I’ve been stepping outside of my normal gaming routine lately. In my current state of mind, I’m not in the mood for following a lot of rules (quests) and pre-defined routines. I’m winging it and playing more casually. That is how H1Z1 has entered the line-up.
I’m not into horror, zombies or post-apocalyptic environments. Until recently, I’d never played a straight up survival game. However, Twitch has introduced me to two games that at least on the surface looked interesting. First up was Don’t Starve (DS) and so far it’s been worth the price. Both of my daughters are now playing it too. On the heels of having liked DS/DST, my interest was piqued enough to give Sony’s new MMO title, H1Z1 a try.
Stopping to gather sticks for arrows and berries for food before venturing into the town ahead
Remember: THIS IS ALPHA
H1Z1 will be F2P, however, to have access to the game now it costs 19.99 USD. Paying to test? Sure, if you’d like to look at it that way. I see it as a path to play something that looks interesting to me now, and that if it were on the market today, I’d be willing to pay to play it. I tend to be a very early adopter in MMOs.
It’s important to remember that even though you’re paying to play, THIS IS ALPHA. No tears over broken mechanics or when the game is down. That’s what you signed up for! If that’s not your cup of tea, don’t buy it. Wait for it to release for free. I enjoyed the alpha phase of ArcheAge. In fact, I enjoyed the management of the alpha game substantially better than the nonsense that went on in live, hence my departure. And even then, I feel like I got my monies worth from the alpha period.
“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal…” Wash |Firefly
It was all going to plan. My basecamp was in good shape to survive the few remaining days of winter. My strategy of eating hand to mouth because I lacked an Ice Box was working. Whenever I was hungry, I collected a fresh rabbit from one of my 10 traps and cooked up some vittles.
DS/DST winter gets a bit routine, especially if you lack special clothing. You can’t wander far from your base. Whenever I must go more than a few yards away I create a campfire nearby. The only goal I had left beyond surviving until spring was making a Heat Stone. This would let me forage a bit further if necessary.
Penguins making their way on land by lumbering thru my basecamp
While out gathering more stone because I’d mistakenly thought the Heat Stone needed cut stone and had thereby wasted what I had on hand, I ran into a gaggle of penguins. They were gathered on a small pond of ice making a huge ruckus. I already knew not to attack one. I saw a streamer mauled by the whole pack after attacking just one. As I stood watching, I noticed they had a lot of eggs. Hrm, eggs. Eggs I don’t have because I’ve steered clear of spiders which means I don’t have silk for bird traps. Eggs that can be cooked with morsels to make Eggs and Bacon. Hrm, I want those eggs.
The premise is simple. The execution, not so much. I stumbled across Don’t Starve (DS) and its co-op play alternative, Don’t Starve Together (DST), via Twitch.tv. After watching a few streams I wanted to try my own hand at not starving to death. From the outside looking in, it appeared to be The Sims meets Minecraft Survival Mode meets Harvest Moon. Okay y’all, I’m in.
I’m not much of a solo RPG fan. I tend to get bored playing games alone after having found MMOs so I really liked the idea of the coop option for DS. A few days after seeing people play it for the first time, I owned both version of the game due to a $19 bundle on Steam that included both versions of the game and a copy of DST for a friend. Although I’m mostly looking forward to playing DST with family and friends I decided to get my feet wet on DS first.
Test Drive
My first two attempts at DS weren’t very stellar. In both cases I was dead after the hounds arrived on day 9. I have an absolutely atrocious sense of direction combined with difficulty in finding an area to collect stone and gold nuggets put me way behind. I wasn’t starving. In fact, I was managing my hunger, health and sanity pretty darn good but desperately needed stone for a permanent fire pit and gold to create the science table. Still wandering around aimlessly by day 8 wasn’t conducive to being prepared to fight the hounds when they arrived. *sigh*
Disappointed in my showing, albeit making it to day 9 on my first attempt was better than other new players I’d seen, it wasn’t good enough for me. Reading through a few Reddit threads I picked up on the suggestion to uncover your map by walking along the shoreline while sustaining yourself on the go. Viola! That sounded like the perfect answer to my problem of getting lost trying to locate the resources you should start harvesting right off the bat.
When I last played WOW I was focused on getting my Warlock to 100. I was starting to feel too much of the grind attempting to get do 3 characters in parallel. My level 96 Priest and level 94 Mage are permanently parked in their garrisons except for going out to trap animals for fur.
I also started to chaffing at the more old school questing approach of running back and forth to quest givers. So close to hitting 100 on the Warlock and having begun to do LFG dailies, I pretty much abandoned doing anything I didn't want to do. I was trying to follow the main storyline quests far as I could identify them but skip side quests and filler.
