Gaming

Gold Seller Spam, ew

stargrace January 8, 2007 3Comments

Everyone has their own views on plat farmers and gold sellers in any MMO. Personally, I hate both. I’ve been trying to complete my access for the inner portion of obelisk for months now with little to no success simply because of the one or two farming groups in there. You know the type, where there’s 4 wizards and a fury all auto following a guardian, they invis through the entire zone (thank you soe, for the revamp that messed it all up) and popping right in front of a named mob (since almost every named in Obelisk has no place holder at all) seconds after it spawns, no matter who is around / in the room, and squishing it, then invising again and moving on.

Frustration. Lots and lots of frustration.

So, when I started getting spam comments on both my blog site, and both of my email accounts (I use one for this blog when I get comments, and I use another for mmoquests.com) I was slightly ticked off.

I had three of these waiting in my email, and another two more spam comments on the blog. Anyone else getting friendly visits from gold sellers asking to advertise on your site? Even if they paid me for advertising for them, I wouldn’t do it, why? Because I absolutely hate this sort of thing.

There are exchange servers in EQ2 (I have no idea about other games / servers) that are set up specifically for the purpose of buying / selling money in game for real life currency. It’s done in a relatively safe manor, and those who have no interest at all in doing this, don’t have to play there. Personally, it’s just not my thing. I think buying gold from sites like this ruins the game, the economy, and various other things that I don’t want to rant about at 6:47am. I think it was nice of SoE to recognize the issue and set up servers where they can handle the buying / selling themselves but I don’t think it did anything at all to stop other companies such as the one above from persuing it as well.

Enough rambling about that, I’ll post again a bit later today, raids this weekend went pretty nicely.

9 Snowglobes and Freethinkers Hideout

stargrace January 6, 2007 5Comments

Finally, Stargrace’ snow globe collection is complete (for this year)

Antonican, Frostfell, Fae, Volcanic, Dervish, Mystical, Thulian, Bixie, and Everling. Those are the 9 snow globes that were handed out as free gifts from the gift giver in the village. Why on earth anyone would need or even want so many snow globes, I’ve no clue. They’re pretty none the less, and right clicking on them provides some house music (one of my pet peeves is the music that comes in every Qeynos home *shudders*). All of my alts have random pieces of this collection stashed away on them, as I claimed with everyone I could for a week in order to complete at least one set for my main character.

Last night was raids, and for the first time since early December, we were full! Short on healers, but full none the less, it was nice. We headed off to Freethinkers Hideout, which is a moderately hard zone. First name down without any issues (granted I died, a lot, this was my first time in the zone as an enchanter and not a healer, and finding my niche was slightly more difficult), downed the second name after two attempts, with some people in the raid experiencing numerous bugs with the zone. I wish they were fixed. One very annoying bug is mobs spawning in the world. It makes it very difficult to burn down adds if no one can see them. Another bug, when (if) the raid wipes, there is at least 2-10 people who end up freezing at the loading entities screen. You have to type /quit (your name here) in order to load back into the game and not be frozen. Which of course takes time, and when there are 20-24 people and 2-10 of them are freezing, it creates a lot of down time waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting some more.

Loot was…. interesting. It wasn’t horrible I suppose. We got one plate breastplate that went to the main tank, a legendary belt that went to a healer, and a piece of the fury set gear (fabled) that was absolutely gorgeous, grats to Jarath for that. It took a little over four hours just to get those three (really two) pieces of loot.

Wanted to do Nizara tonight before we raid Chel’Drak so Stargrace can get some ring upgrades (Uddo and Jarath need this zone as well) but that fell through, so I think today we’re doing Chel’Drak and Inner Sanctum depending on the force that turns up. We’re short one healer for sure, but we should be able to make do. Inner Sanctum is actually one of my favorite zones as far as EoF goes. We typically do clockwork as well, but I don’t really care for that zone, it’s just about burning the mobs as fast as you can. Emerald Halls, well, I’ve only been there once. It’s an all day raid in my opinion.

Tinkering… Tradeskill Writs… More Tinkering

stargrace January 5, 2007 1Comment

Just one of many tinkered items with the new crafting subclass

I have Silverstep working transmuting, slowly. It’s a very slow skill to level up. I’ll go into more detail about that another time. For now, I have Stargrace working on tinkering. When these two sub-crafts came out, they were dependant on your primary crafting skill. I liked it this way since I worked hard on my crafters, it was nice to benefit from being a level 70 crafter. They removed that shortly after though, and it is now dependant on either crafting level or adventure level. Great for those non-crafters.

Tinkering uses a whole lot of resources. Know those dreaded loams that seem to be in abundance right when you’re looking for ore? Well, if you’re taking the path of the tinkerer, save those. You’ll regret it other wise. You use about 900+ leaded loam just to get out of the first tier. As well as the regular raws like malachite, tin, and lead clusters. You can find a huge in depth list of every item able to be tinkered here. There are some exceptionally over powered items. For example, an item that mem-wipes. Now, enchanters both get mem wipe spells. In fact, it’s our ancient teachings spells. So they’re worth a pretty penny. Due to this fact, they also have exceptionally long re-cast timers. They can also be resisted. The tinkered item however.. has a 2 second cast timer, and an instant re-cast, and is not resisted.

Wow.

There is also a feign death item. It has a 99% chance to go off. Shadowknights get feign death as one of their spells, and at M1 it only has a 96% chance to go off, for 10-20 seconds. the tinkered one lasts for 5 minutes.

