MMO

Baby Steps on Fallen Gate

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Since the Everquest 2 Fallen Gate has launched I haven’t had as much time to sit down and play as  I would have liked. But I did get to play a little over the past couple days. I chose to make a froglok coercer and go around the Isle of Refuge enslaving every mob I saw.

It all started on a boat, as all good tales do, with a thinly veiled tutorial on how to do MMO things. Like opening chests, buying and selling to merchants, and of course, killing rats. My biggest surprise right off the bat was that I had 4 inventory slots, just 4, and it stayed that way until level 3 when i picked up another 4 slot bag. It looked like I was either going to be going back and forth from the merchant to sell things often or just not pick up every piece of junk that dropped. I chose the latter.

Combat is harsh, I can barely take on 2 mobs at the same time even with a charmed creature fighting with me. It’s gotten to be a fun little dance of mesmerizing and rooting targets when I aggro one too many. But at the same time it takes a long time to down each one. Not excruciatingly long but long enough that it’s noticeable. I’m sure re once I have a few more skills to press it won’t be as noticeable.

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I made it to level 5 and completed  all of the isle of refuge and set off for the Frostfang Sea. Mostly because it sounded cool. Maybe that wasn’t the greatest choice as my boat was attacked by orcs and I seem to be on another tutorial island. It even told me how to gather and fight things again. But I quickly moved past all the level 1-4 quests and am on my way to a new area of New Halas.

So far the leveling hasn’t been too much of a turn off. I knew it would be slower than the live character I made but right now it doesn’t seem too bad. The chat is lively with people looking for groups, guilds recruiting, and the general chat making the same jokes about some new game called World of Warcraft. It was also nice to see people in the isle of refuge instead of walking round a ghost town on the live server.

I’m enjoying myself so far. I’ll definitely be playing a little more over the weekend to get a better feel for the game. One thing I really like is that the quests are in chat bubbles instead of a separate page to read all at once. It feels more like a conversation between the NPC and your character as opposed to the NPC just ordering  your character around.

Trove’s Sort of Megalithic Update

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Megalithic Update!

Yesterday, Trove released it’s Megalithic Update for both Consoles and PC. Megalithic is a great word but if your going to use it as a patch name your patch better be big. For console players it’s huge as it will catch the consoles up to the PC version. For PC players,not so much, there’s a change to daily login rewards and a new event.

Console players will be treated to the newest class, the Dino tamer, and complete dungeons in the Juristic Jungle. Console players will also be able to loot chaos chests, a premium lock box, in normal dungeon and compete in mini games for daily rewards. All of these will catch the console versions up to the PC version which has had access to all of this since the last major update in September 2016.

The patch also brings with it a change to the daily log in rewards. Come July 1st the Daily Loot Boxes will be replaced with Daily Log In Tokens. These tokens, which will be different each month, will then in turn be used to earn rewards from the Radiant Dayspring. 18 tokens will get you a shiny new dragon egg, 9 tokens will give a flying carpet mount, and 1 token will give you a lock box. It just wouldn’t be Trove without more lock boxes.

I never really cared much for the daily loot boxes. They never netted me anything but new styles for gear which is great and all but I never got anything else out of them. Trove already has a pseudo-premium currency called cubits that you can collect 500 of once a day and use in the store to buy some items. This alone has been a pretty decent incentive to log on and run a few dungeons each day but now there are other rewards too. I love collecting different mounts in Trove and  the Dragons usually look pretty sharp. Not to mention that they give a permanent stat boost to your character too.

Oh and if you miss a few days and really want one of the monthly rewards you can always buy these daily log in tokens the following month in the cash shop. Now at first I thought that was weird. Shouldn’t daily login rewards be given for, I don’t know, logging in? At the same time it’s not all that different from selling last years seasonal events or a certain Living Story. Some people got them for free, yes, but at least theirs an option to get said item or content instead of missing out on it all together.

There’s also a new dinosaur invasion event on the way. It says there’s a 9 step quest chain but usually all these events boil down to collect all the things and or kill all the things and then collect and kill more things.

Trove in a nutshell.

 

 

Getting to Know the Elementalist

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My mini pet is almost as big as me!

