Sideshow & Syrana

I thought I would grace you with my presence since Syrana is taking a short hiatus and removing the sick germs from herself. What have I been up to? I bet everyone is waiting with anticipation.

Last I posted about WoW was when Syrana asked me to answer a few questions. One of those questions was about what I wanted to accomplish in 2010. I basically said that I wanted to get both the Salty and Chef titles. Looking at what I had left, Chef should be simple to grab first. It turns out that I got Salty first. I really didn’t spend a lot of time trying to catch that rare fish. I usually just logged in on my laptop during football games on Sunday and fished while I watched. I’d say it was probably 4-5 hours total until I finally caught that Dark Herring in Howling Fjord. I’ve read comments from people who’ve taken almost 40 hours to catch a rare fish. Crazy. Sadly, I still haven’t got the Chef title yet, but I really haven’t tried. I did take a quick WoW break for a few weeks to play other games.

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It’s that time of year again.  That time where Sideshow and I simultaneously ding.

Today, Sideshow enters a new bracket.  It doesn’t seem to phase him much.  Boy he’s a brave lil’ soldier.

Me, on the other hand, I have reached the top of my bracket today.

And I fully intend to go turn off my XP right now and twink for the rest of my days.

Last week I posted some screenshots from Allods Online.  In the comments, Tami asked the following, which I will answer today:

I’m curious to know how you like the game, past the opening scenes. I don’t know if it was just me being flighty or not, but it seemed really hard for me to connect to the game (adorable hamster people with vicious attack squirrels notwithstanding – mine were Khuu, Bhuu, Rhuu, and Twidget).

Characters

Allods offers some interesting characters to choose from.  There are two factions to choose from: League and Empire.  Each side has 14 different classes you can choose from (which play off of 8 basic classes).  The character creation was kinda fun, but not a whole lot in the way of customization. Plus, I noticed it was easy to change factions and/or classes during the process.

I didn’t see much for descriptions of the races or classes during the character creation. I sort of missed that, especially after World of Warcraft improved their character creation information.  And, honestly, I didn’t want to poke around outside of the game to find out this information. (continue reading…)

This is going to be a bit different than last year’s goal list.  Last year I focused heavily on World of Warcraft goals with a smattering of Rock Band goals mixed in.  This year, I’ve broken down my goals into a few different categories: WoW, Aion, Dragons Age, Sims 3, Blogging, and Assorted.  And my, I look gamerbitious, don’tcha think? (continue reading…)

So recently it was revealed that the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) MMO by Bioware will have the option of utilizing NPC companions.  (Check out this video interview for the full scoop.)

Apparently this is the apocalypse and the demise of the genre as well as false advertising as an MMO.  Keen is not the only one that seems to take issue with this.

The main point I pulled from Keen’s post was that the inclusion of NPC companions meant that Bioware is developing a single player game with multiplayer options rather than a massively multiplayer online game.

In the other posts I read regarding this (and the dislike for it) I couldn’t help but notice a point of view that was being missed…

Why can’t it be viewed as a multiplayer game with single player options?

That thought was then followed up with these:

Why does an MMO have to mean forced grouping at all times?

What MMO has forced grouping at all times nowadays?

Storytellers

But mainly what I saw as missed that MY ears latched onto during that interview was the part the NPC companions play in the story.

Dragon Age, anyone?

Story equals immersion.  Your companions will react to your choices…

There are going to be certain characters that will be integral to the Star Wars story, but won’t suffice as a simple quest giver.  And some… you just can’t expect to create.  So genre destroyer be damned, it sounds to me to be more of a vehicle of driving the story.  Plus, you’re more likely to listen to what they have to say than read quest test, amirite?

Anywho, in this post I am going to move forward with addressing the “single player games are trying to overthrow and destroy MMOs” argument. (continue reading…)

Today is the first day that Aion players can redeem veteran rewards.  Last week NCsoft revealed their plans for veteran rewards.  Starting today, accounts that have been active for at least a month will be able to redeem them.  Although things could still change, at this time, they are planning to have rewards for each active month – up to 6 months.

What kinds of goodies shall we see? Titles, cube expansion, exclusive emotes, rez stones, experience amulets, and better wings.

Best part? You can redeem them for any/all of your characters as long as your account has been active long enough for each veteran reward package.  Very cool for altoholics. (continue reading…)

(To the tune of “On The Road Again” by Willie Nelson – which, by the way, is totally outside my normal musical selection)

I’m a noob again

Just can’t wait to figure it all out again

The game I love is adventurin’ with my friends

And I can’t wait to figure it all out again.

I’m a noob again

Questin’ in places that I’ve never been

Rollin’ things that I might never roll again

And I can’t wait to figure it all out again.

That’s right.  I, Syrana, controller of demons and dark magic artistry, am a noob again. (continue reading…)

Woo, queues have significantly reduced over the weekend.  It seems that opening a couple more servers and raising population caps slowly have helped.  Also, the change made to the private stores, where they can’t be afk selling for more than 30 minutes, has helped too.

As I mentioned before, Sideshow and I rolled Asmodian on Lumiel.  It has been a popular server – which makes it busy.  During the headstart, queues for Lumiel were easily 2 hours.  After the live launch, the queues were commonly 1.5hrs.  But Friday night, it was only 20 minutes!  Then on Saturday, there was no queue in the afternoon, and a short one (15ish minutes) in the evening.

See, I think things will be ok.

Character Creation

So, yes, I have an Asmodian on Lumiel by the name of Syrana.

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As some of you may know, probably from following me on Twitter, Sideshow and I pre-ordered Aion.  Unfortunately, we only did so recently and weren’t in the closed beta.  But! We were just in time for the start of the open beta, which was yesterday.

The Usual Suspects

Let me stop here for a sec.

1-This is not about jumping ship

2-I know I have more BlizzCon stuff to post yet

But as you probably know from reading me, I talk about what I want in my own style and get to it when I can (or when the mood strikes).  So, if there is something you are awaiting to read… all in due time, trust me.

Ok – for those of you still with me….

After defeating the server/we’ve been bombarded by people logging in at the same time/site boss yesterday to actually get inside Aion… I must say, I’m liking what I see so far.  And when I say “see,” for the purposes of this post, I’m referring to just scenery.  (Not that I don’t like other things, just… FOCUS!)

The scenery, is beautiful -no, breathtaking.  Sure, there are some areas that are dark and ugly, as intended.  But there are plenty of other areas that are absolutely gorgeous.  For example, the lake in the beginning Asmodian area – Negi’s Dock – beeeeeauuutiful.  Gorgeous.  Stunning. (continue reading…)

I thought this was adorable and disturbing all at the same time… so I screenshotted it for your viewing pleasure.

After having issues with Deadmines being broken last night, we finally got to finish it… like 4 hours after we first started.  You see, we went in there, we were ownin’ face, but all of us got disconnected from the server after the first boss.  We were returned to the beginning of the instance -reset- and proceeded to farm the same beginning trash mobs a few times as we would get repeatedly booted again.

Eventually we received error messages about Deadmines instance not found, so we gave up and did some other stuff.

Several hours later, we decide to try again – and were successful!