Today’s announcement from EA/Bioware confirms that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going Free to Play this Fall. There is a published FAQ for the change over. The change isn’t a huge surprise to be honest. Hopefully the change over brings new players into what is a wonderful, story driven game. I know that I will be returning when the mood strikes me to finish the story lines.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
LOTRO: Farmer’s Faire
Pains me to report that it is still horribly laggy on Landroval and frustrating. The Drunken Hobbits quest in particular is just tedious and not a fun gameplay mechanic. The ability of other players to ruin the questing experience for a large number of people is NOT gameplay that leads to subscription retention or future subscriptions. Fishing quests based entirely on luck that are once a day are also not a gameplay mechanic I’m highly fond of, especially when completing one of those quests did not result in any festival tokens being rewarded.
Despite my desire for a couple of the new cosmetic armor pieces, I don’t think I’m logging back in to attempt to grind festival tokens for this event. Summer Festival is launching in mid-August so I will wait and see how that festival is. If you are brave enough to delve into Farmer’s Faire, Casual Stroll has the best guide I’ve found so far. Good Luck!
LOTRO Fashion (
) and Cosmetic LOTRO (
)are great blogs with amazing visuals of the new cosmetic armor. I applaud both of them for their patience!
Rift: Beginning Adventures
First off let me issue a small confession, I am the world’s most spoiled wife. Sure there are other wives who are swimming in jewels, money, and material things but they are not spoiled. I am spoiled simply because I have the love of a good man who manages to surprise and indulge me all the time. He noticed I was having fun playing Rift and he silently converted my trial to subscription, he decided to join me as well, making my game play that much more fulfilling. It’s the little things he does every day that make me cherish him and realize he makes my life complete. It is a very safe assumption that after all these years, I love him more today than I thought possible.
Sappy stuff out of the way, now onto Rift. I tried a lot of classes and both factions before settling into playing yesterday. We choose Guardian faction, although I’m not sure how long that will last to be honest. I was playing a mage and he a ranger. As I was slightly ahead of him leveling wise we didn’t adventure together most of the day but did do multiple rifts together.
First day impressions are generally positive. The community on the shard we choose is friendly and chat does not seem to be filled with individuals that make you want to pull your hair out while screaming. Rifts are fun, once you get the feel for the flow of the immediate change of gameplay interruption. Crafting is useful and does not feel like an endless grind for resources. It can be a little challenging to figure out what gathering skills are appropriate pairings for production skills. I will admit to tabbing our more than once to check for answers.
Tips we learned through trial and error, or outright huh? moments:
- Souls (classes) can be changed if there are zero points spent in that soul by clicking on the soul icon in the soul builder (talent tree). So for example, you really want to play a druid cleric soul you will need to swap out a melee offensive soul for the druid soul.
- Fishing is profitable! In less than an hour of fishing, with less than 50 skill, I fished up more than one platinum in currency, one rare caster waist, and one epic caster sword. The cash infusion was nice, although it isn’t especially difficult to earn cash.
- Rifts can truly happen at any moment and if you get frustrated having your questing interrupted, you will NOT enjoy Rift. However, if questing isn’t your thing, Rifts are fun and they level you quickly. Cash and crafting materials are harder to get strictly leveling via rifts but you do obtain an alternate form of currency that can be exchanged for rare and epic upgrades.
- Faction increases are not difficult to obtain. Questing rewards give decent faction where applicable and rifts give out faction when applicable with the corresponding faction.
Did we have fun? Yes! I think we are going to switch to Defiant faction however. He enjoyed it much more when we played in the beta and I enjoy it more now. I really enjoy the rifts. They are spontaneous and can be quite challenging.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Help The Secret World Celebrate
Funcom’s joy with The Secret World knows no bounds, and now you too can participate in that joy. Starting August 3th at 4PM GMT until August 7th at 7AM GMT, you can play the game for free. There will be fireworks, new missions, and special rewards (including Funcom points) for helping others.
Dabbling in Rift
Way back when, we played Rift while it was still in beta. It was enjoyable but in the end we decided to not invest in an unknown company with an unknown product. Flash forward more than a year, and Rift is still going strong and has announced their first expansion, Storm Legion.
So with their free to play version, I logged into my account and stepped back into the world of Telara. The first thing I noticed is that the number of shards (servers) has been greatly reduced from beta, but that server populations on North America shards appeared to be healthy for a midday login.
My first character is a cleric soul, Inquisitor in nature. She is a blast to play and I can’t put my finger on precisely why. It probably has to do with her survivability as ranged dps that is capable of healing herself. It also doesn’t hurt that character creation is decent. A reasonable number of choices and colors to pick and choose from. I also like that none of the women models are rail thin or look like they would blow away in a light breeze and certainly couldn’t swing anything heavier than a nail file.
The mobile application is great! The ability to earn in-game items for my characters while goofing around on the tablet is fun and engaging. Guild interactive features and chat is also very nice. Many of Trion’s competitors could learn from the Rift interactive, offline experience.
So, am I making the leap and upgrading my account? Still on the fence but Trion has made upgrading easy and cost effective. The subscription model, currently on sale, has plenty of models to choose and multiple months include veteran rewards. More play time, different class and faction will help make that determination.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
LOTRO: Farmer’s Faire 2012
Farmer’s Faire went live on LOTRO servers this morning. The faire runs from 26 July – 13 August 2012. Our server, the infamous Landroval, is jammed packed for the opening day of the event. There were easily twenty plus people fishing next to me. The quests on the farms and in Bywater proper are crowded and some quests, Drunken Party-Goers comes to mind, are difficult to complete at the moment. I will wait to complete quests a little later in the festival.
