I love events in MMO’s especially holiday events. It’s always fun to see the game’s spin on holidays and events within their world. Events also tend to be a little more light hearted than the rest of the game. But man, do they stress me out.
Whether it’s a stroll through a questline to get a special emote or grinding for hours to get some special items there are always seems to be limited time rewards attached to participating in the event. Limited time items are something I love to collect, at first when the event is on going or has just ended everyone and their mother has the item or emote. After a while though, it becomes less and less common and when you whip it out it’s like a badge, an “I was there” symbol. It’s especially fun when events are location based and you see so many players in one place.
I have a love hate relationship with event rewards. The limited time nature of these events make it a little stressful. If you can’t grind all the things or can’t log in everyday to get your rewards you miss out. Then the item is either forever unattainable or some guy will sell it to you for way to much. At the same time because it’s a limited time event it makes it all that more special to have.
My favorite event items are ones that look really out of place in the game. For example Guild Wars had a Jack’o lantern head for a Halloween event that looked so silly and out of place. Or the Yo-kai’s in Final Fantasy 14 they’re from a completely different IP. Actually the Yo-Kai Watch event in Final Fantasy is the first time I’ve seen a cross promotional event in a game. Its really cool how they managed to sort of blend it in to their own lore. I’m going to be honest here, I want to collect the rest of the minions since I ran out of sub time.
I just finished this book/auidio book a few days ago. I’ve been hearing for years that its one of the best video game novels ever. It’s some of my friends favorite book of all time.
After the death of the creator of the Oasis the world’s most popular game, he leaves a video will. It announces a competition to find an egg in the Oasis, the first player to do this gets to own the company and inherits all of it’s wealth. It follows Wade Watts in his quest to solve the riddles to find the egg.
It’s set in a distopian future where the real world is energy starved, most of it’s a barren wasteland, and outside of major cities people live in trailers stacked up like high rises. But it’s ok because no one has to worry about the planet when basically everyone is playing in the Oasis, a virtual reality Second Life with hundreds of planets. It started out as an MMO and then grew to replace the internet. It’s a platform to conduct business, children go to virtual public schools, and is also a game though most people don’t play it as such.
The Oasis is free to play and it’s also totally pay to win. You can transfer real money to get credits that allow you to buy items, armor, transportation, anything you might actually need to play the game. In fact you can’t even get off the starter tutorial planet without paying a transport fee. For most people this isn’t a problem as they don’t play the actual game. If you did you better pony up the dough so you can go to a planet where you might be able to kill things for experience and if your lucky some items you can sell for some credits to transport somewhere else. Everything has a money sink, ships need to be refueled and repaired, weapons and armor break, and let’s not forget the auction house where you can buy some of the rarest artifacts as long as you have the cash.
It’s a good book, and the audiobook narration by Will Wheaton was fantastic. It was a little weird hearing Will Wheaton narrate the parts about Will Wheaton or the whole sector of the Oasis called the Wheatonverse. I wouldn’t say it’s blew me away but it was set in a very interesting world.
I have to give it credit, the book manages to talk about video games without being cringey. A lot of times books will try to incorporate video games and they just don’t come out well in print. I also learned a lot about video game history and the 80’s reading this book, I don’t know how much of it is true but it all sounded accurate enough.
My one big gripe with the story is that it took 5 years to solve the first clue to find the egg. Thousands of players trying to figure it out and it took 5 years. The next clues only take a couple months each to solve apparently and they’re more obscure than the first. The other problem I had with the book is that the love interest feels forced. It’s like the book was written and then someone said, you know this is a story about a teenage boy and teenage boys are always motivated by chasing teenage girls around. The whole time she’s not even that interested in him and he just obsesses over her.
If you have read Ready Player One and are looking for a similar book, I highly recommend Omnitopia by Diane Duane. It looks like the rest of the series never took off but the first book is a really good read and is also set in an MMO.
Last Sunday, right as my free time in Final Fantasy 14 was coming to a close, I hit 50 on my white mage. It was a weekend full of running Stone vigil more times than I care to count to hit 49. I wanted to be able to continue and maybe finish the Main Scenario and it’s a long gap between 46 and 49.
