2009

Information Overload

stargrace June 3, 2009 0Comment

Alright, first of all WOW what a week and it’s only Wednesday. I’m feeling 95% better and after having health issues for over a month this is a HUGE deal. It’s fantastic, I’ve been so excited and energetic. Now I just have to keep it up. I’ve been following E3 updates on twitter as well as G4 Tech Tv live, and while personally I’m not a console gamer at all (even though I do own a wii, PS3 and DSi) I am excited about a few things. Kingdom Hearts, Golden sun, a new mario (or two, even though I personally did not like mario galaxy) and who didn’t think the video of The Last Guardian just looked fantastic. Then there’s Natal, and all of the other motion sensor toys coming out, and the new PSP Go. While twitter was filled with some very bitter comments, I tried to keep a positive outlook (as is my way) and remind myself that these are games.

Tipa reminded me that The Dares would be performing in Free Realms across all servers, live from E3 last night, so I quickly made my way into game and ported to her on server 4. It was PACKED. It was the first time I ever experienced lag in Free Realms and we met up with some other bloggers / twitter users which was absolutely fantastic. We danced the night away, and I even picked up one of the concert tshirts for $1 because come on now, you just have to. On the down side while twitter said they played a full set at E3 they only played one song in game, and it was cut short each time, though they did repeat it twice if you stuck around. Still, having friends there made it a massive amount of fun and it was only too easy to see how popular Free Realms had become.

I did spend some time in EQ2 but I didn’t play. I loaded it up on my laptop and hung around in the guild hall chattering to Wpus, Ultann, and Kasul while they went and did all the hard work (mostly crafting and writs) for the evening. On the PC I continued to play Sims 3, I know how embarrassing. Giving up my MMO of choice for an evening to play something as fun silly as Sims. I tried to get to sleep early, the guild is VERY close to level 40 and three more amenity which is just amazing. Ultann has been belting out the writs like they’re being removed from game in the next update (they are not, that was a joke folks).

Thanks to one very kind Kasul I am now holding a copy of Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura which is an RPG that came out in 2001, that follows the Steampunk genre. I had never even heard of it before but when I entered in NeoSteam on GamerDNA this was one of the games they suggested I may enjoy, and it just so happened that Kasul had a copy of it kicking around. Not being an avid gamer myself until these last few years, I’d never even heard of it before. He also sent a copy of Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls III which I’ve never played (despite the game sharing my last name of ‘Morrow’) so I’m looking forward to getting both of those installed on my PC. Sure these game may have seen better years, but I still play EQ happily and that game is 10 years old, so why not.

One last note before I head off to get the morning chores done – have you taken a look at these amazing tinker-themed housing items from EQ2? Holy WOW. I love the selection and any little gnome boy or girl is going to just fall in love with the set. Especially the wall dividers how amazing do those look?! The team has lined up some fantastic goodies for GU52 and I’m really looking forward to it all. I hope everyone has a fantastic Wednesday, in a week and a half the Medieval Festival will be taking place and barring any horrible weather I’ll be there taking pictures again this year – I’m SO excited.

Happy Gaming!

Gaming

Starting out in the Sims 3

stargrace June 2, 2009 3Comments

That’s right, I happen to be one of THOSE gamers. I’m not a huge fan of blood and guts, shooting and killing. While there have been some comments in the past that say this is because I’m (gasp) a female gamer, I prefer to think it’s because I’m just not into those sorts of things. I don’t believe that they’re the sort of game that appeals only to men or only to women. I enjoy pvp (though I rarely delve into it these days) and I’d rather do something I personally find more creative and constructive with my time then just grind it away battling creatures. I typically do this via: crafting, decorating, and other creative outlets, especially those involving design. I can’t exactly be too creative when I’m doing nothing but smacking mobs – though that is a wonderful pass time too, it’s just not the end all be all of my gaming persona. Anyhow!

I’ve been a long time sim fan. I played sim city, and all of the regular sims growing up. I loved building homes, creating lives. I loved designing my own clothing, creating textures and building elaborate yards – or even simple ones. When Sims 2 came out it was amazing, but I barely got a chance to play it because my youngest brother ‘borrowed’ the cd and that was the last I ever saw of it. I even spent some time playing The Sims Online when that came out, I used to DJ on a radio station going by the name “April Love” – four hours every day. It was a great experience even if the game wasn’t all it could have been. I played just before I started with EQ, and just after I had gotten more then my fill of MUDS. I used to take requests and played a lot of songs for people while they wandered around the Sim world.

Sims 3 is beautiful. They’ve made some changes and so far I’ve had a very enjoyable experience. I started out with a fully furnished home (my choice) for $15,000 or so. You start out with $16,000 so you don’t get a lot left over. Character creation was great, I loved the fact that I didn’t have to be some super skinny woman if I didn’t want to. Ages start as young as babies and go up to elderly. You pick five traits that can be negative or positive and as far as simple creativity goes, I adore it.