I spent some more time with my Elementalist over the weekend leveling and trying to do more of the story quest. I’m getting the hang of switching between the attunements and understanding what all of my weapon skills do. I’m so glad this class doesn’t have a weapon swap, 40 skills would be a lot to remember. I’ve decided to go with the staff for now. I like the mix of damage and utility it brings and I really like calling down meteors on my foes.

One of the best things about Guild Wars 2 is that everything seems to progress you further. Everything from exploring to gathering gives you some sort of experience and it’s all doled out so generously. I don’t know if this is true after level 80 but so far I’ve really been enjoying the leveling process.

Finding the points of interests and vistas are one of my favorite activities. The vistas especially when the way up isn’t clear. Completing the maps in general are a lot of fun. It’s really relaxing running from one renown heart to a way point and then a vista.  I’ve only fully explored 2 zones so far, Metrica Province and Brisban Wildlands, and I’m already level 31. I love how the game scales your level down to match the area so that your never steam rolling through areas.

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Skritsburg is my favorite area in Brisban Wildlands

I like that the story moves forward every ten levels. By the time I was done with the level 20 story sequence I was ready to get back out there and explore the world and by the time I was level 29 I was itching to get back to the story. It really is very good pacing so far. I guess we’ll see how I feel about it as I get to higher levels.

I’ve been running into a lot more people than I thought I would have in the lower level zones. I’ve done some world bosses which are cool to see so many people show up but even the random events seem to attract a few players. It has not been a lonely experience at all which MMOs shouldn’t be.

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The only thing I’m finding a bit frustrating is the inventory. It fills up so fast even with all the bags I have equip. I like that you can deposit all materials to the bank right from the inventory but a lot of the lower level crafting materials are already at the max stacks from the last time I played so I end up selling them on the market place. I’m not sure how I feel about not being able to sell or salvage soul bound items it seems like such a waste to throw them away.

Now I’m in the middle of the level 30 story sequence. It’s starting to get even more interesting with fake deaths and people talking about elder dragons. I can’t wait to see where this goes.

A Newbie in Norrath

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I learned last week that Everquest 2 is launching their 2nd Time Locked Expansion Server Fallen Gate next week and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve never played EQ2 or Everquest for that matter so why would I be excited to play an 13 year old game? Well it’s mostly because I’m just so curious.

I just don’t know all that much about Everquest 2. Every once in a while I’ll read something about it but if it wasn’t for me randomly finding it on steam a few years ago I probably would have never known it existed. I’ve had this fascination with the concept of progression servers since Everquest announced their’s a few years ago. I like the idea of taking an old game with so much content and rolling it back to the beginning and slowly working it back up. So I’m both curious to see what EQ2 has to offer and starting fresh on a progression server.

Fallen Gate will be a different TLE Server than the previous Stormhold and Deathtoll servers. The first wave of progression servers had the player base vote on whether or not the next expansion should be unlocked and Fallen gate will unlock each expansion every 12 weeks.

The past week or so I’ve been playing around on a free to play account on the current live servers trying to decide if I like the game enough to pay a sub for it. From what I’ve experienced so far I can see myself playing this. I like how many different races and classes there are and I can be a frog, I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game where I can play as a frog. Even better I can play as a magic frog and have my own little frog clone to follow me around.

I’ve been fooling around with a handful of classes that look interesting. With the free to play account I only get 2 character slots so I’ve had to say goodbye to a lot of characters. I’ve tried playing some of the more familiar classes like ranger, beserker, and wizard but the less cookie cutter classes look like fun too. So far I’m really digging the Dirge with it’s buffs as well as it’s debuffs and melee skills. The illusionist has also been fun to play around for a few levels with and they get their own clone pet as well. The more frogloks the better. I still want to try out the Coercer for a few levels before I make my decision on what class to play I just love the name of the class.

Something that took me by surprise was that there was voice acting in the beginning area. Not all of the NPC’ have voiced dialogue but a good amount of them do. It’s just not something I was expecting to see. I don’t know how much more of the game is voice acted outside of the beginning area but it’s a nice touch. Also the graphics aren’t terrible. They don’t look as dated as I thought they would and don’t detract from the game.