I’m actually glad it worked out so well, I didn’t think it would. When I logged back on Thursday my White Mage’s was level 44, a lot lower than I thought I left him. Every time I ran my daily roulette the bonus either leveled me up or nearly leveled me up. Running Stone Vigil so many times showed me the good and the bad of the Duty Finder. I ran into everything from helful chatty groups, to disconnecting tanks, to DPS’s pulling aggro, and of course the bickering between hot headed party members. But it was all good fun. I love healing in this game and didn’t run into too much trouble in the Duty Finder.
After hitting 49 I ran as many of the Main Scenario Quests as I could. The story was just getting good and building up to a climax when I got the dreaded red text saying I couldn’t complete the quest until I was level 50. It was late Sunday night, I was 3/4ths of the way to level 50 and I was tired of running dungeons. So I decided to check out the Yo-Kai Watch event and see how much experience that would give me. 10 fates and Yo-Kai medals later I dinged 50 and could no longer gain experience.
After this weekend, I see rresubbing and purchasing Heavensward in m near future. I really want to see how the story will end for 2.0. Plus I just discovered the Golden Saucer and that seems like a whole game itself. There’s so much left to see aand do in the game and this weekend reminded me why I played it so much in the first place. But hey, I guess that’s the point of these free even’s right? I
I was at my local library the other day when I passed the Fantasy/SciFi section and saw The Sword of Midras: a Shroud of The Avatar novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott. My first thought was “Huh maybe it’s a series that has nothing to do with the game.” Turns out it’s the first book in a trilogy that’s a prequel to Portalarium’s upcoming, there aren’t going to be anymore wipes but we didn’t launch yet, MMO. I’m all ready reading something but it was less than 300 pages so i decided to check it out.
I know books based off video games aren’t by any means a new thing but I was surprised when something as seemingly niche as Shroud of The Avatar had a book published.It made a little more sense when I did a little digging. A shorter version of the book was distributed to backers asBlade of The Avatar. It would make sense that people who pledged their hard earned money to a game would be interested in a book about their game. The book was already written so why not get it traditionally published as well? Turns out the publishers didn’t want to publish something that had already been giving to 50,000 people already for mass market. So a few chapters were added so that they could get their book traditionally published but who’s the target audience for this now?
I know this isn’t the first MMO to have a book out before it launched either. I remember being very excited when the Guild Wars trilogy came out that bridged the gap between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Those have fairly respectable ratings on Goodreads, while they weren’t fantastic and I barely remember what they were about, as a fan at the time they did it for me. I’ve also seen the scores of books
The people who already received most of it from the kick starter obviously aren’t unless they really want to read those extra 4 chapters. Maybe once the game actually launches new players will want to buy it but it hasn’t officially been launched yet. It also seems like they’re hinging on it being so successful that it will sell two more books. I picked it up simply because I have a vague idea of what Shroud of The Avatar is but I wouldn’t have paid for it if I saw it outside of the library.
The only thing I can think of is if the story and writing are actually good enough to compete with other fantasy novels. This I can’t comment on yet as I haven’t read more than a few chapters but I’m interested to see how it turns out.
It’s always exciting to start a new game no matter what it is. I’ve always enjoyed the first few hours of learning the basics, getting a foundation in the game, and being prepared for bigger and better things. There are 2 things in MMOs that have me sitting in the first few hours over and over again. One is character customization and the other is choosing a class.
I love games with a lot of classes to choose from. I like finding the ones I like by playing the first couple of levels. Unfortunately this means I play the same quests and missions over and over again until I finally find the class that suits me. Once I find the class I might make one more character to perfect how it looks and then continue on in the game.
Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been through 4 characters in Neverwinter. I started with a Great Weapon FIghter, but I didn’t like some of his abilities, especially his charged AoE swing attack. Then I moved on to a Control Wizard, it felt like he was going to be hard to play solo with and I again didn’t like his kit early on. I’ve been reading that classes really come into their own at 70 but I wasn’t enjoying these 2 at all in the extremely early game.
