Finishing City Core and Starting Seratos May 21, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Rift.Tags: City Core, Seratos, Storm Legion
3 comments
While Middle-earth has been calling again of late… my relationship with that game has become as complicated as my relationship with EverQuest at this point… I have still found a bit of time to expand my reach in Storm Legion.
Previously I had made my way through Cape Jule and Pelladane, finishing up what are the first two Storm Legion zones.
I started off in City Core, which was close to hand and had a portal right near the entrance.
City Core is a small zone, and I would say more in the tradition of the game, with things rather tightly packed and a lot of use of varied elevations. Rolling through it was a bit more like the old game than the first couple of zones. But it was also quick. I racked up the key zone achievements and found myself spilling out into adjacent zones.
City Core Achievements
Those are the achievements for exploring the whole zone, completing the story line, finishing up the carnage quests, and killing a set of named mobs around the zone.
While the zone was more in line with older zones in Rift, the story was pretty forgettable. Well, I have forgotten it already, though I remember the climax, which involved a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jump into a lake. And there wasn’t even an achievement for the jump.
After City Core, I was distracted for a bit by crafting. My warrior is an armor smith, but does not have butchering, so he needs to get leather from other sources. The price of the leather I needed was too high, so I got out my hunter spec’d rogue and sent him out to harvest leather. That took a bit, but the rewards were worth it. The crafted armor is noticeably better than the quest reward armor at this point. (Though, with the plan to sell equipment being part of the F2P conversion plan, I expect we’ll see crafting as a business die off.)
That done, I took my first run into Seratos.
This is a huge zone. It looks big on the map. It feels bigger when you get there.
Storm Legion so far
I went into the zone one evening with the sole purpose of finding a portal, so I could get back to the zone easily. I ended up on a 90 minute expedition zig-zagging across the zone until I finally ran into a portal in the southeast portion of the zone in the city of Necropolis.
Later I looked up a map that had the portals on it, and I found that I missed at least three portals on my way across the zone. That, however, is a testament to its width and depth… and perhaps my bad luck.
Necropolis also had the now “must have in every MMO” quest.
I will say that they were very big rats. Level 55 elite rats the size of horses, actually.
So now I have to head back across the zone to find those portals and to pick up the threads of the story line that no doubt runs through the zone. And work on the carnage quests. I looked at the achievement and there are more than 50 in the zone.
So that is where I stand in Storm Legion. Pkudude99′s suggested warrior build has worked out nicely. In fact, it has kind of spoiled me for builds and classes where I have to press more than two buttons in combat.
Time for a Hiatus from our Hiatus May 16, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, Rift.Tags: Exodus of the Storm Queen
6 comments
Whatever happened, we need to find out why it happened. But clearly it should not have happened.
-Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland)
We are reaching that time of the year when the sun is shining and various members of our regular Saturday night instance group are sometimes lured outside to see the world, visit relatives, or move across town or across country, judging from past experience. The summer hiatus is nearly upon us.
Which would be fine, except that so far 2013 hasn’t been the best of years for the group getting together. Take the weekend before last. Four of us were available. We got into Rift. We poked around. We ran into the Exodus of the Storm Queen instance.
Four Enter… plus a dino
You can tell that is a recent picture because the little orange dino pet from the recent Raptr promotion is there by my side.
We went through the first two boss events and then ended up at the third boss, Valthunder, where we again failed the DPS check, being short on person, and ended up in the usual state of affairs.
I’ve been dead in here a lot
Then we chatted a bit, did a hunt rift, and called it a night.
So it has gone. The five of us haven’t been on together since the first weekend of the year.
I am going to guess that it isn’t for lack of desire. It isn’t as though one person has said, “screw it” and just stopped showing up. All of us have missed weeks and then have come back. There is usually a notification in advance that somebody won’t be on because of some event or another.
And now we are at the point where we traditionally break for summer, usually reconvening in late August for a return to our game of choice. So the lack of a full group will continue.
Which means Rift, as least for our main characters, is probably off the table for a while. Not that there is anything new coming in Rift that would impact us greatly. There will be a summer festival of some sorts. I forget what they did last year. And some tweaks no doubt. But the biggest news of late is the free to play transition which means… pretty much nothing to the group. There is another zone coming in, and signs that we might be getting some more dimensions options to decorate. But given the state of my own dimension, that isn’t a big draw for me.
