Vanguard Screenshots
stargrace I really can’t do the game justice. It’s simply amazing. Take some time to peek at the screen shots, and it’s not hard to see why I love this game.
VG
Happy 3rd Anniversary Vanguard
January 30th marked the 3rd anniversary of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. For those who are playing the game or perhaps have an active account (I realize some may be active with station access but not actually playing currently) you’ll want to make sure you jump into game and head to NT, Aghram, or Tower Galan and speak with a Telon Historian for a bag of goodies (pictured to the right). I logged in all seven of my characters in order to claim them – for one reason. See that Special Anniversary Bag listed There? Well. It’s 36 slots of pure awesomeness, with stats on top of it. Unlike the special bag that came from the first anniversary this one is able to be claimed on every character so long as you log in and find yourself that Historian.
There were also events in game – including a Ustream event. The downside is that this was only on the test server, which I didn’t have patched. VG is large enough on its own without me patching the extra server right now. I would have never made it in time either. *sighs* With only four servers in the game to begin with I can see why having one ‘local’ server may have been the best bet, but I would have still rather seen the event moved to the live servers. Show players who may not have been ‘in the know’ what is going on with their game. That’s right, people DO still play!
I wish I had unlimited time to play unlimited games. Vanguard has always been really high on my list of games I adore, but I just can’t devote as much time to it as I’d like. I still belong to my very active guild, and I still own my home that I built from scratch. I’m not THAT far from the current level cap of 55 (I’m sitting at 44 on my Bloodmage) and I’m a level 50 crafter. I haven’t touched diplomacy as much as I’d like (my highest level diplomat is still only 10 or so) and there are so many places in the world of Telon I’ve yet to explore fully. That’s one thing Vanguard really has going for it. It’s an entire world, and it FEELS like a world.
Happy 3rd Anniversary Vanguard – and whether the road is rocky or not, I’m hoping for many more.
Simply Not Enough Time
Ellithia is sporting the Shard of Love headgear that dropped for us earlier this week – and that’s been the extent of my time in EQ2, which hasn’t happened in literally, months. I haven’t logged in. It’s not that I don’t have things to do in game, because I certainly do but I just don’t have enough time lately to do everything I want to do. Isn’t that always the case?
EQ2 is always my home base, and I’ll always return there. Especially after I glanced through this HUGE list of patch notes that are currently on test. Wow. Some pretty amazing stuff is finally getting fixed. This has been a very long time coming. Earlier this week I also transferred my 80 swashbuckler over to Antonia Bayle, so I can get back into boxing. I had closed my second account for a little while but decided that 12 alts was simply not enough, so I’ve got both accounts once more.
Vanguard is my home away from home. It’s the game I play for pleasure with a few friends when we all happen to have time, and I really love the game. The problem is it’s not one of those duck in real quick for a minute or two games, so it looks like it gets a lot of back burner time.
Aion is what I’m playing a lot of lately, mostly for work. I play during the day, when it’s quieter then normal and I can’t say I’m hating it. Leveling is slow, quests are grindy but it’s beautiful and still new, and I’ll be sticking with it.
Torchlight and Dragon Age are still on my play list as well, but I’ll probably be playing those more on the weekend when I’m not busy with other things. The weather is getting much colder and it’s almost time to hibernate for the winter. No doubt my adventures there will be fun as always.
NaNoWriMo is eating up a lot of time. I’m just over 12k words right now (although I completely slacked yesterday and didn’t do any writing – today I should be making up for it) and I’m excited about my story. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time, but simply never got around to. Now that the motivation is there I just need to stick with it for the month of November. I’ve also been very excited watching all my friends work on their stories, and the inspiration and motivation that bounces off of one another is fantastic.