Cosmetic LOTRO has great screenshots of the cosmetic outfits and the mount available. I agree with her assessment that tokens seem far easier to acquire than anniversary tokens were earlier this year. Casual Stroll To Mordor has the best write up on the Faire, other than the Developer’s Blog.
Technorati Tags: LOTRO,Farmer's Faire
Lonesome George and WOW
A giant has vanished from our lives. His name, Lonesome George, and he lived in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. He was a giant tortoise and the last of his subspecies known to be alive. With his passing on June 24th, the Government of Ecuador and scientists world wide have made every attempt possible to preserve George’s genetic material to one day possibility reintroducing his subspecies to the world.
WOW had introduced a homage to Lonesome George in Mists of Pandaria. While Wow is no longer our cup of tea, I have to give the team at WOW credit for the beautiful tribute to Lonesome George. If it brings awareness to the plight of giant tortoises to a handful of people, then that is a boon for some of the most fascinating and beautiful creatures on earth.
Blizzard tribute to Lonesome George
Source: Wow Insider
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2: Hall of Monuments and Stories
Unexpectedly suffering from symptoms of, “When can I log into Guild Wars 2 again?”, I logged into Guild Wars this afternoon. Admittedly prompted in part by the blog posting concerning the quickest way to get 30 points for The Hall of Monuments.
I haven’t seriously played any of my Guild Wars characters in over two years and boy howdy, did I get my butt kicked today in The Eye of North. With a 40% death penalty, I decided I was more than happy with the six pieces of armor I’ve already acquired for Guild Wars 2.
On much more enjoyable notes, two other blog interests of note were published the last two days. The first one details how to reserve your Guild Wars character names for Guild Wars 2. The process is simple, log into your Guild Wars account on or before July 31. It is very simple and quick if you are attached to your Guild Wars names.
The second blog posting is much more interesting. It details the three types of story lines in Guild Wars 2 and how those stories intertwine. There is the global story, the personal story, and the saga of the iconics. The Global Story is the story of Tyria and the awakening of the Elder Dragons and their impact on the world at large. The Personal Story details the impact of your character in Tyria. Saga of the Iconics details the story of the iconic hero you meet very early in your personal story and how that relationship goes evolves from mentor to ally. The five iconics were all once allies, friends, and suffered the same tragedy.
Planetside 2: Beta News and the Full Length Trailer
Planetside 2 Trailer
John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, took to Twitter to clear up some Planetside 2 confusion. All currently subscribed Planetside players and formerly subscribed Planetside 2 players will get an invitation to the beta when it begins. He also let it slip that the beta will begin Monday or Tuesday of next week. Beta invitations will come out in waves, so patience is the name of the waiting game. If you have never been a subscriber to Planetside, you can still apply for the beta.
Tonight also saw the worldwide release of the new trailer for the game. The trailer does not contain actual game play footage but is nevertheless an excellent video game teaser of the possibilities that await.
MechWarrior Online
One of the very few things I truly loved, and miss, about WOW was the Alterac Valley PvP Battleground. There is just something about that battleground I always loved once I discovered PvP. Well, my darling hubby has convinced me to sign up for the MechWarrior Online beta because of the similarities to Alterac Valley. Open beta begins August 7th, so I’m looking forward to see if he is right and it is truly a good, viable substitute for PvP.
World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Release Date
For those of you still playing WOW, the official release date for Mists of Pandaria is September 25th. The expansion is available for pre-order today.
Qeynos Rises First Impressions and Screenshots
The above is a shot of two NPCs, A Knight and A Lady, whose love story plays out without them ever speaking a word to once another. They are easy to miss but one of the little details that blew me away. I rode around for about an hour absorbing the sometimes very subtle changes, especially compared to the dramatic changes that occurred when Freeport was revamped, and taking screenshots. Then I started doing the new quest lines present in the city, both racial and archetype.
There was the appropriate amount of “OMG they NERFED my class out of existence” chat going on in general, but I ignored it for the most part. All of the class changes, both PvE and PvP have been available in patch notes for the test server for weeks now and I don’t have any patience or sympathy for players that complain once a patch goes live. Seriously, it has to be one of my biggest pet peeves in any game. (leaving soapbox now)
Overall, Qeynos looks amazing. Changes are sometimes very subtle but add all of those subtle changes together and the effect is beautiful. Honestly, SOE did a fantastic job with the changes. Qeynos needed a face-lift much more than it needed a complete overhaul like Freeport. While I do miss the suburbs, like Willow Wood and Nettleville, their instanced appearance in-game (what little I’ve done in them so far) are extremely well done and do not detract from the old neighborhood. There are now very definite stories for each neighborhood, Gnolls in Willow Wood or crazed Freebloods and aggressive Council of Ten Militia in Nettleville. Those stories are beginning to unfold for my level 23 Inquisitor.
Lighting changes are beautiful. The sun shafts and god rays are truly some of the best I’ve ever seen in any game. The little details on table edges or wall details are what makes the changes subtle but substantial. No, chances are you aren’t going to walk in through the gate from Antonica and be blown away at first look, but upon closer inspection you will be extremely pleased. From the rain in town, sound of the rain was phenomenal by the way, to the reflections of water or how rain impacts water, the small details are truly what makes this game update great.
But my overall favorite thing from the Qeynos update, non-quest related, is far and away the updated armors on NPCs. The updated Qeynos guard armor is beautiful. Seriously, while I’m glad SOE made the guard armor and mounts for both Freeport and Qeynos available on the Station Cash store yesterday, my intense desire for the other armors I saw yesterday is immense! The mage armor on the Concordium mages is stellar, the Chaos Orchestra armor blew me away, Celestial Watch armor had me drooling, and the Tunarian Alliance armor was phenomenal. Please make those armors obtainable somehow!
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