Category: Pointless Ramblings

Warden at last

Posted on by Nimgimli

I had planned to roll a Warden when Moria came out; I knew nothing about the class aside from the name when I made that decision. Visions of ‘friend of nature’ style gameplay and all that. Then when Moria finally launched, well, it seemed like *everyone* was rolling a Warden and I was playing 35 other games so I just let it slide, until tonight.

Look, I’m all of level four, but I’m going to join the chorus praising the class (which isn’t even remotely tree-huggerish, I might add). Or at least, Gambits (the gameplay system that comes with it). At level 4 I have 3 basic skills I’ve learned, each of them doing a different style of damage. As you string these types of damage together, you activate your “Gambit” skill. There are a bunch of Gambits, all triggered by 1 hotkey, and which Gambit triggers depends on the order of skills you’ve used.

Examples might help. Doing two “thrust” skills lets you do a gambit that just does extra damage. Doing two “shield block” skills lets you do a gambit that short-terms buffs your shield blocking. Doing a “thrust” then a “shield block” lets you do a gambit that does damage with a chance to stun. And so on. Apparently at higher levels you get gambit ‘strings’ of more than 2 skills.

The system isn’t totally unique: in a way its very similar to EQ2’s Heroic Opportunities, with two exceptions. First, as far as I can tell all Gambits are done ‘solo’ in that what the rest of your party is doing won’t impact your Gambit. Second and more importantly, the end effect isn’t random (EQ2’s Heroic Opportunities do involve the whole group and have randomness in their results.)

I can see the Warden being a class that is very powerful in the hands of a skilled player, and less so in the hands of a button masher. I suspect it’ll be a hard class to come back to after an extended break. As you learn more and more gambits and skills it’s going to take a lot of concentration to look ahead and determine what you’re going to want to do and then how to do it.

I’m looking forward to playing the class more. Again, I’m all of level four, so I very much welcome corrections from people who’ve gotten their Wardens to higher levels.

MIA

Posted on by Nimgimli

My deepest apologies for starting conversations and then disappearing on my readers. It wasn’t planned but neither was it really avoidable. If you happen to follow me on Twitter then you probably had an idea that the week wasn’t going exactly swimmingly. Lots of work (literally from the time I got to the office until the time I went to bed, with an hour off for dinner), a bad financial crisis, a savaging of company morale, and some sudden changes in travel plans… I couldn’t manage to keep up with my RSS feeds, let alone find time to post.

Mother Nature appears to be coming to the rescue though. School closings have already been announced for tomorrow in this area, and some of my friends at other companies in the area told me they’ve already been told the office is being closed.

Of course, my company said “We care deeply for the safety of our employees, but short of a National Emergency, the office remains open.” That said, my intent is to take half a vacation day. Last year there was a storm that made my normal 20 minute commute into a harrowing 6 hours on the road, and the weather service says this is going to be the same kind of storm. Specifically they said:

“At this time…travel is not recommended anytime Friday afternoon and evening…as we expect heavy snow treacherous road conditions during this time.”

No way I’m risking another ordeal like last year!!

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be back on my feet and posting again soon. Thanks for sticking with me through this dry spell!

Catching up

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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.

More guinea pigs

Posted on by Nimgimli

Sorry for the lack of posting today. Was feeling rather under the weather and not up to writing.

Which is the prefect excuse for more guinea pig pictures! Which I know most of my gaming readers will roll their eyes at, but I did get a couple of requests for pictures of the two older girls.

Here’s the old girl, Isis, helping Angela play Everquest 2. She’s pretty happy to hang out in her “Cuddly Cup” (the actual name of them, I’m not being cute) getting scritches and being in the midst of things. Look up “nosy” on Wikipedia and you’re likely to find a picture of Isis.

Here she is on duty, making sure no wild carrots sneak into the house unchallenged. Isis and Mimi live in separate cages because Mimi’s youthful exuberance drives Isis crazy. We leave the doors and tops of the ‘cages’ open and the girls show no inclination to ever want to make an escape. They seem to really like their “houses” and are happy to go back to them after playtime.

I don’t have many good pics of Mimi because she never sits still. But here she is, pausing for an instant before continuing to squirm around in circles in *her* “Cuddly Cup” (separate but equal, these girls.) Mimi will be two in later winter, Isis is about four. So far Mimi hasn’t really showed signs of slowing down, but Isis is fairly sedate.

One of our favorite “games” is tug-of-war with this chewing stick of hers. She shows no interest in this stick unless I’m holding it. When she sees that, she gets very focused on pulling it out of my hand, after which she promptly drops it and ignores it. My considerable paunch is her favorite place to perch while playing this game…luckily I’m an extreme sloucher or she’d slide off!