My main right now, and by main I mean character past level 8, is a Tiefling Scourge Warlock. I played it when I tried the game on PC and I loved it then. On the PS4 the starting skills feel powerful enough that I can do things on my own. Also, it has a skill that summons a Soul Puppet, and I really like the name Soul Puppet. I also started a Dwarf Devoted Cleric with Jay last night, he’ll be fun to play in a co-op setting.
The problem with Neverwinter is that it only allows you to have 2 character slots at any given time. So those other characters who I ran through the first 8 levels or so are completely gone. It’s somewhat annoying but I understand, free to play games have to make their money somewhere. There are still 4 classes I haven’t tried yet but right now I’m tired of hearing the same quests again and again so I’ll wait a while before I try those.
Despite all the bugs and growing pains, the games not bad on the PS4. The controls are good, everything is mapped to the controller well. It does take a little getting used to targeting with the right analog stick to attack I keep forgetting it’s not tab targeting. The graphics are Ok, it runs pretty well in dungeons but inside cities like Protector’s Enclave the game starts to chug along. That’s to be expected though. The UI is a little clunky with the controller as well but it’s not a huge inconvenience. I don’t know if it’s a game I’ll play for a long period of time, but I like what I’ve seen so far.
I found out a few days ago that Final Fantasy 14 was having a free login event in August. This could not come at a more perfect time. I’ve been itching to play the game again but didn’t want to pay for a months sub since No Man’s Sky comes out in a few weeks. If I start my free time in FFXIV tomorrow it’ll give me something to do over the weekend.
Right now I have a Bard sitting at level 49 and a White Mage sitting at 46. I’m hoping to get one or both of them to 50 before my free time is up. When I last played I was helping a friend level up and was messing around with a bunch of different classes. I switched to Bard after I got tired of healing and ran most of the Main Story Quests with it. With my free time, I’m going to work on my White Mage because a) I miss healing and found it really enjoyable in the past and b) I don’t want to sit in long DPS queues for dungeons.
Before I let my sub lapse I was getting into crafting and gathering and I was trying to level all the classes at once. As a result, my inventory and both of my retainers were filled up with raw crafting materials. This made it hard to do other things like pick up gear in dungeons. Maybe when I come back to the game for real I’ll get the itch to craft again.
If I can manage it, I’d like to start doing the rest of the quests before the expansion. I hear that it takes some time and when I actually come back to the game I want to jump right in to Heavenward. Though I don’t know if I should wait and get the experience from those pre-Heavansward quests that comes with having the expansion.
At any rate, I miss my chocobo buddy and he must be feeling pretty lonely too After all, I’ve been away for quite some time.
I tried, I really tried to get another 5,000 blocks placed in trove this weekend but my heart just wasn’t in it. As the two week long anniversary event drew to a close so did my interest in doing anything in the game. So I threw in the towel at 6,000 and decided I could live without the extra 5 Golden Ticket Chests.
I don’t know what this is
This morning I opened my new shiny 13 Golden ticket boxes and got a whole lot of nothing. I wasn’t really expecting anything out of them but there’s always a chance with lock boxes, part of the excitement of opening them I suppose.Honestly, I just wanted some new mounts to ride around on, that would have been nice not sure I’d be all that excited for a full year of patron subscription.
While it was fun for a short period of time, I got bored of the endless zerg in the higher level portals. Plus it always crashes when I launch Spotify along with it. If I’m going to mindlessly grind I want some music to grind to. I’ll definitely try it out when it comes to consoles though.
Dark Souls 2
I’ve played Demon Souls, I’ve played half of Dark Souls, I finished Bloodborne, but I never got around to playing Dark Souls 2. It’s my friend Jay’s favorite game and he’s been bugging me for years to play it. For years I’ve been telling him that if I ever found it for 5 dollars or less I would get it figuring that would by me sometime. Well I walked into my local game store a few weeks ago and found Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin for exactly 5 dollars and, keeping my word, prominently bought it. Which,means yet another game to add to my backlog
This weekend I started playing and streaming Dark Souls 2 partly because I had some friends who wanted to watch and partly because I wanted to try streaming solo. Me, Jay, and some other friends had been streaming Diablo 3 as a group which was a blast but I wanted to see what it was like by myself. It was a fun time, I’m sure my more experienced friends had a good time heckling me very time I died as well as giving me a few pointers.
