2011

Professions in The Sims 3 #TS3 #Sims3

stargrace May 3, 2011 1Comment

Since all of SOE has been shut down (going on day two) I’ve been spending some time in single player games, mostly the Sims. One of the sims expansions introduced professions, which are different then jobs in the way that they’re preformed. They include you controlling your sim for the work day, and I’ve been playing with one in particular, architecture. Basically families within your town will hire you to remodel their homes, either with a brand new addition or reworking a room. The homeowners give you a budget and a list of requirements (ie: they want a writing room and it must have 2 chairs 1 tv 1 desk 1 computer) and then it’s up to you to work that beautifully into their home. They take things into consideration at the end when they ‘judge’ you, like how much time you spent decorating it, whether the walls and floors were completed, whether or not the items placed are easily accessible. If you do a good job you take a picture for your portfolio, and this helps you ‘level up’ in your given field. It’s not as easy as it sounds, either. I’ve remodeled three homes so far and two of them said I did a terrible job. Woops.

It’s not the easiest way to make money, but I’m having a lot of fun breaking away from the ‘typical’ sims job, which requires me to fast forward through countless hours of nothingness while my sim does her own thing. There are other professions as well, such as stylist, firefighter, and investigator. Each one has tasks and events your character will have to partake in to get paid.

Looking back over the years at the progression of the Sims franchise I’ve really been impressed with how far they’ve come. Sims 3 is some of their best work (imo) and I also enjoy browsing the store for new items to purchase for the game. I earned 2,000 free sims points by purchasing various expansions over the years and they’ve had so many sales that I’ve yet to actually spend any money in their market aside from picking up the expansions which I would have done anyhow for simply being a fan of these games. It’s easy to spend hours lost in little worlds that I create, and when my online games are unavailable, it’s a comfort to know that these single player games are not going anywhere.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Children’s Week #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace May 2, 2011 0Comment

I’ve been enjoying my time in WoW these days, I don’t know how long it will last (probably about as long as it ever lasts, 2-3 months before I move to another game for 2-3 months etc) but I’m enjoying it while I’m there. A few things changed this time while I’ve been playing. For the first time in 5 years I’m in an actual guild. A rather large one at that. They’re level 25 with over 600 members – and while I would typically be afraid of that sort of guild in this sort of game, the guild has some hard fast rules about maturity and profanity (the first being requested, the second being disallowed in guild chat) that have made my stay quite pleasant. They’re not hard core raiders but they’ve been known to raid as well, and they plan guild events. The web site is well designed and I will admit being in a level 25 guild (max for now) comes with some incredibly nice benefits. The experience bonus is lovely, but something I notice more is the bonuses to both harvesting and crafting skill ups.

I’ve been playing multiple alts (as always) and enjoying them all. I am still considering a warrior tank, but in the mean time I have a paladin who just hit level 40 and is holy spec’d. Out of all of the healers I have played at lower levels, the paladin is by far the easiest. I’ve never ran out of mana thanks to two specific spells, and I have yet to have to need a mana potion (unlike my druid of the same level, who has more mana, but is constantly running out). I’ve been feeling a bit of an itch to try my hand at tanking, but I’m still quite nervous, so we’ll just have to see how that goes. At the moment I’ve got:

Ellithia (85 discipline priest) enchanting / tailoring
Minxes (83 Affliction warlock) engineering / mining
Arysh (77 Restoration shaman) inscription / jewelcrafting
Velours (40 Holy paladin) herbalism / alchemy
Faydai (37 Restoration druid)
Seduisant (10 Assassination Rogue)

This week is Children’s Week! So I’ve been bringing my little orphan around Azeroth. Not exactly the safest of trips (at least some of them) but it’s fun and cute. Today I flew kites and ate ice cream with little orphan “Roo” and then I picked up little orphan “Randis” from Shattrah.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Multi-Housing Excitement #EQ2 #EverQuest2

stargrace April 29, 2011 4Comments

I’ve always thought it was important that games play upon their strong points. The strong points are what set them apart from other games, and cause them to be ‘unique’ even if the remainder of the game duplicates something else. In EverQuest 2 I feel that this is player housing. The latest update allows players to own up to 10 homes at one time, and if you own a prestige home you are able to link all of these together via portals. Prestige homes come in a variety of ways, you can earn them from veteran rewards and you can purchase them from the station cash store, as well as earn them through legends of Norrath.

I’m really excited about this feature even though I haven’t been playing that much EQ2. I have my Norrathian museum on the Antonia Bayle server and it takes up the entire 7-year veteran reward home that I own. Thanks to these linked portals I will be able to link a ‘regular’ house to the museum, allowing players (and myself of course) to tour each of them. Decorating homes and “owning” a piece of the game is a really big deal to some players (not all of them, there are always those who are simply not interested) and I think the fact that EQ2 is willing to explore and upgrade these features is fantastic. There is a LOT of housing available in the game, and a lot of housing items. In fact even if you don’t enjoy housing at all it’s almost impossible to avoid that potion of the game because you get housing rewards for numerous quests, there are vendors all over, and the station cash store is filled with awesome furniture you can purchase. Having an option of ‘something else’ to do in game aside from slaughter creatures is a really important ‘hook’ to keep people in game.