New member of the family

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Cavia Porcellus. The common guinea pig. Lab animals, elementary school class pet. *yawn*

I remember smirking as Angela would tell me tales of her pig, Isis. I mean, they’re just large rodents, right? Then I met her and it took about 5 minutes before I was charmed forever. Once Angela and I were living together, I doted on that pig. Then came the day we were in the pet store and a little black and white lady came running to the glass of her cage and peered out at us. Our eyes met, my willpower crumbled, and that’s how Artemis (Mimi for short) came into our home. She got her name from the arrow-shaped markings on her head (Artemis was goddess of the hunt).

Friday, it happened again. I was at the shop at lunch, getting some supplies, and when I spied this darling little creature. I went back to work and couldn’t get her out of my mind. Angela and I chatted via IM, and we decided that taking care of three pigs isn’t much harder than two, and Isis is getting on in years. We didn’t want Mimi left all alone when Isis inevitable crosses the “Rainbow Bridge” (we hope that time is still years off; Isis is only middle-aged in pig terms, but her health isn’t as good as it should be). So after work, I went back to the store, frantic that she would’ve gone to some other home, but there she was, stretching and winking at me. Angela figures she was born not to long before Thanksgiving, so we named her Pomona (technically goddess of fruit trees, but we’re using the name in a more liberal, harvest goddess sense). Short name, Mona.

So Mona joins Isis and Mimi in our happy household of people and pigs. She’s settling in nicely…last night she gorged herself on alfalfa and timothy hay. Today she’s had a few treats and some cuddles. She’s still freaked about being held, but not *too* freaked. She’s in quarantine for a few weeks so hasn’t yet met her goddess sisters, but I’m sure she hears them. Particularly Mimi, who always answers my query of “Want some peppers, Mimi?” with loud shrieks of delight.

I remember having guinea pigs as a kid, but looking back, they weren’t very well cared for (though I had no idea at the time). As an adult, taking proper care of them, these little critters flourish and really get a chance to show off their very distinct personalities. They bring us great joy and are a constant source of amusement, and really they’re a snap to take care of. There’s no greater source of stress relief than having a guinea pig in your lap, purring contently as you pet her.

Poster Child Post Removed

Posted on by Nimgimli

I posted a, er, post this morning, and might have got a lot of it wrong…

I’m at work and can’t really take the time to straighten the mess out, so for now I’m just unpublishing the post. If I’m mis-representing someone, I don’t want to leave the post up there until tonight.

UPDATE: Lunch hour FTW. After discussing some things with some people, I’ve reworked the post to more accurately reflect what was actually said (vs what I thought was being said) and my reaction to one minor point in someone else’s blog.

My apologies for all the drama-queenerie.

Poster Child

Posted on by Nimgimli

[EDIT: Reworked version of the post with -25% whinging on my part.]

In a recent post at /random, Rick used myself and Heartless as examples of people who don’t like Warhammer. (In the original version of this post, I accused him of using me as a Poster Child for the Don’t Like Warhammer campagin, which was a bit over the top on my part, but I just mention it since that’s where the title of this post comes from.)

I found that surprising and kind of upsetting, to be honest. I mean, its true that Warhammer wasn’t grabbing me as much as it was others. But my experience with Heartless is that he has fairly passionate objections to some of the things Mythic has done/is doing. Nothing personal against Heartless (in fact I admire that passion), but I don’t feel I’m in the same category.

I was so surprised that I went back and re-read a bunch of my Warhammer posts. The specific post that Rick linked to had me wondering why I love Fable 2 so much while others hated it, and talked a lot about the immersion I felt in LOTRO. The harshest thing I said about Warhammer in that post was that “I’ve gotten somewhat less enthusiastic about Warhammer.” That’s hardly ranting against the game.

I have posted some introspective rambling trying to understand why I wasn’t finding as much joy in Warhammer as others do, but this post wasn’t complaining about what’s bad in Warhammer. Here’s a quote from that post: “Warhammer is very focused on the gameplay experience, which makes it unique and (in my opinion) very valuable.” Haven’t you ever observed a bunch of people really loving something that you’re not seeing the appeal of, and wondered why you aren’t “getting it?”

To rewind the clock a bit, I let my Warhammer account lapse because I’d promised Angela that I’d play EQ2 with her when the TSO expansion came out. That really had nothing to do with Warhammer and everything to do with domestic bliss in the house. 🙂 And then CoW started playing WoW so I re-upped there to play with them since I missed the herd – this was an unexpected decision but time was of the essence if I wanted to keep any kind of parity with the rest of the guild. (Of course, the bear factored in, too.) Had I planned on having 2 paying subscriptions at once, I probably would’ve kept Warhammer and EQ2, but sometimes we wind up in places we never set out to be in.

