Gaming

Game update 33 goes live, and what’s up with guilds lately

stargrace March 29, 2007 0Comment

Silverstep, on her way to Unrest

First of all, I have to vent. I really hate how a lot of guilds are lately, in their treatment of non-guildies. One issue in specific, would have to be asking / letting someone join on a raid – only to tell them (or not tell them at all) that the raid is actually full, and they’re no longer needed. This is an issue that has happened to not only myself, but a few friends of mine, and not just one isolated incident, with one guild, but at least three, with three separate guilds. Mine typically goes along the lines of standing around waiting for a raid invite, then the raid zones in, uninvited, after being invited along. Which is the same thing that’s happened to a few other TK’ers. One even went so far as to sign up 12th for a raid, and was denied a spot on it. Not because they’re a horrible player, but simply because in the end ‘there was no room’, even if they registered and it was organized ahead of time that they’d be able to go.

I think my largest concern is that the guilds doing this do not even have the curtsey to SAY something to those involved, but leave them standing around watching the raid force zone in. I realize that organizing a raid is a difficult and time consuming thing. I realize running one means you’re constantly heading in ten directions at once, and things can get confusing, but what happened to having a little bit of humanity and taking some consideration for those who are dedicating their time (and efforts) to help out on said raids? It frustrates me to no end. I’m a good raider, and a good player. I’m not the best, there’s always better out there, but I’m adaptable and know my stuff. I wish I didn’t have to prove that to every single person out there and was given the benefit of the doubt. Anyhow, enough of that rant.

The game update 33 went in yesterday, and I absolutely love what they’ve done to macros. I don’t use a whole lot of them, but I do have macros for divine arbitration on the templar, as well as her sanctuary spell. In the past, these macros have never shown what the recast on the spell was, since you choose a separate icon to display it. Which meant that some where on another hotbar, I’d have to stick sanctuary and DA just so that I could watch the recast timer and know when it would be back up. Annoying, to say the least. I also have macros for my mez’s, depending on the situation. I don’t want to spam my groups with macros obviously. My +168 temporary int buff is also on a macro, as well as Savante, a 52 illusionist rare that reduces mana consumption by 56% for a limited amount of time. I’ll certainly be playing with the functions as time goes on and figuring out the best macro methods for me.

The next sword of destiny quest was also released. Not looking forward to that, I haven’t even completed the first two yet. Slacker, I know. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately both in game and out, so I’m moving a little slower. I finally got around to making food and drink, but other then that have not crafted. Transmuting I worked on slightly, but not a lot. My other smaller crafters have been fairly neglected, but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up. Still not much word yet on the incoming server transfers. I haven’t made up my mind yet about where to go (or whether to just stay). Yesterday morning was fun, just before servers came down I heard that the unicorn (level 60 epicx2) who paths around the Obelisk in LesserFaydark, was up. I poked a friend of mine and asked him if he wanted to duo it with me boxing the illusionist / fury. With only 15 minutes until down time it was a little pressed, but down she went (is the unicorn even a she? I’m not sure.. how do you check that?) and dropped a master chest. I was hoping for the cloak, but instead got a dagger which was of course no trade. I would have ran my assassin down to pick it up, except servers were about to go down in four minutes, so I rolled and won it, and transmuted it. I did get the rare mana component out of it so I suppose that’s better then nothing, but it would have been a pretty upgrade for the assassin (if I ever level her).

Tinkering supplies have been cut in half. I love it. There are also new tinkered adornments out there, mob drop recipes only, I haven’t seen one yet, I’d imagine they’re very expensive. Much like everything these days. With a lack of crafting and farming in general, my funds are slowly dwindling. Oh well, not as if there is that much for me to purchase out there anyhow.

.. and the plot thickens

stargrace March 28, 2007 5Comments

As Posted by Gallenite here, pvp servers are merging, and pve servers, are getting free character transfers

Could it finally be that after all my ranting about lower populations on pretty much all servers, and specifically my own server, that the voices are being heard? The screen shot above is from a post on the EQII players forums, and it was welcome news to quite a few people. A move that is much needed. Not only are the pvp servers merging (and a free character transfer for those on the servers, incase you do not like your merge, of course from a pvp server you must remain on a pvp server and same goes for pve) but as point number three states, pve servers, will be allowed to transfer to other pve servers at no cost.

