June 2007

It’s always nice to be home

stargrace June 22, 2007 3Comments

Niagara Falls, pretty to visit, but it’s good to be home

One of the (many) pictures I took of Niagara Falls, the picture is of the Horse Shoe Falls, on the Canadian side. It’s roughly a 6-7 hour drive to get to the falls, left really early. The hotel room wasn’t ready so we spent a few hours wandering around. Everything is of course very expensive. The hotel over looks the falls, and is within walking distance easily. Just as an example of how expensive things are, if you want a room that over looks the falls themselves, it’s $150 more expensive then the exact same rooms on the opposite side of the building that over look the city. Go figure. I had a blast though. We did the walk beneath the falls because it’s just one of those things that you have to do, and spent the rest of the time sight seeing. There were people everywhere even though tourist season hasn’t officially started yet. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful.

It was nice to come home, Princess was trying to sneak herself into my suitcase before we left, poor thing couldn’t come along on this trip. We actually made it home early enough to attend raids on Deathtoll, and I’m happy I went, as plate greaves (relic pants) dropped. They were a huge upgrade to Dasie, who was wearing the quested legendary ones from Loping Plains. The new ones add 62 points to one of her direct heals, and also have 150 power vs. the 50 power of her old ones. Deathtoll itself was a little.. messy. To say the least. We’re missing one of our key dps’ers and that makes a huge difference. Even with almost perfect group set ups people seemed to be slightly off. We wiped a few times on the splitting drake, and we wiped once on Tarinax himself. People were either standing in the wrong spot, or not curing their dot’s because they were getting hurt badly. Of course the more people who die the worse the raid goes because the encounter spawns adds for everyone who dies. Some guilds mez, some guilds burn the adds. We need dps to burn those adds. If the dps is dead, and we’ve got multiple encounters up.. well, yeah. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Sword of Destiny, rewards were posted. Legendary and fabled. I am exceptionally excited about them to say the least. The legendary healer item is a 1h hammer with +75 to heals. The stats are not that amazing, it’s +20 wis +100 power and I think stam. The fabled one of course has better stats, and on hostile spells it also proc’s a life tap. Very worth it for Dasie to complete. If I were a mage, I’d be pissed off. Their staff is 2h and it also adds +75 spell dmg, but for a 2h item it just doesn’t seem worth it. Especially since for illusionists / coercers you can’t even use a 2h item with their spell chain line — they are removing the fact that you need off hand free for *some* of the aa lines, but I didn’t see anything mentioned about perpetuality, only for the other portions of the same chain. I suppose we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Girl who cried Nerf

stargrace June 18, 2007 3Comments

Dasie in Darklight Woods, working on getting those aa points by mentoring

Everyone on every channel that I listen to lately has one subject on their mind, and that is the dreaded GU36 and 37. Why do I say dreaded? Well, the notes can be found here with all of the new changes listed. I personally like a good deal of them, but there has been huge out cries from raiders and casual players alike. Especially when it comes to agro, and reducing a few classes usefulness on a raid. People are screaming nerf every which way.

However, I don’t feel the same.

In preparation for any expansion the first thing that happens every single time, is a game wide “nerf”. There’s really no other choice though, it has to happen. Why? Because they’re adding another 10 levels, and in order for those next 10 levels to be on par with everything else, they’d either have to be super duper hard so hard that only the best of the best raiders could ever attempt anything at all — or — they down grade how we play now, and make us learn and adjust to the new changes. Come on now, this is not new, it happened with DoF it happened with KoS, and when it’s happening with RoK people should not act so surprised or hurt. It is going to affect everyone, it’s going to make raiders re-learn how to handle their agro, maybe switch up some of those MT groups. Scouts are going to have some learning time with their changes, summoners as well. So when everyone is screaming on the channels about all this stuff that’s going on, I just sit back and listen. It’s not going to be that bad, and if it is, it will get changed. That’s why it’s on the test server, to change and adjust. Until they go to live, and even when they do, it won’t break the game for me or make me not want to play any more. It will just be a period of re-learning my classes to work with the new changes. Finding my niche again. I can completely understand why people who have already spent time learning their class and how they work do not want to have to re-learn how to play, but MMO’s are dynamic and ever changing. It’s never going to stay exactly the way it starts.

I find it amusing the ruckus it’s caused. I’ll wait for it to go live, and adjust with the changes. I’m sure some people will get pissed off and leave like they did after GU13 (which went down in record books I am sure for creating disturbances, you may remember it as the great combat revamp) but the majority of people will stick it out and realize that the changes are needed and are not that bad at all.

Sides, there are a few things that I love coming out with this update. More crafted furniture for one. The ability to respec your tradeskill class as another. I have two jewelers and I’m looking forward to making one a carpenter or weapon smith instead (I have two because one used to be on another server and then I transferred them).

Another side note, I’m headed to Niagara Falls for a few days this week to get away from things, so no blog entries here. I hope everyone enjoys their week though and it’s filled with happy gaming, I’ll bring back lots of pictures.