What I enjoy most is exploring each zone to find the “open” quests that remind me of GW2. I like finding named mobs and tracking down Followers. If not for the long LFG queues for DPS characters, I’d do the instances a lot more as well. But as it is, I can barely fit two in during a normal play session. I need to get a couple more items to hit the ilevel needed for LFR. I could probably buy my way there on the Auction House but I haven’t resorted to that yet.
Newest Follower - found while exploring.
I had a real treat before the holiday thanks to a long time WOW friend. He ran me through Black Temple to let me see the encounter with Illidan, who is my favorite lore character. It was fast, fun and lucrative. He reminisced about how long setups where for the bosses when the content originally released versus his ability to slam through them now. *Smile*
Big thanks to Crowelf for running me through Black Temple!
Sauntering my way to 100 and working on my garrison is still enough entertainment to remain subscribed. I am looking forward to being eligible for LFR and hope the queues are quite as long.
I recently re-subscribed to EVE Online. It’s that time again. The need for my flavor of sensory deprivation, that floating around in deep space provides. I am once again without a corporation because I wanted out of FW. I’ll be playing much too casually to be a flashing target.
Returning with the idea of continuing the grind toward level 4 missions, repairing my standing with the Caldari and dabbling in exploration meant vacating the low security FW home I’d moved to with my former corporation. I was definitely not looking forward to the 19 jumps back to Hek, which is where I like to setup shop when I’m going solo. To make things easier on myself I sold all of the ships I’d purchased and fitted locally for FW. I obviously kept the Viator to transport the rest of my goods. Followed by flying 2 Navy Vexors and the Aries out of the area one at a time.
New Tricks
Before the holiday I’d already wormed my way back to being “Good” with Caldari and was running a few missions per night – just before bedtime. I might not have been good at FW PVP but certainly learned a thing or two! The first time I had difficulty with the “boss” ship in an encounter and used things I’d been exposed to during FW, I was like “Cool, that experience paid off after all!” Before joining Aideron Robotics for FW I didn’t even know what web, scram or neut meant, let alone used the tactics in combat. The increased skill training queue and certificates also helped to define a more directed approach to training. It feels good to setup a ship to match a recommended fitting and be CAP STABLE. Sweet words indeed.
EVE is great for me to have gaming alone time in an MMO. I enjoy the quiet and open spaces in between encounters. The dark and muted tones put me into a chill mood. But I also know that doing PVE solo, even if I incorporate learning exploration, will get boring after a time. Not sure what if anything I’ll do about that. Guild mates from AA are now in EVE and they’re people I enjoyed immensely but it’s the same issue as before – they’re all Aussies. They’re coming online to play just as I’m signing off for the evening.
You're a Winner
Perhaps it’s fine that EVE fills this niche for me which happens couple of times a year. Maybe it doesn’t need to be or do anything beyond providing what it does when I’m in that mood. I’ve been watching a lot of Twitch lately as a distraction when I can’t focus enough to play anything and as luck would have it, I won a prize! I almost never bother participating in Twitch channel giveaways as I usually already own the game I’m watching. I did it on a lark and BAM!
That’s right, I’m slowly making my way through a love themed Interactive Fiction (IF) title. Not because it’s loved themed. No, it’s that I’m insane about all things Regency and am a super fan of Jane Austen! I’ve reread all of her novels multiple times and have seen most every rendition of them that have come to the big and small screen. How could I pass up playing around in her world given the opportunity??
I think but am not sure, that I might have run across this game for the PC back when crowdfunding was just hitting the scene. I remember it being on my PC and not having enough features to be compelling at the time but it was only a demo. Recently having run across it again but for the iOS, I had to give it another chance based on the fun I had playing Sorcery.
The storyline is loosely based on a combination of Pride and Prejudice plus a bit of Sense and Sensibility. If you’re a man, you can stop reading now. *Smile* Unless of course, you know a female that might be interested in the recommendation.
Pride and Sensibility
The story begins as you're exiting th morning period of your father’s death. Participating in different encounters (conversations) and playing regency/Austen related mini games, earn you points. The points are spent on various personality attributes and skills valued during the Regency period such as riding, dancing, needlework, etc. This is important as certain characteristics are required to unlock content. Want to go to the ball a character just mentioned? Guess you’d better have your dancing and music up to snuff.
