Mystic Worlds

Journey Back to Gaming

I took a long break from gaming and blogging after my mother passed away. What initially brought me back was the desire to level from start to finish with a gaming friend.

RIFT STILL FELT FRESH

Our game of choice was Rift. A long time WOW player, he hadn't joined the crush of adventurers when the game launched. The character I created would turn into my third to have made it into level 30 content, third cleric and second to max level.

Although the excitement of highly populated zones was gone, Rift's leveling content holds up exceptionally well. The options are diverse and the content so dense, that I never felt bored from having done those levels before.  For me, Rift’s PVE game ranks right up there with the behemoth, World of Warcraft. 

A RETURN TO WOW

After a few weeks being at max level again, my excitement started to wane.  We ran chronicles and quested in Ember Isle, one of the most beautiful zones I’ve ever seen.   However, with no new levels to  be gained, my interest fell off.  I decided return with my friend to WOW and see what I’d missed by leaving shortly after reaching end game in The Burning Crusade.

As expected, leveling content was good, instances great, crafting worthwhile and an active economy.  It also didn’t hurt to have a wealth of alts to choose from all of whom had decent trade professions to help me along the way.

Although I can't imagine WOW ever being my full time MMO again, I see why and how, many long time players return after completing the leveling experience in other games. You can't rely on keeping your player base at max level by being as good as or comparable to WOW. You have to be BETTER THAN and MORE DIVERSE THAN whatever I came from before. Otherwise, why should I restart the end game treadmill in your game, when I can return to another game where I may have a staple of characters, trade-skills, long time guild mates and in some cases, player houses and guild halls at my disposal?

Many of the so-called WOW tourists aren't that intentionally. I think they want to invest in a new game but get to the end/top and realize they've done this all before and a new skin on isn't enough to keep them around.

UP NEXT IN GAMING

Guild Wars 2 will be my main MMO home for the foreseeable future. Other than time commitments, I know I will be there for the ride to max level. I knew from the beta that I enjoyed Rift enough for a jaunt through and was excited for the launch. The enthusiasm I feel for GW2 is leaps and bounds above what I thought of Rift before launch. I can hardly stand the wait much longer.  ANet please don't break my heart. I need GW2 this summer!!

Rift, SWTOR & Crafting in Real Life

I'm stil taking things rather slow.  I knew the holiday season would be very difficult with my mother having passed so recently.  We did what we could for the little ones in our immediate family to enjoy themselves.

Duoing Rift with a Buddy

I've been back in Rift for a few weeks leveling the content with a gaming friend who hadn't played before.  Kudos to Trion and how well the content stands up for the 4th time around.  I'd leveled several characters up to Perspice and it's almost as much fun now as the first jaunt.  There were still so many quests I'd not done before.  With the options of questing, doing rifts, PVP, instances and grinding, I tended to out level zones without doing many of the quests which is a good thing!  It really makes replayability rather stellar.  We're a stone's throw from level 50 and I never felt like OMG, I've done all this before. SWTOR needs to take a queue from that and make it possible for players to mix up how they level without missing "required" quest chains.  More on that in a minute.

The only thing missing from Rifts are the big crowds.  That intense level of heightened excitment is missing from the zones unless there's a zone wide event.  I wish my friend had been there to see the meyhem and madness of the earlier days.  He really enjoys rift chasing and doing the events. Regardless, we've had fun and are looking forward to doing the new level 50 content that I haven't seen yet myself.

Dabbling in SWTOR

Star Wars isn't a favorite IP of mine.  I've seen all the movies but I don't own a single one.  I wasn't excited about the game.  My only intent was to check it out and play for the first free month.  So far it's okay.  The settings aren't my thing being a die hard fantasy fan.  The questing is rather meh for me since I don't really care about the story and I'm not a huge questing fan.  I tend to mix it up with grinding mobs which isn't grinding to me.

What I do enjoy are the class quest lines, group quests and instance content (Flash Points).  For me, that's where the game really shines.  The story in those feel more compelling.  It's like playing out a part in a movie - it's fun!  My class is also diverse and interesting to play.  I've chosen Inquisitor > Sorcerer for ranged DPS, utility and healing.  She feels pretty bad ass in a group.  I've only clocked a few hours. It's something I log into as a late night diversion.