There are five games that are on my “dang I wish I had more time” list currently. These are the Lord of the Rings Online, Fallen Earth, Wizard 101, EverQuest and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Thankfully DDO is free to play, so I don’t exactly feel like I’m missing out by NOT playing right now. The Lord of the Rings Online recently extended their special Mirkwood promotions until mid November, so I’ve been debating whether or not I want to get in on that and plurge on a life time just because. It’s one of those games I’ve really enjoyed playing but just can’t seem to find the time. Fallen Earth I managed to score a 15 day trial for, and never logged in – sighs. Wizard 101 is something I should be playing a lot more of next week, fingers crossed. EverQuest currently has their closed beta ongoing for Underfoot – and if I could convince a few of my friends to play with me, I’d probably be there a lot more. I really love EverQuest, always have, even 10 years later. It’s just not fun for me to play alone.
After the list of “I wish I had more time” games, there are a few games that I wish I could simply afford to take a peek into every so often, even if I don’t have the time. These include Warhammer (I loved the game, but lacked friends to play with), Free Realms, and Champions Online (which I played a few times but honestly never got into it, I was right about it simply not being the genre for me). Of course there’s those games I’ve tried but never stuck with (and I’ve tried them multiple times), EVE and World of Warcraft. I even bought the latest EVE game and never actually installed it (it went on sale for $5 if I recall) because I just don’t have the time right now to learn another game. I’ve played WoW off and on since release, and I just think it would have been neat to make it to the level cap at least once. My highest level is 50.
Don’t get me started on all the free to play games out there that tickle my fancy.
There really is just not enough time for everything.
Wandering through Telon
Looking down at Renton Keep, working on the United Races of Thestra (URT) quests that reward some pretty good armor at lower levels. I’ve done these quests a lot, and each time I love them more and more – all except the one that we were working on today that involved hunting invisible mushrooms that simply refused to spawn. I was using my disciple which is a monk healer and a character I haven’t played in a VERY long time. If a disciple is not hitting a mob, typically that means they’re not healing. You have to melee in order for your heals to go off. This is difficult for me, as I’ve become accustomed to staying at range as a healer. Being right in the middle of the combat is breaking years of training to remain ranged.
With our duo we managed to defeat level 18 mobs without too much issue as long as they came alone (two dot) and three dots a level or two higher then us were also dealt with fairly easily. We wiped a few times when (usually do to some bad pathing) we found ourselves with a handful of brownies eager to eat us (how odd does that sound) but dying in Vanguard isn’t as heart wrenching as it once was. You do still need to recover your corpse to pick up the extra gear that’s not currently bound to you, and recover some experience, but you don’t have to do it naked any more.
I spent most of my time mentored from 23 to 13, but Hampooj hit level 14 as a Dread Knight, and we had a blast exploring Telon. Now if we could just find those mushrooms.
A Casual Weekend
Yesterday was filled with Halloween goodness, so I didn’t really play all that much. I spent the evening giving out candy to frozen trick or treaters who braved the cold to go door to door, eating some great pizza, and playing Torchlight on the laptop since I was not at my own apartment (we don’t hand out candy at the apartment building, and I wanted to be a part of it this year). When I heard that EQ2 was putting on an event that included random void shards dropping all over Norrath until the 2nd of November, I decided to see about farming some, I need a lot still for my illusionist.
After hours of killing in Crushbone Keep with Hamal and Calreth, we decided it would have been far easier to just go and complete the void shard instances in TSO and actually get a shard, rather then hope one dropped from a chest (which it never did).
I did manage to get my bruiser from 15-36 in an hour or so of game play last night, she was the Oasis character I had level locked at 15 to work on achievements, but now that I have the shadowknight on Antonia Bayle, I decided one level locked character was more then enough.
Since I wasn’t sure how much time I would have, I didn’t get into any Vanguard yesterday, but Wpus did and now that the riftways on the Isle of Dawn are working, he left and inched his way to level 12. From all of his accounts he’s having an absolute blast, and I’m so glad to hear it. I’ve really loved the game and every time I hear that someone else is also enjoying it, I get a little tingle inside.
Hopefully everyone has been having an amazing weekend, no matter where you find yourself!