So the question becomes, what should the summer be about?
Should we carry on as we have been? We have a set of intersecting games depending on who is online. We play World of Tanks when it is just the boys. We play Need for Speed World sometimes when the group includes some combo of Earl, Potshot, and myself. We were playing the Neverwinter Nights 2 with just me and the Potshots. But we still end up with intersections of people where Rift is the only game in common, and four player Rift only gets us so far with instances.
(I did suggest the last time around that we could just get the dungeon finder looking for group tool to assign us a DPS player, but we eventually decided that having one person in the group not on Skype with us would end up feeling odd.)
So should we let Rift go fallow for the summer (unless we all happen to show up) and go for a nostalgia run?
We could go back to the Lone Lands in LOTRO and play some more anachronistic music with Anderson Cooper. My corp in EVE is looking into a summer run in LOTRO. The server they have chosen is Brandywine which, of course, is not one of the servers where I have characters. That is always the way.
Music… and Anderson Cooper
We could get some scrolls of resurrection for WoW (Earl is still subscribed) and see what has changed in Azeroth. It could become the summer of dailies and pet battles.
We could even go really old school and take another stab at EverQuest. That is doable in groups of less than five.
I think most of the group has Guild Wars 2 at this point. Oddly, despite its “no need to group” focus and its “every man for himself” view on roles, I think it could work as a group game on the overland content. I ended up standing by myself in a bunch of group events, so bringing your own group would clearly be a help there.
Or is it time to explore something new and different. Neverwinter is out, which is new, but I am not sure how different it really is nor do I have a sense of how noxious the free to play aspects of the game are. There are crazy ideas like Darkfall or Planetside 2 or the like, which promote grouping but where level differentials do not keep people from playing together. Or we could explore co-op games. There is Diablo III, which at least three of us own, or Torchlight II, which is damn cheap for what you get. There is even Borderlands 2, which Gaff made me buy a few weeks back when it was on sale ($25 for the game + all DLC up to that point), but which I am so hilariously bad at on my own that I haven’t gotten very far and have pretty much stopped playing.
I think MOBAs like League of Legends are out, primarily because I cannot stand the genre.
Is there anything else we should be looking at as a possible summer hiatus game?
Further Mutterings about MMO Revenue Models May 15, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Need for Speed World, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft.Tags: Free-To-Play, MMO Subscriptions, No Real Point
20 comments
A few years back, at the height of the housing boom, we decided to move. We listed our house at the market price for our neighborhood, and the first day on the market we got an offer for roughly 60% of what we were asking. Somebody sensed, as we all were beginning to at that point, that the bubble was going to burst soon, and wanted to know if we were desperate.
We were not, and actually sold the house for what we were asking a couple weeks later. But there was no possibility that we were going to come to an arrangement with the person who made that first offer. Their offer was so insultingly low that it made it completely unlikely to be able to negotiate any deal at all.
—
We have a garage sale at least once a year. Often we have two, one in the spring and one in the fall. Just the process of finding stuff to sell helps us keep the house clear of clutter, so that our home, with the exception of my office and my daughter’s room, feels clean, open, and spacious.
We tend to put out all manner of things on the driveway for sale. I often have a pile of books that have made it into the category of “won’t read again” out on a table. At one garage sale I had done a big purge and had 40+ paperbacks lined up, with the asking price was 25 cents each. Cheap enough that anybody with an interest would pick them up, and it wouldn’t kill me if I decided to give a couple away to any kid who looked like they wanted to read one. And, as always, quantity discounts are available.
A woman, who rolled up in an expensive car, offered me a dollar for all of the books, and then started gathering them up like it was a done deal. A dollar turned out to be exactly the right price to start a fight.
In the cold logic of hindsight, it was just an offer I could freely reject.
In the reality and emotion of the moment, it was insulting. I started with “no” and worked my way up to using them for kindling before I would sell her one at full cover price. Her offer stayed at a dollar throughout, leavened with sneers and insults. But we could have stopped after our first pass through offer and rejection, as no deal was possible after that point. I cannot imagine she thought her negotiation technique was going to be effective. It is always interesting to meet people who are worse at interpersonal relationships than I am.
