MMORPG

Harlan's Vista Rift’s “Droughtlands” is the kind of land only a wily coyote could love, filled with dead-end canyons and high, high mesas. Harlan’s Vista rises from a sticky sea of tar and rifts. On the very top is an ancient wardstone. I was doing quests around the Vista and noticed that the wardstone – far above me – was taken by the Guardians. As a good Defiant, once I’d finished my tasks on the ground, I scouted the twisty, mobby path up, found the wardstone and got an achievement! Yay! A picture was duly taken of this momentous moment and sent out through Twitter, where it was ignored by everyone. Some followers may have unfollowed me at that time. ...

Even Dragon Age Legends needs more tanks I was amused to load up Dragon Age Legends last night and find a message urging me to recruit friends to the game and to urge them to play a tank. Given Blizzard’s new Call to Arms program, which rewards needed archetypes that queue for random dungeons with potions, loot and cosmetic items like mounts and pets, I was a little surprised to see this bleed into the world of social gaming. ...

I received over 1,400 correct entries to my Manta Ray giveaway! That was a LOT! So, I guess the answer (A ARMY ANT) was pretty obvious, and maybe letting everyone see what everyone else answered made it REALLY easy but hey, I wasn’t interested in giving the SAT here :) Extra smiles to the people who said “ANT MARY”! I’m from New England and we pronounce “aunt”, “ahhnt”, so I didn’t get the pun until several people pointed it out to me :) That was considered a correct answer as well. ...

Being the only player in the Outpost of the Overlord is like being the only kid at Disneyland. Rides aren’t as fun without someone else there! But at level 10, there’s absolutely nothing that gives my little coercer any experience. Once she leaves the Outpost, though, it’s gone forever. No characters can start there any more, and this beautiful little island will never see a new struggling newbie, nobody will plead for help with the cave or the pirate or the graveyard, and one of the most wonderful starting experiences I’ve ever had will be forgotten. ...

Discovery Channel may have their Shark Week, but that’s kinda lame, if you ask me. They’d be better off having a Manta Ray week. The first place they’d have to come to find the Very Best Manta Rays would be very deep in the Spiral, in a watery realm called Celestia. Maybe Selena Gomez could mention it to them because, heck, she’s been there already. She’s scoped out the fine mantas of Calypso’s realm for sure. Camera crews might be on their way – in fact one camera crew surprised me in my home while I was training a new crop of rays. ...

I do log in to EverQuest 2 now and again. Mostly for two things – to keep Scatter’s spell research going and to redeem the AA scrolls I win by playing Fortune League on Facebook. Every three and a half days, Scatter gets a new spell level. Every week, she gets another couple AA. It’s like EVE Online. Actually, though, Fortune League has a hard limit of 21 prizes you can win before your prizes no longer show on your Fortune League prize wall. I’d figured out a way to show the additional prizes, redeemed them, and hurried into EQ2 to claim and apply them. ...

Three Wolf Moon cloak Lore text: This cloak will make you more desirable! Also has the property of featherfall. And why it’s particularly funny… The whole “Three Wolf Moon” phenomenon started with this comment on Amazon.com, and from there took on a life of its own (and spawned hundreds of imitators): This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him. ...

Droughtlands Pictured is the Droughtlands, from a high vantage above the desert floor on a plateau called Lantern Hook. There’s a neutral city within it, and a dungeon (“The Fall of Lantern Hook”) beneath it. I had no idea where this place was until a crafting daily sent me here, but it’s a nice place. The area is around my level (39) and I could skip the Moonshade Highlands and work on Droughtlands quests, just like I skipped out of Scarlett Gorge to work on Scarwood Reach quests, and Scarwood Reach quests to work on Moonshade Highlands quests. ...

Scarwood Reach is safe again It’s important to remember that in Rift, the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. (Men drop cloth when they die. Mice drop tears). Oh, speaking of mice, my cat decided she wanted some attention today, while I was wrapped up playing Rift, so she laid on my mouse pad and stared at me, challenging me. So I used her as my mouse pad. There’s a lot of cats in Scarwood Reach; when they see a pig, they attack it. On the way to King’s Breach – KB – you’ll pass a lot of cats and pigs fighting each other. ...

Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight our beacon, which, I just remembered, is grail-shaped. It’s not the first time we’ve had this problem. – Monty Python and the Holy Grail Is Fortune League a social game? The “fantasy raid party” game is on Facebook, after all, but just putting a game on Facebook doesn’t make it social – not by itself. It seems to me that social games require other people to play. When this came up on Twitter a few days back, I thought that the whole reason why they were called social is that, by definition, they couldn’t be played alone. ...