My Son Digs SWTOR

After watching me play for a bit my son decided to get a copy too.  He's also more of a fantasy person but is rather bored with Rfit.  After a few days, he came to the same conclusion - love the class quests, PVP and instances, wishes he could skip the rest.  Unfortunately, you can't.  There are necessary quest chains for picking your advanced class and getting the ship you'll need to access the higher level Flash Points.  Moreover, there's nothing that overtly leads you to these NPCs to get the quest chains.  You run across them if you're doing all the quests.  Both of us initially missed the quest to choose the advanced class.

I had to search on the web to figure out why I was level 12 but couldn't purchase the level 10 spells I could clearly see on the Class Trainer.  We weren't alone.  I found many threads and links where people were asking the same question.  My son ended up having to back track through content to get his ship for the very same reason.  I think that needs some tweaking.  Other than that, he's really enjoying it now that he's 20-something.  For me, it's still just something to do if I'm in the mood.  My money is waiting on GW2.

Still Crafting in Real Life

I'm still crafting in real life.  In fact, I had a nice little jump in activity the couple of weeks before Christmas.  It tickles me when people purchase or "favorite" the two rings inspired by my love of fantasy.  The ring called Rose of New Eden, inspired by EVE Online has done well.  The Inara Serra III ring has sold nicely when seen in person - flea market and jewelry showings.

I recently revamped my Nomadic Eclectic website to be more of a showcase.  With Etsy picking up steam for me, I couldn't see implementing the disabled ecommerce features that were part of that original theme. I moved to something designed to just give people a taste of what I'm doing before hushering them over to my Esty Shop.

That's all I've been up to the past couple of months.  Hanging in there as best I can.  I have my good days and my bad days over my mother's passing.  I've found making jewelry to be much more relaxing than sewing so I've sidelined that for the most part.  I lost the tip of a finger, sewed through another one and was accumulating more cuts and gashes that necessary.  My mind wanders a bit too much at the moment for the intense concentration needed to sew safely.  Plus I feel more creative freedom and contentment making jewelry so am sticking with it.

Patching... Re-installing... Hoping for a weekend drive by.

I’ve been catching up on my favorite MMO blogs the past few days. It’s all making me very nostalgic.  I have a large amount of wonderful gaming memories linked to MMOs.  I know EQ2 is pretty sweet this time of year.  For my money, that game does holidays the best.  I’ve probably been dropped from my guild not that I did much with them.  I was so wrapped up in my furniture and custom home decorating shop.  Dare I install it on my current gaming PC???  

I haven’t even checked out the new Rift content.  But-but-but there they have trick-of-treat candy needed for crafting certain items that can only be harvested this time of year.  I could farm some if time allows over the weekend…  But-but the new Rift Chronicles are fun I’ve heard…  Maybe I can sqeeze in a weekend drive by.

Patching Rift…
Re-installing EQ2X…

 

Waiting for Rift Solo Dungeons, Reckoning and Buttons

Gaming Drought

The evenings of sitting around watching each other play Fable 3, Red Dead Redemption and Halo have long since ended.  None of us play The Sims much anymore.  And although my son and I are still subscribed to Rift, we’re not actually playing.  I tell myself that I’m waiting for the next content update and Trion’s introduction of the first solo dungeon.  It’s not that I like Rift any less – not it at all.  I just have too many other irons in the fire.  

I have 30 minutes here-n-there to play something.  Unfortunately, that sort of short AND sporadic availability isn’t conducive to MMO end game – STILL!  That reality simply sucks because the whole MMO gaming experience up until end game IS VERY conducive to it.  I like Rift’s events but I’m not drawn overly much to the rewards and if you can’t accumulate enough tokens during the events scheduled and fixed duration, you’re ass out anyway.

A couple of weeks ago I pre-ordered the Xbox 360 version of Reckoning, the RPG from 38 Studios. Reckoning is the pre-cursor to their upcoming MMO code named, Copernicus.  This is the IP where famed Sci-fi author, R. A. Salvatore, is writing the lore.  It looks REALLY GOOD.  I’m excited about the RPG as an opportunity to play something again with my kids.  Well - they’re not really kids anymore; they’re in their low to mid 20s and gaming is the one common thread across their ages and genders. We are all gamers!  I include my two teenage nephews and pre-teen in that bunch.  I also baptized them into gaming, and drag them along for every excursion.

Rift: Solo Instances! Solo Instances! OMFG Solo Instances!

