So its been a very Frostfell Weekend for me. Riowa the ‘zerker made four levels and actually ran out of Vitality for the first time ever.
He got a shiny new sword:
And check out the detail, which is almost impossible to see unless you use a ‘dressing room’ mod (Angela’s Templar is showing if off here): 
And a Bauble:
And this axe, which just looks pretty but isn’t that impressive in use:
And two trees:
And Frostfell has just begun! Happy {insert your game’s live holiday event} Everyone!
I was settled in to get back to The Witcher tonight (I live ever in danger of leaving that game so long that I forget how to play it) when the frustrated grumbles from across the room got persistent enough that I asked what was going on. Angela was having trouble finishing a Frostfell quest with one of her alts. Her main had been able to solo the quest, and since things scale she assumed she’d be able to solo it on her alt, too. But she’d died a bunch of times trying.
So, just to be a good boyfriend, I logged into EQ2. Even her alts outlevel me, but we grouped up and she ‘mentored down’ and off we went (the quest scaled to my level that way). We blew through it without too much trouble and earned some tokens that you can trade in for all kinds of fun stuff, including gear.
I sorta skimmed through the list without paying much attention. Then I wondered how one would get more tokens, so I went back to the instance and got another quest to basically ‘re-clear’ the place. Angela came back, re-grouped and re-mentored, and we did it all again. Next time at the vendor I paid attention and wow, there’s some great stuff available. A lot of it is good *unless* you’re fighting something that does heat damage, in which case you’re pretty screwed. But there are some nice all-around items, and Riowa got a spiffy new sword that was a huge upgrade from what he was using. And I spotted a “Charm Slot” item that I now MUST HAVE. So back we went for a third time through!! Still need more tokens, but the hour is getting late.
In the meantime, Riowa made a level fighting and doing these quests, and was about 50% of the way to 44. There’s a Frostfell Collection Quest too (collect frost-bitten toes!) and when he turned that in, WOW! He went from 43.5 -> 44.25 or so. Huge experience for that. By the end of the night he was about 80% of the way to 45. Leveling like mad thanks to both Vitality and Mentoree Experience.
And have I mentioned that all this time the two of them (Riowa the hulking Barbarian and Angela on her Kerra Defiler — that’s the cat-people for non-EQ people) were wearing crowns of snowflakes and in Riowa’s case, a cloak that made him look like a giant Christmas present. 🙂
As quest rewards we took home goblins frozen in ice to place in our homes, “baby ice dragon plushies” and some frosty-cold looking floor lamps. All in all, an unexpected good time.
It seems that every year Sony adds new Frostfell content while refreshing the old stuff, so the event becomes more elaborate every year. There’s much left for Riowa to do! So much fun. Every time I come back to Everquest 2 it draws me in a bit more. Earlier this morning my alchemist made a few levels as well, and he’s getting high enough that he can contribute status to the guild (as well as keeping abreast of Riowa’s level, so he can continue to make Skills for the Berserker.
We had a big ice storm here in New England during the Thursday overnight. Friday morning our power went out, so I couldn’t post before work. At lunchtime I came home to check on things, making sure neither Angela nor the guinea pigs had frozen to death, so no lunchtime post writing. By the time I got home, power was restored. My heart goes out to the many people who will be without power for several days; high today will be in the 20’s so its going to get terribly cold in all those houses. One of my co-workers had to leave the area to go stay with family; they had no heat, it was getting cold, and all the hotel and motel rooms are booked. I guess some of the schools have been set up as shelters for those without the means to get out of the area.
Funny thing about electricity is how much you don’t notice it until it isn’t there anymore.
Anyway…
Thursday night before all this started I got my first taste of this year’s Frostfell celebration in EQ2. I can’t remember if my account was active for Frostfell last year, but if it was I didn’t pay much mind to Frostfell because there’s a lot of stuff new to me that I’m told isn’t new this year. For my first outing I aided Queen Bunny in her fight against the commercialization of Frostfell. It was a fun little quest, solo (and it scales to your level) and it took me to the Steamfont Mountains, an area I’d never visited in EQ2.
