Complete Heal

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.

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.

It’s patch day over at Warhammer Online and the notes are longer than many novels. I figured I’d roll up a new toon and check it out. Didn’t get a chance to play much since it was a late night at work but I made a new Rune Priest over on the Badlands server where my old friends from “Casualties of War” are playing. At least the guys who are playing on the Order side with that guild reside there. The patch today contained 2 classes – the Choppa and the Slayer and completes the classes promised at launch. They also did a large itemization revamp, added “easy mode” public quests in all tiers and much more. My last Warhammer post was me quitting in disgust in response to Mythic canning many of their developers. I feel a bit sketchy giving the game another shot but what the hell. I’m bored at the moment with many of the other games I’m playing. It might not be so much a case of boredom as it is a case of realizing that I’m spread pretty thin time wise and it’s difficult to really make progress in the “end game” of MMOs without making a major time investment in them.

I’m also getting a case of Spring fever. I want to get back in shape again and start getting more sleep. I need to try to figure out a way to accomplish all that and still get some solid MMO time in. If I find the secret to being able to work all day, stay in shape, get plenty of sleep, hang out with friends and family and be a serious MMO player I’ll be sure to share the knowledge.

EA / Mythic recently announced 12/31/08 subscriber numbers for Warhammer Online. According to published reports, they have just over 300,000 paying customers. While that sounds like a healthy number, it’s far less than the 1,000,000+ copies sold and nowhere near the numbers they were talking about prior to launch. EA / Mythic basically just pulled a Funcom – a huge release of a AAA title followed my massive subscriber bleeding. The difference is that Funcom can successfully operate a game with lower subscriber numbers (see Anarchy Online) for the long haul and improve things and I’m not sure EA will put up with not meeting expectations. The Warhammer bleeding resulted in a round of support staff layoffs a few weeks ago followed by an even more severe cut yesterday.

With the news of the most recent layoffs, I got aggravated with EA / Mythic leadership and canceled my Warhammer account. The last round of firings cut deep into the development staff and involved people like the developer that implemented key systems such as the Tome of Knowledge. I’m going to vote with my wallet on this one. For now, I’m done with Warhammer. Good luck to those still working there. I hope you guys get the chance to make that product shine one day.

Since I freed up some cash, I decided to reactive World of Warcraft. I know I just caused several of you to shake your heads but I might get motivated to level my 74 Priest up to 80 and give Naxxramas a shot in the coming weeks. I’ve got several RL friends who are in my guild and are having lots of fun. It’s also easy to get a group in WOW and that’s one of the things that’s been bugging me recently in other games. I don’t know how much I’ll actually play it but you might see a few posts about it here and there in the coming weeks. In the meantime, let me introduce you to the WOW version of Lazaretto.

I’ve been working like crazy over the last few days and before that I was traveling so I haven’t had time to do much gaming. In addition to a shortage of time, my main gaming rig is down for the count right now. I figured out that the problem lies in a bad video card so I’ll be ordering a new one shortly. Right now I’m debating between a ATI 4870 x2 or a GeForce gfx 285. My existing power supply (OCZ 700 watts) probably isn’t enough for the x2 so I’d have to get a new one in that scenario. I’ve been reading reports that the ATI x2 card gives double the framerates in AOC as well as about a 20% boost in most other titles compared to the Nvidia solution. Double the fps is nothing to sneeze at. There is this thing called a bad economy which gives me pause when debating on dropping $400 on a new video card and another $200 on a power supply just to play video games. Then again, in the whole scheme of things there are worse things to spend that kind of cash on. Anyways – back to the topic at hand.

This week I’ve played mostly Warhammer Online. I think it’s because I get burnt out easily these days looking for groups, grinding mobs or doing mindless questing. Do you guys ever feel that way? Sometimes I wonder how many times a developer can ask me to kill 10 rats or go gather up 10 bones. One of my favorite aspects of Warhammer is you can level up without ever doing a single quest or killing a single NPC. You can literally log on and go from 1 to 50 doing PVP in scenarios or in open realm vs. realm combat.

I decided the Disciple of Khaine wasn’t doing enough healing for my tastes so I rerolled a Chaos Zealot. The Zealot reminds me of the Undead race in World of Warcraft. He walks with a hunched over posture and oozes nastiness. When he runs he kind of awkardly moves forward but if you start beating on his friends, he has a ridiculous arsenal to keep people alive. Ahhhhh, my kind of class.