I know I’ll be in the extreme minority on this new progression server as someone whose never played the game before but I’m looking forward to learning and playing a new to me game. I’m hoping that with this server I’ll be playing the old content in a meaningful way instead of rushing through it on the live server. I think this is what excites me most about it getting a fuller experience of what EQ2 was and is. Plus, the nice thing about the All Access Day Break subscription is that I can try their other games as a member if EQ2 doesn’t end up being my cup of tea.

 

Oh Tyria, I’m Home!

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Returning to Guild Wars 2 this weekend has been a little more complicated than I thought it would be. I’ve created and deleted so many characters this week trying to decide on a class to play. I’ve gone through a ranger, a necromancer, a thief, and a warrior, and elementalist. In the end decided to stick with the Asura elementalist. There’s just so many buttons to push.

Previously I had leveled a Guardian to 80 and an engineer to 59 so I didn’t want to reroll as those classes. Every class i tried there was always something around level 10 or 11 that i didn’t like. I didn’t like the weapon skills for most of the ranger and thief weapons and I didn’t like the utility skills for the necromancer. Both classes were promising in the beginning but by level 10 just didn’t look like they would play the way I wanted them too. I’m sure I’ll give them a second chance when I inevitably create more characters but for now none they just didn’t suit my tastes.

The warrior I would have stuck with but being a human seemed kind of boring and the Asura were calling to me. I was so excited when Guild Wars 2 was announced to play as an Asura and even though I already had an Asura Engineer, I made another one!

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One of the benefits of creating and deleting so many characters has been the chance to visit all of the starting areas. Out of all of them, Rata Sum is still my favorite city with Hoelbrek coming in at a close second. I’ve been enjoying finding all of the Points of Interest and Vistas just as much as completing the hearts. I haven’t had this much fun exploring in a long time and this game is just a gold mine for screenshots.

They must have updated the new player experience since I’ve last played. Weapon skills unlock based on level and not how much you use the weapon and I also remember their being access to the utility skills before level 10 but I could be wrong. Overall I like the change. Instead of giving you a bunch of skills at the start it eases you into them one by one. Even the elementalist who has a ton of weapon skills has been pretty easy to learn.

It’s weird because I’ve played this game before and I’ve leveled up to 80 before but the game feels brand new this time around. I think part of that is the better computer and the other part is I’m not trying to race to 80 to play with my friends. We never did end up playing together…

This time around I’m taking it slow, enjoying the world, and enjoying the personal stories I’ve done so far. The Norn one was just starting to get good when I got rid of the necro but I have a feeling I’ll be seeing the elementalist all the way through.

 

Heading Back to Trove

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I’m back to playing Trove again this week. Sometimes I want a game I can turn my brain off and play and feel like I’m getting somewhere. It fills the same role as Diablo 3 for me, grind a few levels get some new gear while listening to music or something. I also have a group of friends who get together to run the weekly Shadow Towers, which are the closest thing Trove has to challenging content.

Lately I’ve been looking for a game I can play with no sound so I can catch up on some podcasts. Trove is perfect for this as I don’t have the game sounds on anyways because they’re a little repetitive. I think the entire soundtrack consists of 3 songs.

This week I took a break from my main class the Ice Sage and have been playing the Pirate Captain. I’ve had him for a long time and I don’t know why I haven’t played him before. He’s got a really great set of skills with parrot manned turrets, explosive decoys, and a giant cannon the fires molten cannon balls. In my adventures so far I’ve leveled him up past the 5k Power Rank needed to do higher level content with my friends. Also I got a class gem that lets me spawn 2 Parrot Turrets instead of just one. And we al know more turrents are always better.

Trove hasn’t had the sticking factor that it once had for me. Jay has been playing it every day for the last year and a half and I can’t seem to get into it for more than a month or 2 at a time. I used to really like unlocking and playing around with all the classes. When the game first launched there were new classes almost every month. As of late the class releases have slowed dramtically with the last one being released in August of last year.

Trove has been really slow with content updates as well. While there have been some major patches since the release of Mantle of Power, which came out last summer, none of them have added new features to the game and have seemed to just added more stuff to the store. In fact there was one “major update” that was just an improvement to the store UI. Apparently they’ll be adding sub-classes and a few more shadow tower bosses later this year but a release date hasn’t been mentioned yet.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be playing Trove this time around. I could be a few weeks or it could be a few months but right now I’m enjoying my time there.