One thing I learned while doing this quest is how badly equipped Riowa is. I was taking a lot of damage which made me think to check his gear and it’s all level 30-32 (and he is 42)! One of my “problems” with EQ2 is that I’m perpetually doing “gray” quests because my quest log is perpetually full. So I always log in to ‘knock off some of these gray quests’ and end up leveling in the process, making even more quests gray. I’m anal about going from A to B to C (in everything I do, not just EQ2) so I take every quest I see, and what I’m learning is that there are too many quests for any one character to do and still maintain some level of challenge. Not sure what to do about that… the A-B-C thing is pretty deeply ingrained.
Anyway, Friday night I was so totally spent that I mostly watched TV. I jumped into WoW a bit to use up Rested Experience on my baby Rogue on Rexxar, but I have to be honest, WoW just isn’t engaging me. It was fun for a week or so but now it’s just the same old same old again, even with the added benefit of CoWs. My account is up for renewal on the 23rd and I don’t think I’ll renew. Winter’s Veil starts on the 15th so I’ll probably play around in that a bit then be done with WoW.
In LOTRO the Yule Festival has begun, and I’ve read there’s a quest in the Shire that earns you a Christmas Tree for your yard, so I need to do that this weekend. I’m wondering if I can get my Champion to 35, get a decent horse, and win one of the Festival Races to get a better horse, all in the course of one special event. But there’s Frostfell fun to be had, too! So many choices! I managed to snag the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s off, though, so I’ll have some extra gaming time. On the other hand, next week is going to be hell week (launching a new web site at work) and I don’t imagine I’ll be getting much gaming dune.
The only “gaming” I did last night was running around in Playstation Home, since it was announced that all the free junk in beta would turn to “paid for” junk in Open Beta. I fervently hope this isn’t true, because if it is I think Sony is in for a big surprise.
Would you pay real money for a virtual ottoman for your virtual apartment? I know I wouldn’t, and I hope a lot of these ‘basic items’ remain free.
Overall, to say I’ve been underwhelmed with the Home beta would be an understatement. I think its a train wreck, and this coming from a Sony Fanboy. I greatly prefer the PS3 over the XBox 360 or Wii, but this…service. I don’t get.
Everyone gets a big sterile empty apartment that they can decorate and do nothing in. Or you can go to the Central Plaza, which is a big, sterile open area for you to do nothing in (though I understand they’ve added a game to this area in today’s update). You can go to the mall to shop for the aforementioned virtual items, but when you attempt to pass through the doors into a store you get a big menu pop-up. There is no actual store to walk around in. There’s a movie theater that, for me at least, takes longer to download the “movie” (trailer, really) than it does to play it.
And there’s the bowling alley, the one tiny pocket of fun in the service. You can play pool there, or bowl, or access an arcade machine. I’ve only done the latter and it was ok.
As for the avatars, they are universally creepy, in that “uncanny valley” way. Also they all feel completely generic. You have a ton of analog controls to set cheek height and mouth width and brow protrusion and on and on, but everyone still ends up looking like a 20-something mallrat dweeb. I feel that both the XBox Avatars and the Nintendo Miis allow a better “reflect my personality” experience with their virtual creations.
The bright shining hope for Home comes from Red Bull. There’s a Red Bull Pavillion that’s going in (maybe today?) that, from the previews I’ve seen, looks visually interesting and has some activities to do (flying a stunt plane). But the ‘out of the box’ content for Home is sterile, boring, and pointless. If it had just showed up it would’ve been fine (given that its free, after all) but after the months and months of hype, launching this is just another example of Sony shooting themselves in the foot.
But everyone is getting it, so I’d love to hear what I’m missing. Please leave a comment telling me what you’re enjoying about Home.
Here’s some footage from the Red Bull sponsored area. More areas like this one would make Home a fun and exciting product. I really hope this is in for launch.
Evenings sure do go by quickly during the week, don’t they? I feel like I’m just settling down for some gaming and its time for bed. That’s not literally true, but it feels that way.
Which gets me to my point of not having done much that’s blog-worthy. I played some Persona 3, having gotten re-enthused about it both by playing Megaten and by the glowing reviews of Persona 4 that are going around. P3 is proving to be a difficult game to jump back into…so many things that I no longer understand. So I play a bit, read a bit, back and forth, and slowly its coming back to me. I just really don’t want to start over from scratch.
