Giving Neverwinter a Chance #Neverwinter

screenshot_2013-04-30-13-19-41When I played the beta I was pretty unenthusiastic. The controls gave me motion sickness and I couldn’t see myself spending $60 for the options that were granted, so I didn’t get that excited about the game in general. Then a few close friends of mine started playing and I decided to give the game another chance today when it went into open beta.

I’m very glad I did.

I created a Guardian Fighter, Dwarf, named Blesse (on the Dragon server for those who are looking for me). She’s level 6 so far and I’ve had a blast with the character despite the fact that there has been some incredible lag on the servers since the masses started logging in. I’m looking forward to inching my way to level 10 so I can start professions, and aside from that I know absolutely nothing about the game. Maybe that’s for the best. I played through one of the foundry missions that someone had created and I can’t wait until I can make my own.

Will I stick with it? Well, as a nomadic gamer that’s a pretty hard decision. I’ll just have to take it day by day for now!

Are you trying out Neverwinter? What are your thoughts so far? What are you playing? Let me know in comments!

Missions and Prayer Shawls #EverQuest

EQ000043It was a great Sunday for playing EverQuest, though I did manage to get a lot of spring cleaning done too (and broke the balcony door, thankfully that was easy to fix). Last night Oger, Xoxox, and myself decided to head to House of Thule to work on some missions, mostly for our alts. I boxed my ranger, and Xoxox boxed his ranger. We all earned a bunch of achievements for completing the missions in a timely fashion and for having no one die. Oger managed to edge his way to level 92 which is fantastic because that’s the first tier of Rain of Fear gear. Gear doesn’t make or break the game exactly (aa do) but it certainly does help.

Earlier on in the day I completed the pre-quest for the prayer shawl 3.0. Since I have not completed my 2.0 shawl yet I can’t go any further but it was nice to get it done. For the 2.0 I need to farm snow griffin eggs, something I dread. I’ll have to use my ranger to track and lately they have been camped by other people also trying to complete their prayer shawls. Go figure.

The 3.0 pre-quest was quite easy. It begins with Kerst Frostrift in PoK who is a new NPC in the center building of the small bank. There are a bunch of new NPC there along with various crafting depots. You need to speak to a few people and make a few items, nothing out of the ordinary. When that is completed you’ll be granted the title “Alliance Artisan” and you’ll also be given the book “Merchant Alliance Tradebook” – this book allows you to craft a few unique recipes which are great for end game characters.

My enchanter is very slowly inching her way towards level 96. It’s quite slow going now, but that could also be because I haven’t actually been earning experience on her in the typical sense of the term. I haven’t been grinding experience, rather. I’ve still been having a lot of fun completing what I have so far, yesterday I started the hand augment quest that involves an enormous amount of bits and pieces. I’ll have to make some room in my bank.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Citadel of the World Slayer #EverQuest

EQ000059One thing I really like about EverQuest is how out of date content is still quite relevant in the current game. Last night I was invited along to raid the Citadel of the World Slayer, which is a raid from the Seeds of Destruction. Those are void zones, and while I’ve done a fair amount in the regular zones I had not done anything in the raid zones before so it was bound to be an adventure. We had 21 people in the raid but a good portion of those were boxed. The raid involves 7 boss fights, and we managed to down 5 of them before calling it a night. I imagine we’ll get the last two today.

While the gear that dropped was not anything to write home about the augments that drop and spell components are still quite handy, and of course there are achievements for completing these raids.

The first mob we were up against was Mindblight, which was a pretty straight forward fight. The mob would spawn, we hit it a while, then adds would spawn. We fight those until dead, then back to the named. Eventually a new type of mob would spawn, I would mez those and they would vanish. A few AOE went off at the same time, but nothing too serious. It was a fun fight, and a nice introduction back to raiding. The mobs gave experience since they were light and dark blue to me at 95, so while they’re certainly a few expansions behind it’s not as though they were complete pushovers.

Next was the Trophy Room, then Stasis which was my favorite fight. It involved a lot of running around, people being banished to cells, and an entire script that had to be played out. I may not have felt like the most useful person in the raid (almost everyone else is level 100 and are geared for raiding) but it was still a great time. I didn’t even die, although I did have a few close calls.

