Christmas Week Abbreviated Adventures

Pippa managed to run into Krampus finally in The Secret World and blindly followed him into the portal he opened.  He and his buddies immediately kicked my rear and Pippa was dead on the floor faster than wrapping paper on Christmas morning.  She wisely exited the instance upon regaining her sense.

Pippa, the original character of that name, and the bevy of 90’s opened presents and rescued Metzen until one of them was lucky enough to get the Rotten Little Helper companion.  He is decidedly evil and miserable looking.  Can’t say I feel the effort was worth it.  I will admit, I think I’m over WOW for quite a while.  Yes, I still have characters I could level and I haven’t completed the loremaster achievement.  But I’m not enjoying myself.  I enjoy reading the lore in novels much more than I am repeating myself in game. 

I can’t say I won’t ever be returning to WOW, I’ve made that claim too many times before and Pippa always get’s missed.  I wish Blizzard would wise up and give the non-raiding crowd a reason to stick around, like adventure or quest packs.

I stopped into Guild Wars 2 again this year.  Same even as last year it appears, I didn’t stick around that long to find out.  I decided to try out one of the event instances and imagine my delight in learning my level 10 warrior was stuck (until I logged out) in an instance filled with level 80s.  I can’t deny the game is lovely but there is no quest content and thus no interest for me.

I’ve dropped my LOTRO several evenings this week and completed the quests in Frostbluff for cosmetics.  Luckily, LOTRO will run on the Surface Pro well enough to do things like festivals and crafting so I’m not trapped in the office.  I think I’ve gotten almost everything I want from the festival this year.  Trying to decide if I want this year’s horse or not.  I’ve gotten one, not sure how interested I am in the other. 

I stopped by Star Wars: The Old Republic this week.  I activated one character, my Consular.  She’s on Hoth and I want to finish her story line.  I didn’t play her, I browsed the Cartel Market and realized that I need to change her gear out if I’m going to play her without subscribing.  Two years after the game launched and I don’t have a character at max level yet, but I keep wandering by for the story which speaks to how compelling the quest writers at Bioware are.

This time next year, I imagine I will still be happily immersed in Elder Scrolls Online.  I hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas.  Happy New Year and may all your football teams be victorious!

 

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Beta: Project Spark First Impressions

When Project Spark was announced at E3 this summer I was floored.  I signed up for the beta as soon as they started accepting applications.  This afternoon I got my beta invite and downloaded the game immediately.

I have never been into building games, so I have a clean slate when it comes to experience and intuitive tools.  First impression is mostly positive.  World s gorgeous and immersive.  The ability to create what I want, how I want is the draw. 

There are a large variety of pre-created items to place in the environment you create.  Everything from the background sounds to the way fish interact with the environment.  However, the only thing you can create from your imagination is the environment itself and then only within the color palette and terrains provided or you’ve purchased.  There is no ability, at least so far, to create your own houses or building structures and no way to go inside that I have discovered.

Trees and just about everything else can be recolored to suit your fancy.  However, once again the shape and style of trees, etc. is limited to what is available for free or purchase.  There is a very Seussian sense about the world, I find charming. 

I will continue to explore the world in beta.  I’m not sure it will be everything I wanted it to be.  Time may change that initial judgment and I definitely think the couple of hours I spent exploring today mean the game deserves more play time.

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This Week’s Adventures

Not much happened in the gaming world this week.  Last full week before Christmas and I spent it reading, cleaning, and writing.  But there are at least two screenshots this week.

 

Yule Festival has arrived in Middle Earth and Moirareth, my rune keeper when off to Frostbluff as soon as possible.  She built snowmen and did the first day’s daily and watched as experience accumulated.  Needless to say, I purchased the Stone of the Tortoise immediately.  I had been considering it anyways so I wasn’t overly upset at purchasing the Stone.  I haven’t been overly diligent about acquiring tokens or completing quests this year.  I did them all diligently everyday last year and burned out on LOTRO for months to come.  I like the mounts but I do not like the manner in which Yule Festival cosmetics dye so the pressure just isn’t there for me this year.

Winter Veil has arrived on Azeroth and off went my wee Goblin to visit great Father Winter.  She did notice immediately how close the Goblin decorators placed the Winter Veil tree to an open fire barrel.  Perhaps there is a Goblin plan underfoot to burn Orgrimmar to the ground? I must admit to being HORRIBLY disappointed that all of the Winter Veil quests are once again unavailable to characters above level 20.  Make it dangerous or require a group but there is no reason to exclude non-max characters from being able to fully participate in holiday activities.