Panting... Hyperventilating... I might pass out.  The thing I enjoyed the most in AOC was my personal destiny quest.  If I could have done only that for progression, and come out into the open world for social and crafting, I probably would have played to max level.  But since it didn't and I didn't like the zones much after 20s, I bailed.

Rift coming out with solo and duo instances is something I've wanted in MMOs for years!!! Some of us really enjoy testing our own skills against boss encounters.  Hollahback multi-boxers.  Trying to solo instances is one of the major reasons I tried multi-boxing.  I will SO be duo-boxing this content when it arrives.  I need to stop thinking about it.  It's making me lightheaded.  I think I'm going to faint.

Holy shit - solo instances in my MMO.  *swoooooooooooon*  

Rift: Ship Travel and ORVR Island PLEASE!!

I Breakout My Tinfoil Hat with GBTV

Episode 25 of Game Breaker TV’s Sanctum videocast, discussed new zone photos leaked by players who inadvertently found them on the PTR.  The picture that got my blood pumping was a large ship sitting at the end of a long dock.  OMG I love ship travel.  Even after fast travel options were implemented all over EQ2, I still used the ships.

Party Over Here

When I played WOW, I was in the camp of wanting something more to do on the boat rides.  I loved riding them, used to run around inside and often went AFK chillin in a cabin.  I always hoped that Blizzard would implement Goblin Gambling Casinos on the boats.  It would have been fun on PVE servers and a riot of excitement on PVP servers.

My tinfoil hat hope is that Ember Isle utilizes ship travel as its access point and is an open world PVP zone on all servers.  Booyah, bring on some WAR RVR/PVP with open world control objectives.  Wouldn’t that be a sweet combination?  Traditional PVE, raiding, instanced PVP, dynamic rift content AND open world PVP objectives. I see wonderful options for even more content diversity.

I Will Wait, I Promise

When I came back from my brief hiatus, several guild members provided expensive mats to craft accessories, off-hand items and runes in order to boost my base stats to meet the T2 requirements. I’ve only recently started doing T2 content.  Being late in the leveling curve in our guild means I get most of the Cleric drops.  As a result, I’m already dripping in T2 purples without any heroic farming efforts on my part.  Thanks Casualties of War guildies!!!  

As much as I’d love to see the raiding content, I don’t have the time or interest in being that precise about my gear.  I’m also over doing quests for now – mad dash to finally hit 50 burn out.  Finishing my crafting professions and dabbling in PVP is what I do when there are no guild runs going.  I still enjoy it and don’t mind the very slow pace at which I’m approaching Rift.

At times, I am fatigued with closing rifts and ride past them.  Other days, I feel an urgency to jump in and kick ass everywhere and crush all who oppose us.  It would be wonderful to have yet another flavor of content to do in spurts as my time allows.  I can see it now… Hop on a boat to Ember Isle and join my faction against its enemies WAR style.  Bring it.  I’ll wait for it.

 

Rifting the End Game. WTF Happened in New Eden?

Not Gaming Over Health Reasons

I haven’t blogged in a while because I haven’t been gaming.  Over the past several weeks I’ve had health concerns that were leaning toward a very scary place – again. Thankfully, after weeks of tests it doesn’t appear to be cancer.  An outpatient biopsy this Friday will hopefully confirm that it’s just an unusually large hemangioma on my liver.  They’re not a health risk and normally go undetected.  Mine just happened to form in a spot and develop to a size where I was experiencing pain, discomfort and a persistent state of nausea - not fun.

I'm still dealing with the symptoms but the overwhelming panic and depression over it are gone.  I feel much more in the “clear”.  Even knowing it will have to be treated, it’s several orders of magnitude away from liver cancer. For people who spoke to me here and there, in game or email, sorry.  It was just easier to say I was busy with work and stuff than explain when there was still so much uncertainty. Crossing my fingers for the biopsy results.  The doctors feel confident so I do too! 

Update 7/1: Biospy went fine.  Had a decent 4th. Have consult for results on Friday 8th.

 Update 7/8: BENIGN!!!!!!  Dodged a bullet.

Hit Level 50 in Rift

I returned to actively playing Rift again last weekend.  In two days I hit level 50 – FINALLY!  I’m such a scrub.  Most of the Casualties of War guild members have multiple 50s at this point.  They’re such a great bunch.  The night I hit level 50, they organized back-to-back Tier 1 dungeon runs to help me upgrade my gear.  My accessories, staff and shoulders were all replaced.  I cringe at using LFG tool to do some runs but I might have to in order to catch up.  My one good experience was quickly followed by a bad one.
 

