Well, he’s a POTTER, and he’s HAIRY, so he’s a HAIRY POTTER, right? I was a level and a half from level 20 tonight, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to 20 – the starting level for the Grizzleheim quests – but I finished the quest chain in the pyramid and dinged 20 on the final quest. It was clearly meant to be :) ...
I’ve been playing a lot of Wizard101 lately, working on getting my characters to level 20 so that I can explore Grizzleheim. The game is so close to being perfect that when you get snags, you notice them all the more. Here are a few things that would make the experience all the better. Appearance Slots: With so many outfit choices available, it would be wonderful to wear one outfit for its stats, and another for its looks. It would clearly be a huge UI hit to have to worry about three more outfit slots, but maybe it could be done another way? What if you could make and dress a special mannequin, and whatever IT wore, you would appear to wear? Or you could talk to a certain NPC who, for Crowns perhaps, would cast a spell that let you keep the appearance of whatever you wore at that moment, until you requested they cancel that spell? ...
Hey, everyone ELSE returns to WoW…. And why not? Rumor has it that Blizzard is definitely going to introduce the Worgen and Goblin races as new playable races… something ever World of Warcraft player has been expecting since before Burning Crusade was announced. With news of the new expansion and the Starcraft II delays already making the rounds, Green Armadillo asks what else could Blizzard possibly have in waiting to surprise Blizzcon attendees? ...
I got a spam comment today which mentioned, while complimenting me on explaining some vague idea to them, that they were unsure of this blog’s update schedule. Geez. When even SPAMMERS wonder why you don’t update every day, it’s getting out of hand ;) Fact is, most of the time I am doing boring stuff. CrazyKinux linked to a blog once that insisted nobody wants to read about someone running mission in EVE Online, so once I read that, I stopped posting about my adventures in EVE. I’m leveling up a character in Wizard 101 so I can do Grizzleheim with level-appropriate characters, but that takes time. I do fit in little bits about what I’m doing in EVE and Wizard101 now and then in these blogrolls… but they don’t seem worthy of entire posts! ...
Back in EverQuest, the raid leader had banned all mage pets because they tended to push bosses into walls. The mages were not amused. Aion: Next WoW killer? Caliga thinks Aion might take that coveted #2 spot of ranked subscription-based MMOs right behind World of Warcraft with a final tally of 800,000 players. He’s forgetting that WoW players always return to WoW. Always. My own prediction? 200,000 six months in because A) it’s a WoW-like, and B) it isn’t WoW. ...
I pretty much gave up on crafting when I received the first Dragonspyre crafting quest and realized how many hours of gathering I would have to do. More than I wanted, and if Malistaire had once needed some special high-level crafted item to fall in defeat, his re-nerfing meant he needed that no longer, so I let it lie for awhile. ...
When I die, I don’t want my last thought to be, “Why oh WHY didn’t I grind out another thousand AAs when I had the chance?” Etha, 67 Druid, 191d 3h played Tipa, 71 Rogue, 254d 12h played Brita, 75 Cleric, 181d 8h played Tipa, 68 Ranger, 9d 1h played Those aren’t even all my EverQuest characters. Six hundred and thirty five full days playing just across those characters. I could add my 65 mage or 58 shadow knight to that. At eight hours a day, that would be five and a quarter years. (Though, it’s easy to see how much quicker leveling in EQ has gotten. 1-68 in nine played days? Sweet! And that included raiding!). ...
Well, would YOU bet $200 on a game that nobody but press is allowed to talk about, a month before it’s released? When Lord of the Rings Online offered the same deal – A Benjamin and his identical twin for a lifetime subscription – you had a month to think it over. Not so with Champions Online – if you insist on playing before committing, the offer goes away. Probably the best thing about the offer – access to the Star Trek Online beta, and Mirror Universe outfits for same. So, if I want to play STO and get all the best goodies, I have to toss two c-notes Champions’ way? ...
Sorry for the entire and almost complete lack of posts this week… family stuff. Guess I should have called it the “WEEKLY Blogroll”…. What makes an MMORPG an RPG? Nowadays, EVERYTHING seems to be called an RPG. First person shooters like Call of Duty 4 are suddenly RPGs because they include levels (and, arguably, classes as well). So is that it? Is any game with leveling now automatically a Role Playing Game? Zubon of Kill Ten Rats wonders if that’s all there is. Psychochild responds by taking a look back at the origins of the term in pen-and-paper gaming. These days, I tend to regard games that don’t force you into certain paths as more of an RPG that on-rails MMOs like WoW. Zubon has a point when he says Second Life is more of an RPG than most games that claim the title. ...
[slide width=“640” height=“480”] Just got back from Virginia yesterday afternoon (you’ll be seeing some pictures from my trip on my ShutterCal widget to the right in the coming days) and am still catching up on all the blogospheric happenings of the past few days. Reason enough to show off some 3D images I’ve been making. A few weeks ago, I got wondering how I could turn game screenshots into three dimensional images. MMORPGs would be a lot more immersive if we could see the game world in the same number of dimensions as we see the real world. ...