Complete Heal

We had an extremely short raid on Wednesday night. I logged in to find that we only had an x2 online with 2 people making up part of a third group. We were scheduled to go kill Gorenaire to continue our T7 progression since one of our short term goals is to hit Deathtoll very soon. We zoned into the the x4 version of Ascent of the Awakened even though we were down 10 players. I knew the raid would be challenging, but it was about to get even more interesting. Once inside the zone, I got a message from our normal main tank Templar asking me if I wanted to try main tank healing for the night. It was a hell of a night to try, but I gave it a shot nonetheless.

Our first pull didn’t go so well and our dps was really light because we didn’t have enough players. The low dps put stress on my mana and it was a challenge in the beginning keeping my group alive through all the cures, aoe attacks and stuns. Eventually, I got in the groove and we took down the dragon with 14 players and a brand new main tank Templar. Since we didn’t have the raid force to go much deeper, we called it a night. I think the entire raid took about 45 minutes.

During the past week, I’ve also been playing Aion. I managed to level my Cleric up to 18 and get in my first group. The screen shot above shows our group’s main tank standing next to me and she obviously heard about my EQ2 accomplishments. I figured out that killing EQ2 dragons gets you chicks! Grouping in Aion is much more fun than soloing and allows you to get lost in the moment – forgetting that the game is so grindy. I got some great upgrades like the helm I’m wearing above. While I had a good time, I don’t know if I’ll be able to dedicate the time required to reach the end game in Aion. There are just too many other games that offer more enjoyment per hour spent playing and they tend to pull me in their direction since I have limited play time these days. I’m having a blast raiding casually in EQ2 on AB, there is a pvp server merge coming out today which should spice things up on the Nagafen server and I may even start spending more time on the 360 with games such as Dragon Age: Origins and Modern Warfare 2 coming out soon. This is a great time to be a gamer. I just wish I had the free time now that I had back in college.

I play a lot of MMOs. Because of this, I bought an extra Raptor hard drive about a year and a half ago from a buddy at work and kept it loaded with roughly 10 games. This second hard drive had EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, Warhammer, Aion, Age of Conan, Darkfall, LOTRO and a few other titles ready to be played on demand. My theory was to keep the games on a different drive from the one that has my operating system on it to perhaps get a little bit better game performance. I also kept my screen shot library on this drive, which I used to update my blog every couple of days.

Early last week, my main gaming rig wouldn’t boot up properly. I was able to trace the problem down to the hard drive in question and once I disconnected it; everything worked fine. My buddy tested the drive and sure enough it was dead. Unfortunately, that means a good bit of the screen shots I wanted to use for this update are gone as well. Fortunately, I still have most of my CDs / DVDs and I also have an external drive with most of those games installed. In the end, it was just a bump in the road but an aggravating one. At least it wasn’t a dead CPU, RAM or Motherboard. For a while, I was starting to price out building a new computer.

It’s been just over 10 days now since my last update and I’ve been busy playing EQ2, Warhammer and Aion. Most of my time has been spent in EQ2 as our guild on Antonia Bayle has managed to defeat a whole bunch of T7 content on a three day a week raid schedule with basically three groups each time. We don’t seem to have enough players to fill out a full raid force but we haven’t had any trouble clearing Labs, Lyceum, Ascent x2 and a number of contested Kingdom of Sky mobs such as Hurricanus. My favorite kills so far were HarlaDar and Venekor (shown above.) The loot hasn’t been that great but my guild has a great group of people to raid with and the old content is pretty enjoyable just for the experience.

The only mob we haven’t been able to take down yet is the Mutagenic Outcast, shown above. This guy is a contested T7 mob. He’s got a few waves of adds and we just didn’t have the dps to take him down with our partial raid. I think we got him down to around 20% one time but when people start dying he heals up like crazy so it becomes a losing proposition in a hurry. I’m sure we will pay him another visit soon and emerge victorious – hopefully with a full raid.

Shifting gears a bit, I spent Friday after raids playing my level 80 Fury on the Nagafen server. This is the character I raided with when I was healing for Onyx in the Exile faction. These days he is enjoying retirement in Qeynos with his mythical weapon, a good number of masters and lots of fabled gear from Veeshan’s Peak. He’s almost like a time capsule as he hasn’t even stepped foot in the TSO expansion which was released a long time ago.