Sure, I’m just playing a virtual life, and I’ve already got a real life (hah) so you may wonder why this would even be appealing, but it’s great to pretend, and fantastic to invent and create.

One addition to Sims 3 is the RMT factor, they have an online store where you can purchase more styles of hair, clothing, furniture and other goodies. I checked out the furniture. It reminds me of SOE’s station cash, where it’s $20 for a full house set, and cheaper for bits and pieces. For pre-ordering the game on direct2drive I snagged $10 (1,000) worth of points to put towards future purchases – if I want. I didn’t see anything that interested me quite yet, but we’ll see. My only issue with this is the same issue I have in EQ2, that there’s less of a push to release really awesome looking content for free because you can just charge for all of the neat looking things. Aside from that one small little blip, I’m having a great time taking a break from Norrath and Telon (and whatever other virtual worlds I happen to wander through this week) to spend some quiet time playing the game. So far I’ve enjoyed the little quests they’ve sent me on. My sim (named Stargrace, go figure) is a young adult, working her way for $28/h as a podium polisher, mon-fri 9-3. The first weekend that came around she took some writing and art classes, and cooked some fantastic hot dogs for some fine gentleman that she may (or may not) have her eyes on. The life of a sim is less complicated then real life and I think that’s part of the charm – plus if I remove all the doors to the house in a moment of pure frustration it’s fun to see what happens next. Not, that I would do that. *grins*

Gaming

Wait, I won Something?!

stargrace June 2, 2009 1Comment

This week and next week make up the crunch time before my next articles are due for Beckett MOG, so I didn’t spend very much time in EQ2 last night. I did get some nice time in Wizard 101, and once Wpus and Kasul returned from work (we can’t all play video games for a living!) we headed off to knock out a few instances before it was time for bed. We started out with Obelisk of Ahkzul – still aiming for that legendary healer shield that has yet to drop. How many months have we been doing this instance for now with no sign of the shield? I’m not sure, but it’s been a LOT. The instance is fast and it rewards a void shard so I can’t complain that much, but I’d still love to see that shield drop.

Afterward we wandered over to Anchor of Bazzul, this is a fairly simple and quick zone and it rewards two void shards at the end of it, making it quite worth while. Plus every so often the Gods of Norrath smile down on one of the group members – and a nice item drops. We got a lower level swashbuckler master which I’m sure was worth a great deal (congratulations Wpus on winning that) and the charm pictured to the right hand side also dropped. My illusionist has been under geared for quite some time. Not under geared in the sense that she’s wearing mastercrafted at level 80, but she’s only sporting T1 gear, owns 1 master spell, and only has 108 achievement points. She was power leveled to 80 and I’ve been slowly gearing her up ever since. It was no great surprise that one of her charm items is the caster reward from Everfrost with + spell crit on it, and the other charm was actually the mana battery which is a collection reward. No special stats at all and so I rolled need on the beautiful charm that dropped last night – what’s more, Wpus graciously declined, and I won it. Now, ideally I’d like an item that has + spell crit on it, I’m only sitting at 52% currently, and I have a long way to go. The stats on the charm and the 2% reduced cast time is very nice, and I won’t be complaining at all. We grabbed our two void shards and decided to head off to do the daily double before we called it a night, it was Deep Forge.

Deep Forge has never been one of my favorite zones. In fact none of the Lavastorm zones are that appealing to me. I’ve still yet to do the quests from the revamp (hey, maybe a goal for today!) and when someone mentions Najena’s Hollow Tower I visibly shudder. On the plus side as much as I dislike Deep Forge it is a fast zone and being the daily double meant we could get four shards from that one zone including some coin. Arysh also had not done the quest that rewards a fairly nice charm with +2 spell crit on it, so off we went. No deaths, and the final named dropped without too many issues (and also dropped that really horrible 2h hammer that always drops). Headed back to the hall to stash all of the no trade loot into my bank so I can transmute it one day in the future, and called it a night. Even though we didn’t play a whole lot, it was still fun and it was nice to finally get a nice upgrade.

Speaking of which. 20 more shards and Ellithia (the mystic) will own her complete set of T2 void gear (cheers) finally. Last night Arysh gathered enough shards to get her 2nd piece of T2 – pants. That just leaves the robe, hat, and shoulders left. I don’t even want to start thinking about how many shards that still is. I also worked on the TSO chapter quests a little bit, trying to inch myself closer to the rest of the guild. Hopefully we’ll be on chapter 5 soon where it makes us do all of the instances. Not my most favorite part, but it’ll be nice to be making some progress.

I hope everyone has an amazing week, I know it’s been filled with a lot of great stuff since E3 is going on right now and before you know it, Fan Faire will be on. I’ll see you in Norrath!

