November 2007 Entries
Sirens' Call is something of an education, I've decided. Well, putting it another way, I went to Siren's Call, and got schooled, big-time. My previous impressions of PvP in City of Various were largely based on tentative and furtive forays into Bloody Bay, a rather quiet zone much of the time, and despite it becoming a bit of a second home for my Stalker, I'd only actually been in a fight there once, and that by prior appointment. Actually stumbling across, and ambushing, a roving Superhero is a generally unlikely proposition, and in the end I just took to...
You know, thinking back, I'm not sure if I can remember a time when Guild Wars wasn't an emotional rollercoaster of rapidly alternating success and defeat. Last time saw me getting all QQ about the Eye of the North's Shards of Orr dungeon, a rambling gauntlet of rather powerful and extremely angry undead - skeletons, zombies, and the like. A hardcore speedhump dropped somewhat casually in the path of our softcore story-based cruising, and quite irritating, all in all. Of course Irritation is my Fuel, and after the last post, I went away and got extremely obsessive about the whole...
Oh alright then! The evening started out well enough, with me logging across to my Factions Ritualist to help a friend, who is attempting to be come a Legendary Survivor the Hard Way; i.e. playing through the missions properly, rather than find a safe cluster of mobs just inside an explorable area and repeatedly grind on them until eyes bleed. In this case it was #9(K) - The Eternal Grove, a challenging and tricky 'defend the hill' type of mission, a lot like Prophecies' Thunderhead Keep and Nightfall's Dzagonur Bastion. To make matters even more awkward, my Survivalist friend...
So! Guild Wars then! Ah-ha! Tuesday N00b Club and such forth! Weeeeeeell...I'd like to talk about my experiences in my customary manner, you understand, but things didn't go exactly as I'd have liked, and... look! One paragraph down! A three-headed link post! An interesting aside found here: Tobolds Blog: Massively on PotBS crafting In which Tobold peruses a decent interview piece in the relatively new online magazine thing Massively, which is quite growing on me, but is no substitute for for an RSS Reader stuffed full of Halfarsed and Ill-Informed Opinion! The particular nugget I noted is almost incidental...
Last week saw all sorts of fun and games, as under the direction of the Silver Mantis, a highly-placed Arachnos nutcase, our highly ambitious and mostly competent gang of Supervillains were sent on caper after caper, all with the express and cumulative effect of throwing a whole toolbox of spanners into the workings of the Sky Raiders. This airborne company of guns for hire had clearly trodden on the wrong toes in the largely Arachnos dominated Rogue Isles, and have elaborate plans to become far too powerful for their own good. These plans mostly consist of a very optimistic...
Its off to the sunny and lush paradise of The Tarnished Coast this time, as we get to work on the second of the three big story branches in Guild Wars: Eye of the North; The Knowledgeable Asura. We'd used one of their underground gate thingies and arrived at Vlox's Falls, an outpost just south of, but unconnected to, Sanctum Cay, and here learnt of the Asuras' enigmatic 'G.O.L.E.M Project', which promises to be some kind of dangerously eccentric magical weapon system. The Asura are the classically absent minded and befuddled genius types provided for comic effect, as seen...
After a few weeks of general purpose low-grade villainy, () and almost universal obsession with cake...(), our little gang of Villains, so recently thwarted in our attempts to usher in an age of demon-fueled apocalypse, have at last got a new gig! This comes in the form of the second of five Strike Force chained story missions, The Pirates of the Sky. A tricky thing to sort out, as it isn't just a case of strolling up to the usual NPC and going 'HAI! I CAN HAZ LOLCATACLYSM?', as you do. No, for this one, you need a Mission...
Before setting out on the next leg of our journey, in search of Vekk's Asuran compatriots and the magical knowledge they hold, we spent a fair amount of this weeks session filling in the gaps in the quest log for the various snowy Norn lands.
Many of these quests give out entirely new skills, in new tracks that any profession can use, and which work of reputation rankings, rather than attribute levels, a bit like the Sunspear skills. My own Cry of Pain is now prodigiously powerful, due to my PvE grinding of bounties during Nightfall and subsequent Sunspear...
What did you do for Halloween, Van Hemlock? Well! I'm glad you asked! Let's get the annual 'I don't see why you Americans make such a fuss' rant out of the way early and get straight to the scooped out pumpkins, and free stuff, shall we? Only two real games on the go this year, City of Villains and Guild Wars, and both did very well. Second Life has no centralised community as such, and no 'GM Events' to speak of, so nothing special there really. City Of Villains entered into the spirit of the thing by adding the...