A buddy of mine told me that SOE made obtaining T8 pvp armor much easier with a recent patch. On the pvp servers, you can now get a full set of gear that rivals T3/T4 shard gear and mid level TSO raid gear in about a week by simply going out and fighting other players. You basically get a repeatable quest to kill 6 enemy players from a guy in Kylong Plains. You can repeat the quest every 10 minutes and you get 5 tokens as a reward. There are tons of people from each faction zerging each other for these updates. If you compare the risk vs. reward and the time commitment required to get this amazing gear under this method vs. raiding or grinding instances, it’s easy to see why so many people are upset about it. The time people spent over the last year running zones for shards and raiding was largely wasted. I’m not sure how much sense it makes to load up the pvp servers with easily obtainable gear. They are going to have an advantage in pve content vs. the players on pve servers as well. I had a fun night killing Freeport players but it just felt cheap.

Another issue I have with EQ2 pvp is game performance. The game just doesn’t run well when you have a ton of players on the screen at once. Furthermore, the pvp system in EQ2 just feels “tacked on.” It feels a bit forced like the developers just dumped it on top of a pve game and there doesn’t seem to be any real point in it. There are no objectives to hold, no keeps to siege, no real reason to go out and fight the other faction unless you want to fight over contested raid mobs or gear up your character in a cheap zerg-fest. Those feelings got me thinking about how much I enjoy pvp but just don’t see the point of it in EQ2 anymore. I decided to spend some time in Warhammer and Aion. Both of these games, have pvp built in to their original design and it shows. I’ve played about 10 hours or so of T1 and T2 content over the last week in Warhammer with my level 14 Rune Priest. I’m on a very populated server – relatively speaking but it still feels empty. Scenarios are a fun way to kill some time but the lack of player concentration in the open world just kills any momentum the game starts to build

Aion, on the other hand, has that player concentration which is so critical for an enjoyable experience in an MMO centered around pvp. It will be interesting to see if the game can retain their players as the experience curve is rather steep and it’s a bit of a grind fest. My cleric in Aion hit 16 last night but it feels like I should be 40 by now due to the amount of time it takes to level. The leveling feels as slow as original EQ1 and I hear it only gets worse. Travel times also feel like Vanguard to me at times – before the rifts. I was doing a quest last night and it was very difficult. I fought this mob 4 times and each fight lasted 5-8 minutes in a one on one slug fest. I would either end up running away or he would kill me and I would have to run back to the quest guy each time to get another potion to use on the mob and then run back again which I swear took about 30 minutes of travel each round. It was nuts. I finally got the mob down and the quest complete but the experience just left me shaking my head a bit. Why couldn’t I use my wings in this zone? Was I having fun? The jury is still out. It’s hard to adjust to a game with an old school difficulty factor when we have all been spoiled by the instant gratification of WOW and EQ2.

So, yesterday at 3pm EST the Aion early access period started. The early access period was designed for people who pre-ordered the game to have two days to get into the action before the game hit the shelves and everyone showed up to play this much anticipated title. I managed to get in game for about 5 minutes, but it left a lot to be desired. My expectations were already pretty low and I was met with a queue of about 30 minutes upon arrival. Once that was done, I entered the world and was greeted by hundreds of players and a few mobs warping and rubber-banding in every direction. I managed to do the first quest where the biggest challenge was finding a mob that was still alive but the second quest caused me to call in a night and go play EQ2.

As the screen shot above illustrates, the second quest involved gathering four sacks of grain from a little farm. Unfortunately, each sack had about 10 people camping it and with the massive lag from the stressed servers it was pretty much pointless to continue. I was looking forward to giving the game another try tonight but I was greeted by a queue of almost 4 hours. That’s pretty funny actually. I’ll come back and try it again in a few days. For now, I’ve got better things to do.

Over the last few days, I’ve been grinding away (if you can call it that in EQ2) and am now 30% from level 60. My guild Combine Syndicate just finished the T6 raid content and unlocked their characters for a three week leveling trip to 70 where we will experience T7 raid content together. We plan to stay at T7, with locked characters, and experience all of the content in a “progression” mode until it’s down and then we will move on to T8.

Although I’m having a great time in EQ2, the pending pre-select, early entry and launch of Aion is hard to resist. I love playing games at release. There is just something about everyone on a level playing field entering a fresh new virgin world that is very appealing to me. I’m also a sucker for amazing graphics and Aion delivers on that point. I think if I give Aion a chance, I could really get into the game. At the same time, I’ve been around the block long enough to realize that game play is what really matters and community is what keeps my attention over the long term. To a certain extent, it’s a shame that I’ve grown up and have more limited play times these days. I’d love to spend all day playing Aion and EQ2 and lots of other titles. I could seriously play these games all day long. I just love playing MMOs.

