Nomadic Gamer

Gaming

What am I playing? LOTS!

stargrace 4 Comments

Screenshot_20150305_164319I’ve probably played more games in the last week than I did most of last year. Part of that is due to having a bit more time on my hands than normal (hopefully a temporary situation that will be resolved by the end of this month) and part of that is because there are just so many wonderful games out there.

EverQuest2: My defiler is still only level 95, but she did manage to reach level 100 in tailoring. Crafting is an odd duck with the latest expansion, Altar of Malice. Doing the crafting quests themselves won’t get you to level 100, and grinding out writs goes quite slow – however, doing the daily craft mission will easily net you 30% experience, and doing the weekly got me an entire level. Missions re-set on Wednesdays. You can find me in game on Antonia Bayle as Stargrace.

Cities: Skylines: This game just released, and it’s so much fun. In fact it’s everything that I wanted from SimCity, at half the price. There’s an enormous mod community and enough content to keep me satisfied for quite some time. Well worth the cost, and I highly recommend it if you’re into the city building games at all.

Elder Scrolls Online: I just started playing this. It apparently starts going free to play on Tuesday. I’ve had a subscription for quite some time because I did some alpha testing on their billing system, but I never actually played. It wasn’t because of any drastic reason, I simply didn’t have the time. The game is beautiful but I’m not far enough into it to make any other calls about the game quite yet.

EVE Online: Still training skills, still working on faction, PI, and all of that good stuff. EVE Online is still one of the best games I have to relax with. That’s right, even though the skies are filled with pirates and horrible people looking to scam and pod you, it’s still relaxing.

FFXIV: I’ve started a new character on Cactuar. I’m hoping to go white mage, but I’m taking my time and things are moving along slowly. I believe my character name is Velours Reveurs for those looking to add me to their friends list. This game is absolutely gorgeous, and I’m hoping to keep it on my rotation. We’ll have to see how things go though.

Minecraft: I’m running The Dark Trilogy as a server right now for some friends. I’ve created a portal to the Twilight Forest, as well as a portal to the Nether. There are some really awesome mods in this pack, and I’m having a blast. I’m hopping to get some nether quartz so I can make some furniture that comes in a specific pack. Furniture like refrigerators and televisions. Mods really do make this game.

Sims4: Still working on my legacy family. Tristan is going to be the next person to carry the legacy name, and so I’ve been preparing him for adulthood. Right now he’s best friends with a feisty redhead neighbour girl, and they’re promised to each other. Meanwhile Jessica will probably just move into the basement (that’s right, Sims 4 is patching in basements!) and Elizabeth will age gracefully, as she watches her children carry on.

Wizard101: My life wizard is level 27, and I’ve been questing in Marleybone. It’s the home of cats, dogs, rats, and proper manners. Based on 19th century London. It’s also my favourite zone to date. It has been some time since I’ve played and it’s interesting getting back into things, but this is still a fantastic game no matter your age.

WoW: This has been taking a back seat to other games, but I still log in to check my garrison resources and to trade and do the dailies. As others have mentioned, by the time you take care of all of the garrison chores, my game time is already spent for the day. On one hand it’s great to have a reason to log in every day but on the other hand it would be lovely to play the game instead of just playing the garrisons.

The Secret World: A handful of combat wombats have decided to start up in the Secret World. We’re playing the Dragon faction, and while the game has never been a genre that I’m completely comfortable with, it does have one of the best (IMO) quest systems and story lines that I’ve ever participated in. Playing with friends makes it seem a little less scary, and even though I’ve just started (again) I’m looking forward to playing.

Wurm Online: Now that my guard tower is completed, it’s time to work on the rest of my deed along with taking care of my horses. I’ve been trying to breed 5 speeds for a while now and to also breed out the grey colour. It’s coming along well, but it requires time. In between that I’m trying to decide which skill to work on next.

Those are the games that came to my immediate mind when listing what I’m currently actively playing. There’s others I’ve left off the list on purpose – like GW2. I want to get back into the game but I just can’t seem to find the motivation to keep playing. Since it’s a buy to play game, that’s alright. I’m also still playing WildStar, but again it’s very casually and sporadic, so I don’t feel comfortable putting it up there with my ‘most played’ games. What about everyone else? Where are you spending your time these days with so many options available? Let me know in comments!

Gaming

Keeping Up With The Gamers #MMORPG

stargrace 4 Comments

If you’re one of those gamers who likes to taste a little bit of every game, this has probably been an expensive year for you. Whether you’re only interested in MMOs or if that extends to single player, it doesn’t much matter. There’s a lot of games out there and the costs can add up.