I sunk about 4 hours into it Saturday night. I played Demon Souls and Bloodborne mostly Co-op so this is the first time I’m trying to complete a Souls game completely by myself. So far it’s been difficult but fair and I had a good time with it.
World Of Warcraft-Trial Edition
I never played WoW at all. Ok that’s not true, I played a few private servers in high school with friends but that wasn’t fun. You were too powerful and gained everything too quickly. It probably wasn’t the best way to be introduced to a game. Of course, the game was around when I lacked any sort of disposable income of my own and my parents didn’t understand why I needed to pay monthly to play a game.
With all the hype around Legion coming at the end of next month, I wanted to sit down and try for myself the king of MMO’s. I started my exploration into Azeroth as a Draenei Monk. It was a pleasant way to pass the time doing quests, killing things, looting things, leveling up. All of it was great, the quintessential MMO experience. I managed to get to level 15 this weekend and plan to get to my account level cap of 20 next weekend.
I like games with a lot of classes. With 13 classes to choose from it looks like it would keep my attention for a while.If it wasn’t for the inability to delete my character I would have re rolled countless times and probably not made it past level 10. But I like my name and being a blue space goat felt right so I stuck with the Monk for the weekend. Plus,those hooves look like they’d hurt to be kicked by.
Though strangely enough, playing World of Warcraft over the weekend actually made me miss Final Fantasy 14. If it wasn’t for No Man’s Sky coming out in a few weeks I would have plunked down some cash for the starter edition of Wow or Heavansward and upped my sub to FF14. I have a feeling most of my gaming time in August will be taken up by my quest to explore the universe and name some plants and creatures. Maybe even fly some spaceships or something.
I’ve been playing more Trove this week snatching up goodies every day from the one year anniversary event. I have to admit, they have been pretty lack luster. Most of the time its 2 Golden Ticket Chests that are a lot like scratch off tickets. You could win a pack of mounts or a whole years subscription but most of the time end up getting a measly style surprise.
Trove holds competitions every week and players can compete and climb the leader boards for prizes. This week one of the competitions is Blocks Placed. There are no prizes for being a certain place on the leader board, all you have to do is put down 10,000 blocks to win 20 of these Golden Ticket Chests. So instead of building a 10k block wall I decided to try my hand at actually building something.
My friends who play have always been really into building sometimes more than actually playing the game. They’ve built some interesting stuff including a giant monopoly board, a large city,giant pinatas, and even a whole club world dedicated to aviation history. They’re creations always look crisp and well planned out.
Meanwhile I built this Narwhal once while watching Interstellar. As a result I was banished to building in the desolate corners of our club world.
So I sat down and thought about what to build as I rode far away from our main hub. I wanted to build a robot, one that looked like one of those tin toy robots with the square body and square head, a classic robot. After about 3 hours and one delightfully awful horror movie later, the Grinda-Tron 5000 was built. While he’s not exactly what I envisioned I think he turned out pretty well. He consists of 5,100 blocks and is my second creation in Trove.
I was never a fan of building in Trove. It’s kind of clunky and there isn’t a good way to do anything fast. If you’re building something tall and accidentally fall off, better hope you have enough jumps to get back to the top. Sometimes it can be insanely frustrating and it takes a long time. For a game that tries to promote creatively and building, there should be some useful tools in build mode to make it easier and more fun.
Despite this, I am excited to build some more and get my boxes at the end of the week. Building was somewhat fun once I got over all the limitations of the game and things started to come together. It was almost like doodling in 3D. I’m not quite done, I still have 4.1k blocks left to place, maybe Grinda-Tron needs a friend.
