2015

A bit of Trove

stargrace December 12, 2015 0Comment

I had beta access to Trove for the longest time but never actually made it in-game to play. A few people have been talking about the game as being a ‘hidden gem’ so I decided to peek around this weekend some. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, and I’m still not really sure what to think. What I played around with was fun, but the world didn’t really appeal to me at the start. Of course it’s never fair to judge a game after only a few hours of playing but I will say that I earned enough of the in-game currency to unlock an awesome reindeer mount, which I loved.

The game is F2P with a subscription option as well as store options. I was playing as a free player and nothing stuck out at me as a “hey you must have a subscription!” point at the offset, and I appreciate that. A ‘why don’t you consider subscribing!’ screen did pop up once as I gated between worlds, but it wasn’t completely intrusive.

There are no traditional groups in Trove, instead those who are in proximity, get loot. A neat concept but one I wasn’t exactly prepared for. I leveled up a few levels and was just standing around outside of some giant fortress type dungeon and suddenly had a bunch of loot for no effort. That felt really weird.

Crafting is fun, and there are a TON of collection options. Graphic options for every single thing you could imagine. I figure there’s some pretty neat outfits out there that people probably want to get their hands on.

I also enjoyed playing the trickster quite a bit. I was able to shoot from a huge distance and take down most encounters before they were ever near me. If they did get near me I would blink away and call my illusions to fight the battle for me. In the lower levels as you go through the tutorial there’s a lot of hand holding and a lot of ‘place your house, craft this item, do this dungeon. Rinse. Repeat’ but I still had fun doing it.

I don’t know if I can safely say at this point whether I’ll be playing long term or if this was just a brief little afternoon excursion, but I DID see lots of players around no matter where I went, and that’s always a good thing.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Sims 4 – Get Together

stargrace December 11, 2015 0Comment

Another Sims 4 expansion has been released, this time it’s called “Get Together” and includes a new feature called ‘clubs’. Just like in real life, your sim character can join a club, earn points by doing ‘club things’ together, and even lead their own club if they want to.

I wanted to take advantage of some of the new styles in-game, along with traits, so I decided not to start with my legacy family (more about how they’re doing later). I created a new character and moved her to Windenburg (shake your butt-enburg to the locals). The map is a European inspired world that has ancient ruins, cafes, and discotheques. Unfortunately the game also comes full of bugs, some of them really annoying like the one pictured above.

My character and a bunch of strangers just gathered around this counter and stood there forever. They were talking to one another and just frozen in place. It happened twice before I decided to just automagically send my character home which freed her up. I believe the bug occurs when you have so many people gathered in one location. Hopefully EA fixes it before too long (yeah, right).

My sim browsed through the clubs that would accept her without having a whole range of skills and eventually settled on joining the Garden Gnomes. This is a gardening group – at night. At least I think they only operate at night because any time they have a meeting it’s dark. Their last meet up was at a local park, dead of night, complete with a child playing on the playground (that’s not creepy or anything). The group typically gets together (in the dark) and then performs some group farming rituals over some thriving plants, or goes fishing. Yes, that’s exactly what my sim wanted to do on her Thursday evening, go fishing in the city in the dark.

As you go to these gatherings and complete tasks together you earn club points, and these points can be spent on all sorts of things to enhance your club experience. Clubs come with a few by default, and if you’re the leader of the club you’re able to customize it even more. Secret handshakes, cool outfits and accessories of course.

Besides all the fun club things that comes with the expansion there’s a whole range of new items and skills to play with. I’ve been working on my dance moves and have every intention of trying out the new DJ options one of these days. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the expansion so far – minus the bugs, of course.

Gaming

Do You Need Combat in your Games?

stargrace December 10, 2015 4Comments

Spurred on by a conversation on twitter with Belghast and Adrel I started thinking about the games that I play that I enjoy more than others. Two immediately came to mind, Wurm Online and the Sims franchise. Both are games that (due to my play style) have very little if any combat – and I love that about them. Yes, arguably you can combat as much as you want in Wurm Online but that’s not how I tend to spend my time. In the Sims games there’s almost never any combat, not in the traditional sense. Of course there are ways to encourage combat if you want (you can make enemies and start fights) but for the most part the game is pretty peaceful. Then there’s all of the visual novel games that I enjoy playing, games like If my Heart Had Wings, and Dandelion – Wishes brought to you. Mindless games I enjoy just because like Cook, Serve, Delicious. Building games like Cities: Skylines. These are the sorts of games that entice me the most and I suppose until I sat down and looked through my games it’s not actually something I noticed before.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy combat in games, too. I do. Diablo 3 is pretty much nothing but blowing things up. The thing is I get very bored of those games very quickly – just like Belghast tends to get bored of games that don’t have combat in them (per our conversation earlier). I think that in the majority of games I play I spend my time equally between combat and no combat depending on the game. EVE Online is a good example. There’s combat, and I do combat via missions, but a lot of the time I’m running delivery missions or I’m mining or I’m doing industry things that don’t involve any combat at all. The same can be said for EQ2 and WoW, sure, there’s combat, but a lot of the time I’m harvesting, decorating, or crafting and none of that (at least for me) involves any combat at all.