Right now I’m reading everyone’s excited squeals for Neverwinter, the ‘early’ release starts today – for people who decided to buy the $200 package. Needless to say, I simply can’t afford to spend that much on a game that I may or may not enjoy well into the future. At this moment I have been contemplating the $60 package, but I’m still not sure if it’s a game that I truly enjoy more than anything else I already have on my plate (that comes at a lower cost). So what is on my plate?

I did get my $60 out of Guild Wars 2, and even though I’m not actively playing that right this second I know it’s not going anywhere. I’ve dedicated more than $60 worth of hours to the game, and I’ve had a lot of fun. It will still be there when my interest leans that way again.

Wurm Online is $50 a year (until the price goes up in May). You rarely ever get MMOs for that price, and I’ve certainly got a lot of played time on my characters. I think my main is over 100 days played now. Plus you can play Wurm with in-game currency, which I do for my 2nd account. I just purchased a year of game time, wanting to get that settled before the price goes from $5 EU a month to $8 EU.

My EQ account is compensated, as are all of my SOE accounts. This makes them an easy go-to choice for many genres. I’m having a lot of fun in EQ, and I still dip into EQ2 and Vanguard. Me and SOE (the company, not the people) may have had some rocky times, but they’re a solid game choice for me and have been for many, many years.

Rift is active for 30 days. I haven’t poked in yet and I’m not really sure why. I just haven’t felt the urge, even after claiming the latest expansion and a handful of other goodies.

There are loads of other games on my desktop that I could technically pick up and play at any time, and haven’t felt an inkling to do so yet. There’s Wizard 101, Pirate 101, The Secret World, Star Trek Online (I have a life time subscription to that one), and of course EVE which I still have some unused PLEX for. These are just the MMO games. There’s a whole steam library of single player games that I haven’t beaten yet, and a few that have no ‘end’ like The Sims 3.

With such a selection it’s hard for me to justify spending even more money on a game that I know didn’t exactly call to me in the beta – but – so hard to resist because pretty much all of my friends are going to be playing it. I never want to be the one left out of all the fun. So for those who ARE going to be playing today – I look forward to living vicariously through your adventures!

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

Gaming

Back To Marelybone #Wizard101 #W101

stargrace 0 Comments

A general warning: This post is a mishmash of ideas and thoughts combined with my gaming session in Wizard101, so it sort of bounces around a lot. My apologies.

This day in age, it’s hard to support all of the video games out there that you may enjoy playing. By ‘support’ I mean providing them with some sort of subscription fee or other payment that the game company can look at and go “we’re making money, yay, people love us!” because that’s what the ‘big guys’ pay attention to. We can make our blog posts and praise games as much as we want, and yes, that does all help, but to KEEP a game going I truly believe that it is funding  that is noticed most of all.

I love Wizard101, and I’ve played it off and on for a number of years now. When I first started playing I splurged and bought a handful of crowns (as well as a subscription) to show my ‘support’ to the game. Years have gone on and I still have a handful of crowns, I haven’t really found anything that I NEEDED to spend it on. Last night I had an itch to play, so I loaded it up (and had a lot of downloads to go through) and made my way to my wizard castle (home). It was great re-visiting my garden, which I was surprised was actually still standing. I made quick work of clearing out the bugs around my plants, watered them, my gift giving tree is even still there. Gave them some sunshine and then I was out of energy for a while, so I moved on.

When I had left Wizard101 I had just started on Marleybone, after becoming a hero of Krokotopia (which I am still pretty proud of to this day). I know by most W101 standards I’m still a very young Wizard, having never been to some of the newer places like Celestia, Zafaria, or Avalon. I did get a quest that sent me to Wysteria but because I prefer to do things in order once I had completed the introductory quest I went back to Marleybone (where my quests there promptly sent me back to Krokotopia to do delivery to some troops). It felt nice to be playing again. It’s a relaxing game, and you don’t need to have children to enjoy the finer details like housing, pet battles, gardening, crafting, or even just the basic game play which is a turn based card-game type of battle that takes place.

Anyhow. While I feel lucky that there are so many games out there for such a huge variety of gamers, I also feel sad because it’s impossible to support every single game I enjoy all of the time. Some times these blog posts are all us fans have to give and it’s just not always enough. That comment doesn’t directly relate to Wizard101, but more a general thought I had as I was going through some of the games I’ve played in the past. Some that are no longer around. Some make you wonder how on earth they can still be around (Vanguard, I’m looking at you).