 

Gaming Choice Paralysis

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Last week I built my first gaming PC. With that came a crash course in computer hardware installation and a great sense of accomplishment but also some unforeseen consequences. It ran for about 3 days until the power supply gave out causing a whole week worth of troubleshooting, researching, and more troubleshooting. But after all was said and done I was able to bring it back to life over the weekend!

For the past 8 years or so I’ve been attempting to play games on a business laptop. It wasn’t exactly an enjoyable experience. There were only a few kinds of games I could pay, Namely this came down to do I want to play a 2d side scroller, a pixelated indie game, or, if I was lucky, a game that came out 15 years ago. Other than that my choice in games has been whatever the PS3 and PS4 libraries held. While they aren’t small by any means there was always something I wanted to play but it wasn’t on the system.

Now I have all the options and I must admit it’s a little dizzying how many choices there are. I’ve already installed games I’ve been following for years but could never run well enough to play. Games like Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Black Desert Online, Wildstar, even World of Warcraft. They all run without skipping a beat, it’s fantastic.

Then there’s single player games I’ve been waiting on like Grim Dawn and Elite Dangerous. Though Elite Dangerous is set to release for PS4 at the end of the month…go figure.

Unfortunately I don’t have any really intensive game to really make my PC work hard but even my old games take on a new life at maximum settings and on a bigger monitor.

With all of these options how do I choose what to play? I find myself hopping from game to game saying “oooo look how pretty this one it” and then moving on to test another. It’s hard to pick just one to play for an hour but I can’t complain too much it’s a pretty good problem to have.

New Dungeon Jitters

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Kluwes A'llond 02/03/2017 09:29:31

While I’ve been continuing through the 2.XX main quest line I keep getting distracted by quest that unlock things. As a result I’ve filled up my quest tracker and journal with a bunch of quests that unlock more parts of the game. Most of the ones I’ve picked up have led to unlocking more dungeons and primal fights. While a few of them have been new dungeons most of them are Hard Mode of the rest of the ARR dungeons and trials.

New dungeons are exciting but there are always those new dungeon jitters. These are so old that most of the players in the Duty  Finder have already done them many times over which results in being dragged through which isn’t an ideal way to experience new content. That’s just how it is though coming in later, which I totally understand. But I also don’t want to slow them down too much as I’m learning the dungeon.  What still surprises me is that even though these Hard Mode dungeons are being run as efficiently as possible by the more experienced players they still stop and explain things when I ask, which is awesome.

Kluwes A'llond 01/30/2017 10:34:08

In the regular story dungeons in ARR there is some skipping of rooms and alternate paths but the group typically kills everything in its way. What’s throwing me off with these level 50 dungeons is that the tank will either pull everything and their mother or just skip entire packs of mobs. It feels faster passed and more rushed than the regular story dungeons ever did.

Now I know I could possibly get FC mates or a PUG together to this stuff slower but I know eventually I too will be running these dungeons again and again so I might as well learn how its usually run.

Kluwes A'llond 01/31/2017 10:13:07

 

Other than new content I’ve been leveling up my pugilist through the daily leveling roulette. It’s going pretty well I like the class much more than I did the last time I played it. It’s fun moving around the enemies to land those positionals. It feels like a very active class. After being in greased lighting for a while and losing it the GDC skills feel like they take forever to reset. I’m also enjoying the class quest story line and Hamon Holyfist is such a delightful character.

 

 

Finishing Up A Realm Reborn

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Kluwes A’llond 11/03/2016 11:17:44

I’m back to playing Final Fantasy 14 after a month long hiatus. Patch 3.5 doesn’t really do anything me in the right now as I’m a long way off from reaching the current content, but  at least now I can queue up for the Duty Finder and have my trusty chocobo by my side.

I’ve changed things up a little since my return. For one I am no longer playing a hulking mountain of muscly man meat and have changed Kluwes into a female Au Ra. Now I have the pleasure of looking like mostly everyone else in the Duty Finder.  That’s ok though, every once and a while I like to play other races and genders. This isn’t the first time Kluwes has had a total DNA make over, he started out as a Duskwhight Elezen with long flowing locks.

It’s taken a little while to get used to my drastic decrease in character size after adventuring so long with the Roegadyen. I no longer have an over sized chocobo and I feel like the camera is lower to the ground than before. Also, it’s weird having NPC’s actually look down to me when I talk to them.

