June 2016

Uhh What Was I Doing Again?

stargrace June 30, 2016 1 Comment

This is pretty much as far as I got in ArcheAge when I attempted to peek in and see where things were at. I’ve mentioned this before, but a lot of games out there do an absolutely horrible job at welcoming a returning player back to the game. I’m not talking about the little goodie bags that were waiting for me – but there was no indication as to what I had been working on, what I needed to be working on, what had changed since I had been away, or what I should work towards next. What I did know was that my character was level 40, she had a bunch of quests on her, and 700 gold plus relatively full bags that seemed to be mostly consumables.

I know that in order to get back into a game your best bet is usually not to revisit your old characters but to create brand new characters and get familiar with all the ins and outs – but I rarely ever want to start from scratch, and I don’t necessarily feel that players should have to. What I’d like to see is some sort of special UI that pops up for players who have been away from the game for XYZ amount of time, with options on revisiting skills, quests, what’s changed, what’s new. Maybe an in-game browser highlighting the very important changes. If it could somehow take a peek at your last logged in date and calculate notes from there, that would be simply amazing and would be a great step in getting me to re-join your game. As it is now, there are very few games I can pick up from where I left off and know what the hell is going on.

I did have a lot of fun logging in my pirate character. As you can see by the character info panel on the left hand side, she has almost 1,000 crime points. She hasn’t been killed in PVP though so she hasn’t had to go to trial. Most of her crime points (OK, all) are from stealing crops that were not on farms, and for uprooting other players crops (also not on farms). She’s my “evil” character, if that’s still a thing. Unfortunately, just like my main character I had no idea what I was doing or where I should go or what I needed to do. This second character is level 32, and I remember zero about her class. That being said, logging in is pretty much all I did before logging right back out.

I suppose that’s just a hint for me to start over if I want to re-learn anything about this game..

Gaming

Forever Wandering Through Games

stargrace June 29, 2016 3 Comments

How long has it been since you stuck with a single MMO for at least a year? I remember when Tipa used to put out a challenge to people to stick with a single game for a year, and almost no one could accomplish it even when the choices were much more limited, let alone these days where there are games for every genre you could possibly think of. Sure, we may play one game at a time, or two games, or have some combination of F2P & subscription, but more and more I notice that we are ALL becoming nomadic gamers, bouncing between games when the mood strikes (or when that new shiny pops up on the table).

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just something I’ve noticed over the years. I would love to be one of those people who stick with a single game for any length of time but I simply don’t have that in me any more (for a few reasons). One reason would have to be the price point. Money fluctuates throughout the year and my game choices will change based on that. A good example is EQ2. My subscription expires the 2nd week of July, so I find very little motivation to log in and play right now as I know I won’t be re-subscribing (baby on the way, I simply have to re-allocate my funds for a bit). I’ve never really enjoyed playing games with a sub as a F2P player, not because I think F2P is “bad” but because I’d rather have access to the entire game. Speaking of – why doesn’t Trion offer some sort of bulk subscription plan that offers access to all of their games, much like station access? Rift and ArcheAge would certainly be two games I’d love to check out more of, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about the F2P options (especially in ArcheAge where owning land is tied to having a subscription). Offer a package deal and those subscriptions become a lot more favorable. I blame Belghast and Bhagpuss for my sudden interest in Trion games, both of them have been posting about Rift / ArcheAge on their blogs. I was interested enough that I updated glyph though I haven’t actually logged in (yet).

Speaking of EQ2, a new server opened up yesterday. It’s the Isle of Refuge, and it runs just as all the other servers in the EQ2 line up do, except the majority of items can be sold / traded and don’t have the heirloom tag. There’s a great write up about it over at EQ2wire, and the server reminds me a lot of Firiona Vie, the RP server over on EQ. There are a few other rules to the FV server besides that but it was one that stuck out to me. Why Daybreak has added such a server I have no idea (nor does anyone else it seems if you read through the comments on the article) but it’s nice to see things are not completely stagnant.

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

Gaming Real Life

Happy 10th Anniversary, MmoQuests

stargrace June 25, 2016 8 Comments

June 25th, 2006 marked the first post I ever made here on MmoQuests. 10 years has gone by since then. Ten. Years. So much has changed, and yet, not that much has changed. I started this blog writing about EverQuest 2. There are a total of 2,889 (soon to be 2890) posts, and 1,349 of them are related to EQ2. That’s a lot of posts. 260 of them are related to EQ. 225 to WoW, and 195 to Wurm Unlimited. Those are my top game categories and it’s pretty easy to see that those are also my top games. Even today, 10 years later.

This blog has changed my life in ways that I could have never imagined. A few years after I got started, I got a job working for Beckett Massive Online Gamer, and wrote articles for their video game magazine. That’s right, articles that are out in print (or were in any case). It was one of my proudest moments. I wrote guides for EQ2, Wizard 101, Aion, and others. Unfortunately the magazine shut down, it was right as the surge of video game web sites was coming up and lets face it printed publications are typically outdated by the time a buyer sees them, especially compared to web sites. It was still pretty damn awesome to go to a big box store like Chapters and buy a magazine that had my articles in it. Sometimes there was just one, other times there were as many as four or five.

Because of the connections I made at Beckett, I was invited to visit the Sony Online Entertainment studio back in 2009. It was another experience I won’t ever forget. I met with dev teams from EQ2, EQ, and they managed to slip in a Vanguard tour for me which was spectacular. I wrote about it all on my blog and it’s just so apparent to me how much of a fan of these games I was even before meeting with the people behind the games.