—
What did those two little stories have to do with anything? We’ll get to that. First, a foundation of words needs to be built.
With the announcement that Rift is moving from the once traditional monthly subscription model to a cash shop driven free to play model, there have been the usual range of reactions, from feelings that no good will come of this to expressions of joy at the demise of yet another monthly subscription barrier to entry. Some people really hate the subscription idea.
My own response is somewhere in between.
Good things will come of this change. I know that.
More people will play Rift. It won’t make it suddenly popular with people who wouldn’t play a fantasy MMORPG in the first place. But people who wouldn’t otherwise commit to $15 a month will want to play.
An annoying amount of words, and some irrelevant pictures, after the cut:
Rift to go Free to Play on June 12 May 14, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Rift.Tags: Free-To-Play, PLEX, REX
8 comments
I was wrong.
Another subscription MMO caves in, unable to make a go of things on monthly fees alone. Or they feel that the grass must surely be greener on the free to play side of the fence.
Of course, my prediction was back when Scott Hartsman was still on board and before they put the cash shop interface into the game. And with WoW, the game Rift sought to out do by speed and emulation, dropping subscriptions in huge, game killing chunks (for any game except WoW), the subscription model takes has taken another blow.
Anyway, Trion has announced that Rift will go free to play come June. They have a video and such on the official site. And a producer’s letter. And a FAQ. And an interview over at Massively to reinforce all of this.
They will even have something called REX, which sounds remarkably like PLEX. You think?
The beginning matrix of who will get what has been announced.
Rift, Storm Legion, and free levels
People who subscribe will now be called “Patrons” and will get a set of benefits. Will they be worth $15 a month to people?
Call me “Patron”
That feels more like World of Tanks, what with the short term options available. They are certainly trying to mix in all they can.
But still, the cash shop will now rule the roost and new content will likely falter while Trion begins the endless race to figure out what will sell best. Those who buy from the cash shop will drive the game going forward.
Some people will be cheering, feeling that every game needs to be free, that there is only one right model.
Others, whom like me, have been unhappy with the rot that cash shops can bring, will be less enthusiastic.
Either way, it will change the game. Nobody can deny that. And it will likely bring in some new players to start. But eventually the cash shop chase will begin.
What do you think?
Addendum: Green Armadillo has some thoughts on Rift’s new plan.
April in Review April 30, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, Month in Review, Need for Speed World, Rift, World of Tanks.Tags: Meaningless Milestones
7 comments
The Site
A Google moment turned April into a record setting month for the blog pretty much out of the gate. My quick coverage of April Fools at Blizzard for this year managed to get on the first page of results for a number of salient searches and… well… sent a lot of traffic this way.
Page Views Gone Wild
The previous record was actually set last April, though that was driven by links to my Burn Jita posts. This year, Burn Jita wasn’t a hot topic and page views were about at the average-ish line across the event.
If you look at the gap between the dark bar, which is unique visits, and the light bar, which is total page views, it seems like people actually stopped to look at the links I had in the post, which included the past few years of April Fools. The “Most Viewed Posts” section below bears this out.
Upon seeing the sudden spike in traffic, I tried to incorporate as many links out to other blogs as I could in order to “share the wealth” such that is was. So a few other blogs got some traffic out of this.
April 1st and 2nd were about equal the whole month of February, which was when the impact of the Google image search changes showed up.
The downside of such a moment of Google fame is that the traffic is not very… sticky. I would be happy if out of all those people, one or two returned and left a comment now and again. And, of course, those two days will now skew the default graph on the stats page for a full month. Plus I keep looking at those two bars and feel like I should be reminded of some historical moment.
Never Forget… something…
As with the big dip in page views in February, the big spike this month is essentially meaningless in the big picture. I like to try and figure out why these things happen, and they make the part of me that enjoys statistics thrill. But it isn’t like I get paid for page views.
And, of course, I bet Google is going to kill off some more page views come July when they kill off Google Reader.
I haven’t switched to a replacement yet. I am waiting for the other providers to accommodate the surge before I move.