Do you have a preference or are you about equal in terms of combat vs. non combat gameplay? Would you tend to fall asleep if one or the other aspect was missing from your game of choice? Let me know in comments!

Gaming

Lost, Again.

stargrace December 9, 2015 0Comment

Remember how just last week I was talking about video games that do a poor job at introducing you to what you’ve missed while you’ve been away? Well, World of Warcraft is another game that I’ve recently returned to – and I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean, I know how to play my character, I understand garrisons, that’s not the issue. I was around for that stuff. The issue is what I do with everything else going on.

So lets start with what I know. So far I know that they’ve added navel battles since I last played. These are like garrisons – on water. Plus you can lose your ship, and you can gear them up so of course when you lose them you lose all their stuff, too and then you have to start all over again. When you do the tutorial they do a great job of explaining about how much you suck. Thanks Blizzard!

The next thing I discovered was Warlord’s version of Timeless Isle – except it’s not as much fun, it’s much more pressure, meaner, and harder to get around. With that being said, I did get a pair of 675 shoulders last night, so that was swell. When I quit I was wearing 640 gear, and the new stuff is a big upgrade, plus I can upgrade it twice more. I haven’t figured out how that works yet, but I’m sure it’ll be revealed in time. The zone is awkward, the roads are narrow, and my map is FULL of stuff going on. Unfortunately most of it happened to be complete before I got there, and unlike Timeless Isle where people usually helped one another out, this place seems like a complete free for all.

Then there’s the Timewalking dungeons. Those reward various 660 pieces of gear, and for barely anything I was able to upgrade almost my complete set of gear to 675 from the vendor in Shattrah. I’m on my way to doing 5 dungeons, I just need one more. They’re fairly painless but not a complete cakewalk, one of the ones I went through ended up needing three replacement tanks since none of them were able to control their aggro. Happens, and I didn’t vote anyone out, but the rest of my group was less patient than I. Speaking of patience, the NPC who sells the Timewalking gear is currently completely covered by players in mounts with vendors, on purpose to be obnoxious so you can’t purchase anything. Isn’t that fun? There’s a quest to complete 5 timewalking dungeons, and so I did that and managed to get an ilevel 695 robe, yay! Now my ilevel is 666… that seems.. appropriate?

That’s where I’m currently at. I imagine I’ll do some LFR before too long, maybe on the weekend (though that has always been a poor day to do raids from my experience, best day is typically Tuesday when they re-set) and continue working on being able to fly in Draenor. If you want to group up or just add me to battlenet, you can find me as Stargrace#1783 – I’m playing horde these days, my alliance characters over on Argent Dawn have taken a back seat, and I’m playing over on Area 52.

What else do I need to know about recent changes? Have any tips / hints / tricks / guides to direct me to? Go ahead and leave them in comments as always!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

Lets Give Away some Steam Game Keys (Contest Time!)

stargrace December 8, 2015 2Comments

Since I’m not running my Gamers Secret Santa this year, I decided I would do something a little bit different. I have quite a few steam game keys I’m going to be giving away, all you need to do is enter a valid email address to be put into the draw (plus you’re going to want to have a steam account so you can redeem them if you win). The keys will go out randomly on December 25th at 1:30pm PDT, and the games I’m giving away include the following (and more that are not listed here):

Fez
Starseed Pilgrim
Neighbours from Hell Compilation
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection
Sid Meier’s Civ. III Complete

Plus many more. You can only enter once, and the rewards are random. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from me, Stargrace, here at MmoQuests.com!

A bit of Trove

Sims 4 – Get Together

Do You Need Combat in your Games?

Lost, Again.

Lets Give Away some Steam Game Keys (Contest Time!)

You Missed

Expensive Month (preparing for fun)

Locked Out (again)

What’s Going on?

EVE September (personal) Economy Update