November 2008

Nostalgia gets a Lobby

Today was much like every other day I’ll have for the next little while. NaNoWriMo meshed between real life projects meshed between my love of gaming. I haven’t had time to play Little Big Planet as much as I’d like, or hang out with friends in game, but I logged in to EQ2 and looked around the Nostalgia guild hall with a little dismay. It didn’t take long for the urge to hit me. We needed an entrance room.

I hate designing entrance rooms. I’m not any good at it. We really did need one though. I wanted it to welcome people into the hall. Show off what Nostalgia was about. Make it some what ‘homey’ and I think I managed to do that between furniture and accessories. There’s still some work to be done on the ‘stage’ room, with a few tables and chairs set up in the theater area, the library and crafting areas also need some work, but I’m happy to say that I think the lobby is at least ‘finished’ and I won’t be touching it that much. The guild has reached just over the 400 item mark in a 750 limit – apparently you CAN use the expander to add 100 extra items to the halls which is certainly something I’ll be looking into. More items is never a bad thing!

The only downside to all of this decorating (and not much leveling or actual playing going on) is that I’ve spent close to 200 plat on the guildhall now and I’m not making any of it back. Hopefully as things quiet down (when ever that will be) I’ll have a chance or two to do some adventuring and maybe run an instance or two in the hopes that a semi good master will drop that I can sell. Or craft a bunch of adornments in the hopes that they’ll sell. I’ll think of something no doubt. 

I’d love to ramble on about some far more exciting adventure, but alas that’s the limit of my gameplay today. I should be posting the TSO Journal Day III tomorrow (fingers crossed) but no promises. 

I had a few random thoughts on betas and why I didn’t think that the EQ2 approach to them was such a great idea (ie: Everyone runs in to look at all the ‘cool’ stuff and actual testing doesn’t get done, people head straight to the shiny bits) but my eyeballs are threatening to close here at the desk so I’m going to call it a night for now.

TSO Journal – Part II (The Moors of Ykesha)

(( If you’re looking for complete walk-throughs to each zone, you won’t find it here. You won’t find step by step information, or anything particularly useful. There’s a fairly good reason for that though – the expansion is still a few weeks away. Why on earth would you want to spoil it all so soon, know all of the ins and outs, and take away the sense of adventure that’s going to come from discovering and exploring things on your own. If you go in with a set plan of “I need to do this and this and this RIGHT away and get all of THIS” you’re going to be bored, and burn out. Remember how much FUN these are supposed to be? Remember how it felt to NOT know what was going to happen next? Or what gear was going to come or how things were going to be played out? I loved that feeling. ))

WNLO showing Legend of the Seeker at 7pm EST in Canada

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find a station showing this here in Canada, and it figures that it would be playing right when I *should* be writing for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve read a LOT* of bad reviews on the show – but I’m going to watch it anyway, and be happy with it. Why? Because what other option do I have right now for a fantasy based tv series? Bad or not I’m going to enjoy it.

Anyhow, if you live in Canada, and have Rogers digital cable, you can find it on WNLO (channel 166 for me, not sure about everyone else) – hope everyone else out there managed to find it on too who was looking for it!

Umbral Plains meets Nostalgia

Like the Maiden’s Eye, the Umbral Plains make for one the most treacherous outdoor areas on Luclin. These wide open plains are home to dark assassin shades, many wandering undead Elysian remains, gorangas, netherbians, and giant zelniaks. In the South is the entrance to Vex Thal, which is surrounded by a hoarde of elemental guardians along with Rumblecrush. – Zam.com

Last night Nostalgia headed to Umbral Plains. A zone most remembered as dangerous – and rightly so. The group consisted of two enchanters, a bard, Tipa (ranger extraordinaire), Kanad (well renown shaman), and myself on Qutey (the cutest druid ever). We also had the pleasure of two mercenaries, a tank and a healer (though the healer took a back seat for most of the evening until a few of us died). 

For some reason my computer decided to chose last night of all nights to give me issue. It could have been because I was running curse client (forgot to turn it off) along with xfire, and vent, so I restarted once my video card (or some other part) screamed in protest and crashed me. Then later on in the night it did the same thing. I was already feeling tired so I went and laid down for a little bit before returning. Too much stress lately, but that’s another story. 

We took down a few named in the zone, named I had not seen in a long time. Tawro Icequake lead to The Spirit of Tawro who dropped two very nice weapons (that rotted since the bard was AFK and no one else could use anything), we also took down Bile Spew and a few others. Since I had crashed out I heard there were a few others, and all in all it was a fun night of just hunting named. Next week we’ll get back to leveling.

Have I mentioned that the mercenaries are amazing? Maybe once or twice? 

Well once I logged in game, called my corpse to the guild lobby (noticed that they changed deaths, you no longer lose your items any more when you die? Wow, that is WEIRD) Tipa brought out her healer – and by healer I don’t mean Brita, I mean her mercenary, and it rez’d me for 96% and then buffed me with 2h virtue and other random goodies. 

Sweet. 

Kanad and I stuck around for a little bit once Nostalgia was finished for the night, and I purchased a journeyman healer. They don’t really strike me as being any different then the regular ones. Perhaps faster power regen was the only thing I really noticed. We headed to Plane of Storms and meandered our way through the forest, breaking up a giant camp there for a little bit. He managed to get level 64, and I hit 63 on the druid. The journeyman healer is expensive, at level 62 it cost me 1,300p to purchase, and 26p every 15m of play. Tomorrow I’ll probably turn her in for something a little cheaper. I have no idea if the tanks have a noticeable difference. 

We also learned that you can not make a raid with a mercenary in your group. I figured this was the way they worked when I read the patch notes, but it’s always nice to know for sure. 

NaNoWriMo started today, but (crazy me) I plan on doing my daily mmo updates still on this site as well as participating. If I can’t handle it though I’ll be holding off on the blog posts. We’ll see how it goes. I’m more then likely also going to be switching my host over to wordpress, and dropping the company I’ve been with for 3 years (lots of little annoyances) and just keeping the domain name. We’ll see how that goes. So much to do this weekend!