One Year Ago
Last April set a daily page view record. What is it about April? I know you are going to say “April Fools,” but the record was actually set because of the Burn Jita event.
Yeah, the Burn Jita event. It made for my most popular YouTube video ever. And it lead right into Hulkageddon V and its OTEC connection.
Elsewhere in EVE, the LEGO Rifter got 10K votes, the War in the North seemed to be winding down with RAZOR back in Tenal and six fleets stalking Venal. Raiden managed to lose a bunch of sovereignty, by accident, which finished that up. All that was left was to say we didn’t want that region anyways. We also made conga lines, experience time dilation, and followed DBRB through high sec to kill some super caps. And Seleene became the chairman of the Galactic Student Council.
I was also syndicated occasionally on EVE News 24. I don’t think I got paid for all of that.
I also made a list of small features I wanted other MMOs to copy.
Lord of the Rings Online hit the five year mark.
Potshot and I were wandering around EverQuest again, looking for lost dungeons. We were not buying any $25 bags though.
In Rift, the instance group was driven out of King’s Breach. But Trion added in fishing, so we could do that instead.
And it was April Fools at Blizzard.
Five Years Ago
I made up something for April Fool’s Day. I thought it was amusing.
Lord of the Rings Online celebrated a year of being live. Book 13 introduced, among other things, fishing. And my video problems with the game proved to be a bad video card, so I was actually able to get into the game.
Computer Gaming World/Games For Windows magazine ceased publishing as part of the ongoing demise of print media.
In EVE Online I made the big move from Caldari to Amarr space. I also began producing Badger transports for fun and profit. CCP introduced the whole Council of Stellar Management thing, which I dubbed The Galactic Student Council. My opinion on it hasn’t changed much since.
Meanwhile in WoW one million people in China logged into WoW at the same time. There is still no report on what would happen if they all pressed the space bar at the same time. While that was going on, the instance group finished up the Slave Pens and the Underbog and began the long struggle with the Mana Tombs.
I was looking around for Tetris on the Nintendo DS. You would think that would be easy, right?
And then it was Tipa’s turn to bang the EverQuest nostalgia drum, so I joined in yet again.
New Linking Sites
The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
Most Viewed Posts in April
Per the top of the post, April Fools at Blizzard dominates the list this month.
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2013
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2012
- Blizzard Blindsided by Diablo III Auction House Popularity
- Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2011
- WoW Dance Battle System!
- Ignore Burn Jita? Is That Your Plan?
- April Fools at Blizzard – 2010
- Burn Jita Held Over for an Extended Run
- Age of Empires II – HD Edition, That’s What I’m Talking About
- What is it with Me and Storm Legion?
- Camelot Unchained Kickstarter Unleashed!
Search Terms of the Month
animal jam: non fair membership abilities
[Welcome to free to play]
trion merge with blizzard
[Heh, copy Blizz, yes, merge with Blizz...]
brothers in arms or camo for arty?
[Camo]
world of warcraft bdr g1b good 4 money
[A BDR G1B would rule in WoW... in WoT, not so much]
Spam Comment of the Month
Do you have a spam issue on this website; I also am a blogger, and I was wanting to know your situation;
[From a spam comment linking to "genuine" Prada items]
EVE Online
A quiet month in New Eden for me. Burn Jita was an exercise in precise, clinical destruction. The fleet ops I went on all ended up with no action for me. I made some money speculating on ice products. A rumor went around before FanFest about ice changes, so I bought up half a billion ISK worth in Amarr and relisted it for double what I paid. That sat until the announcement at FanFest, and which point it sold. Easy money. And then the price dropped back down.
Oh, yeah, and CSM8 elections. Congratulations to the winners, which includes Jester, who will now have to suffer the fate of getting exactly what he asked for.
Need for Speed World
I have actually played this game every single day this year. I log on, I do the gem hunt, I log off. Elapsed time for each session is generally under 10 minutes. It was part of my plan to see what sort of rewards you would get for the daily hunt as time went along. I thought I would be done at that point. But then they added achievements. And for just another hundred or so gem hunts in a row, you get a special car. So I am in for the long haul on that.
