It’s been a long stressful week, and that’s not about to diminish until after Tuesday of next week, so I leave you all with this awesome image of my Asura hacking away at a Risen. I absolutely love her little motivational speeches that she gives about herself constantly. Makes me smile.
Have a great weekend!
A general warning: This post is a mishmash of ideas and thoughts combined with my gaming session in Wizard101, so it sort of bounces around a lot. My apologies.
This day in age, it’s hard to support all of the video games out there that you may enjoy playing. By ‘support’ I mean providing them with some sort of subscription fee or other payment that the game company can look at and go “we’re making money, yay, people love us!” because that’s what the ‘big guys’ pay attention to. We can make our blog posts and praise games as much as we want, and yes, that does all help, but to KEEP a game going I truly believe that it is funding that is noticed most of all.
I love Wizard101, and I’ve played it off and on for a number of years now. When I first started playing I splurged and bought a handful of crowns (as well as a subscription) to show my ‘support’ to the game. Years have gone on and I still have a handful of crowns, I haven’t really found anything that I NEEDED to spend it on. Last night I had an itch to play, so I loaded it up (and had a lot of downloads to go through) and made my way to my wizard castle (home). It was great re-visiting my garden, which I was surprised was actually still standing. I made quick work of clearing out the bugs around my plants, watered them, my gift giving tree is even still there. Gave them some sunshine and then I was out of energy for a while, so I moved on.
When I had left Wizard101 I had just started on Marleybone, after becoming a hero of Krokotopia (which I am still pretty proud of to this day). I know by most W101 standards I’m still a very young Wizard, having never been to some of the newer places like Celestia, Zafaria, or Avalon. I did get a quest that sent me to Wysteria but because I prefer to do things in order once I had completed the introductory quest I went back to Marleybone (where my quests there promptly sent me back to Krokotopia to do delivery to some troops). It felt nice to be playing again. It’s a relaxing game, and you don’t need to have children to enjoy the finer details like housing, pet battles, gardening, crafting, or even just the basic game play which is a turn based card-game type of battle that takes place.
Anyhow. While I feel lucky that there are so many games out there for such a huge variety of gamers, I also feel sad because it’s impossible to support every single game I enjoy all of the time. Some times these blog posts are all us fans have to give and it’s just not always enough. That comment doesn’t directly relate to Wizard101, but more a general thought I had as I was going through some of the games I’ve played in the past. Some that are no longer around. Some make you wonder how on earth they can still be around (Vanguard, I’m looking at you).
On a completely random note, I can’t wait for Pirate 101. I’m not in the beta but I have my fingers crossed, and I am really looking forward to seeing what KingsIsle does with the game. Of course I’m also pretty biased since I wrote a bunch of Wizard101 articles for Beckett Massive Online Gamer (which shut down), and FUN! Online Games (renamed). It’s amazing at how fast time flies.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
Unable to bring myself to playing an alt when there’s still so much to do on my ‘main’, I’ve been completing the lower level zones and collecting craft goods for those unplayed characters so that they may at least level up crafting (and gain regular experience from that). So far it’s gone quite well. Yesterday I completed the Charr starter zone, which I found incredibly pretty, decked out in fall colours. My human mesmer picked up armoring and tailoring, which is of course a huge pain in the behind because both skills use the same materials to level up. I’ll get through it, I’ve really got nothing but time on my hands now that my guardian is 80 so collecting lower level supplies is not too rough.
I’ve only completed two of the starter zones now, the Asura and Charr. Today I’ll probably do the human zones, and then the Sylvari tomorrow. We’ll see. That should get me enough craft materials to at least level either one or the other to 75, and prepare me for the next round of zones. I’m slowly saving up skill points towards the 200 required for the legendary weapon, and while I’m certainly not saving up any money (yet) I know it will come with time (or at least that’s what I hope).
I’m pleased that I’ve almost completed the monthly achievements for September. All I need is to salvage 500 items, I believe at this moment I’m at around 375, and running through the lower level zones has certainly been helpful, as I’m just salvaging everything I loot. I’ve made sure to keep the magic find food active on my character too, after all every little bit helps.