There are speed items, mounts, and a portable mendor (who charges more then a regular mendor, but on the run, it’s still nice) so while the grind is so incredibly slow (you rarely get skill ups, and can easily go through those 900 loam and only get to a skill of 30) it is well worth it in the end. The majority of these tinkered items are also only able to be used by tinkerers. Another plus to me. If everyone out there could use all of these items, then what did I grind away at it for. It would not be quite as unique, I could just pay someone to make the items I wanted for me. I’m sure in time they will be slightly revamped and fixed up and changed, so I’m taking advantage of it now and continue to grind away at them.

On the other side.. I’ve found a display case I want to buy, a house item of course. It requires 10,000 faction with the ironforge exchange. Roughly 100 tradeskill writs (non-rush) to get it. I figure if I do 10 tradeskill writs a day, then in 9 days I’ll be sporting my new display cases. Got my 10 yesterday done, we’ll have to see if I can keep up with it. If I do the lowest available writ, it uses items that are cheap and easy to find on my provisioner, and not the good berries that I use to make my own food and drink. Meat and squash and water are all they use actually. That stuff is so easy to come by.

Bone-clasped girdle ? Check, and wow do I hate pink

stargrace January 3, 2007 3Comments

The newest Frostfell book, tucked away in Stargrace’ room

Managed to complete one thing on my list at least – the bone clasped girdle heritage quest is done. Very simple too, two other guild mates needed it done so we collected our bones, trained to the forge in SoS, crafted the piece we needed (I crafted for one through commission), ran back to the npc, killed Do’dragon in Bonemire, back to the npc, did a quick race to three islands, and back again to kill the final level 70 ^^^ who has a nasty kick back. At level 70 it’s a pretty quick and painless quest, even with 4 of us in the group. The guild status was nice, I’m sitting at 70k with Stargrace, after losing my 124k with Silverstep, I’ve got a lot more HQ to complete, so it shouldn’t take too long (hopfully) just depends on how much time I spend slacking.

Those who know me, both in game and out. Know I have fairly little tolerance. I have no patience for stupidity, especially in game. I hate people who speak for others, who generalize concepts about minorities (or majorities), I can’t stand egocentrism, and a number of other comments that people make. It makes for very quiet playing time, because I’d rather solo my way around then have to deal with people in a lot of cases. Those who are my friends though, are friends for a good long time. I’ve known people in game going on 5+ years now, and they’re some of my closest friends. It just takes a bit for me to open up. Anyhow, as I was reading some blogs today, I realized that goes for everything. There are some people who generalize about others, who make rude stupid snide comments (and posts) and expect others to listen. I had to rant that out. I tend to avoid rants but gah don’t you just get so frustrated some times?!

Raids tonight, simple x2 raids. Roost is locked still until tomorrow, so that leave crab, and maybe I can get into a Nizara group and complete the quests for my rings before we do Chel’Drak again. We’ll have to see how it goes. Not in a rush to finish my class hat since I won the circlet in courts, but the tinker bag would be nice. Speaking of tinkering, I’ve been stock piling my leaded loam up so I can start working on that. It takes massive amounts of resources, but I figure it’ll be more fun for me then adornments, which Silverstep is already doing.

Simply Charming

stargrace January 3, 2007 0Comment

Stargrace, lounging in Qeynos Harbor

It seems my ‘to do’ list in gaming is growing by the day, and very little of it is actually getting accomplished. Though I have having a blast, so what does it matter, it’s all about having fun, right?

Tonight was Labs, we wiped on some silly trash stuff that shouldn’t have killed us. It seems the more we master a zone, the more we actually tend to slack off on it, and then we die foolishly. We had an easier time in Deathtoll then labs, because deathtoll people still concentrate (some what) for. The raid was over in less then two hours. Fastest I think we’ve ever done it and we only had three groups.

Yesterday, we killed for status, and the guild hit 55. Slow going, but we’re not exactly trying. Courts is always fun to raid. We also killed a contested silver dragon in Pillars of Flame, a zone I remember well on my templar and even the warden, but had barely ventured into with the illusionist, not even completing any of the KoS quest content. Then with the silver and gold scales that drop in poets palace, we took down the dragons in Maj’Dul, They didn’t give aa, or status, so it was just for fun. I actually got a hat upgrade from courts, the circlet of living fire. How could T6 stuff possible be an upgrade? Easy.

If you’re a caster (a mage or even a bard) class, you live for proc’s. Triggered items are your best friends. Bards love them because their skills are not combat arts for the most part, they are actual spell. So those trigger procs that go off when you cast a hostile spell, go off when a bard plays one of their many songs. I tend to keep synergism on the troub. in my group, and they’re parsing close to 1k on every encounter. So anyhow, this circlet, has a fire proc. It’s great for me, I can synergism myself, have the fire proc from the hat, as well as the proc from grizzfazzles staff (spelling on that, it’s been a while) and I’m missing some claymore quest line proc’s (that I’ll get eventually) and an earring that can proc.. as well as my bone clasped girdle. You add all those proc’s up, plus the bard’s mastro and a wizard’s proc, with my perpetuality aa line.. well.. it’s fun, lets just leave it at that.

I also (shamefully) spent about 3p on collection pieces today, for two collections. One rewarded me with a chess board for my house, the other a torture chair.. pictures to follow soon as I find a better section of the house to place these items in! I adore my house items. Speaking of which, I hired Mishanna from guild to make me 11 more rare items for Stargrace’ 5 room.. it may not be as nicely done (yet) as Silverstep’ place. But it’ll get there with time!