On a completely random note, I can’t wait for Pirate 101. I’m not in the beta but I have my fingers crossed, and I am really looking forward to seeing what KingsIsle does with the game. Of course I’m also pretty biased since I wrote a bunch of Wizard101 articles for Beckett Massive Online Gamer (which shut down), and FUN! Online Games (renamed). It’s amazing at how fast time flies.

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

Gaming

Holiday Events In Our Games of Choice #MMORPG #EQ2 #WoW #Rift #W101 #GW

stargrace 1 Comments

Hard to believe that today is already December 15th – where does the time go! My apologies for those who may have been trying to access MmoQuests these past few days. My host was hacked and so the site has been less-than-stable while they resolved issues. It looks like everything is a-go now, so I should be able to get back to posting here on a regular basis, so long as something shiny doesn’t come along and distract me along the way.

There are numerous holiday festivals taking place in MMOs this time of year, and I love hearing about them all. A few of my favorites happen in Guild Wars, Wizard 101, EverQuest 2, Rift, and of course World of Warcraft. That by no means lists all of the events out there though, so make sure you take a peek into your GoC (game of choice) and take part in the yearly events (if there are any, not all games have these).

Dragon Flight (my Argent Dawn alliance based guild) managed to take down a few more encounters in some Outlands raids last week. This was quite a feat for us because we’re still only three people (actually, now we’re five, but two of them are too small to participate in these raids). We’ve been doing them for appearance gear and my shaman won herself a pair of neat shoulders that have a graphic of glowing broken up molten infused rocks.

Aside from that I’ve been working on leveling both a DeathKnight and a Druid. The druid managed to grasp on to level 62 tonight, and the DK is 61. I do have a recruit a friend account, so they’ve only got a few hours played if that. While getting to ‘end game’ is not everything, I’ve taken my time and enjoyed the ride on a handful of alts and this time I just wanted to get to Cataclysm content.

In true nomadic gamer style I haven’t really settled on a ‘main’ although I tend to play my shaman more than my other characters. I also spent some time playing Plants vs. Zombie, and Skyrim. The majority of my friends are all playing SWTOR – and it’s been really hard to hold out and not just pre-order the game for myself. In fact, there is a copy in the house, belongs to my other half. He’ll be playing and I can make a character on his account and play while he’s at work to see if the story actually does suck me in as everyone says it will. A few friends have pointed out that Star Wars has very little to do with ‘space’ and has far more to do with fantasy and magic, which is a big point in its favor (for me at least). I even sat down to try to watch the Star Wars movies today, so who knows, give it some time and perhaps that will be my GoC.

In sadder news, Beckett MOG shut its doors today. For those who don’t know I’ve been writing MMO related articles for them for a number of years now, as well as moderating their forums and writing news articles for the web site. They just weren’t pulling in enough money (or so I assume) and in this age of digital media, it’s not a big surprise. I hope that everyone who is now searching for new work (I’m looking at you, Jason) finds the job of their dreams, and I personally am incredibly thankful for the experience I’ve gained while working there.

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

 

Gaming

Waiting on The Gift Giving Tree #Wizard101

stargrace 1 Comments

I mentioned over at Nomadic Gamer that KingsIsle has a fantastic charity drive going on right now where players can purchase a seed for 2500 crowns (approx $5 worth) and grow The Gift Giving Tree (pictured above). I love the idea of helping out a charity this way, and I’m anxious to see what my tree rewards me with. I’m only one day away from being able to harvest it finally. Feels like I’ve been waiting forever.

My little garden is composed of 6 plants total, which gives me enough to do that by the time I’m done I’m almost out of gardening points (I’m sure they have a specific name, I’m just not aware of what they’re called). Running out completely would be bad but this gives me a little boundary if I happen to accidentally pollinate when I should have played some music. This happens to me quite frequently because it takes time to switch between gardening spells and some times when I think I’ve switched I’m actually just using the same spell twice.

I’m almost rank 3, and I’ve enjoyed harvesting from my Dandelion and Boom Shroom plants. My Desparagus will be able to be harvested for the first time tomorrow, and I’ve been making sure I log in every day to take care of my plants, other wise they will wilt, and die. It’s nice to see that Wizard 101 has joined the ranks in ‘keeping players logging in’ on a daily basis with their daily quests. It’s actually gotten me playing a lot more than normal, which I love.

Has anyone else picked up a gift giving tree? Have you been able to harvest from it yet? What sort of rewards have you gotten? Let me know in comments!

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