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World of Warcraft: Nostalgia and Love

I was struck with a case of nostalgia last night as Taalina began to level through Ashenvale.  Darkshore and Ashenvale were the first places outside of the starting zone I ever leveled, and how those places have changed.  Penelope, my first character, did a brief fly though this morning.  I know all this scenery and questing changed with the release of Cataclysm three years ago but this is really the first time I’ve extensively quested through the zones.  Cataclysm was the first expansion release I ever experienced to be honest, since I started playing shortly after the release of Wrath. 

Unfortunately, when I originally played through these two zone with my husband I wasn’t taking screenshots, heck I doubt I even knew how to take a screenshot back then!  I hit the coast line of Ashenvale last night and the Zoram Strand instantly smacked me with a strong wave of nostalgia.  I remember playing with my husband killing Naga and not understanding why he was so upset when he “missed” or why he was so frustrated when I pulled critters off of him.  I was a complete noob and he had the patience of a saint.

The memories are all good ones however.  Even if the beauty that is Ashenvale is currently being destroyed by the Horde, I will always smile and remember how deeply my husband loves me because of these memories.  The landscape and our play styles may have changed over the years, but these first few months when he introduced me to MMO’s are a precious memory I cherish.

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Wish List for Changes to Games for 2014

Maybe it is a side effect of growing older, but my list for changes for games becomes a little longer every year.  It isn’t that I think any one game suffers or is unplayable, but with a few simple changes standardized across games, gaming life in general would be much improved.

My first wish is for area-wide auto loot to be implemented.  I much enjoy the auto-looting in Lord of the Rings Online.  Nothing is more convenient than loot automatically being deposited in your bags.  Yes, it can be inconvenient sometimes when your bags are cluttered with vendor trash, but that minor inconvenience is outweighed by never having to loot an enemy again.

Next up on the wish list, mentoring. Everquest 2 and Rift both implement this feature enormously well.  It makes sense and allows for friends and family who have differing play time to still play together.  Turning off experience, doesn’t make it possible for a higher level character to effectively play with a lower level character without it being unbalanced and in the end power-leveling. 

The ability to turn off experience directly from your experience toolbar.  EQ2 does this and it prevents the problem of out leveling a zone simply and elegantly.  This becomes more and more essential as games reduce the amount of experience required to reach maximum level.  Nothing is more irritating than constantly out-leveling zones and leaving stories unfinished because non-story content has become trivial.

Housing, for the love of all that is holy, HOUSING.  And not just any old housing, but housing as magnificent and immersive as the housing in EQ2.  I want someplace my characters can all home, display their spoils of questing, relax with a full hobbit second breakfast, or curl up and read a book.  I miss the housing in EQ2, and if there weren’t other issues preventing full enjoyment of the game, I’d still be playing it.  I don’t want small cramped hovels with over-priced rents and storage costs.  I want the ability to decorate and for all characters to be able to share the space.  I also want housing that looks like house, not some weird variant of housing that only vaguely resembles housing.

Shared banking and storage among all characters on the server.  How hard can this be to implement?  Personal storage and communal storage should be standard at this point.  And there should be separate storage for crafting materials shared among characters on a server.  Guild Wars 2 does this beautifully.  One of the few strong points of that game is the ability to send crafting materials to shared storage.

Cosmetic wardrobes and for this there are truly only two models to be followed: LOTRO and GW2.  GW2 has the most beautiful dyes and more importantly, find the dye once and it is yours forever.  Nothing I hate more than constantly having to search for the dye I want every time I want to dye a new piece of cosmetic clothing.  LOTRO has hands down the best cosmetic clothing system, minus the dye issue.  The ability to have multiple outfits to wear at a moments notice without changing or disturbing the stats on your battle armor is phenomenal.  I freely admit, my LOTRO characters change clothes frequently depending on mood and season.  Why can’t all games do this? Why can’t my casting class characters slip into heavy armor so they look intimidating if they want to, or why can’t me heavy plate warriors look less threatening and those surprise foes? 

I know I’m tilting at windmills.  I know despite he fact that I make sense and all games thieve from one another, no consensus amongst game designers and companies is magically going to unfold in the next year.  Doesn’t mean I am going to stop wishing that there will be dramatic changes for the better across all games or that new games releasing this year will come to understand that it is better to delay release and implement features from other games that a vast majority of players consider as standard.

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Leveling Screenies from this week

We both have colds and I will admit that those colds are kicking our butts.  No real thought intensive gaming was accomplished this week.  Most of the gaming time was spent in WOW where it is much easier to engage in mindless gaming activity with very little danger of dying because you aren’t paying attention.

So, onwards to screenshots from The Secret World, WOW, and Lord of the Rings Online.

Pippa meet Sam Krieg this week while continuing to explore the Savage Coast in The Secret World.  He in incredibly fascinating and I loved his quests. 

The dialogue from Sam Krieg is amazingly well written, not that is all that surprising.  I hope there is more of him to come otherwise I will miss his insights into humanity.