I also updated the Beta That Shall Not Be Named and started playing it, but its one of these games that causes every fan in my system to kick into over-drive until it sounds like a vacuum cleaner is running inside my case (Warhammer does this at times, too). I don’t know for sure that its bad for the machine, but it is certainly annoying and I’m not willing to risk my system to beta-test. 🙁
Then I updated Dream of Mirror Online, once again inspired by Tipa. I knew I’d played it before but couldn’t remember which of the many Free2Play MMOs it was. Once I got in, it all came back to me. This game starts out simple to the point of dull. Get a quest, open the map, click on the quest location on the map. Your avatar runs there on auto-pilot. Click the baddie and wait until its dead. Open the map, click on the quest-giver to return to him. Turn in quest. Repeat.
I’m sure it gets more interesting at higher levels but last night I got to exactly where I got the last time…out of the starter areas and into Eversun City. It was hard to get enthused about going back the first time, but reading Tipa’s posts gives me hope.
So all-in-all, I got nothing accomplished last night. Reading about the RMT in EQ2 took a lot of time, granted. But I need to focus on choosing ONE game for a given weeknight rather than flathering around between several.
I captured a monument site in Nile Online and started harvesting Limestone for the monument itself (which will take about 5 days at the rate I’m going now).
The baby guinea pig is settling in nicely, starting to play in her house (pushing toys around, running laps, etc) and not being so freaked out when held.
Last night I put a bit more time into my LOTRO Rune-Keeper, as well as reading up a bit about them. It’s an interesting class in that it feels flawed in the early levels, but if I’m understanding things right it gets a lot more flexible higher up.
I’ved died several times and I haven’t gotten to level 10 yet. Generally getting the “Undying” title at level 10 is pretty easy in LOTRO (I think they call it Undying, forgive me if I’m wrong) but not with this Rune-Keeper. The problem is how ‘locked in’ you get to one type of actions.
You see, your melee abilities are all but non-existent, so you need to use spells to kill anything. And the more you use spells, the farther your ‘needle’ moves towards doing damage, which is fine as long as everything is going swimmingly. But if you get an add or two and need heals (and you will, since all you’re wearing is cloth armor) it takes a LONG time to move that needle back the other way to the healing side of the gauge, and by the time it gets there, you’ve fallen in battle.
Now if you’re cautious, you can cast a HoT on yourself, and throw down a healing rune, before every battle. I fear I’ve spent too much time as a Champion though, and I tended to cut corners on those activities unless I know I’m going to pull multiples. So probably 50% of my problem is me rushing.
All *that* said, from my reading it sounds like higher levels get you skills that move the needle pretty quickly to neutral, allowing you to start healing a lot more quickly (at least “weak” heals until you build up healing mojo). It sounds like it’s going to be a pretty interesting class once it gets all its abilities, and by interesting I mean ‘challenging’ (but in a good way).
I’m looking forward to putting more time into this guy. I may end up nuking my Minstrel, who I’ve never gotten past level 11. It’s nice that Turbine gave us 2 more character slots with the Moria Expansion, but I’d still like a couple more. Ideally I think we should have enough slots to have one of each character on a given server. Anyway, my Minstrel is my armorer and I need to get my RuneKeeper up to spec in crafting before I nuke anyone.
I’ve been doing my best to resist rolling another LOTRO character since I have a passel of them in their teens and only one over 30. But the Runekeeper’s combat/healing system intrigued me, at least on paper. I’ve never been able to stick with a traditional healing class… I just don’t seem to have the mindset for it. But I thought maybe the Runekeeper would be different.
So tonight I caved.
I spent so much time creating him that I didn’t get to actually play much. But what’s really weird is that he has no weapon, except his rune. So when he melees (which isn’t very effective and isn’t something he should be doing) he’s just swinging this brick-like rune around. Really odd.
At the puny level of 3, I’m thinking this is going to be a pretty group-centric character, but we’ll see. I have 1 HoT, 1 DoT that stacks but takes a long time to cast, and a couple of DD lightning spells so far. It takes a long time to kill stuff, which makes him feel a lot like a healer.
Obviously level 3 is insignificant insofar as getting a feel for a class. But I just had to share the weird brick-fighting technique. I’ll play him more sometime over the next few days and see what happens after he gets to the teens.
At this point my characters are “born” with almost a full bag of freebie stuff! 4 cloaks, 3 Moria Coins, a Bree Steed Receipt, a decorative piece of armor and a ring of agility!
