Over the years, Blizzard has done a wonderful job at engaging the player community with contests and events. The fanaticism surrounding World of Warcraft (WOW) is so huge that I think that the community would have continued without encouragement. Machinima, comics, podcasts, fan-art, etc. are part of the glue that ties the community together. In the first year of WOW I followed the contests but never participated myself.
Sunday evening I was harvesting crafting materials in Runes of Magic. I wanted to try the system out and see what type of things I’d be able to create from the Cooking profession. Earlier in the day I’d spent a good deal of in-game gold earnings on furnishing my one room player house. While reading chat I noticed a player mention that we could earn a free house upgrade by participating in the Taborea Living contest. I’d seen the contest on the official website and had meant to read the details but forgot all about it. The player explained that by signing up, you’d be sent a code that would upgrade your current home to one of the two-story homes not yet available for purchase in the game. Having player housing in a game besides EverQuest II is a big deal to me. I was all ears – err, all eyes on the conversation. The deadline for signing up and sending in submissions was that day. Yikes!
I could have just signed-up and taken the upgraded house without sending in any pictures. I didn’t want to do that though. If I was going to get an upgraded house, I at least wanted to participate in the spirit of the event. After receiving the code which magically upgraded my house, I spent the next couple of hours fiddling with furniture placement. I had enough items from my earlier decorating. I’d also figured out the other benefits available like crafting inside your house and the XP, Training Points and Crafting XP gains that are acquirable from Item Mall furniture. While decorating I decided to purchase the cooking station. This single purchase allows me to craft in my house while simultaneously receiving a crafting XP boost. Buying crafting stations is done using RMT. I used diamonds I had left over from buying a permanent horse.
I found the interior positioning of wall beams, windows and steps a little difficult in supporting the symmetry and room division I had in mind. I tried so many things – too many things for the late hour, trying to shape the house into the vision in my head. I put the bedroom upstairs, living space and workshop downstairs – didn’t’ like it. Switched to crafting upstairs and liked that even less so I switched it all back. The placement of items is free-form like EQ2 but the interface and mechanics of moving things around is a little clunky.
The whole time I kept thinking, “Damn, I need Tipa to give me some advise!” If you’re not aware, Tipa has a reputation as an excellent carpenter and interior designer in EQ2. I tried to be creative and blend objects together to form new ones like I’ve seen her and others do. In the end, it was getting too late and I needed to send what I had at that point. You were only allowed to send in a single picture.
Here’s my submission. I’m sure that there will be others better designed taking home the prizes but I gave it an honest effort.
Click the image to see a larger version
Very nice!!! All of my houses are as of yet unfinished, thus they look like an empty warehouse.....oh well, perhaps in due time. Out of curiosity, how much did all of your furniture set you back, Saylah?
Roma
Posted by: RomaGoth | February 07, 2009 at 01:50 PM