Mystic Worlds

Chatting with the Nuns

A couple of weeks ago I recorded a show with Sister Julie and Sister Fran for their No Prisoners No Mercy podcast.  They've just now posted the conversation as part of NPNM show 30.

Hope you enjoy.

Posts Slowing Down

I love MMOs and I derive great pleasure writing about my adventures in them.  My posts will be slowing down for the next several weeks.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm taking part in a writing workshop for the next ten weeks.  The course work, research and writing will consume the vast majority of my free time.  While I won't be completely abandoning games, everyone needs a little bit of downtime, I won't have the time for frequent posts.

I will be posting at least once a week and will have to learn to write shorter posts so that I don't steal valuable time from this other objective.  Runes of Magic being my primary MMO I won't ever have any decisions to make there about how long to stay subscribed to a game you're not playing.  I will remain subscribed to EVE and Wizard101 since I'm only expecting a short hiatus.

Wizard 101 - Downtime Friday April 24

Wizard101 Downtime
Wizard101 the game will be offline on Friday April 24 from 3:00am to 4:00am Central US Time. During this downtime you will not be able to log in to the game, and players in the game will be prompted to log out.

The website will also be unavailable during this downtime. Thank you for your understanding while we continually improve the game and the website for all our players.

EVE Online: Cleaning House before the Storm

I completed my self-imposed house cleaning in EVE.  I had a mass of inventory that needed review – ship modules I’ve saved but outgrown, salvage that needed to be divided into keep for future production opportunities or reprocess for the components and items that should be sold on the market for cash.

It took a couple of sessions but I got it all done.  I also finalized my entry level Faction Warfare ship fitting for the Tristan.  I made changes based on the cost of items and missing training skills.  All in all, I’m pleased wit the fitting and think the new Save Fitting options are fabulous.  Of course the proof is in the pudding.  I won’t know how well this build performs for me until I see it in action a few times.

Wizard 101 - Player Housing on Test Realm

Woot, news from the Wizard 101 Community Management staff...

Test Realm Opens to Preview Housing in Wizard101

To our Subscribers and players who have made a Crowns purchase in the last 30 days, we invite you to test out some of our new features on the Wizard101 Test Realm.<br /><br />

We will be looking to you to test out the following additions to Wizard101:

• Housing - Housing and housing item vendors can be found in all the worlds of the Spiral. Decorate your house or your Dorm room!
• Voice-overs have been added for Marleybone, MooShu and Dragonspyre
• Tips will appear to alert you to any items you have received as a reward.
• Run Speed modifiers can be found on Crowns items and as boss drops.
• Markers can now be placed that will allow you to recall back to a marked location.
• New messaging for Dungeons when you enter and if you log out while inside.
• New messaging for Quest drops such as 'Collect Armor'.
• Boat and Balloon rides are now optional.
• Friend Requests show more information about the character.
• The ghosts have fled from Firecat Alley and Triton Avenue to be replaced with different creatures.

If you see any issues with these or other features on the Test Realm, please use the Bug Report button in the game to let us know.

For more information on how to participate in the Test Realm, please see our Sneak Peek Page.

Summertime Diversions

I’ve been struggling to complete two writing projects for two years.  They are both novel length but I haven’t been able to make much progress past the 40% mark.  A few months ago I began wondering if my struggle was more related to the content length and genre that I’d selected, since the stories as far as plot and outline are concerned, have been complete for over a year.  Perhaps novel isn’t the format that speaks to my writing style.  I’ve thought about converting them into short story compilations but that didn’t get very far.

Tired of guessing and wanting to do something demonstrative about this quandary, I decided to take a few writing seminars over the summer.   The idea is to take one of the stories and do it as a short story, screenplay and novel – beginnings of for the last two and see if I find a stronger affinity with one format more than the others.  Right off the bat, I know the style I can produce like breathing is essay form but I don’t have a desire to do more with that beyond blogging coherently. 