There are certainly games I enjoy more than Warhammer Online, and I’m strapped enough right now that I can’t justify paying for a game I’m not playing (though that didn’t stop me from snapping up a Black Friday deal on a 60-day timecard for War). That just seems sensible to me; it isn’t my job to invest in the continued development of any game unless I’m either a) playing it or b) going to reap fiscal rewards from it.

I’ve been continually impressed with how quickly Mythic reacts to player feedback. Of course in order to do that, they need to HAVE player feedback to react to. So I’m not going to feel bad about my sharing things that bother me about the game, but if I’m giving the impression that I have a strong dislike for it, well, that isn’t so. I’m not playing Warhammer now because I have other things to play. If Warhammer were the only MMO on the market, I’d be all over it.

And I’m actually rather excited about the 1.1 patch. When that drops, I’m going to use that 60 day time card and rejoin the War.

Thanksgiving 2008

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I’ll be on the road, going to visit my dear old mum, so Dragonchasers will be silent for a couple days.

I really like the idea of Thanksgiving. It’s all about gathering with friends and family and sharing a feast. No over-the-top gift competitions, no crazy-loud partying. It’s my favorite winter holiday.

And stopping to give thanks probably isn’t something we should only do once a year, but life is so crazy hectic that it seems we need a reminder.

I’m generally a glass-half-empty person. I wish I owned a house instead of renting an apartment. I wish I made more money. I wish I had a nicer car. And on and on, blah blah blah, whinge whinge whinge.

But really, I’ve got a lot of be thankful for, and if you’re at your computer reading this, you probably do as well. I’m thankful I don’t go to bed hungry every night, and that I’m not living in fear. Fresh water is at hand at all times. We take stuff like this for granted, but a lot of the world doesn’t.

More topically, I’m thankful that I live in an age where I can reach out and make friends all across the world. I’m old enough that I didn’t grow up with computers or email. Who you knew was who lived nearby, for the most part. Having a ‘pen pal’ from a few states away was pretty exotic.

Now the only barrier to making friends, really, is language. Geography has become irrelevant in many ways. That’s pretty incredible.

And since this is a gaming blog…I’m thankful that there are virtual worlds to visit with these far-flung friends. We all bitch about our games, but when you step back and think about it…they’re all pretty awesome. If you plucked someone from as recently as the mid-1970’s and sat them down in front of WoW or EQ2 or LOTRO, it’d blow them away. LOTRO in particular… grab a flower child grooving on Middle Earth in 1969 and drop ’em into LOTRO and they’d think they’d gotten some very fine acid indeed.

It’s a good time to be alive, y’know?

And my final thing to be thankful for is that you’re reading my blog. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to me yammer: it means the world to me.

Here’s wishing you and yours have a very Happy Thanksgiving. And for those of you in other parts of the world, well, I wish you a very happy Thursday. 🙂

Romantics & Dreamers

Posted on by Nimgimli

Sometimes I just don’t understand other gamers. Why do they hate the things I love, and vice versa? There’s something about me that’s just different from most gamers. And I finally figured out what it was.

I’m a romantic and a dreamer.

Fable 2 actually got me thinking about this. I loved the game, and the ending was incredibly moving to me. It left me feeling quiet and thoughtful for a long time. But I read other impressions of the game and they’ll tell you the ending sucked. Huh?

Well, if you’re playing with your fingers and eyes, the ending did suck. If, like me, your heart was thrown into the mix, the ending was amazing. One of the most thought-provoking endings I’ve ever encountered.

This morning Angela was working on a web site that I’d done the database design for. I knew she’d have a certain number of questions about the choices I’d made, so I didn’t want to get too engrossed in anything. So I logged into LOTRO to work on some Shire deeds. The character I was running is well beyond the level of the Shire but he never did the deeds in there. So mostly I had to run around and ‘discover’ landmarks, and hunt lots of very gray bugs and slugs and wolves.

And y’know, I was enchanted. Whenever I’ve been away from LOTRO for any amount of time, I’m a bit stunned when I return. The landscapes, the music, the people going about their business…it all feels very much like a “world” to me, and one where there is still hope and happiness. Watching the sun come up and the clouds move slowly across the sky. Watching brooks babbling over rocks, and the sunlight reflecting off the water. It all feels very relaxing. It feels like I really am in Middle Earth. And it makes me want to defend this place from the intrusion of darkness.