Left is Overlord Muram and the Edge of Destruction. I believe we’re going back to do those tonight, we have a lock out timer on the rest of the zone now. Who knows, eventually I may even be raiding current content, although these days I don’t really see a need to have very many enchanters on raids. We’re not exactly awesome DPS, though we do bring a few unique things to the table I don’t feel (yet) that any of them are essentials. I guess we’ll just have to see!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Keeping Up With The Gamers #MMORPG

If you’re one of those gamers who likes to taste a little bit of every game, this has probably been an expensive year for you. Whether you’re only interested in MMOs or if that extends to single player, it doesn’t much matter. There’s a lot of games out there and the costs can add up.

Right now I’m reading everyone’s excited squeals for Neverwinter, the ‘early’ release starts today – for people who decided to buy the $200 package. Needless to say, I simply can’t afford to spend that much on a game that I may or may not enjoy well into the future. At this moment I have been contemplating the $60 package, but I’m still not sure if it’s a game that I truly enjoy more than anything else I already have on my plate (that comes at a lower cost). So what is on my plate?

I did get my $60 out of Guild Wars 2, and even though I’m not actively playing that right this second I know it’s not going anywhere. I’ve dedicated more than $60 worth of hours to the game, and I’ve had a lot of fun. It will still be there when my interest leans that way again.

Wurm Online is $50 a year (until the price goes up in May). You rarely ever get MMOs for that price, and I’ve certainly got a lot of played time on my characters. I think my main is over 100 days played now. Plus you can play Wurm with in-game currency, which I do for my 2nd account. I just purchased a year of game time, wanting to get that settled before the price goes from $5 EU a month to $8 EU.

My EQ account is compensated, as are all of my SOE accounts. This makes them an easy go-to choice for many genres. I’m having a lot of fun in EQ, and I still dip into EQ2 and Vanguard. Me and SOE (the company, not the people) may have had some rocky times, but they’re a solid game choice for me and have been for many, many years.

Rift is active for 30 days. I haven’t poked in yet and I’m not really sure why. I just haven’t felt the urge, even after claiming the latest expansion and a handful of other goodies.

There are loads of other games on my desktop that I could technically pick up and play at any time, and haven’t felt an inkling to do so yet. There’s Wizard 101, Pirate 101, The Secret World, Star Trek Online (I have a life time subscription to that one), and of course EVE which I still have some unused PLEX for. These are just the MMO games. There’s a whole steam library of single player games that I haven’t beaten yet, and a few that have no ‘end’ like The Sims 3.

With such a selection it’s hard for me to justify spending even more money on a game that I know didn’t exactly call to me in the beta – but – so hard to resist because pretty much all of my friends are going to be playing it. I never want to be the one left out of all the fun. So for those who ARE going to be playing today – I look forward to living vicariously through your adventures!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Why Own Just a Guild Hall – Why Not The Whole Zone?! #EverQuest

EQ000057Why decorate a simple guild house – when you can own the entire neighbourhood! This is exactly what I decided to do for the small guild I belong to in EverQuest. The station cash store has an option for you to purchase not only a guild hall (that can be accessed through the guild lobby) but an entire guild neighbourhood. This instanced location will belong to the guild as a whole, not any one individual person, which you’re warned about before you purchase it.

Other people can enter the instance, tour the houses and poke around, but they won’t be able to purchase house plots.

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So it was that I ended up with an entire area to decorate and then some. The guild halls are nice, spacious, and they come with a handful of NPC to help make your stay there more comfortable. So far I’ve not done much decorating, Oger has added some weapons and shields to the walls as well as some very nice looking paintings. We have a crafting room off of the main entrance, complete with some of the more ‘unique’ craft tables, like alchemy and even an ice cream churn. There are some extra NPC down there so you don’t have to go racing all over the place to collect items from your bank, and I really like how things are looking so far.

I’ve also set up a few houses within the zone for my alts, you can use these for storage or whatever else you would like. I haven’t gotten around to any massive decorating yet, and certainly nothing on the scale of EQ2 housing (yet) but it’s in the works and as I make some progress I’ll be sure to share pictures.

Speaking of progress -the ranger on my second account is now level 85. I’ve paused her leveling here for now, 100% of experience is going into alternate advancement. I don’t want her to be useless, so the more aa I can get the better. Plus this gives me time to work on getting my epic completed, and a few other (ie: older) quests that I want to do. My rank 5 mercenary quest is pretty high up on that list as well.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!