I’ve got about a half dozen major MMO’s installed on my main gaming machine right now. I’ve got four gaming machines set up in my office. I’d love to be able to play more games – there just isn’t enough time. For me to get out of these games what I want to get out of them, I have to narrow the field down a bit and focus on one or two titles. I dread having to make this choice. For example, I’d hate to have to abandon ship on Aion to keep up with the leveling and raiding schedule an active raid guild in EQ2 requires. At the same time, I don’t want to play Aion for a few weeks, get burned out and toss the game in my stack of johnny come lately wasted titles only to realize my opportunities in EQ2 have passed. At the end of the day, I just need to remember to play for fun and for all of you out there that have lots of time – don’t take it for granted. Game while you can. Oh yeah, don’t ignore RL either. By the way, does anyone want to buy a barely used PS3, 360 or Wii? My consoles are collecting dust. Long live PC gaming.

I haven’t posted much in the last two weeks primarily because I’ve been pretty busy in real life and was out of town last weekend. On the gaming front, I’m excited about spending more time in the final Aion closed beta; which starts tomorrow and runs through the end of the weekend. I have mixed feelings about investing a lot more time leveling up my Aion beta character since it will get wiped soon. If I’m going to grind, I’d like it to count – know what I mean? Be that as it may, I will try out some different classes and look around a bit more this weekend. I hear they are going to have some live events so that should be pretty cool.

What have I been up to in the virtual world recently? Well, I tried to give Warhammer and AOC another shot but couldn’t get into either game. I lasted a few hours in Warhammer over the course of about a week and about 15 minutes in Conan. Both games have their strong points but not enough of them to keep me playing. They just aren’t fresh – at least to me. Speaking of another game that isn’t particularly fresh, I did manage to gain a few levels in World of Warcraft since my last update. I took my blood elf priest up to 77 from 75. The best thing about hitting 77 is that you get cold weather flying which enables your character to fly in Northrend. A recent patch increased the regular (non epic flyer) mount speed to 150% so you can really haul ass if you know what I mean getting quests done. After running around for 6 levels, it’s nice to fly once again. It’s also nice to be able to fly without a timer (Aion) and without being 50+ (Vanguard.)

My priest also picked up the dual specialization option so he now has a healing spec and a shadow / dps spec. You can switch between specs for free in town and your spell bars update automatically between the two specs. There is no charge to switch. Very cool… Another thing I noticed while leveling up is that the game is incredibly smooth and polished. Everything just works and it feels right. The quests for example have great variety to them. So far I’ve gotten to unleash rats on npc corpses, unleash termites on a lumber mill to spawn a mini-boss, fight dragons while flying, rescue Undercity from siege, torture a few guys and a few more interesting things.

Another cool thing about World of Warcraft is that the seas are actually populated with interesting things. In other news, I read today that they are going to bring Onyxia back soon for the 5th year anniversary celebration and that might be just enough to get me motivated to grind out those last few levels to hit 80 before Aion releases in late September.

Vanguard had a double experience weekend last weekend and I missed it once again. That’s a bummer. The party I was running with a lot has continued to grind through the 40’s and last time I checked they are 45+ now. That sucks for me because they will be out of range soon and I’ll need to find some more random folks to try to hook up with. Personally, the solo content in Vanguard just seems a bit stale. I know it’s there and doable but it’s pretty difficult on my blood mage and just doesn’t have the fun factor to be honest. At least not compared to a few other games. Vanguard shines in the group environment so I’m going to need to find some new groups. My blood mage is still stuck at 40 but he should have quite a bit of rest experience by now. I’m still planning on leveling him up to max level but it may take me a while. The rate at which new content is released is rather slow, so I don’t really see any reason to rush it. In other Vanguard news, the spell animations have been fixed and they patched in a new overland raid mob this week. I’ll be back with another update in a few days.

The Aion open beta is ending soon. I found out a few more interesting things tonight. First of all, you can’t fly everywhere. I guess I knew that but I was still a bit surprised when I hit an invisible wall. There seems to be a good bit of no-fly zones in the game which is a bit disappointing. Especially when you compare it to something like Vanguard where if you see it you can fly there. Tonight I did a bunch of solo questing and grinding on mobs and hit level 13. I also found a plate helm and was able to equip the item. Apparently, helm slots don’t count as armor slots – any class can wear plate helms. That’s a bit strange but I’m not complaining. Anyways, here are a few shots of my 11-13 experience. The first shot show below is the graphic you get while harvesting. You basically suck the soul out of whatever you are trying to harvest.

In the shot below, I’m flying around one of the 10+ villages just hanging out. Contrast that to the second shot where I hit the invisible wall.