I hope everyone else is having a pleasant week so far, no matter what game you find yourself in. Happy gaming!
As much as I love playing video games, I still haven’t found “The One” and don’t believe it exists yet. Wurm Online was probably the closest. As such, I play numerous games and will continue to do so – because guess what, they’re ALL fun, and each game (IMO) has a little unique feature to it that I greatly enjoy. My three ‘active’ games at the moment are GW2 (no subscription which is a fantastic thing for my nomadic gaming habits), WoW, and EVE Online. I still dip into other games but I would call those three my steadies.
In EVE Online I’m currently training towards a Tengu, and in between still working on my industry. I have a load of items to sell in Jita, so I’ll be planning a trip out that way some time soon. My R&D agents probably forgot who I even was when I showed up at their base today to request a mission (and of course to spend all that RP I had gained) because it has been a while since I popped my head into game, but things were just as I had left them, which I like.
EVE is still the most relaxing game that I play, even when I’m doing missions or traveling through NullSec. I wonder if it’s because I don’t see physical avatars running around from quest hub to quest hub, or because the idea of ‘space’ feels bigger than ‘a world’ that my character is adventuring on. Whatever the reason, it’s a great way for me to relax in the mornings with a warm mug of coffee, going through my daily ‘chores’ in-game. That mostly involves setting up my PI runs, checking my copy processes, manufacturing, and industry. Running missions for my R&D agents, and then a mission or two for loyalty points if I happen to be in the right area. Lately I’ve been running missions for a mining company in order to make some faction purchases, but I may branch out once I fit my newest ship: a fancy new Drake. We’ll see how it goes.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
Thanks to some great blog posts by Rowan over at ‘I Have Touched The Sky‘ I decided to get my feet wet in some PvP in Guild Wars 2. One thing to keep in mind is that PvP is NOT WvWvW (world vs. world vs. world). You access it from your hero pane, and you port over to a completely different zone. You’re given a template character, with template gear, and you can sign up for what they call ‘structured’ pvp. There’s a few ways to do this. Number one, you can enter tournaments with a set team of players – or – you can join one of the 8 vs 8 teams already in progress. You’ll be randomly placed with a team of players, and you’ll be red or blue. You’ll be placed on one of a handful of maps, and the objectives are pretty much (from what I saw) all the same. First team to 500 points wins, and you are trying to take over as many areas of the map as possible (and of course kill your enemy along the way).
I really enjoyed this pvp, even more so than the wvwvw that I had been participating in. It felt a lot more ‘relaxed’ to me, although it also moves a lot faster. It takes no time at all to reach 500 points, especially if you’re on a good team. Instead of dropping and having to sign up again what happens when you’ve won (or lost) is that you’ll move on to another map, in another random match up of players, and start over again. If the matches go by really quick this means you could be moving maps every 5-10 minutes, which can be a bit confusing (at least it was for me). I just stuck with someone from my team, because obviously there is power in numbers. I’m almost finished the first ‘tier’ of PvP which is the hare, or bunny, or rabbit tier, whatever it’s called. You earn glory (I think that’s the name for it) that you can use to buy gear as you move up through the ranks. There are a lot of them, too. Merchants open up for level 50 60 and 70 that I found.
The introduction to PvP is quite well done, too. You’ll start out on the training grounds before moving to the actual sign up zone. You’ll have to complete three ‘hearts’ that are on these grounds, teaching you the basics of reviving an ally, and taking over an area of the map. After you’ve completed these three things you move to a larger map where you can work on getting familiar with whatever template you happen to be using, pick different weapons or gear if you’d rather not start out with whatever you have, and generally chatter with others in the zone about joining a tournament.
Then it’s just a matter of talking to another NPC to get into an actual battle, and you’re off. Best of all, I had no queues, unlike WvWvW.
Anyone else tried out PvP? What did you think of it? As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!
stargrace