Rift
After sulking about Storm Legion for quite a while, I actually pressed on into it with a recommended solo build for my warrior. It is okay. Will I press on and finish though? Meanwhile, the instance group… has failed to show up consistently since the beginning of the year. So we still have yet to finish the first Storm Legion instance, Exodus of the Storm Queen.
World of Tanks
I continue working with my KV-4. Tier 8 in a heavy has turned out to be pretty fun. I do dread those matches with three or four SPGs on a side though. You cannot hide under cover forever, and getting caught in the open is murder.
Coming Up
We will know how the Camelot Unchained Kickstarter saga ends in a couple days. Success will mean City State Entertainment getting to work. Failure will mean… well, we shall see what it means.
I have a blog anniversary coming up… for another blog. But I am going to write about it here because nobody reads that blog. Though, to be fair, it is all about pictures instead of words.
Neverwinter is going to show up. I think it is open beta or pre-release or taking money from the general public as of today even. I have been averting my gaze from it so as not to spoil anything in advance. The call of Forgotten Realms will probably ensure that I will download that at some point, but I won’t be in for the day one rush.
Maybe… just maybe… the instance group will do Exodus of the Storm Queen this month.
Pressing into Cape Jule and Pelladane April 25, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Rift.Tags: Cape Jule, Pelladane, Storm Legion
9 comments
Earlier in the month I was moaning about the Storm Legion expansion for Rift.
I had not been actively avoiding the game. But whenever I was looking for a game to play, I would get to Rift, give a little dejected moan internally, and move on to something else.
I just wasn’t that into it, and I was trying to figure out why.
A lot of unexplored land
Thinking on it, I came up with three possible factors. They were, put simply, the character/class/soul revamp that went in just before the expansions, the change in how quests and story flow were handled, and the general increase in landmass that came with the expansion.
Nice theories. They seem reasonable.
And certainly the first one, the class revamp, was a big pain in the ass. Having to go back and relearn how to play your character… and the multiple roles on your character… was a big deal to me. I have managed to get healing sorted out on Hillmar, my cleric, and I think I have his DPS soul working. But my warrior and rogue characters are still pretty opaque and my mage is probably dead to me at this point.
But still, are these the things that were keeping me from logging in?
I decided to push the point, force myself to log in, and get through the first zones and levels just to see what I could see.
What I did after the cut.
Visting King’s Breach and the Storm Queen April 11, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, Rift.Tags: Exodus of the Storm Queen, King's Breach
1 comment so far
Four seems to be the magic number for our group, as we again could only assemble 80% of the group on a Saturday night. It is like we’re adults with outside interests or something.
- Jollyreaper level 51 mage
- Zahihawass level 51 cleric
- Hillmar level 52 cleric
- Gizalia level 53 mage
Anyway, a short group meant another practice night.
The Carnival of the Ascended was over, so there was no balloon raid to occupy us, so it was straight to the dungeon hunt.
We looked around on the map for another instance would could go after in Expert mode. Foul Cascade, which would be next on the list, was rejected because it is a pain to get to. That put us at King’s Breach, which is close to a portal. So we headed there and jumped in to see what we could see.
The group in King’s Breach
As is the norm for these posts, more after the cut so the front page isn’t loading so many screen shots.
Finding Some Challenges in the Deepstrike Mines April 4, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, Rift.Tags: Deepstrike Mines, Granite Falls
2 comments
Despite my issues with Storm Legion, the group continues to form up and wander Telara on Saturday nights. We managed it again last Saturday, though again we were short a person. This time Jolly was traveling, which left us with the following group:
- Zahihawass level 51 cleric
- Hillmar level 51 cleric
- Earlthecat level 52 warrior
- Gizalia level 53 mage
And, of course, as we have done in previous weeks, we spent a bit of time working on the Carnival of the Ascended. The balloon bursting raid was out in full force again, and several of us picked up our last doubloon, which allowed us to get the new mount… and some other items.
Hillmar and Zahi play dress up on new mounts
With that it was time to decide where to head next. With only four people we were once again unable to use the LFG tool to magically transport us. We would have to walk, which prompted us to pick some place we were reasonably sure we could find. I opened up the map and looked for the next closest dungeon, which happened to be Deepstrike Mines over in Stonefield.
