MMO

Book Review: The Sword of Midras

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Sword of Midras

Ever wonder what a book would be like if a bunch of NPCs stood around talking to each other? I give you The Sword of Midras by . Tracy Hickman, of the original DragonLance  fame, and Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima and Shroud of the Avatar. Actually, looking at the games site, it looks like both of them are involved in Shroud of the Avatar

Our story starts a s a lot of fantasy stories do, in the middle of a battle.The Obsidian Army lay siege to the inferior city of Midras. We meet our main character, quippy Captain Aren Bennis and his equally quippy side kick Syenna. After the city is mostly defeated, the general sends Captain Bennis to find a good spot to hold his victory parade, sounds like a pretty standard MMO quest. While in the city Bennis and Syenna chase down one of the city’s priestesses. In the midst of their chase they fall into a large tomb where Aren finds a magic sword that only he can touch and is suspected to be the Blade of an Avatar. Now everyone wants the blade and to find out what power it holds.

First let’s talk about the characters. They sound like video game characters almost all of the time. All of them are either super witty and have a comeback for everything like Captain Bennis, overly dramatic and ominous, or very one dimensional only there to move the plot along. But they’re enjoyable enough and there is enough character development to make you kind of care about Captain Bennis at least.

Now when I started reading this I wondered why they got the book traditionally published besides the fact that they could. It was originally an e-book for backers of Shroud of the Avatar. But what was the appeal for mass market, maybe some more advertising? I wondered if it would hold up with other fantasy novels and I think it did. It’s a par for the course as far as fantasy writing and plot lines go. In the back drop, the Obsidian Army is trying to civilize the world through law and order while the rest of the countries form a coalition to oppose them. At its core its the story of Captain Bennis coming to terms with whether or not he still believes in the Obsidian Cause.

For a 300 page fantasy novel, it does a good job at introducing some of the world. Though it feels kind of like Destiny’s story. There’s just enough lore and information to move the plot along but the deeper stuff you have to go outside of the game/book to look for. They keep talking about the Fall and everyone in the book seems to know what it was but its never explained I thought it was interesting that elves, ogers, fauns and other fantasy creatures were actually ,magically shaped from living humans by the Obsidians.

It actually made me a little more interested in the game itself. It was fun reading about places and thinking if I could play the game and go to those same places. While I didn’t think this was a fantastic book I’m looking forward to reading the next installment.

MMO Events Stress Me Out

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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.

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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.

Dinging 50

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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

Relearning All the Things

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Last night I had the chance to start playing Final Fantasy 14 again. When I logged in things were not quite how I remembered them. My classes were a little lower than I originally thought with my Bard sitting at 47 and my White Mage sitting at 44. I also had a lot more inventory space than I thought. I went ahead with my plan to clean it up still and now I have a whole bag and a half left.

I was feeling like I’d forgotten a lot of the controls and the skills so I took the time to reorient myself with what every thing did. Slowly but surely I got my footing back as I waited for Jay to do his Main Story Quest. I was planning on helping him get through the story dungeons he needed until he caught up t me. I also ran my White Mage class quests which I apparently hadn’t done in a while because I had 3 to do. After finishing them all up I’m now the proud owner of Holy.

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I had forgotten exactly where Jay was in the story, when he said he had hit a dungeon I thought it was going TO be Brayflox’s Longstop. Instead when i hit commence on the queue I found my self in Haukke Manor, oh how I hate Haukke Manor. I don’t know what it is about this dungeon but I’ve never liked running it. It’s not that its hard, it seems to take longer than some of the other dungeons and the bosses aren’t all that interesting. Since it was the first dungeon I ran in a while I was bit rusty. Jay, our tank, died a few times as I was trying to figure out the right balance between Cleric Stance DPSing and healing the tank. Thank goodness for Swift Cast + Res. Surprisingly, neither of the DPS’s we were with left and after our 30 minute struggle we emerged from the dungeon victorious and Jay had some new gear for his Gladiator.

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It was getting late so we decided to run the roulette and end the night. Being a tank and healer combo the queue popped immediately. As the loading screen faded we found ourselves in Haukke Manor once again. We both groaned, but this time we were prepared and the other two people in our party were super nice. They gave us some tips and good conversation. We made it out of our second run a lot quicker than our first and no one died, a rousing success.

After all was said and done, we ended the night with Jay starting his Paladin class quest and my White Mage leveling up to 46. I can’t wait to play again tonight.

 

The Class Dilemma

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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.

 

Out with the Old and In With the Older…and Older

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Trove

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.

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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

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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

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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.

Creativity is Such a Grind

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

 

Happy 1 Year Trove!

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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.

 

Exploring The Elder Scrolls Online

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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.