Halfling Beastlord Those who follow me on Google+ have been hearing about my problems with the Age of Discovery. It’s the expansion that brought mercenaries and beastlords to the game, and is the one expansion not included in the forthcoming expansion, Chains of Eternity. I went ahead and bought Chains of Eternity assuming I would get all previous expansions that I’d missed (Velious, etc), but, wrong. I’d get all previous expansions except Age of Discovery. ...
Plants vs Zombies. I enjoyed the Guild Wars 2 Halloween celebration, what I saw of it. I might as well have just stayed hidden at the side of the fight and just watched, because I was too low level to contribute (even though artificially leveled to 80 for the event). Folks were reminiscing about the Halloween celebrations in GW1 and EQ2 and I started thinking, hey, I really liked the Halloween celebrations in EQ2, too… why am I not over there doing them? ...
The Dance of Madness There’s a rhythm I get to in Guild Wars 2; bring up the map, look for a blank spot, and go there. Fill the hearts, look at the vistas, do the skill challenges, sell and move on. If there’s an event nearby, try to get to it and join in. Having unlocked all my weapon combos and decided upon favorites, that’s done forever. My gear is limited by my level, so nothing I can really do about that. The story missions are fun, but most of the time in GW2, I’m just on auto-pilot. So it’s nice when things like the Halloween event comes by to break up the flow. ...
The clockwork city of Valencia I dunno if Pirate101 has any Decemberist nods in the world of Valencia, but they’d be missing a bet if they didn’t. I haven’t even seen any orange trees. But then I just got here. So, level 16, and I’m in the third world already. Still feeling just a little overwhelmed in some fights, and that’s a good thing. I have never actually LOST a fight, though, and they may not be such a good thing, but probably is. What I would like to be able to say is that I have never been boarded by an enemy, but unfortunately, that happens all too often. I’ve been trying to keep my nautical level up, but it’s a chore, and I feel lucky to have gotten it up to level 10. ...
But only three! This week, KingsIsle sent a mysterious map to all of its US-based Wizard101 players for whom they had valid mailing addresses. Those maps had a puzzle that revealed a code for a ninja pig companion (swashbuckler) that could be used four times – but only once per account. Well, I used my code, got my pig, and now I have three codes left. And I’m going to give them away. ...
The Map to El Dorado So I picked up my mail – paper mail that comes in a box you open with a key in real life – yesterday, and was surprised to find a folded up bit of cardboard from KingsIsle that popped up into a map torn into seven parts and painstakingly re-assembled. Given that I’m looking for pieces of the map, this same map, in game right now was a nice bit of synergy. It was a map of the Spiral, with worlds known and unknown on it, and some of them had numbers and letters next to them. ...
Weed Whacking Two weeks in to Pirate101’s launch, my character is level 15 (swashbuckler) and has completed the Skull Island Skyway, the Flotsam Skyway, most of the Tradewinds Skyway and most of the Tierra Primata Skyway. The Skyways are the individual zones of Pirate101. Along the way, we’ve attracted the notice of the pirate hierarchy, downed many other pirates, helped along the administration of the monkey colony in Puerto Mico (which has a different governor each time you visit), been to the monkey homeland and saved the royalty-in-exile, and started investigating El Dorado, the City of Gold, hidden somewhere on the Spiral. The Spiral we’ve seen firsthand for the first time, with the Wizard101 worlds of Krokotopia, Dragonspyre and others just tantalizingly out of reach of our sky-ships. ...
Who built those mysterious ruins, anyway? From the moment I first saw them, I’ve been blown away by Pirate101’s cinematics. These aren’t 3D rendered with lots of dramatic camera angles and explosions. They’re little puppet shows. HILARIOUS puppet shows, as in this one, where the monkey prelate Bishop Hidalgo is telling the story of how the gorilla Gortez went all Lord Jim/Heart of Darkness in these mysterious ruins and is now using a giant golden statue as his seat of power. ...
The Tipster in Brisban Highlands I may have missed the Combat Wombat romp through the Brisban Highlands last night, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t run through it solo tonight! I was 16, going on 17… fellows will fall in line. Eager young lads, and grueways and cads, will offer me food and wine… Well, okay, that didn’t happen, Baron von Trapp. Instead I fell into the clutches of the villainous Nightmare Court, a faction of evil Silvari, apparently. What would turn a plant evil, I wonder? And what constitutes evil among plants? Stealing sunlight? Hogging the fertilizer? Hosting pungent varieties of fungus? Wearing your lichen on the south side of your body? ...
In the cellar of any tavern It took a long time, too long, before it all connected: there was a reason Bonnie Anne kept wanting to meet me in the cellars of any tavern. I’d noticed before that its patrons were all companions, of course; what I didn’t realize until after I’d recruited Rat Commander Ratbeard that they were all of MY companions. So there ya go. If you want to see your companions outside of battle, head down to the cellar of any tavern. Also, on your companions screen, look for an exclamation mark on their portrait. This means that they have a promotion quest available. Bonnie Anne got hers at level 8; Ratbeard was recruited with his already active at level 10. I haven’t gotten to promotion level on any of the others, but in a random group, I heard that once Subodai, the horse barbarian, is promoted, he is pretty powerful. ...