When Beckett shut down I started volunteering for SOE, both as a guide for Vanguard and EQ2. After some time, I was also invited to sit on their community council. A good portion of my blog and blog-related changes happened because of my love of EQ2 and the fact that I had found a method of discussing my unhappiness with some aspects of the game without being incredibly rude. I learned that developers most certainly DO listen to players but you really have to word it a particular way so that it doesn’t come across as crass. Too many people like to spout hate and disrupt things – that’s not how you get the proper attention of anyone in charge at all.

Eventually I started applying to game companies for remote jobs that were not SOE. These jobs are rare, but they’re out there. It meant I had to break my ties with the SOE Community Council though, which I still miss. Through some luck and a man named David who was willing to take a chance on me, I was hired at Carbine as a forum moderator to help work with the WildStar players and their teams. Eventually this job shifted to me being hired at NCSOFT, still mainly working on WildStar but also dabbling in Aion, and Lineage 2. My job consisted of not only forum moderation, but feedback from players to developers, acting as that barrier. I interacted with players on a daily basis, wrote reports on an almost daily basis, and invented events and games to help keep things calm in times of turmoil. I started helping out with patch notes, and learned just how valuable my sense of organization was. I learned a lot, but unfortunately contract work is contract work, and we all know how those typically end, especially if you’re working remote.

None of this would have happened had I not started writing back in 2006. I don’t often get a lot of comments on my blog, and my readership fluctuates, but I like to think that I have stayed relatively steady through those 10 years. My writing doesn’t change that much, even when I’ve been angry or upset about a recent video game decision. One of my most valuable pieces of advice that I can give is – be persistent. Write steadily and reliably. Write for you. I never ever expected that blogging of all things would take me to where I have gone, but I am eternally grateful that it has. Hopefully my next 10 years of adventures will be just as grand.

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

Gaming

Making Goals, Achieving Goals

stargrace June 22, 2016 No Comments

I like having goals in games that I play, whether they’re goals I create myself, or goals the game creates for me. One of the goals I had for myself in WoW was to reach ilevel 700 on my main (who at this time I consider my priest) before Legion released. I consider myself to be a pretty casual player, I don’t group up very often but I spend a fair amount of time in LFR or searching through custom groups for something that catches my fancy. I’ve never done a mythic dungeon (let alone a raid) and while I did do a lot of PVP at the beginning of Warlords, I’ve since stopped. This meant that reaching that magical number was a goal that I wasn’t sure I could accomplish.

Except today I managed to do just that. It probably would have been sooner had I bothered trying to get groups for Kazz but I didn’t even know about that raid (blush) until a month or so ago.

My gear is of course a hodgepodge of stuff. A few set pieces (Felfume) some Kazz loot (trinkets, neck, cloak), and some empowered baleful from Taanan Jungle. While I’m out and about on my own my priest is usually spec’d as shadow – but when it comes to grouping or raids, I’m currently in disc. I’ve been playing a priest main for years now, and I’m excited to see the holy changes that are coming in Legion, it’s been a while since I’ve tinkered with that specific spec.

In the meantime as we wait for Legion I’m doing the typical “prepare for Legion” things. Milking my garrison while I can, collecting appearance gear in my bank / bags for when transmog changes go live, doing world events for tabards, and playing the alts here and there. I’ve also been working on my pet collection, I’m up to 551 now, but I want more to be level 25, and at least rare quality. Alts come in handy for this, I can earn enough tokens in a day to turn a few rare and to also level up a few levels just by doing the garrison pet daily. I know I could grind out the levels on the pets that I want at 25, but I have a feeling I would get bored of that pretty easily. At least this way I keep myself interested.

That’s one of the hardest parts about waiting for an expansion – keeping interested and busy. Since I’m such a casual player to begin with, it hasn’t been that hard this time around, but I AM very eager for Legion to release.

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

Gaming

The Legacy (family) Continues

stargrace June 21, 2016 No Comments

I love decorating homes but I don’t have very much patience for building a home from scratch. I was getting frustrated at having multi-floor homes, and so I decided to (once again) re-do the entire legacy home from top to bottom. Their lot is work a whooping $94,000 give or take, so I had plenty of money (and space) to play with. I put all of the rooms on the main floor and by the time everything was sufficiently decorated, the home consisted of two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a dining room, a computer room, living room, and a lovely outdoor pool / BBQ area. I saved the gravestones of both Alonzo and Jessica and placed them outside in the yard, so the ghosts can still come around and visit. I’ve since added an outdoor garden as well, harvesting fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs is very handy. Now the fridge is stocked and meals cost a lot less with supplies on hand. Since Jessica used to do most of the cooking, Emily has taken up the craft. She’s still working away at her painting career, selling works of art to galleries and museums across the world, while Tristan plunks away at being a programmer.

He has two negative traits that are making life difficult. One is non-committal, which means every day he gets sad with his job, his life, his wife and his family in general unless something changes. His second negative trait is the gloomy trait, which of course puts him in a constant sad mood. Thankfully his family is pretty understanding, and they’re learning to cope with his moods. He also seems to have a weak immune system because he has caught more colds and ‘itches’ from things out in the world than any of my other sims combined.

Their son continues to go to school and attempts to make friends. He’s another creative soul, much like Emily. His differs in that he tends to focus more towards music and instruments than the arts, but there are plenty of both around to hold his attention either way.

I’m not 100% happy with the new house, so I may look for one that suits what I want in the gallery, and then decorate it myself. I’m not good at designing the properties, but I could spend hours decorating them. Might as well do what I enjoy doing! Especially in a video game.

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

Uhh What Was I Doing Again?

Forever Wandering Through Games

Happy 10th Anniversary, MmoQuests

Making Goals, Achieving Goals

The Legacy (family) Continues

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The Construction of Quail Landing

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