Of Interest

No Place Like Home

I apologize in advance for this not-quite-all-gaming blog post, but it does happen from time to time (the joys of this being my personal rant place). I did game yesterday (of course) but I didn’t really do anything of significance. My woodworker inched her way to level 30, which is great. My sage inched her way (sans vitality or bonus, painful!) to level 35 – and I marveled over the fact that on Antonia Bayle there were only three T8 loams for sale for 2p each. We’re talking common loams here not those rare silicate loams. Not sure why they were all suddenly bought up unless perhaps people are preparing for the extra 10 levels they’ll need to obtain in February and stock piling. Grinding writs it wouldn’t be too difficult to do T8 for 10 levels since harvests will be rare for a time in T9.

Speaking of harvesting, I was a little amused to find that the harvest bots in guild halls can now harvest imbue materials. These are used for the crafting epics, and the smoldering ones are pretty pricey on the broker. I need to help level my guild up a few levels so we can get our bots back, as we’re still too low quite yet to purchase them. It will come with time.

Tomorrow evening I’ll be leaving the city of Ottawa and heading to Russell, which is about 25-30 minutes south of Ottawa. It is a small community, with its own township, and I’ll be spending a few days at my parents place. They in turn are headed to Tennessee on their motorcycle for a week – or at least that’s the direction they’re headed, whether or not they actually get that far is still to be seen. I think it’s neat that my parents can just head out like that with no real plan. Anyhow, I as much as I love this city I need to get away for a few days and I think the country air will do me wonders. I have deadlines for work coming up on the 14th of August so this is slightly before the mad rush begins. I haven’t gotten out a great deal lately since I spent so much time sick (and I’m still recuperating over that ordeal) and I have a feeling that the simple fact of ‘being home’ will do wonders for me. I’m incredibly excited about it, there’s plenty to take pictures of, wild life everywhere (my folks have raccoons and birds and squirrels etc that come to their back deck) a comfortable gazebo out back with lights and seating to relax and read in. I’ll be taking my laptop simply to check up on emails and twitters and I haven’t decided if I’ll blog yet, I probably will not. Expect lots of pictures to show up on ShutterCal though, I need to fill in my blank days.

Monday is a holiday here in Canada (Civic Holiday) but I’ll be coming back Sunday morning (I need to get groceries before the stores all close) so I still have two days of relaxation back in my own house before the hustle and bustle begins. It’s certainly been an interesting year.

Back to the game bits, I also played a little WoW yesterday, running a lowbie instance with a friend to work up my shamans skills, and then we did the graveyard instance of Scarlet Monastery. It was a lot of fun, and I inched my way to level 34. I don’t own a mount yet but apparently in patch 3.2 (due out in August?) mounts will be a LOT cheaper – so I’ve been holding off. Since I don’t dedicate too much time to playing I don’t have a great deal of coin, not to mention all of the alts. Ah those expensive alts. Maybe I’ll run a few more lower level dungeons just to find greens to sell. We’ll see.

In the mean time, MmoQuests may be quiet for a few days but at least it’s because I’m taking a nice relaxing break feeding squirrels and not because I’m in bed sick. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend, and happy gaming no matter where you are!

Safe travels!

A Day of Good News and Good Games

First of all, I got confused and yesterday was apparently not Saturday at all, but Friday – so the book of the day is posted below, hope everyone enjoyed it! In the mean time, while I don’t have any solid answers yet about why I was sick nor am I feeling 100% quite yet – I am feeling better, and that is a huge bonus. In another little bit of good news, I managed to get a little promotion at work! Most readers know that I write for Beckett Massive Online Gamer, I write articles on Sony related games (EQ, EQ2, and Vanguard for the most part) as well as Free Realms, and I also write about Wizard 101, and whatever else they happen to throw my way (I’ve done a piece on Darkfall, etc).  The magazine is published in the states every two months and sold in stores like Barnes and Noble and Walmart. People can also get a subscription, and I’ve been working for them for exactly a year this month.

My new job still involves writing articles for them – but also includes working on their newly revamped web site a lot more. Posting news articles, moderating the forums and making sure things are posted there, too. It also includes a lot of public relations and promotions to the site and the magazine via twitter, facebook, and what ever other social media I can get my hands on. So from time to time you may see a post like this one trying to rack up interest. Hopefully I do a fine job (I can’t see why I wouldn’t!) and things go smooth. I’m excited!

Game wise I’ve been playing a lot of Wizard 101, I just can’t help it! My little life wizard has been having fun exploring Krokotopia, her dorm room is now completely packed with house items resembling the ancient land of forgotten treasures. In fact it’s starting to get a little crowded, and I need to move into a real house one of these days so I can move all the items out of my dorm. I have no idea what sort of house I want to purchase – I really want to purchase one of the “big” lots of land, as opposed to the smaller versions. They cost a lot of gold though – I have about 17,000 saved up.

I haven’t really gotten into crafting too much because there have been so many people running around going after the same things I needed it hasn’t been worth it. However, in Krokotopia I seem to find craft supplies galore. I’ll need to find a quiet time to finish my beginner quests one day if for no other reason then to say at least I’m working on it.

I love the newly revamped bazaar – it’s far easier now to search for items that you actually want. I don’t know that I’ll use it all too much never being a huge bazaar person myself, but one never knows!

The sword pictured above is the one from the latest issue of Beckett MOG – although if you happen to buy their Pokemon magazine you’ll also find another code! I love these little items, even if it means everyone is running by me asking where the awesome sword comes from. I’m always happy to point them towards the magazine!

