It felt a lot like Christmas last night when I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of TSO. Two copies, one for each of my accounts. The 2nd account I have doesn’t have many characters who can take advantage of TSO aside from the crafting bits and the mount, but maybe some day.
As you can see by the picture I also got myself two little pewter dire bears, perfect for throwing at people as Ogrebears pointed out, or I can use them as the new tokens in my monopoly game, they’re the perfect size.
I always wondered why Sony didn’t just get rid of the whole ‘preorder’ or ‘digital download pre order’ business (and rewards) and put out a Collectors Edition instead. I don’t think I’d buy it (it would depend on what it included) and maybe the company figures not many others would buy it either so it wouldn’t be worth the cost.
I would have gone with a digital download this year as I have in previous years, if it were not for the bear mount that can be claimed by all characters. It means I miss out on a house item but thankfully that item can also be claimed by multiple characters, so I’m sure I’ll be getting one or two placed in my homes.
Was it worth the wait? You betcha. Of course I got to vent my frustrations out all over this blog and that really helps, thanks for putting up with it! The only concern I have is that the mounts don’t scale down in size with the character sizes (yet) so my poor girls look like they’re hanging onto this giant mount for dear life, afraid that they’re going to get flung off of it any moment.
There were a few things I wanted to do first before diving right into the content. Of course I went and opened the booster pack that came with the expansion (nothing there, my luck holds true) and claimed the items that I could. That includes the Ethernaught painting. I haven’t redeemed it yet because I’m not sure who to give it to, but it’s waiting. I’m still contemplating building that ‘free’ LoN house into a museum of sorts. Having heritage quests on display for each one, as well as the (now huge) collection of LoN paintings I have. My reasoning for this is also stemmed from the fact that apparently these ‘free’ LoN homes have no vault slots so you can’t actually use them to the potential that you could with a ‘regular’ home.
Once I had claimed everything I had worth claiming it was time to head to the docks and wait for the ship to arrive. The lag was only slightly better tonight, we had 4 Moors zones up with 50-80 people in each one. Silly me didn’t bother to turn down my graphic settings for the adventure, so once I had zoned a few times and evac’d through etc, I was starting to feel like I was running through tar.
Kasul, Shadowgeist, and I met up and waited for Albrta and Lanerian and together we did the cannon access quest, where I had a lot of fun being shot through the air, even though it took me a minute or two to figure out where the npc was that I needed to talk to. I wasn’t there to look at any of the pretties or give a glance at the other quests, but that will be on the agenda for later today (or this weekend, or when ever I have a spare few minutes to get to it!). Last night was for crafting only. The introductory quests were well written, and they introduce you to the three factions in the Moors. Each of these factions also have a craft book associated with them and very specific sets of furniture that can be made by any class. These furniture pieces look amazing. Especially the Grobb set. I’m looking forward to seeing what people can create using those ‘stone’ looking pieces. I’ve already got some plans for waterfalls and my necromancer is looking forward to a house that doesn’t look quite as bright and cheerful as the ‘goodies’ homes that I have designed.
Of course to get any of these books you need to work on faction first and I don’t have the faintest idea of how long this faction will take. I know there is both a crafter and an adventurer method of obtaining it and I’m assuming that the adventurer method will actually be quicker for me. We’ll see how it goes!
I haven’t set foot into any of the TSO instances yet, but I’ve heard people LFG for them and spamming the channels with their new ‘uber’ loot drops. Hopefully, all this excitement will last once three or four months has passed. For now? I’m liking what I see.