And at the same time, I know for a lot of gamers what I was doing would be considered pointless grinding and a huge flaw in the game. They wouldn’t stop to watch a shrew clean its face or nibble on a tidbit it’d found. They wouldn’t notice the sky. They’d find a hobbit outfitter that sells cosmetic items and snort and think “What a waste of money..why would I get this for my toon?”

Actually, I think “toon” is significant. If you think of your characters as “toons” then yeah, every time you think about them you’re reminding yourself that this is all really just a spreadsheet with graphics layered on and that there’s a most efficient way to increase those numbers quickly. I think of my characters as characters or, more often, as “me”. I have to deliberately say “Gillain did this” rather than naturally sliding into “I did this”.

I feel faintly embarrassed to be admitting this. Ysh was talking about Wizard 101 a few days ago and someone commented that he was too old and too male to play Wizard 101. It’s just part of our culture (particularly among the young, and I consider anyone under 35 or so in that category) that guys are supposed to be hard and apathetic about beauty (except for hot women, of course) and fluff. We’re supposed to be all about the killing and efficient leveling. Competition and being the strongest and the best.

But that just isn’t me, at least a lot of the time. I’m about the experience. That’s why I get so excited when I run into Gotrek & Felix in a tavern in Altdorf. It’s why I mutter under my breath when I have to slog through a marsh and ruin my new boots. It’s why killing 10 rats isn’t a problem for me, but killing 10 bunnies is.

I mean yeah, I really like getting a new level, and I enjoy winning a bout of RvR. But not all the time. I need more than that, and maybe that’s why I’ve gotten somewhat less enthusiastic about Warhammer. Mythic deliberately designed a GAME rather than a WORLD and I kind of miss the world aspects sometimes.

Anyway, no real point to all this. I’m certainly not saying one way is better than the other (and I don’t think there’s a dichotomy here…it’s definitely a gradient kind of issue). I just find it harder to find other gamers like me than I do the type that is very goal-driven and not really about the extras. Maybe we need to form a support group or something.

Thanks for reading all that, if you’re still here. 🙂 As a reward, here’s a couple of ‘wallpaper’ screens I took this morning. Very valuable, very rare!!

lotro lotro

TGIF, WRUP, and other acronyms

Posted on by Nimgimli

So last night was all about the Thursday Night Football, thus no gaming was done. In fact overall damned little gaming got accomplished this week, much to my chagrin. XFire says I spend 2 hours playing Warhammer in the past 7 days, and that’s the game I spent the most time on, PC-wise (not that I always trust those numbers). I did play the Left 4 Dead demo on the 360 a couple of times, and spent quite a bit of time at Nile Online.

Yes, fascinating stuff. But what of the future? This is an odd week for me. I finished Fable 2 and didn’t/don’t want to wade into some lengthy single-player game because next week the LOTRO and EQ2 expansions hit, plus the “New XBox Experience” arrives (which, granted, will probably only be interesting for an evening). I could be playing Warhammer but fear getting sucked back into it, only to have my account turn off early next week.

So I feel like I’m in a quasi-holding pattern. I might stalk follow Ysharros into Wizardry 101 over the weekend, just because it sounds fun and easy. Quick to download, easy to learn… just some nice concentrated fun. Or at least that’s the vibe I’m getting.

Or I could fire up the EQ2 account and get re-acquainted, but I dunno… does it make sense to get re-acquainted only to install an expansion and have to relearn stuff? Might be just as easy to wait.

Curiously, I’ve paid very little attention to the big MMO expansions. I know WOW has Lich King and a Death Knight class and that’s about all I know. Moria has legendary weapons and 2 new classes, which I know very little about (but I’ll roll a Warden because I always roll any class called Ranger or Warden). The EQ2 expansion I know ZERO about, except that Angela is super-psyched for it. I guess it adds… new stuff. I don’t even remember the full name of it!! LOL.

This makes me an un-informed consumer but a happy gamer. I love discovering stuff on my own, and THEN researching it to learn the nuances. Werit wrote a post called Too Much Information that captures my feelings well enough that it seems pointless for me to repeat them here.

Apparently there’s a big free content update either going into Age of Conan, or already launched. Interesting. I’d like to jump back into AoC at some point. But then Ardwulf has me wanting to take another look at Vanguard, too. Plus Chronicles of Spellborn launches sometime soon, and I wanted to look at that as well. And I’m definitely not ‘done’ with Warhammer Online!

Is it any wonder that MMOs have churn problems these days? So many interesting choices and it’s hard to justify two concurrent subscriptions for most people. Add to that the lure of so many fantastic single-player games out now. It all just feels like too much. Are there enough gaming dollars to support all this content??

Anyway, let’s get to the WRUP part: What are YOU playing this weekend?