If you are into housing, don’t forget to /join antonia_bayle.homeshow for great discussions with other designers. Have you decided what you’re going to do with this new feature yet? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

The Sims Medieval – Patch 1.3 #TSM #SimsMedieval

stargrace April 28, 2011 1Comment

A lot of people have been looking forward to this patch, although there is apparently a bit of an issue if you have the digital version of the game vs. the CD version. I updated without any issues – but keep in mind when you do an update like this you lose your quest progress. I wasn’t particularly enjoying the quest I was on so I didn’t think it was too big of a deal. The screen shot above is using the new camera feature that allows you to move 360 degrees around your character even while in the castle – no more barbie house view. This was probably the biggest change for me and the one I was looking forward to the most. The only issue I still have with the camera views is that I’m constantly right clicking on my portrait in order to change the view back to how I’d like it. It seems to flip between camera abilities too easily (ie: right clicking the portrait puts you into the ‘follow my character’ view, and the arrow buttons allow you to swivel around that character, rather then the base view which is more free form). Below are the patch notes (since for some reason my update didn’t come with any notes for me to read) and in italics are my comments about the ones I’m most looking forward to. Enjoy!

Here is a list of what will be included in the new update!

New Feature: Free Play Ambition – Set up your perfect kingdom without worrying about long term goals. In this special ambition, you can play quests when you wish, or control up to four heroes at once in a more open free play mode. (Very excited about this! Some times I just want to do things ‘free form’)
New Feature: Child Succession – If a Hero Sim dies, but already has children, you can choose to have one of the children grow up and take over their parent’s job!
Camera improvements – Have you ever wanted to get a better view of the action? The camera now allows tighter zooming and full 360 rotation in buildings. (The most important thing to me in all of these updates)
End Game Improvements – Similar to the Free Play Ambition, can now play quests, earn XP, and build buildings even after your ambition is completed!
Hero Leveling Improvements – Can now gain XP beyond level 10 for all heroes, giving additional benefits.
Brave New World Quest Improvements – When you complete the quest “Brave New World” and start a new ambition with that character, he or she will now retain several abilities from their previous profession!
Kingdom Aspect Improvements – Can now gain additional benefits when increasing aspects beyond their maximum capacity
Ambition Improvements – Certain ambitions now allow one or two additional buildings to be placed at the start.
Increased the maximum number of residents in a household from four to five. Go ahead and have another child!
Implemented game stability improvements that affected some players.
Adjusted several quests for clarity.
Fixed several bugs related to staying on a quest for a long period of time.
Improved detection of monitor resolution for some hardware configurations.
Fixed a variety of issues in Create-A-Sim.
Fixed several text and art inconsistencies.

Over all I’m pleased with the patch, and I hope to see more coming. I’m almost sad that there is no store attached to this version of the Sims franchise, unlike Sims 3. I got a few free sims points with my Sims 3 purchase (Generations is coming up soon and I’m looking forward to that expansion) and enjoy browsing the stores for new goodies. Ah well.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

4.1 Arrives #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace April 27, 2011 0Comment

I wasn’t expecting the big 4.1 to hit yesterday, but hit it did along with a lot of issues which are being hotfixed this morning. As with any major patch there were all of the now outdated UI addons that had to be updated, and while most of mine are there are still some which are not. This patch added a few key things that I am really pleased to see. Number one would have to be the new looking for guild interface. While EQ2 does have a LFGuild tool – it doesn’t allow players to communicate and apply to a guild that they see in the window unless there’s an officer online currently recruiting. The tool also does not allow players to see what level the guild is, something I find very handy. I applied to a casual guild on my warlock, and left a little blurb about what I was looking for. My other characters are already in a pretty nice guild, level 25 and casual but also do some light raiding and other organized events. I wish leveling a guild solo was more of an option (a la EQ2) but blizzard makes this just about impossible, or at least impossible to earn the achievements because you need to have a group majority of guild mates in with you. Don’t get me wrong, I love my guilds, just some times I like things quiet, too.

Guild challenges were also put in, which I do not really like. There are three types, one requires you to kill one boss of a level appropriate zone and your guild bank will receive 1,000g (each week). The second is to do 7 group dungeons in a guild group, your guild bank earns 250g for that one. The final is PvP and you earn 500g for that one. My problem is that this coin just goes into the guild bank for – for what purpose? Whatever the guild leader decides? For their own personal use? To cover repair costs? I have no idea. I still feel that sort of money is a large amount – but I realize I’m probably wrong.

With this patch also came the rise of the Zandalari, two revamped instances for level 85 characters who have an item level of 346 or higher – which I do not. In fact I doubt I even come close. I am excited about exploring them eventually but for now I’ll be content to listen to everyone else talk about it.

Dungeon finder: call to arms was also implemented. This is the incentive program to get queues to move faster. There are some restrictions on it: “to be eligible for the additional rewards you must solo queue for a random level-85 Heroic in the role that is currently being Called to Arms, and complete the dungeon by killing the final boss” – so I haven’t had any experience with it yet. I do like the idea of rare mounts being a reward, but I dislike that once again WoW focuses entirely on the end game.

A LOT of class changes too place, fixes, and updates. So if you want to read up on what else changed be sure to head over to the patch notes. In the mean time I’m having fun just doing my thing. The paladin is now level 36 and I’m having no issues healing my way through dungeons. Hopefully I can keep that up, but we’ll just have to see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Professions in The Sims 3 #TS3 #Sims3

Children’s Week #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

Multi-Housing Excitement #EQ2 #EverQuest2

The Sims Medieval – Patch 1.3 #TSM #SimsMedieval

4.1 Arrives #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

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