Wizard101 – Balance + Death = Traps + Feint + Leech Heals = Talent Respec FTW

The recently deployed Training Points reset micro-transaction feature inspired me to play Wizard 101 over the weekend.  I knew that I would drop Storm as my secondary and choose Death in its place.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted instead of Fire but I was certain I didn’t want it.  After gnawing on my choices for a long time – normal behavior on my part, I decided that Balance and Death would be best complimented by Ice for me.

Balance has my wonderful traps, de-buffs and reliable damage.  Death would bring Feint and damage with leech heals, two of which I always purchased as Treasure cards into my main deck.  Ice brings more reliable damage than Fire.  Like Fire, Ice also has the potential of capitalizing on a spare Element Blade after I’ve cast Spectral Blast.  I’ll equip a Fire wand to get a 0 PIP damage boost from the other EB buff versus using an Ice wand.  I dropped Fire because of the elevated failure chance and to stop the extra work of buffing them with + Accuracy cards.  Ice also brings a nice 50% damage reduction shield - Tower Shield.

W101: Training Points Reset Arrives!!!

If you’re like me and haven’t been keeping up on the recent patches this little bit of news might have escaped your notice.  The game patch released on April 13th added a Training Point reset option.  O-M-F-G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This is a new lease on life for fans of Wizard 101.  Thank you so very much!

Selecting secondary and tertiary magic schools when you’re very new to the game is difficult.  You don’t even know the abilities of your primary school, let alone choose a complimentary secondary school of magic.  Moreover, you don’t know enough about your preferred play-style and combat strategy to make such choices.  Unfortunately, until now those choices were permanent. 

I agonized over my choices as I do in all games.  I played the ones that were of interest to me to level 10 and then created my main character.  For my secondary, I used the knowledge gained from testing the various classes and asked around.  That’s still not enough to make those choices that early in the game.  It was MANY levels later when my personal combat style emerged and when it did, I knew that I’d made the wrong choice for how I preferred to play.

EVE: Skill Queue Less Helpful than I’d Hoped

The Skill Training Queue (STQ) features introduced with the Apocrypha expansion pack aren’t proving nearly as useful as I’d hoped.  It is great for kicking off the early levels of skill training that take a few hours here and there.  However, it does absolutely nothing for skills that are longer than 1-day and complete during off hours – nada.  You’re still stuck with a skill finishing in the middle of the night or during the business day, when you aren’t able to start the next skill you’d like to train.  Basically, you’re still tied to queuing up things you may not really want yet but will fit into the 1-day STQ restriction or starting a longer skill you don’t want yet either, in order to always have “something” training if you're going to be away from the game for a few days.  *Yawn* 

While I understand CCP’s concerns about not wanting to encourage more AFK training-only players, it hasn’t changed player behavior all these years.  This is an aspect of how some players manage their characters and quite frankly, as long as they’re subscribed it shouldn’t matter. Making skill training a pain in my ass doesn’t make me log in and play any more than I normally would. It just makes me annoyed.

ROM: Ding 33 on Magus Gimpus

I hit level 33.5 in Runes of Magic with very little effort.  I spent most of the time standing around in the same few spots slaying mobs.  This is not intentional on the game’s part.  It was me still mucking around with a build for my Magus Gimpus, previously known as Battle Monk.  Using my Priest Talent Point Estimator, I fiddled with full caster build, balanced caster and melee, melee focused and finally, caster focused with minimal melee.  In the end, I went caster focused with minimal melee.  Priests only have TWO direct damage spells.  Rising Tide with a two-minute cast and Chain of Light with a 6-second cool down.

I figured that since I’m stuck with the Warrior side, I might as well make minimal use of Battle Monk Stance for mana-less damage while Bone Chill is ticking, even though its benefits were nerfed, it reduces my healing and hog-ties me to a 2H staff.  I see lots of Priests just bubbling and standing there in between.  I can’t do that after having played this class as multi-mob melee before the recent changes.  You have no idea how sorry I am that I selected Battle Monk for my character.  The Talent Point Reset rune that was given to all players was all well and good.  However, for the depth of changes that showed up in the live release they should have allowed players a ONE TIME opportunity to reset their secondary class.  After reading the Patch Notes, I would have changed mine in a heartbeat.