Kluwes A'llond 01/17/2017 15:32:46

Once I got my character set up I decided to see how much longer I had in the Main Scenario for ARR. At first I was going to level my Ninja to 50 and then do the Main Scenario but an FC mate encouraged me just to get it done.

It turns out I wasn’t actually that far from the end anyways. I had about 3 quests and 2 dungeons to complete. One of my least favorite parts of FFXIV is that story is delivered through cut scenes in the dungeons. I like the idea  because it makes dungeons all that more cinematic but trying to watch a cut scene in content that old is a sure fire way to get left way behind by a group. Luckily I on’t mind skipping the cut scenes and watching them later in the inn. Actually I found that watching the last cut scene for both Castrum Meridianum and  Praetorium was enough to understand what was going on.

Kluwes A'llond 01/17/2017 14:44:55

I’m not sure how I feel about the last 2 dungeons in ARR. On the one hand the scenery and backdrop for each is really pretty. On the other, especially in Castrum Meridianum, my screen ended up looking like a field of purples and greens when the group made huge pulls.

I enjoyed the Praetorium more than Castrum Meridianum. It seemed like there was more to do in the dungeon rather than just pulling everything in sight and demolishing it. A brief moment of embarrassment came when I  couldn’t figure out how to get into the Magitech so I ended up huffing it on foot the whole way while my teammates destroyed whatever horror were along the way. Turns out it was kind of fun watching my mechanical chicken teammates clear things from the ground.

The Ultima Weapon was a fun final boss and since this is a Final Fantasy game of course he had three forms. He didn’t seem all that challenging but I’m sure that had something to do with 7 people whaling on him who knew what they were doing.

With ARR finished I can start working my way through the last of the 2.XX content on my Dragoon. I still want to level up my Ninja but for now I’ll reserve that for the Daily Roulette. What I’m most excited for is the 2.XX Main Scenario to be all level 50 quests so I don’t have to take a break in the story to get a level up or three.

 

Trove Taketh and Trove Giveth Back

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Once upon a time Trove used to be my main game for a few months. I would play regularly with a group of friends and we had a lot of fun grinding levels and farming the night away. Then the Mantle of Power patch was released and it took away the ability to get classes through game play as well as adding an endless grinding endgame that didn’t add much to the overall game. Even though I had all the classes unlocked, putting classes behind the cash shop didn’t sit with me quite right. Especially since most of the fun I was having in Trove was trying out all of the classes. While my friends cntinued to play I stepped away from the game. Every time they asked me to come back, my answer would always be when classes aren’t only in the cash shop anymore.

Flash forward to Tuesday. Trove’s Snowfest & Get Crafty patch released. It added a whole lot of changes to the game including simplifying the market, expanding player inventory, and the ability to craft classes, costume s, and even premium items. I couldn’t resist, I downloaded the lottery 1 gig game and sat down ready to return to a game that had given me so much fun in the past.

I actually like this new crafting system for classes. Before they initially took it away you would have to farm a certain never of dungeons to fill up a bar that would give you cubits. The cubits were use to buy various items from the non premium store and it included classes.

In the new system, you unlock classes by gathering a bunch of materials and praying to RNGesus that you get some chaos cores from the chaos chests. While it takes longer to unlock every class at least for me it would give you more time to play around with your new class before unlocking another. It also probably has to do with the fact that I actually like collecting materials.

As always players have gripes when it comes to massive overhauls in one patch. Some players feel the crafting cost is too high and others don’t like how the market place has been cut from 5 currencies to 2. But what really has the majority of players up in arms is the changes to chaos chests aka premium lock boxes. Before Tuesday they were tradable and sold for a pretty penny after the patch their now farmable drops that are essential for the new crafting as they have a chance of dropping chaos cores.

Overall I think the game is taking a step in the right direction. Trove seems to be loosing its death grip on it’s players wallets and making things a little easier for new players. I do wonder if this change has to do with the games recent console release. I almost wouldn’t mind starting over on the PS4 once this patch hits over there. Sure it’s a lot of grind but I’m thinking i would be a great game to remote play on the vita. Though from what I’ve experienced so far, Trove isn’t nearly as fun playing alone.