Lazaretto meets the invisible wall. Temporary break in the immersion factor.

Next up was a trip to Jurassic Park. These guys were pretty fun to kill.

Nice scenic shot under a waterfall with my new plate helm. Need a little more impressive armor though, looking like a noob atm.

Guess what? A new mine area. At least this place has some new mobs. What’s up with mines though? They seem to be a bit overused early on in this game.

Speaking of better looking armor. Check out these low 20’s characters I ran across in the capital city.

I’m off to get some sleep. Until next time.

I’ve spent a few hours this weekend playing the closed beta of Aion. I wanted to post my initial thoughts of the game and point out some strengths and weaknesses. Granted, I’ve only made it up to level 11 so far; mostly due to a RL that’s busy as usual but it’s just a beta so I don’t need to go too hardcore about it – at least not yet.

First of all, character creation in this game is the best I’ve seen in any MMO to date. You have your four basic character types to select from – warrior, priest, scout and mage but then you can dive into sub classes at level 10. That aspect is pretty normal – it reminds me of the old EQ2 system. Honestly, I’d rather just pick a class and play it from the start and I think most other people in the West would as well. While the class selections are pretty normal, the character customization options are top notch. You can pick from a series of base character appearances and then tweak to your hearts content. There are sliders for everything, over 40 hairstyles, tons of color options, lots of facial options etc… I think it’s very possible that you could make a character and never see anyone that looks the same as you for as long as you play the game. In other words, you can be different. The screenshot above shows my new cleric in some end game armor. That’s another neat touch – you can see what your character will look like at end game as soon as you create him. Of course, you don’t start out with that gear but it’s still a nice carrot dangling out there right from the start. Hey Vanguard players who use Vista; you can see rain in this game! You even have leaf umbrellas. Where is the pokiemon?

Once you enter the world, you are greeted with a nice movie which is some kind of vision your character is having about his past. At the end of the movie, you are staring up at the sky and someone is trying to get you to wake up. It reminded me of washing up on the beaches of Tortage in Age of Conan. You wake up in a typical newbie area but have a foggy memory. Where are Kalanthes and Casilda? Sorry, wrong game. Quest givers are nearby and they have some blue thing (Korean quesetion mark?) over their heads which lets you know to talk to them. From the beginning, the story line is very solid. People in the world react to you in a certain way and it becomes clear that you are something special. Again, this is very similar to Age of Conan. Hey, I’m something special – check me out below. Do you want to see my something special?

The first few quests are pretty typical – kill 10 rats and delivery quests. The controls feel very familiar and it doesn’t take long too get used to the user interface. The newbie combat isn’t particularly exciting and to be honest the game was running with some lag this weekend so you would often times find yourself dead after a fight against the lag monster where your combat arts or skills weren’t firing off but the mob continued to beat on you. I guess it’s a sign of server load – hopefully something that will improve upon release.

Most of the newbie mobs are pretty interesting – such as the rabid pink flamingo shown above. There are a number of new types of mobs along with your basic wolves, chickens etc… I have to give the game a huge thumbs up for graphics quality as well. The characters look amazing, the environments are spectacular and weapons/armor is the best I’ve seen in any game. I haven’t zoned yet and that’s a good sign. We all know that great graphics don’t equal a great game but it sure doesn’t hurt either. Especially if systems can run the game with max settings fairly easily. Absent the server lag due to a ton of beta players, I got great frame rates throughout the weekend and very little to no graphics lag and ran max settings at 1900×1200 resolution.

Aion will ship with a fully functioning broker system to buy and sell your wares or you can just set up your own private shop in town. Vendor characters sit there spamming and you can go up to one of these guys and right click on them to view their private store and buy items off of them. I haven’t sold anything yet but I think it’s a neat if not somewhat obnoxious concept. Check out some of the text in the picture above. Classic.

The game has a gathering profession that best I can tell works for all types of harvesting / gathering. There are trade skills and crafters but I haven’t explored those aspects of the game yet. I just did lots of killing. Speaking of killing, I felt bad about killing the mob in the picture above. He looked like some fat kid trying to go trick or treating. Oh well, he had to die. Self defense, right?

You end up going through a few villages as you work your way up to level 9 and it took me about 4-5 hours of gameplay to make it that far. I was actually reading the quests and taking in the sights and sounds and found myself digging the story line and looking forward to Ascension. Ascension is what happens when you hit level 9 and you start a quest line that ends up with you discovering your true identity. Better than that, you get wings and the game really starts to take off – literally and figuratively. The screenshot above is from one stage of this quest line where your hero status starts to become clearer.