We took the portal to Granite Falls, the main town in the zone, and got ready for another run in expert mode.
More after the cut. The usual too many pictures, too many words, too many spoilers follow.
What is it with Me and Storm Legion? April 3, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Rift.Tags: Storm Legion
12 comments
I think that you could make an objective case that I enjoy… or enjoyed… playing Rift.
The instance group and our semi-weekly adventures in Telara aside, I actually spent enough time playing the game that I ended up with four level 50 characters, one from each of the main classes. That means I worked on getting a mage up to level cap, and I rarely ever play mage classes. Clerics, always, warriors often, rogues sometimes, but mages? A very rare moment indeed!
And it is a truth I have known about myself for a long time, that I may express enthusiasm for something, but the only real test to whether that is true or not is my behavior. Saying I like Rift is one thing, logging in and getting three characters to level cap, outside of my group character, that is solid proof that it is so.
I also have done a lot of the events. I ran through the Autumn Harvest festival enough to get a mount for Hillmar, my main.
Hillmar’s mount… and hat!
And also did it enough to get a mount for my mage… because I felt that it completed his “look.”
The spider mount is his thing
A simple look at the map from the original pre-expansion world shows that I have been most everywhere.
I am missing some portals on this character
So with all of that, I should have been all set to carry on with the Storm Legion expansion. I subscribed for a year in advance to get the expansion at no additional cost. I went on the pre-launch Storm Legion tour. I was riding around on the pre-order mount. I was there and patching on launch day.
And now, almost five months later, where do I stand? Let’s see after the cut.
March in Review March 31, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, Guild Wars 2, Month in Review, Neverwinter Nights 2, Rift, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft.1 comment so far
The Site
WordPress.com decided to give us some color in their “visits by country map.”
Actually, we had color, but the choices were limited. Basically, it was red-orange, orange, or beige.
Visitors from around the world
The map has changed a bit and we have a bit broader spectrum of colors.
A more colorful world
But Greenland is still appears larger than South America or Africa. Damn Mercator projection! What does that say about WordPress.com?
It has also been a little over a year since WordPress.com started tracking this sort of thing, so I thought I would compare the top 10 countries they list with what my Flag Counter side-bar widget shows.
WordPress / Flag Counter
- United States / United States
- United Kingdom / United Kingdom
- Canada / Canada
- Germany / Australia
- Australia / Germany
- Sweden / Netherlands
- Netherlands / Sweden
- France / France
- Brazil / Poland
- Poland / Brazil
It is the same ten countries with some difference in the ranking after the third position. So I guess that means that one is about as accurate as the other. Or something.
One Year Ago
The family and I went and visited the USS Iowa while it was docked up in Richmond.
April Fools spirit hit Wargaming.net a little early.
It only seemed like Zynga was desperate a year back.
I took a quick peek back into Need for Speed: World.
Raptr said I could be the top WoW player they tracked… if I just played another 18,999 hours.
I also rolled a new character on a new server in LOTRO because… why not?
In EVE voting commenced and The Mittani won the chairmanship of the CSM 7 by a large margin. And then he named names during his alliance talk and was removed from CSM 7 and banned from EVE for 30 days.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, we were being taunted by a LEGO Rifter that we were doomed never to see and Derek Smart was telling everybody DUST 514 was doomed to fail.
Meanwhile, the war in the north was heating up again even without The Mittani. The CFC was picking up systems in Tenal as bases of operation for the upcoming offensive. Then there was the bloodbath at C-J6MT.
In Rift, we had a couple of runs at the Foul Cascade.
EverQuest turned 13 and went free to play. That saw more than a few of us run in to give it a try. Fall nostalgia in the Spring. We ran the tutorial, tried out mercenaries, and created a guild. I am not sure what became of our little group. Nostalgia is like that.
It was also announced that Vanguard would be going free to play as well. While on the Fippy Darkpaw server, LDON and LoY went live… I think.
Then I was trying to find another blog name that used the TAGN acronym as a setup for an April Fools joke. That totally fell flat.
And, finally, I attempted to bring together as many memories from the early days of Air Warrior as I could.
Five Years Ago
I was again ruminating about the whole “Why So Much Fantasy in MMORPGs?” thing, this time on the shores of chaos.