I hadn’t planned to play more City of Heroes this morning, but I was looking at the update notes and was curious about the new “Shield” powers. I logged in and created a throw-away character to check them out. Something about the character creation tool in CoH always brings out my inner 13 year old. My ‘real’ characters are male but when I’m experimenting I inevitably end up with a large-breasted hottie female character.
So here she is. The shield doesn’t even show until she gets in combat, which is a bit of a shame.
Anyway, I logged into my “main” after than, and set up a second “Build” to see how that worked. I couldn’t figure out a way to change your archetype, though (I don’t think you can but I’m not 100% positive) so couldn’t take Shields on him. It was still kind of fun to build a level 13 character from scratch, but I think the “multiple builds” thing is really intended for higher level characters, since my two builds aren’t all that different. One has Combat Jumping and the other had Hover but otherwise they’re pretty similar.
I did some ‘standard’ missions today, and they were fun but I started to remember how dull it got running through the same run-down buildings over and over again, or the same caves. But then I spotted a building on fire, and ran to help put it out. You get a Fire Extinguisher temporary power, and the patches of flame have “Hit Points” that you knock down with shots for the Extinguisher. I jumped into a team and we put out the fire, which was different and kind of fun.
I may even play a bit more today, and I can see subscribing at some point in the future, but probably not for a long period. But $15 to play around in CoH for a month sounds like a decent deal to me.
To celebrate the release of City of Heroes Issue 13 , NCSoft has reactivated all old City of Heroes accounts for this weekend only. Of course my wandering eye couldn’t resist.
Let me start by saying that the NCSoft Launcher pretty much rocks. I fired it up, clicked a button and the entire City of Heroes client installed on my system. No hassles whatsoever. And why oh why don’t they come out with a Station Pass-style bundle subscription? They’ve got 7 games to offer now, with Aion and Champions Online in-coming, and Tabula Rasa sadly exiting. It just seems like a bundled sub might save TR, making it a “value add” title. They could just leave a small team to work on it slowly. I’m guessing obviously, but I figure that’s how Sony gets away with keeping Everquest Online Adventures and Planetside running.
Anyway, back to City of Heroes. My most recently played character hadn’t been played for 481 days, so I was rusty as hell. The last time I jumped in (also on a freebie weekend) a friend of mine had given me a lot of advice on my forum, and so I went and re-read all that. But having been away so long, I’m not sure how much of the cool stuff I found was part of Issue 13 and how much has been around for a while.
I had a new contact when I logged in, and so I went to speak to him. He started a long story-based series of quests surrounding a cure for The Lost (those warped people with the tv sets on their heads). Maybe I was lucky, or maybe the quest scales, but it was just the right level for me (my character was only level 10 when I started, 12 by the end of the day) and was really fun and interesting. Much more interesting than I remember quests being back in the day. I got some Merit Points for completing the chain, though I doubt I got enough to do much with.
I also went through the Invention tutorials, which I’d never done before, and made myself some nifty enhancements. I found some places where Heroes and Villains fight together against the Rikti, though you have to be level 35 to get involved with that.
It struck me how funny it was (in retrospect) for Funcom to talk about Age of Conan’s active combat as some revolutionary system, because my CoH character fights the same way my AoC character did, with ‘arc-based’ melee attacks that require positioning in order to hit the max number of baddies, and no auto-attack.
A couple systems that I do know are new are “Day Jobs” and a “Leveling Pact.” The former is a system whereby if you log out in certain places, your character will go to a day job and earn some kind of bonus when you play again. So log out in a Police Station and you get bonus experience when next you play. Log out in a hospital and you’ll get a health regeneration buff. That kind of thing.
“Leveling Pact” is something I’ve never seen before. You make a pact between your character and a friend’s character, and those two characters will always remain the same level. So if one of you plays every night and the other plays twice a week, you’ll still be the same level when the less frequent player does get a chance to log in. Kinda neat.
There’s lots more new things in Issue 13 and you can read all the details at the official site.
*sigh* Another fine game. It was great to get a chance to see how far City of Heroes has come, and I’ll add it to the “would like to play again some time” pile, but that pile is getting darned big at this point.
Did you know that much-reviled IGE was formed by former child-actor Brock Pierce? I sure didn’t.
Wired has a lengthy article on how the company came to be. Get comfortable; this is clearly an article from the print mag moved to the web and it goes on for a while. But I found it darned interesting.