Check out that guy above. No idea what he is but he was pretty interesting. The shot below is from one of the mine areas where you end up doing a good bit of questing around level 7-8 or so. I haven’t found a dungeon yet, all of the newbie Elyos lands are above ground – at least that I’ve found.

As you work on your Ascension quest, the story really starts to unfold. I would say in addition to character customization and graphics, the story line and use of cutscenes are also very enjoyable aspects of this game. The scene below shows the local population getting behind you and thanking you for all you’ve done for their town.

The boss below is the last guy you fight before you get your wings. I found the final newbie quest line to be pretty easy but I was so engrossed in the story and the desire to fly at 10 that I ended up staying up to almost 5 a.m. to get it done. I haven’t done that since EQ 5-10 years ago. Aion has something that is both familiar and fresh at the same time. It makes you want to keep playing to see what lies behind the next turn. That’s a magical quality, as far as I’m concerned.

Once you finish your Ascension quest line, assuming you are playing the good faction, you enter the capital city of Sanctuary. This place was incredible. I ended up exploring the city for an hour or so and then portaled back down to the next town to start working on some quests. I guess there are a few ways to travel so far in Aion. One is the portal system that I mentioned earlier in this post. You basically pay for a ticket and can get teleported between locations. The second method is a flight vendor. These guys connect the different towns in the newbie areas. Third, you can fly yourself but initial flight timers are pretty short with a decent sized cool down. Finally, you can run and let me tell you running is slow. There is no sprint key and I haven’t seen anyone yet on a mount so I don’t know if mounted travel is in the game or not.

To wrap things up, I’ve had a lot of fun so far in the closed beta. Highlights are character customization, environmental, character, armor and weapon graphics, flying, use of cut scenes, story and what appears to be a lightly instanced or instance free world. On the negative side, server lag has been pretty common place, combat feels a bit slow and stale (at least so far,) the sound is a bit buggy, and it feels a bit grindy with rumors or more grinding down the road. The game also forces you into the Abyss which is a large pve / pvp zone where to the best of my knowledge you play from levels 25-50. This area also includes all the end game bosses and pvp objectives. I’ve got some guildies who are already there and they are having a blast. To me, the experience inside the Abyss will make or break this game upon release. Their newbie experience doesn’t really break new ground except that it looks pretty, has lots of customization options and offers character flight. In the end, it’s still a bit early to tell if it will attract the masses from WOW, Warhammer, EQ2 and LOTRO while having the ability to keep them here for the long term. It’s got potential – let’s see how things shake out.

I just finished my first day in the Aion closed beta and I’m in love. I thought I would put up a picture of my level 10 cleric flying around after finishing the Ascension quest line and getting his wings. I’ll post more once the beta event is over but so far this game is unreal… I’ve got that EQ feeling from 10 years ago all over again.

I’m sure just about all of you have heard of the new game from NCsoft called Aion which is scheduled to be released in North America on September 22nd. I’ve been following the game with a moderate level of curiosity. To date, I’ve resisted the urge to pre-order the game just because I’ve been burned so many times on the “next best thing.” I’ve got collector’s editions in my office cabinet of several games that crashed and burned so I’m a bit hesitant to leap before I look if you know what I mean. All that aside, I’m still interested in Aion for several reasons. First of all, the game looks amazing. The environment is incredible and rivals just about any other game out there. There is a tremendous amount of character customization in the game. I’ve heard there is very little instancing which is always a good thing. Early word is that the game has a pvp element to it similar to a realm vs. realm system but that it is actually fun and works as intended. I’ve heard that the game can render hundreds of players on the screen at the same time without lag and hitching. I’ve seen several PVE raid videos so I think the scripted raid encounters are in the game. Did I mention you can fly?

There are no flying mounts. However, your character gets wings at level 10 and can take to the skies. I’m thinking about picking up a second game to play for a change of pace and decided against reactivating my AOC, WOW or WAR accounts. At the moment, even EQ and EQ2 aren’t doing it for me. Both are great games but they just don’t offer anything that I’m not already getting in Vanguard. I may drop the Station Pass and just go back to a single game Vanguard subscription. I’m pretty sure I’m going to pre-order Aion this week in order to get in on the upcoming beta events. At the end of the day $50 isn’t all that much to lose and I’m willing to take that chance one more time. Check out this video I found which outlines character creation and the first newbie area. The video is marginal but the guys doing the commentary are hilarious. It’s a bit harsh on the language side but worth watching for 10 minutes of entertainment here. hi-YA!!!