EQII has already had one free transfer in the first year of the game, I know because I moved then. Of course now I’m facing yet another dilemma because I’m finally getting into some smaller raids, and though I am not allowed to join my guild of choice, I am still having some fun. What’s to say that I won’t move to another server, and be back at square one, at least currently I am raiding. Basically it means I’ll have to do some research. On servers and guilds, and see what’s out there. Moving to another server (all of my characters) is not something to be taken lightly. Chances are their names are also already taken, so it means thinking of new ones, do I even want to go through that hassle. It could mean a new beginning. I could move to servers of fellow bloggers, where I at least would “know” in a manor of speaking, a few other players.

The few of us who are left in my old guild are contemplating moving, most of them hate the low population of LDL. The post does not specify whether or not there will be restrictions on moving. For example the first time that the transfers were available, you were not allowed to move to AB (the other RP server). I think this would deter a lot of role players from moving off of this server, if they were unable to move to the only other rp server out there (which has a very nice population). Personally, I’m not sure what I’ll do. It’s a lot to take in and a lot of decisions to make. I have friends here, but I do post often about how much the server lacks population. Are there pve merges incoming as well? Or just these free transfers? Again, I’m not sure. Because the post is mainly specified over pvp there wasn’t very much news on the pve worlds affected (pvp is player vs. player, incase someone is unsure, and pve is player vs. environment).

So that’s my news for today. It’s going to be very interesting to see how things go, whether or not I’ll take my 8 characters and move, where I’ll move to, what will happen to TK, and all the rest of it.

Too much plat spam and other ramblings

stargrace March 27, 2007 4Comments

Stargrace and Silverstep, both working on the newest released quest, the sword of destiny

I’m not sure about any other servers out there, but mine has been bombarded it seems with tells for power leveling and selling platinum. Now, I don’t really care if people buy money. It’s a personal choice, breaking the rules or not. What I do mind, is the 3-4 tells I get from Xsdfjtidnmb advertising their site. I report every one of them. Not always because I hate people who buy plat, but just because they’re interrupting the game for me. The only way to avoid them is to go /role or /anon and I don’t believe that anyone should have to do that just to avoid the spam tells. It’s also a shame when I get all excited seeing my “you have mail” icon go off, rush to a mail box, only to find that it’s some gold selling site advertising their wears. My assumption for this sudden influx? They’re not making as much money as they used to. So they feel like they have to advertise more. When I played EQLive everyone knew where to go if you wanted to buy gold. It was like this secret that people rarely talked about but everyone had heard of it. I never once got a tell about it. Even in WoW I never received a tell about buying money for the game – though I did occasionally hear the messages being spammed over the channels.

In VG there’s a huge lock down on those who advertise selling money in game. I love it. They announce it to the server and all that good stuff. I wish EQII were the same way, but that’s just my grumpy opinion.

I have a few in-game dilemmas lately that I’m not sure how to handle. The largest one would be that although I have been welcome to raid with a specific guild, I am not allowed to join that guild. So while I play a needed class, and have been raiding constantly with them for the past two weeks, the leader says it would be a bad idea if I joined, and that I am not welcome to. It’s one thing to be a tag-along on a raid, but being an actual member of the guild is something all together different. I’m not concerned about loot at all, they use a dkp method that I am apart of, but lets say an actual guild member works up the class that I play. Or they find another class outside of guild. They will (obviously) get priority on raids because they carry the tag and I do not. It’s a case of “good enough for the raids, but not good enough for the guild” that I find really unfair. It’s understandable, because of a few other factors that I won’t get into here. I’ve been invited to tag along on some other raids, with another guild who is interested in me joining them, but I don’t feel quite as comfortable with them. That could change though I suppose. Hence my issue.

I’ve also been trying to decide which two characters to work on solidly. It’s difficult to work all three on the main quests that I have. I want to work on the sword of destiny before tomorrow’s game update comes out and they release another part. Doing the quest with all three characters though is a huge pain. Hell doing it with one is. Then there’s also my claymore and DT access quests. Neither the templar nor the illusionist have it though the fury is done both. Argh. The illusionist is at least almost at 100 aa, but the templar and even the fury are so far behind. Then of course there’s all the regular real life stuff going on that people have to deal with that’s not even game related. Feeling slightly stressed over everything.

Weekends are for raiding.. and questing.. and friends.. and instances.. and

stargrace March 26, 2007 1Comment

The Entrance to Freethinkers Hideout

This weekend was a mixture of raids, instances, quests, and various other pleasures of EQII. I raided yesterday again, nice calm raids that are always a lot of fun, Lyceum and Labs. Both went flawlessly. Before raids, I was trying to get the tunare orb quest completed that both Dasie (the templar) and Stargrace (the illusionist) have. The quest however is a lot longer then I recall it being. I did get the obelisk portion done though, I had wanted to complete it before raids and that didn’t end up working out, but I did get a few steps done, progress is progress after all. The illusionist also managed to get to 96 aa’s between working that quest, and then later (much later) that night, doing an unrest group. She’d never been before, I’ve only ever gone with the templar, so it was a pretty fun experience.