It’s been one year since Trove officially launched and to celebrate Trion is putting on an event from July 13th to July 5th. They’ll be handing out free stuff and who doesn’t love free stuff? Players will receive a few items when they log in each day including Golden Ticket Boxes which give a chance to win a bunch of mounts, a collection of Dragons, and a full year of patron (Trove’s paid subscription). If you’re above mastery Rank 20, you get 2 days of patron every other day when you log in.
I took a break from Trove last month and didn’t really have any interest in coming back but I really enjoy free stuff, like a lot. The two days of patron help bolster my enthusiasm as experience is doubled,you get 4 daily lock boxes, and 1500 cubits (Troves free in game currency) instead of the meager 500.
It’s been quite a year for Trove. A lot has been added to the game since launch, some of it has been good like additional classes, flying, and rune crafting. Some of it has been not so good like only being able to buy classes with premium currency. Trove released an expansion which raised the level cap fro 20 to 30, added in new ways to power up your character, and class gems that modified abilities. A lot of this was hit or miss with the community. The devs had made some interesting decisions over the course of the year and have left players wondering “who thought this was a good idea?”
A few things have changed since the last time I played. The level requirement for gems has been lowered to make them easier to access. Trove’s experience curve after level 20 is really steep, gems being available earlier give players more power rank earlier and let them go into higher level worlds for that sweet loot. Some of the awful RNG has been taken out of upgrading said gems. After so many failures the gem is guaranteed to upgrade.
I’m going to log in every day, run a few dungeon, and get my cubits for the duration of the event. Who knows maybe the enthusiasm I had for the game back in May will come back. If not, there’s always the console release to look forward to.
I’ve been wanting to try out ESO for a while. For one, it’s on PS4 which means it’ll look pretty and two I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I’ve been putting off actually buying it though. I rented it when it first came out and couldn’t get into it. The combat felt weak, the story was ok, and the character models looked kinda ugly. I returned it after a day and forgot about it. Lately it’s been creeping up in the news and I’ve met some people over PS4 that have had nothing but good things to say about it. Plus they just released a new DLC.
I found a copy of the game for $5 dollars at a local used store and fired it up. A friend of mine wanted to play together so we made some new characters and started our adventure. We ran around the starting city for a while racing through quest he had already done. I got acclimated to the combat and the skill system. It was nice to play with someone who was so knowledgeable in Elder Scrolls lore, as I have barely played more than 20 hours in Skyrim. I was having a bit more fun with it playing together. It really wasn’t until I sat down and played by myself for a couple hours to get my bearings that I started to click with the game.
My one dilemma so far is choosing a class. I’ve created 8 different characters trying out a lot of the different classes and skills. This is the one time I’m glad there aren’t a ton of classes to choose from, it’s hard enough with four. And then you have to decide between magika and stamina, and then what kind of weapon you want to use, and then what kind of armor there’s a lot of choice. Once I figure out the class I’ll have to figure out what race I want to play…so many decisions.Speaking of the character creator, I can’t remember the last time I was able to make a character with a beer gut.
The friend I’ve been playing with has his characters in the Ebonheart Pact faction and after restarting so many times, I’ve become very familiar with Bleakrock Isle. I really like the sturcture of the main quest there, gathering all the villagers in town before evacuating. And each villager only goes back to town after you complete their side quest. After the 8th time doing it all I’m so ready to move on.
After a lot of testing I’ve at least figured out the class I want to play formy first time around Tamerial, a magika nightblade. At first I was sure I wanted to be a bow and dual weilding stamina night blade but I liked the idea of a nightblade healer so much I just started over.I;m glad there are restats in this game if I ever want to try something different.
Even though I’m playing on PS4 there seems to be a ton of people in the starting zones even before Dark Brotherhood launched. I was actually surprised considering the game is about 1.5 years old on consoles now.One of my only complaint so far is that there is only voice chat, which I quickly opted out of while exploring. It wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t people constantly blaring music, eating, or screaming for no apparent reason. Of course I’ll opt back in for group content but while I’m out in the world alone, silence is golden.
Many Welps 