August 09 Gaming

Posted by Stropp on September 2, 2009 My gaming time has been somewhat erratic over the last few weeks. Despite my intention to structure my time better between games I still manage to find myself distracted or engrossed in one game to the detriment of the others. And August really did have a few major distractions, even for those games I had originally decided against getting involved with at this point. Along with all that, the biggest influence of all last week was that my long time healthy cat lost his appetite and developed a fever spending a week in the vet hospital. Unfrotunately, nothing they did worked to restore his appetite or reduce the fever, and they eventually determined that a cancer was behind it. The prognosis, even with hugely expensive treatment wasn't good, so I ended up saying my goodbyes. But still, there are a few things I did, including working on a plan for a series of posts that I've been considering for some time. I'll get to that shortly.

Everquest 2

I haven't spent as much time in EQ 2 over the last month or so as I would have liked. My main character, the Troll Shadowknight Bargears is sitting pretty on level 25 with around 40 AA points. The goal with this guy and perhaps all my other EQ 2 characters is to level slowly but accumulating the maximum number of AAs as early as possible. I'm finding it a fun alternative to rushing to the level cap. 

Fallen Earth

I spent this last weekend prowling the wastelands of Sector One in the Fallen Earth open beta. After having some initial troubles installing the client (it turned out that the FP download wasn't corrupt, just that the standard Windows zip utility doesn't like files over 4GB) I managed to install and patch the game in order to start playing Friday evening. I tried a number of different locations and a ranged build and a melee build, getting four characters to level 3 and one to level 6. Fallen Earth only allows four character slots, so it's not terribly alt friendly, but there are only three major combat skills -- Melee, Pistols, and Rifles so there's three build there and one left over for a crafting alt. Speaking of which, a dedicated crafter alt can craft everything there is to craft. Overall, I actually really like Fallen Earth. There are a few extra's I would have liked to have seen of course, but that's always the case isn't it. I was a hairs breadth away from buying this on Sunday evening, but decided against it for a couple of reasons. I'm going to wait for a while though. And I'll write something a bit more detailed up later. I'll explain then.

Champions Online

On Monday evening I ended up buying the sixty day preorder special. (I'll buy the D2D 'box' for the key tonight.) Yes. I know I said I was going to wait. I have no resistance to teh shinee, okay? I ended up creating Bombay Jack @ Stropp. An ordinary man who had an unfortunate incident with a Vindaloo and a genetically mutated chilli pepper who now fights evil with his flaming power of the curry. That all happened last night and I took Jack through the tutorial and into the Canadian Wilderness zone. I'm still getting used to the controls, which feel a little sluggish to me, but overall the game has a fun and fast feel, and it's pretty cool getting my fire flight travel power. Zipping around like Johnny Storm from Fantastic Four is great, and I got Jack to level 7. Again, more on this later. Now where's my burn cream?

Asheron's Call

Yep. You read that right. I subscribed once again to the first MMORPG I ever played, Asheron's Call. A while ago now, Tipa, Stargrace, and some others created a guild on Everquest called Nostalgia. It was designed for old EQ players to run through and enjoy the original Everquest content. At the time I thought about doing a similar thing with AC, but never really got around to it. With the upcoming 10th anniversary of Asheron's Call, I figured it was time to just do it, and that it would be a good opportunity to do a series of blog posts about the game, what has changed, and a nostalgic look at some of the areas. So over the last few weeks I have spent a bit of time exploring with some low level characters (low level is under 50 these days btw, since the level cap is now 275) and coming up with ideas for the series. This was also a part of my resolution to get a bit more variety in my gaming. Didn't work since I spent a good couple of weeks just playing these characters. Hopefully now that I've got back in, I can adjust this to a night or two a week.

Coming Up

That's pretty much for last month. I figure now that I've decided on Champions Online as the release of choice, I'll be concentrating on that over the coming month. With AC being a focus at least until the anniversary, I figure EQ2 might take a back seat too. Having said that, the news coming out about the next GU is kinda exciting and might make for more EQ2 time. As always, it will be as it happens.