I haven’t gotten very far. It’s not as entertaining as Sorcery but it’s a good when I’m lying in bed unable to sleep. I’ve already met the Darcy, Georgianna and Wickham characters. I think the household itself would have been much more fun and interesting had a couple of siblings been in the home. An endless variety of activities could have happened in the household, as was actually common place during that time. All in all, I’d give it a thumbs up if you’re mad about Jane Austen or the Regency period in particular.
The recent loss of my brother stopped all of my traditional gaming the past couple of weeks. As much as I needed and wanted a distraction, I couldn’t put my mind into doing much. Before that day, I was rolling along in WOD, my Warlock having reached level 98. I was holding down the fort on my farms in AA and had re-subscribed to EVE Online.
I’ve never been much of an iOS gamer given my preference for MMOs. Circumstances being what they are, and the fact that I’d treated myself to a new iPhone for Christmas, the larger screen encouraged me to try a few games when I couldn’t motivate myself do anything else.
Interactive Fiction
I’ve always had an interest in interactive fiction but have only run into a couple on the PC that I liked. As luck would have it, I hit the mark on the very first try for iOS. SORCERY, immediately caught my attention because of the name and my fascination with magic. I wasn’t expecting very much so was pleasantly surprised.
In the style of choose your own adventure, your hero is sent on an important mission and the choices you make along the way impact the journey and the outcome. An important distinction in Sorcery versus other IF titles I’ve tried is the addition of choosing your path on the journey. The physical route like you did in MUDs. The road is forked, which way do you want to go? In all cases, the choice has consequences. Some are minor and do nothing more than flavor the adventure. Others are dire and have the potential to end you!
Luckily, all is not lost when you die. The game is saved at various checkpoints and you can “resurrect” yourself by re-starting at any of the checkpoints you’ve accumulated. This can be important as some of the choices that impact an encounter were MADE A LONG WAY BACK. I restarted the whole adventure twice when I couldn’t complete a pivotal encounter because of choices that were so far back starting over was the best option. And even then it wasn’t a complete repeat. I made different choices along the way, some of which exposed more content the next time around.
Unfortunately, there are some encounters you can’t avoid and if you can’t win, your story is essentially over. It wasn’t until I’d beaten the encounter that I realized it was the end boss, which accounted for the extreme difficulty. I had made a few too many “goodie two shoes” choices, leaving me unprepared and lacking the health needed to have a prayer at surviving the final boss. That was a bit frustrating and was the only time I felt annoyed at a mechanic in Sorcery.
Always about the Magic
I enjoyed the magic mechanic in the game. Your known spells are in a book that lists the incantation and how much stamina is lost by casting the spell. I liked out maneuvering enemies using spells instead of hack-n-slash. I would have liked more freedom of when I could use the magic since it was being balanced by stamina consumption. However, the game inserts a companion you can’t avoid taking with you that blocks your magical abilities. And trust me, I rewound to when I met this creature a few times trying to avoid him or ditch him early to no avail.
The end boss would have been more manageable with access to magic. I wouldn’t have needed to restart the game if I was allowed access to cast spells during the boss encounter. In truth, it felt like the game was cheating since there was no scenario where that companion who blocks your ability to use spells wouldn’t be present for that encounter. Other than that, I enjoyed the game very much and am likely to pick up the next chapter.
Here's wishing you and yours a blessed and Happy New Year. I'll be back to MIA as far as posting for a while. My younger brother passed away unexpectedly on Christmas morning, the day before his 45th birthday. I was still playing WOW and recently resubbed to EVE. I'll be back to posting eventually.
It’s only a couple of days away from my real life holiday vacation. YEA!!! I’ll be M.I.A. the last two weeks of the year. Here’s wishing all of you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The Story thus Far
So far I’m happy with Warlords of Draenor. It’s Blizzard doing what they do best. It’s also the first release where I’ve been able to see the phasing technology in action. I haven’t quested much since BC. When I have to quest, I appreciate how the experience is being personalized with my character at the center of the action.
My priest and mage have been parked in their garrisons for the foreseeable future while I concentrate on playing my warlock. I have a small itch to heal on the priest but OMG the last time I played my priest in WOW, healing randoms almost annoyed me to the point of hating the class. Here’s an oldie but goodie post of my Top 10 Lies about Priests.
For now I’m sticking with the warlock. The ease and survivability of the demonology specialization is awesome. I feel very much like a character dabbling in dark magic. I NEVER get tired of Demonic Leap! I like the idea of the Demonic Gateway and portals but I’ve yet to find a practical way of using them on a regular basis. I’ll keep at it though. The animation and idea is too sweet to pass up without a fight.
