enter beta, and I’ll drop every subscription game I managed to hold on to as soon as it’s released?

Oh, how I yearn for thee, Guild Wars 2, with your sexy Norn and your endearing Asura and your… well, yes, sexy Charr, your, um… enigmatic Sylvari? I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing an Asura at launch. That and a Human. And a Norn. And possibly a Charr.