Gaming

Exploring Ruin Falls (Level 44)

stargrace June 1, 2009 2Comments

One thing Vanguard does not do for you, is hold your hand as you adventure. If you want to figure out where to go after being away for a while, it can be difficult. Especially if you’ve already turned in all of those rift seeker quests that rewarded you with pies that give bonus experience. Those quests used to tell you where to head for level appropriate areas. I spent a lot of yesterday spending money and flying around from place to place trying to figure out where I should be. At level 44 I’m too small for a lot of the higher places, and to big for a lot of the lower. I could head back to the Harbor but I’d already spent so much time there, it was time for a change.

Growlius suggested we head to Ruin Falls, which is located in the southern portion of Thestra. I’d been there once just flying through but had not completed any of the quests yet, so I found a rift stone and off I went.

There were only three or four quests that we could obtain right away but that was fine by me. We set off to kill some frogs first as we eased our way into the game and learned how to play together again. I’ve always loved the blood mage (there’s a reason why she’s my only level 44+ character) and they make a perfect duo with a dreadknight.

The area is all swamp land and we spent a lot of time slaying disgusting hag like creatures that looked like deformed trees with pus, I kid you not. Channels were actually quiet, although there was word of a Tipa sighting!

Most of the mobs we had to kill for the starter quests were only two dot (solo) mobs, but they came three at a time. Eventually as we progressed the quests we had to kill a few three dot mobs. When they hang out in bunches it’s hard to solo and we teamed up with a shaman who happened to be adventuring at the same time.

Once we’d completed the first few quests it was time to turn them in and prepare for the guild meeting that Safe Haven would be having. I tried to stay online for the meeting but alas about 20 minutes before it was due to start I was called away by real life and had to log off. Next time perhaps!

I’m still finding my footing in game, and still learning good areas to hang out. It’s difficult when I’ve been (semi) away for a length of time now, I would prefer to solo but rarely know of any good locations. I know they’re out there, it’s just a matter of me learning where to go once again.

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend no matter where you spent your time, and here’s hoping this is the beginning of another wonderful week! Safe travels!

Gaming

Festival of Unity – Why the Fuss?

stargrace June 1, 2009 3Comments

I’ve been tweeting up a storm about the Festival of Unity on twitter, and yesterday was the opening ceremonies. If you’re not familiar with this event, it is a week long of celebrations that incorporates everything good including order, peace, and friendship. Those aligned with Freeport, Lucan D’Lere, and the other denizens of evilness are requested to disguise themselves or lie about their alignment which I find very amusing.

Why am I so excited about this event? Well you really have to be there to soak up the atmosphere. First of all it is BY FAR the largest player run event across all of EverQuest II. In fact I would even say it’s one of the largest events across EQII period. No, we didn’t crash any zones (that I know of) but there were well over 200 people clustered into Antonica for the opening ceremonies in the afternoon, with more showing up to partake in events and just mingle with their fellow role players.

This is a massive event with a LOT of planning and work put into it by players and employees of sony alike. In fact there was a Gnobrin spotting, as well as a Domino spotting. I tried to rush after both for autographs but alas their evade skills are far beyond what my level 12 dirge could manage.

The community of SOE gets involved by means of decorations for the fair grounds, which is incredible every year. This is the third annual festival, and of course Gnobrin out did himself. tents, cooking areas, merchant grounds, lights, flowers, everything was perfect.

If you’re not on Antonia Bayle but would like to listen to the public announcements (which are always humorous) and see what else is going on you are more then welcome to join their festival channel: /join antonia_bayle.festival. Of course if you’re like me the first thing you did upon hearing about this festival (since I no longer technically play on AB) is rush right out and create a character. Thankfully Malfi had some spare party clothes for me so my baby dirge didn’t have to wander around in her uncomfortable chain mail.

There is a calendar of events with times that you can find, as well as a map of festival locations. Not a role player? I’d still suggest checking it out. There are so many other stories going on that you don’t really have to have one of your own in order to enjoy the party atmosphere. If you’re a people watcher (like I am) it works out wonderfully. I heard so many stories last night from characters I have never heard of before, it was amazing. I plan on writing a role play introduction from my bards perspective later on today (depending on work, it is Monday after all).

I can not stress enough that THESE are the reasons people will play your game. The community. Sure, it is fantastic when the game itself has festivals and events but player run events on a massive scale such as this are simply astounding. The creativity that goes into it just amazes me every time.

So if you happen to be on Antonia Bayle this evening, you’ll want to make sure you catch the events! They start at 7pm EST and include Gnome punting, Antonican Idol (eep!), and Golden Lemming. The festival closes after a full day of fun and games on Saturday June 6th, so if you’ve never witnessed something like this before, make sure you head out that way.

Information Overload

Starting out in the Sims 3

Wait, I won Something?!

Exploring Ruin Falls (Level 44)

Festival of Unity – Why the Fuss?

You Missed

Personal EVE Economic Update (October)

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)

What’s Going on?