We started to see the end of the “Brent hand picks the news” era over at VirginWorlds. The reign of myself and CrazyKinux was near to an end.
I got a Nintendo DS Lite and my own copy of Pokemon Diamond for my birthday!
EverQuest celebrated its 9th anniversary. A very nice time line print of the game was posted over at the EQ Dev blog to celebrate, along with a video.
In Lord of the Rings Online some sites were speculating about future expansions. And then Turbine announced The Mines of Moria! Meanwhile, I was trying to give out some founder’s referrals. I think I still have one or two of those left.
In World of Warcraft, patch 2.4 was the latest end-of-the-world panic. I was trying out Alterac Valley trying to get a mount, not reading that I needed to get exalted reputation to buy it. Meanwhile the instance group made it to Shattrath and then hit the Blood Furnace while my wife and her friends were drinking apple-tinis.
Official forums were the talk again for a bit, as Marc Jacobs said he wasn’t going to have them for Warhammer Online. No, the Warhammer Herald (to be created in the image of the Camelot Herald) was going to be enough. Well, we know how that worked out.
And, finally, five years ago Gary Gygax left us. We still miss him because we still feel his influence every day.
New Linking Sites
The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
Most Viewed Posts in March
- Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
- The Seductive Comfort of Azeroth
- Google Reader Alternatives? Again?
- Age of Kings Gets an Unofficial Expansion
- Considering Star Wars Galaxies Emulation? Better Grab a Disk!
- Five Games I Want to See Revamped
- Completionism in the Wayfarer Foothills
- Wrapping Up My Seven Days of Azeroth
- Backwards in Time to Forgotten Realms
- Shroud of the Avatar – Lord British Discovers Kickstarter
- Jagdpanther
- First Time Out with Tech Fleet
Search Terms of the Month
heir to the empire audiobook
[I have that!]
bond almost dies
[Every Bond movie ever]
spaceship blows up
[Every EVE Online day ever}
churchill i with 100% crue
[Motley]
whats a goon in ancient rome
[Mittanicus Maximus?]
how mcuh isk poer hour can a hulk make?
[How is Veldsparr formed?]
EVE Online
I got in on an op early on in the month, when I was able to use my freshly finished logistic skills to fly my Oneiros at last. And then there were the homeland defense fleets at the end of March. However, the rest of the month was mostly passing on fleets where I did not have an appropriate ship handy, skill training, and figuring out what I want do to next in EVE.
Guild Wars 2
Well, that lasted a couple of weeks. Didn’t hate it, just stopped feeling the need to play it once I hit the next set of zones. Pretty much the same response I had with the original. There is probably a lesson in that. Anyway, I should probably explore the why of that at some point.
Neverwinter Nights 2
We played a bit of this in the Saturday night group. It went from awkward to fun, and then we stopped playing. We now have this odd fragmentation on Saturday night where what we play depends on who shows up. I should make a Venn diagram.
Rift
Hey, we actually played some Rift. Maybe we will carry on here and actually start in on the Storm Legion instances. And speaking of Storm Legion, I am trying to figure out why I have no real enthusiasm for the expansion. It was supposed to be bigger, better, and bolder or some such, right?
World of Tanks
Tanks keep rolling. This is one of the subset of the instance group games. I am chugging along towards my tier IX goal. Russian heavies and German tank destroyers are the thing.
World of Warcraft
I played it for seven days and had about six and a half days of fun. The last half day was less fun, and managed to convince me that I really did not have to subscribe to the game again.
Coming Up
Well, it is April Fools tomorrow, so tradition dictates that I post something about Blizzard’s jokes. I have nothing planned for the site. No, really. The best I could come up with was to change the theme to something silly, and I think I’ve already done that, or change the site name to “Triaminoguanidine Nitrate” or some such.
I expect there will be a couple of posts about games I am not playing. And the whole Kickstarter thing going on now with Shroud of the Avatar and Camelot Unchained. I hope Mark Jacobs holds off until April 2 to launch his. Too much risk of confusion on April 1.
And we are coming up to the 1 year anniversary of the Burn Jita event last year in EVE Online. I wonder if there will be any follow up on that?