Although it says little Angela Ravendust is level 23 in that picture, she’s now level 24 and part way through. I’ve been trying to take a little break here and there from the game but it’s hard, I find the card game combat exceptionally addicting, especially because it’s just so different from all of the basic hack and slash games that I already play.

I’ve been playing some EQ2 as well (of course) my little illusionist managed to get herself the wand from Crucible – of course it’s not the illusionist I have on Antonia Bayle (I’m still split between two servers, instead of four, making it much easier to handle) but it’s nice none the less. We did a few instances last night for shards and I completely forgot that the key mobs have been removed from Crucible and Scion of Ice for the time being. It would have meant two more (very useful) shards for me. I hope they get them fixed soon!

Ultann was taking his inquisitor on multiple raids yesterday which is fantastic for him. He managed to get his Thuuga update, Leviathan, and as I was headed to bed he was headed to Veeshan’s Peek – to perhaps get his final update of Nexona. I haven’t logged in yet this morning to check how that went, but my fingers are crossed! Calreth didn’t have nearly as good luck with his updates, Leviathan going horribly wrong for the evening (hugs). Fingers crossed that he’ll get his updates one of the times he’s around! I know he’s been waiting forever for it.

I hope everyone else has a fantastic Saturday, enjoy the weekend (more rain here) and happy gaming! I’ll see you in Norrath (or in Krokotopia!)

No Posts Until Further Notice

I’m sorry, but for now I will be unable to continue to post about my MMO experiences. Health issues are currently preventing me from doing much more then curling up in the fetal position and crying. Hopefully I will be back before the month is up so I can get back to writing about things I love. Thank you all so much for your comments and support, thoughts and hugs and well wishes. Means a lot to me. I can still be reached by email, occasionally on twitter, and in game though I am typically afk. I did not want to leave readers in the lurch over my lack of posts, and hope everyone understands.

Thank you

~ Stephanie Morrow (AkA Stargrace)

So Many Games, So Little Time

A full blog post just isn’t working out for me today, so I’ll keep it short (for once). I didn’t get to play EQ2 at all yesterday due to work, meetings, and other things popping up (brother came down for the day) but I picked up the daily double to do at another time since you can keep them for a number of days. Started a few new games, can’t talk about one yet but I will as soon as I can. Princess (the cat) woke me up at 5:45 instead of 5:30 today, so that’s nice. She’s resorted to chewing apart the same book instead of 20 different ones, another bonus!

Next weekend is the Medieval Festival and work deadlines, so needless to say my posts will be sporadic and disjointed at best over the course of the following seven days. Once that weekend is over things should be able to settle back down to normal, and I won’t appear so harried and frantic. We’ll see!

Happy gaming where ever you play, and have yourselves a fantastic weekend.

Information Overload

Alright, first of all WOW what a week and it’s only Wednesday. I’m feeling 95% better and after having health issues for over a month this is a HUGE deal. It’s fantastic, I’ve been so excited and energetic. Now I just have to keep it up. I’ve been following E3 updates on twitter as well as G4 Tech Tv live, and while personally I’m not a console gamer at all (even though I do own a wii, PS3 and DSi) I am excited about a few things. Kingdom Hearts, Golden sun, a new mario (or two, even though I personally did not like mario galaxy) and who didn’t think the video of The Last Guardian just looked fantastic. Then there’s Natal, and all of the other motion sensor toys coming out, and the new PSP Go. While twitter was filled with some very bitter comments, I tried to keep a positive outlook (as is my way) and remind myself that these are games.

Tipa reminded me that The Dares would be performing in Free Realms across all servers, live from E3 last night, so I quickly made my way into game and ported to her on server 4. It was PACKED. It was the first time I ever experienced lag in Free Realms and we met up with some other bloggers / twitter users which was absolutely fantastic. We danced the night away, and I even picked up one of the concert tshirts for $1 because come on now, you just have to. On the down side while twitter said they played a full set at E3 they only played one song in game, and it was cut short each time, though they did repeat it twice if you stuck around. Still, having friends there made it a massive amount of fun and it was only too easy to see how popular Free Realms had become.

I did spend some time in EQ2 but I didn’t play. I loaded it up on my laptop and hung around in the guild hall chattering to Wpus, Ultann, and Kasul while they went and did all the hard work (mostly crafting and writs) for the evening. On the PC I continued to play Sims 3, I know how embarrassing. Giving up my MMO of choice for an evening to play something as fun silly as Sims. I tried to get to sleep early, the guild is VERY close to level 40 and three more amenity which is just amazing. Ultann has been belting out the writs like they’re being removed from game in the next update (they are not, that was a joke folks).

Thanks to one very kind Kasul I am now holding a copy of Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura which is an RPG that came out in 2001, that follows the Steampunk genre. I had never even heard of it before but when I entered in NeoSteam on GamerDNA this was one of the games they suggested I may enjoy, and it just so happened that Kasul had a copy of it kicking around. Not being an avid gamer myself until these last few years, I’d never even heard of it before. He also sent a copy of Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls III which I’ve never played (despite the game sharing my last name of ‘Morrow’) so I’m looking forward to getting both of those installed on my PC. Sure these game may have seen better years, but I still play EQ happily and that game is 10 years old, so why not.

One last note before I head off to get the morning chores done – have you taken a look at these amazing tinker-themed housing items from EQ2? Holy WOW. I love the selection and any little gnome boy or girl is going to just fall in love with the set. Especially the wall dividers how amazing do those look?! The team has lined up some fantastic goodies for GU52 and I’m really looking forward to it all. I hope everyone has a fantastic Wednesday, in a week and a half the Medieval Festival will be taking place and barring any horrible weather I’ll be there taking pictures again this year – I’m SO excited.

Happy Gaming!

Nomadic Gamer