Old Friends
I’ve had barns built in my garrisons for a while now as a way of producing more of the Sumptuous Fur needed for tailoring. The minute the first one was constructed, I was happily surprised by the familiar faces assigned to manage it on my behalf. Always and forever an Alliance side player, the trek through Goldshire was and still is, one of my favorite WOW zones. EVERY ONE OF MY CHARACTERS, regardless of race, was leveled in GS. So I know the Stonefields and the Maclures, and their star crossed lovers’ version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.
Maybell's tale still plays out in Goldshire
I was rather tickled to see NPCs I knew running around my garrison. So much so, that I made a trip to GS to see if they’d been removed from that zone now that they’re part of garrison content. Nope, they’re still there with the original quest series in place. I suppose that makes sense. Their presence in WoD would be meaningless if their original context was removed.
Really Ma Stonefield, you had to tag along??
It was funny to realize that the lovers had overcome their family issues and married anyway. This is evident by Maybell’s persona in my garrison being Maybell Maclure-Stonefield. She’s a modern woman! Too bad Ma Stonefield came along for the ride. I don’t imagine having your mother-in-law in tow is pleasant under the circumstances. Hopefully she makes up for her presence with good vittles.
Hrm. Her son, Tommy, doesn't look very enthused about it.
Often it’s the little things that bring a smile to your face. Many players won’t get significance of that family being there together. But for me, it brought back the fond memories of my early days in WOW. The wonder and adoration I felt romping around the Eastern Kingdoms during its vanilla days.
As of last night, I’ve now completed the first two instances in Warlords of Draenor a few times each. They were good as expected. We all know that Blizzard creates high caliber 5-man content. Not having done PUG 5-mans since Burning Crusade, it took me a while to warm up to the idea. WOW players don’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to being open and friendly to new players in dungeons. After all, “link me your achievements and ilevel” was born here.
A Dip into LFG
While accepting that WOW is for the most part, old school questing, there are times when I don’t feel like running around to the tune of a quest log. Yet I need character levels to unlock various aspects of the Garrison. The other night I wanted to do something to get XP but wasn’t in the mood for quests. I decided to armor plate my sensibilities and queue up for a random dungeon.
It took roughly 30 minutes to get into a group as DPS which wasn’t a big deal. I rode around uncovering locations on the map and killing named mobs for lootz. That’s a favorite pastime of mine in WOD. Finding named baddies, elite and all, and taking them on for what their dead corpses provide. It’s either an upgrade or disenchanting fodder, and I need a lot of fodder!
I spy a a dangerous guy. I like hunting named mini bosses and elites to solo.
Luckily for me, I’d watched multiple videos on Bloodmaul and Iron Docks. More than lucky to be honest. THANK GAWD I HAD. I suspect that by now, the average WOW player is into their 2nd or 3rd character so the alts running around the game are better geared than newcomers and recent returnees. Their DPS mitigation and output is far superior, making normal 5-mans a cake walk for them.
Road Runners
People are powering through the instances like their pants are on fire or a gun on their mother. You barely have enough time to loot before the group races forward to the next encounter. Not a single word spoken in chat – nada. No explanations, words of caution given. Zip. Zero. You better know what you’re doing, are a quick study or can fake it ‘til you make it. If you die they’ll resurrect ya when they get around to it. It’s a white knuckle experience for a casual player. And don’t even THINK about watching cutscenes. I was in a party where someone was kicked over it and in another where they were told to watch it on YouTube. *Sigh*
A RPG story is playing out everywhere, linking quests to dungeons to garrison You can choose to take your time and indulge in the show
I felt under pressure to do the DPS expected and what not. However, some of the encounters are too disorienting the first few times around to focus on it. I was more concerned about not being the one to die, not standing in the colored stuff, evading bombs, dodging fiery boulders on a narrow ledge, being aware of where to go and the DPS priority when multiple mobs are up but no one is marking targets. I can’t even IMAGINE making it through these mad dashes as a new player. OMG, I suspect it would be the first and last time.
As it was, I felt prepared enough to avoid being Leroy. I never died or came even close to it but my DPS was last or second to last. No one complained. They might have been glad I kept up, never holding them back and that was enough. For me, I’d like it to be better and to feel more confident at the encounters and the class, both of which will come over time.
I enjoyed the instances – gray hair inducing runs that they were. *Smile* If you want a more measured romp through the dungeons where you can enjoy the show, I suggest forming your own party of friends or guild members. And expressly state that you want to watch the cutscenes and take the time to listen to the various NPC conversations that take place around you. They’re really well done and there’s lots of cool stuff to see that you won’t have much chance to appreciate during a LFG mock-5 tour of them.
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