Admittedly a large portion of my time in various games has been spent questing. I enjoy quests, even the ones that tend to be a grind. What I don’t enjoy, is ONLY questing (example: Ruins of Kunark) in order to progress in a game. I like a mixture of things, be it quests, experience grind (just good ‘ol plain killing) crafting, and simply hanging out. It’s all of these things combined that draws me into any MMO. If I start to feel pressured to do one thing or another, chances are I’ll end up giving the game up.
Yesterday was spent doing a combination of things in EverQuest, as well as peeking my head into some Spellborn, though I didn’t have much time to do anything before I had to go out for a few hours. First I spent some time hanging out in Stoneroot, and my little halfling druid managed to inch her way to level 71. Friends make this type of grind so much easier, I burned my lesson of the devoted and we were set. Drachnid fell every which way. It only took half an hour or so to get the level, and then the group broke up a little. Next? It was time to work on my epic. Now, I had given up on the epic the day before in frustration because the Bloodgill foragers that I needed decided to spawn inside of the walls of a building. Not fun. Today we hoped that would not happen – but if it did we would be prepared. You can order your pet to attack by text command rather then a target, and that’s what we did. It worked, thankfully. My little Bobo (name of my druids bear) headed into the wall very brave like and calling him back caused those foragers to head right for us.
I thought that would be the most difficult portion of the day, but alas it was not. Once I’d moved past a few more steps it was time to play Hide and Seek with a bunch of Goblins in Frontier Mountains. This requires you to first make a disguise, hang out in the front of the Temple of Droga, wait for 7pm game time, and then use the disguise, mention starting a contest, and then the King sends all these Seekers out and a few Hiders. Your job? Kill the correct Hider, before the King says the game is over (30 minutes).
Well dang. I ran around with track going and managed (with the help of Ninga of course) to kill a good portion of Hiders, but it was not the specific one that I needed. 30 minutes passed by and I lost the game. Unhappy that I’d lost and the disguise at the beginning only has one charge so you have to start way at the beginning again – I decided to call it a night. It’s always better to step away during those frustrating times (I’m sure lots of people have stories like this) then risk getting upset in game.
It was fine by me of course, I have a few books I’ve been neglecting and I ended up spending the rest of my evening playing scrabble on yahoo which was something I haven’t done in years. Today my mood has calmed some and I’m not quite so cranky at having to start all over. Not that I’ll be doing it again any time soon, teehee.
I’ve been trying to plan out my schedule game-wise for the next three weeks. Not for my personal game play, but because I have a few Beckett Articles (few = 5) due in early April (not to mention my birthday is coming up, dang I feel old!) and I have a review for MMORPG that needs to be completed. I love the way I have a few weeks of quiet and then everything comes all at once. Typically it begins with me emailing my editor about a separate issue and then the casual ‘Oh by the way, we need it a week earlier and we need five pieces not two’ comes into the conversation. I am quite used to it now, and it’s actually something I adore about this line of work. Gets the blood going!
In any case, I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend and enjoying some of that nice weather if you’ve been so blessed. Hopefully I’ll get some more game time in this weekend, I’ve got a few projects on the go that need some work first.
Safe travels!