After the heaviness of the conversations with Sam Krieg, Pippa felt a need for a little whimsy and so she slipped into her pirate costume.

Taalina was been gifted a heirloom weapon and thus she spent her week leveling in Darkshore.  As you can tell, the Murlocs were incredibly happy when she stopped and rebuilt a dwelling for them.  Now if only game phased to permanently show for Taalina there rebuilt Murloc home.

Queen Azshara and Malfurion Stormrage decided to have words off the coast of Darkshore.  Taalina somehow escaped the Queen’s wrath despite the dead Naga scattering the island.

 Meet Brynhildd my Dwarven Champion who was created this week.  Her name means Warrior Woman in German and she is my cosmetic vault keeper.  I already have one character of every class with appropriate leveled professions, but no Dwarf characters.  Making a female Dwarf isn’t possible in LOTRO, so Brynhildd is going to be a female Dwarf disguised as a male Dwarf out to seek adventures of her own.  Now she may never see more than Thorin’s Hall and gate but she will be prepared for the eventuality of leveling further.  She slipped into the Boots, Shoulders and Gloves of the Eastemnet (pre-order items for Rider of Rohan expansion) and the Leather Cloak and Hauberk of Mystery from Skirmish Cosmetic boxes.  All in all, I think she looks quite attractive.

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World of Warcraft: Patch 5.4.2

Patch 5.4.2 is currently being applied to World of Warcraft and according to the patch notes, the cash shop is now live in-game for WOW.  That’s right folks, if you thought the cash shop was going to be exclusive to Asian servers and it would never invade the rest of the game, today is a black day for you.  The cash shop will make it easier to purchase mounts and companion pets without having to go to the external website.

There are a couple of patch specific notes for mages and warriors, as well as some questing improvement implemented.

Bind-to-Account items can now be truly be considered BOA and not Bind-to-Realm items.  Starting today BOA items, and ONLY, BOA items can be mailed to your characters on other realms.  Simply follow this format: Jane–Silvermoon (no spacing) this will allow you to mail BOA items to your character named Jane on the Silvermoon server.  I’ll admit, it will make some of those languishing characters on other servers get some playtime now.

And finally, cross realm raiding is arriving.  No it isn’t the feature that will be coming with the release of the next expansion but it does take advantage of functionality already in the game.  Open the Social Menu (O) and click on the Raid tab.  This will allow you to queue for or find members for your raids from other realms.   This functionality is only viable for Mists of Pandaria world bosses (Celestials and Ordos) and the Siege of Orgrimmar flexible raid. 

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The Leveling Ladies

This week I did much more around the house or reading than I did playing games.  When I did venture into the gaming world, most of my time was spent completing Volume 1, Book 5 in The Lord of the Rings Online.  My time in World of Warcraft was much more limited.  I keep trying to force myself to play Horde and it is making me miserable, so this morning I returned to my last sub-ninety Alliance character and had a very relaxing time for a couple of hours.

So, without further ado, here’s a brief visual tour of this week in PC gaming.

The Misty Mountains were snowy when Moriareth ventured out of Rivendale and into the Misty Mountains.  Here she found a land inhibited by giants, dwarves, trolls, and servants of the Dark Lord.  The local wildlife was far from friendly but were beautiful on the snowy days she spent in the Misty Mountains.

Moriareth arrived in Angmar and promptly changed her clothing to her Rohan pre-order armor.  She immediately felt a change in the air and knew that there was something wrong with the land.  She has begun her quest to help the tribes and rangers that inhibit Angmar.

Mistalaina, or Mista for short, reached Northrend this week.  She is a rogue and is my last sub-90 Alliance character on Silvermoon.  She is questing and only running around with heirloom weapons because I hate trying to replace weapons when I don’t have to.  As you can tell, she’s currently landed at Fizzcrank Airstrip where the Gnomes seem to have gotten handy with the paint cans once again.

Meet Blessed, Mista’s Alterac Brew Pup.  His beer comes in quite handy now that she has ventured into Northrend for the first time. 

My lovely Enchanted Fey Dragon, gifted by my husband, that Mista named Bella.  She took flight this morning at Fizzcrank Airstrip and turned the perfect shade of Borean azure blue with violet blue accents.

Gwennya is currently in her mid-40’s and hanging out in Tanaris.  Apparently the innkeeper of Gadgetzan irritated her somehow this morning because she certainly appears to be giving him an earful.  She’s steam rolling everything, because of the heirlooms and the fact that old content hasn’t been retuned for new skills.  The end result, there is no challenge and I have to make a decision.  Remove the heirlooms and level content more slowly so that there is a wee bit of a challenge or suck it up and power level to 80 for the Horde story from 80-90.  I am leaning to power leveling, the old world quest content doesn’t differ between factions and I’m tired of trying to force myself to enjoy content where there is no challenge.

 

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