Vanguard

While discussing the possibility of “classic” servers in World of Warcraft, Cameron waxes nostalgic about his own yearning for the simpler days of gnoll-pounding in the Karanas. I loved those days too – my blog is named after one of those old zones, and my header images are all from EQ1, so you know I’m standing right there with Cameron, casting SoW, shooting off careless lightning and healing as best an old-school druid can. I was so nostalgic at one point that I restarted on a new no-transfer server, Stromm, and went through the entire game from scratch (xping in East Commonlands and Permafrost and Oasis, seeing the world once again), so that helped sate that particular yearning. ...

It’s been a little over a week since I started blogging over at Massively, and while I am really enjoying myself, I think I still have a lot to learn about story ideas. It’s all about the page views, right, and what brings in the eyeballs better than our dear old friend, porn. So I suggested this to the editors, and they pretty much informed me that they already had plenty of Second Life coverage, and maybe I could work on this piece about “Shoulder armor through the ages – how high is too high?”. ...

I haven’t done even a tenth of the gaming I usually do in a given week. Between my sister Hillary getting hitched in Boston; my sister Genjer and niece Jazzmin coming up from NYC to spend Easter weekend here in Connecticut; and the siren’s call of Rock Band demanding the return of the (in)famous Buzzkillaz, well, that was pretty much it. But though I didn’t get much gaming done, I did get a lot of writing done. I am absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve been hired on at Massively to do what I can to make Massively the number one destination for hot news and features about every single game in existence. I’ve patched Test and re-installed EQ1 because I can think immediately of three or four games which could use a lot more coverage, and I aim to see they get it. ...

I had the pleasure of being on SUWT #22 this weekend. I was first on SUWT #12, so I guess I’ll get another chance to mix it up with the crew on SUWT #32! The fights, the yelling, the smashed windows, the death threats and broken relationships that make podcasts fun, are all here. Our souls laid bare. Tune in and listen to the terror that inevitably occurs whenever someone lets me get too close to a microphone. ...

Armed with a map that was at least semi-useful, I set out in Telon to get some levels, some loot, and some amazing screenshots. Meh. I got two of the three. My quest log is stuffed to overflowing with quests for Veskal’s Exchange… I really need to get back there and do some of them before all the quests go gray on me. Fate wanted me near Tursh, though. Satia guided me to a harvesting trainer, and so I was taught the mysteries of … felling weakened ash trees and looting logs from its corpse. ...

I was aghast to find that after Vanguard GU 4 that I no longer had eyelids! Crikey! Was I going to have to go everywhere with a damp cloth over my eyes? I petitioned, of course, and got my reply this morning. You can read it below, but take a good long look at that mailbox first. DON’T TOUCH IT! Just look with your EYES, not your hands. Didn’t your mom ever teach you anything? ...

I didn’t have long to spend in Vanguard last night after my raids in EQ2; just enough time to patch and run around a bit. Veskal’s Exchange, where I was parked, was transformed – they have a griffin flightmaster there, and one of the new riftstones there, which promised me that should I gate back to Thrusk, that I could do those quests and easily return to Veskal without that long, long run back to Leth Nurae and through the Arcanium again. ...

Stargrace had figured out how to talk between Vanguard and EQ2, so we were chatting. I was flitting between various characters looking for a group and a little bored. I’d two boxed the last of my armor quests for my (level 31) brigand earlier, and having made a bunch of mastercraft poisons with my alchemist and gotten her Adept 3 combat arts made with my jeweler, so I was ready to go kill and slay but… no groups! ...

From a comment on Tobold’s excellent post about the tank shortage in the World of Warcraft (or more accurately, the Protection-spec’d Warrior shortage): I’ve been playing WOW for 2+ years now and everytime I see pvp hurt pve, it makes me wish there was a viable pve alternative to WOW. I happen to think there are plenty of viable PvE alternatives to WoW. Not least among them EQ2, but also LotRO (the breakout MMO of 2007, by anyone’s definition viable), Pirates of the Burning Sea, FFXI Online and literally hundreds of smaller MMOs, most of them free to play, most of them with very dedicated and helpful player bases. I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Vanguard these days. ...

I finally hit 31 in Rock Band last night after about a dozen duels of which I lost two. Huh? Levels? Grinding? PvP? Yeah, this is Rock Band. If you start exploring the Multiplayer menu in Rock Band, and avoid the unsatisfying “Band” player matching, where you and three random strangers from Xbox Live slowly come to understand why people suck, you’ll come to Tug of War and Score Duel. Score Duel was unsatisfying. Tug of War is surprisingly strategic. ...