Died twice, both in the same hallway due to buggy mobs that pull through the walls. It doesn’t seem to matter what MMO I play, that’s always an issue. Well, died to Bugaboo as well at the end, but I was not expecting anything less – although – I did hit him for 400 points of damage. Before he hit me, for 13,000. Not fair! The loots were pretty lame too, the plasma wand (which I have yet to see) of course did not drop, nor did the fabled cloak at the end, and both the set pieces of gear were shadowknight pieces. Which, was of course great for the main tank, and eww for the rest of us (side note, the shadowknight / paladin legendary pieces are silver, which is just girlie! Haha. Poor shadowknights). Still a fun run though. I was on vent for the group and basically just played it as background noise, concentrating on dps performance. Speaking of which, illusionists are wonderful dps and don’t ever let anyone say other wise. On the KoS raids I parse typically anywhere from 1,000-1,600 and on some named fights parse 1,800 if they’re the ones who are melee resistant. It’s all about the procs. There’s pleanty of proc gear out there that I don’t have, but in the mean time the pieces I do have work nicely. I love my dps group, it’s a fury (int buffs, vim etc and wonderfully fast group heals), a wizard (again, their group proc spell rocks) a troubador (who is just amazing in a mage group), a brigand so that I can dps buff them with my buffs, and typically either a summoner class of some sort (necro or conj) or a second wizard depending on who is available.

Game Update 33 goes in this Wednesday. Which means I should idealistically finish off the Sword of Destiny quest series (the pieces that have been released) so that I’m up to date and not rushing with a bunch of other people to complete it. Whether or not I’ll actually get around to it, I’m not sure yet. I have been trying to work on claymore for the illusionist, she’s on the last quest in SoS. The templar…. still has not started. Sighs. I’m not looking forward to it. The illusionist could actually get by very well not even doing the quest, the end reward is not that great for mages, but the templar could use it for sure. It’s one of those must-haves for healers.

Crafting has been slow, but I’m looking to pick it up a bit. I need 5 levels on both the woodworker and the sage. Nice quiet afternoon projects to do between house work and the other mundane tasks of every day life.

Freethinkers, Castle Mistmoore, and a whole lot of deaths

stargrace March 24, 2007 1Comment

Aww, what a cute couple…

Headed off to Castle Mistmoore last night with a pick up group none the less. Something almost unheard of by me, I hate PuG’s, and that zone is awful for them. I had done Freethinkers about 30 minutes earlier though, and was not quite in the mood to call it a night yet. I’m glad I decided to go. Since TK has fallen (for the most part) I’ve been trying to get a feel for other groups and guilds, trying to find a new home. It’s always nice to actually get out there and play in order to do that. The two groups consisted of a few banished, myself and Ymirr from TK, and some random folks (such as Zepp pictured above). The zone typically lags people. We had a bard who kept going LD on us, and adds, always lots of adds. Typically people would lag into them (For once, I have absolutely zero lag in this zone since I’ve gotten the new computer, I adore it) and before you know it, there are 10 more adds. The epics in the zone also hurt, in fact, they hurt bad. We had no shaman, which would have made a world of difference. I’m leveling mine up, the defiler that is. There seems to be a small demand for them and I’ve never played one end game, only the templar and the fury.

Freethinkers was fun. There are ‘tricks’ to the zone that are getting fixed shortly with the tinkered mem-wipe item. A lot of legendary dropped, upgrades and even nicer then some fabled. Go figure. Parsed fairly low since I was on mem-wipe patrol and there were timers going off and all the rest. Still managed around 1,000-1,200 though. Trying to make a few adornments to help out. The fury has been neglected since it seems the entire server went off and created them. I use her to port the illusionist around, and other then that.. not much else.

Hopefully I can wiggle my way into a few more raids. I haven’t gotten a stitch of gear as upgrades, but it’s not that much of an issue for me. When I’m playing the templar I’m a little more aware of my lack of gear due to the simple fact that she’s wearing T7 legendary and T6 fabled. Gear does NOT make the player though, I am a firm believer in that. I’ll take a templar MT healer who’s paying attention over a fully fabled one who couldn’t find their heal button if it was stapled to their ass any day. Trust me, there are a lot of those out there just because templars have a pure HP buff, Sanctuary, and other “pretties” that make them desirable in a MT group.

Despite paying almost 50g in repair bills, yesterday was fun.