Quiet – Not Gone

I’ve played less Rift in the past week.  Some of my family came in town weekend before last through this past weekend.  It’s been fun catching up and enjoying the weather that has been a little less humid. A couple of days after the completion of the world event, I hopped back into my usual nightly Rift schedule.

First PUG – Omen of things to come?

The first evening that I logged into the game DeSarazan, a guild member, asked me if I wanted to join a PUG for the dungeon under Lantern Hook.  I was a bit skeptical having given up healing instances for random players half way through my years in WOW.  I’d only done LH once before and didn’t get much of a chance to see it because we raced through hit so quickly.  I decided to give it a try and hope for the best.

Wow, I might have to change my tune about not healing PUGs.  This group was on it!  We ran through the dungeon twice in an hour – might have been less.  We had just one wipe.  It happened on the 2nd run where the tank was too enthusiastic about the success of our first run and attempted to pull too many groups.  We re-grouped with no issues, complaints, acquisitions, etc.    If fact, the tank said that he was at fault for pulling too much so he’d be more careful.  After that it was 1-2-3-over.

Ding 46

The next evening I dinged level 46 from a combination of finishing out some quests with DeSarazan in IPP and doing a guild run of King’s Breach.  I’m not one for remembering all the intricacies of instance encounters until afterwards.  Once people die then I remember, “Oh yeah, we needed to do… on this boss.”  It’s one of the reasons I don''t tank, a role that is usually the person leading the group through the content.  It was a bit of an adventure being the only person who’d done KB before.  We had deaths here and there and a wipe or two but what’s a little vitality loss among friends.  Along the way three of us leveled and got nice loot.

Rift Still My MMO of Choice

That was the last evening that I played.  Work, family and the holiday have kept me busy.  I’m also dabbling in a new hobby that I’m hoping I can turn into a side business some day, and clip some of the shackles keeping me bound to Corporate America.  It’s likely that my MMO gaming will slow down a bit during the next few weeks but when I sit down to play, Rift is still my MMO of choice and the only one I’m subscribed to for the foreseeable future.

P.S.

I've slowed down on taking screenshots because I can't figure out why they're so dark.  Adjusting the gamma in the game and/or my PC display settings makes no improvement.  Fixing it afterward on every picture became too time consuming. More importantly, I felt they did a disservice to the game's graphics which are so beautiful.  If anyone has any ideas of how I can fix this problem I'd appreciate it!!!

You can’t un-ring the bell

For me, at least, it was never about the loot.  It was about being there, participating with my guild, taking pictures and having tales to spin about that time when…  The River of Souls event has come and gone and Trion can’t un-ring the bell of the Phase 2 event that left many customers queued out of participating.

Scott Hartsman posted a message on the official forums that basically apologized to customers who had issues and outlined what they were doing to make amends.  Not a loot whore, it can’t replace being there but I don’t know what else they could do other than running it again.  I hope they take this mishap into account when designing events in the future.  

Even players who haven’t been as active will come for one-time only events.  You should expect mass participation from subscribers.  Oh well, the good news is that we’re playing on highly populated servers where we don’t have problems finding others to do content.  Bad news is that it’s not the place to be if everyone wants/needs to be online at a specific time.  Hopefully, Trion will refrain from intentionally orchestrating such a need in the future.

When I get over my hissy fit of paying for 3 accounts, where we each play on different servers yet none of us were able to participate, I’ll accept Trion’s peace-offering and move on.  I still look forward to what comes next and expect Trion to do it much better.

Fucking Furious about the handling of the Rift Phase 2 World Event

I mean seriously fucking furious that the delay has been combined with a free trial weekend, begins at a SINGLE PRESET TIME on a server and as a paying customer, I'm sitting in a 2 hour fucking queue (edit: the queue rose to an estimated 8 hours)!  Are you serious Trion?  RLY!?!

I don't give a damn about being compenstated with some welfare loot hand-out.  The whole idea was to see and participate in the content.  Can you imagine how annoyed people are who've been participating in the event since the beginning but we're now sidelined for the pinnacle event?  Talk about foreplay but NO SEX, NO CLIMAX!

Guild members who play regularly - almost every night and have done all the daily quests faithfully are sitting helpless in a queue, listening to the lucky few who got on talk about it in vent.  Wow just wow. I am absolutely livid and disgusted. You've got to be shitting me that this is how this has played out.