MMORPG

So I thought I would have some dynamic pictures of PvPing but – turns out I didn’t actually TAKE any, so that’s out. Instead, I guess I’ll just have to show off my two wizard’s spring outfits. Because, if I dress them in Spring colors, Spring will come sooner, right? The idea, when dyeing outfits, is two fold: First, make it obvious what their school is. You should be proud of your school of magic! I admit, in PvP, it took me a couple of rounds to figure out that I was facing TWO Life wizards, because only one of them was wearing the green. ...

Atlus, maker of the Persona series and with a pretty long line of fun Japanese-style RPGs, is bringing their Steampunk MMO, Neo Steam, to our gear-strewn shores. Apparently Neo Steam has been available in Asia for quite some time, but the version we’re going to be getting has new content, more localization, and just better all around. Which can only be a good thing, because the game as it stands now doesn’t look that interesting. ...

Okay, Stargrace tagged me with a meme to post the sixth screenshot from the sixth subfolder of my saved screenshots. So that’s what I’m gonna do. All my file names are actually a hash code I made so I wouldn’t keep duplicate pictures so honestly, I don’t know what picture is gonna show here. This is from my EQ Classic folder, and shows us in a Hate raid, before it was made into an xp zone. ...

Stargrace’s high speed romp through EverQuest has made me nostalgic. REALLY nostalgic. I remember when each new victory, the culmination of much effort, many tries, and no little creativity, would bring us just a little closer toward – I dunno. Guild status? That was part of it. The feeling that we were all a tightly knit group of friends that we could utterly rely upon? That was part of it. There was so much to it. ...

Based on last week’s run-through of the very bare beginnings of still-very-fluid Twitter RPG, I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. It has very solid underpinnings now. The timeline loop – rock solid. Fights with multiple monsters and players worked fine, though it was somewhat chaotic and I was having trouble keeping track of every actor’s health without the handy visual aid of health bars to keep me informed. The first issue? The game was TOO FAST. Seriously. I had to keep slowing it down, finally slowing it to a twentieth of its initial speed, so that someone following the fight on Twitter wouldn’t have to keep refreshing their Twitter client to see it. The rate the fight progresses should be about the same rate a Twitter client would refresh. ...

There’s a lot of hidden numbers in Wizard 101. How do you know if a new hat you just got is really better than your old hat? Is accuracy more important for Storm wizards than it is for Life wizards? Is Crowns gear really the best gear? After trying on nearly every piece of gear I owned and seeing how it changed my stats, I have answers to some of these questions (and a really, really large spreadsheet!) ...

I was just sitting around, waiting for a spot on the Trakanon raid to open, and I got to thinking, hmm… I should write that Twitter-based RPG I’ve been talking about. So last night and this morning, that’s what I did. Players can enter the game and whack on a mob until one of them dies. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, and it isn’t, but right now, it’s all about getting the basics done, get something working – anything, really – as quickly as possible, so I can see how to move things forward. All about the iterative game programming style, right? Make it fun, then add new stuff, make it fun some more, etc. ...

Norrath, the planet itself, wasn’t discovered by humans or elves or iksar or the ancient snake people or even the gods. It was discovered by the great she-dragon Veeshan, who chose this nondescript planet on which to raise her brood. She marked the planet with a swipe of her claws, claiming it as her own to all who could read her sign. Her brood, the First, and all their many descendants chose that event as their emblem, until the time when the awakened Sleeper, Kerafrym, tore the moon of Luclin apart, and in defiance of Veeshan, chose for his symbol, himself, curled in the same way, bursting the moon. Veeshan may have been content to leave her mark on some forgotten frozen continent, but Kerafrym’s mark would be laid across the entire SKY. ...

Lots of updates to progressin EverQuest II and, unfortunately, not a lot of time to write about them, so here goes. I have three goals in EQ2 at the moment – finishing Heritage Quests for our guild, Nostalgia, getting Dina’s tailoring to 80 and also finishing the Rise of Kunark expansion by defeating Trakanon in Veeshan’s Peak. Once these are done, I’ll probably start focusing on doing TSO missions. I was reading yesterday about a friend who has almost finished his second set of TSO armor; I don’t even have one item from the first set. I spent about ten void shards on resist jewelry for raiding and have five or so left over. Most TSO missions I’m in – pickup groups every one, as Kasul and I are Nostalgia’s only active members doing TSO content and we’re far too few to form a group – end in failure, so it’s just a gigantic waste of time, usually taking more than an hour to finally abandon the mission with a pile of debt and repair bills. ...

Just got an email from Mr. Lincoln, the fine-feathered tech contact for Wizard 101, about my troubles getting into Orin Grimcaster’s lair, the Fleshless Tower: Good Morning, Sorry that took so long! I have gone into your character and reset the quest. You should be able to get into the building now. If you still can not please let me know! Thanks, Mr. Lincoln Sounds like I have something to check out when I get home… Any other wizards in the same situation? Mr. Lincoln may be able to help.