I’m playing on the Dark Crag server which operates under the “open RvR” ruleset. I’m not sure what that means entirely other than it gives you the most freedom in pvp. So far, I can tell that you don’t get bolstered up in scenarios so if you enter a scenario at level 1 you have level 1 health/power and your level 1 abilities. Most of the Warhammer servers, using the ruleset that I think is called “core” level the playing field by bolstering up the stats of lower level players in scenarios. While it’s tougher to not get the bolster, it’s more fun to me as it gives me another reason to level up and be more competitive. I entered the scenario waiting list and started doing some intro quests.

So far, I’ve taken this new Zealot from level 1 to 10 in short order. I basically log on and enter the waiting list for all available scenarios. In tier 1, there are three available scenarios. Until one pops, I kill 10 rats (grrrrr) or do public quests to keep things moving along. I’ve found that the scenarios offer solid experience and renown and offer the most enjoyable type of gameplay so I tend to gravitate to those areas in the game. I haven’t found questing very rewarding as the quest rewards seem to be weaker than the pvp rank rewards or even the public quest rewards and the experience gained seems to be less as well. When you factor in you don’t get renown while doing pve content it just makes the most sense to me to level up in the scenarios.

“War is Everywhere.” That is one of the mantras of Warhammer Online. So far, it’s been War is in Scenarios. That is until I stumbled into a Warcamp last night at about level 9 or so and when I walked outside of the camp I saw a massive surge of Order and Destruction players pushing back and forth through a choke point. It took me a minute to realize that I’d just stumbled into open RvR and people were actually participating in it. You see early on in Warhammer, everyone stuck to scenarios and Mythic made some moves recently to encourage people to participate more in the open area – non instanced combat.

As you can see from the screenshots above, Mythic’s moves seem to be working out. I joined an open war band and we had a full 24 players in our party. There were a few other warbands available to join so I’m guessing it was at least a 40 on 40 or greater battle. Both sides would gain ground and then lose it again and I was able to cycle through a few pvp style quests at the same time.

At the end of the night, I had a new optimism for the future of Warhammer Online. Our server population is extremely strong and it’s very refreshing to be able to find people to group with easily. That’s been one of my gripes about Everquest, Vanguard and Age of Conan recently as all of those games suffer from low population. Granted, I’m lower level in most of those games (72, 21 and 35 respectively) but nonetheless MMOs are more fun when there are lots of people running around everywhere. In Warhammer with open realm combat the possibilities are almost endless. I had a ball. Isn’t that why we play these things anyway?

I had some time to kill last night as I waited for my old EQ2 buddy Theo to catch up with me in AOC. First up, I logged into Vanguard and grouped with a monk to work on the HL chest piece quest. We killed a few of the mobs to advance the quest but they were really too tough for us. After struggling for about half an hour to recruit more players to our group, I decided to log and go do something different.

What did I do? I dusted off Warhammer and rolled a new toon. I played Warhammer on release as an Order character; an Arch Mage to be exact with the Casualties of War guild. It was decent I guess. I loved the guild but the game didn’t really grab me. So at level 14 I canceled my account and moved on to greener pastures. Like most MMOs, with time comes polish and new content. I decided to roll up a Dark Elf Disciple of Khaine. This class is basically a melee dps / healer hybrid class. They start off dual wielding two insane looking swords and they get to wear the heaviest armor out of all of the healers. They appear to be a rather complex class to play – which always intrigues me.

In the dark elf starting area, you begin you adventures on a beach. It’s very reminiscent of AOC except there are other players here. That’s not a knock on AOC it’s just that the beginning AOC content is instanced and in Warhammer you start in the open world. You get an immediate feeling of grandeur as an amazing dark elf ship is anchored right behind you and the water laps up on the shore at your feet. You grab a few quests and eventually make your way to an outpost where you encounter the first public quest.

Public quests are basically persistent encounters that anyone in the vicinity can join. The early ones have three stages and this particular one has been detuned so that smaller groups of players can complete it easier. You gain reputation by doing these quests which can be spent like currency to get items from a local vendor. You also get a chance to roll on the chest that drops at the end of the third stage which gives you some pretty cool stuff as well.

Since this was my first dark elf, it was the first time I had done this public quest. Imagine my suprise when at level 4 the third stage began and all of a sudden a “raid boss” like dragon appeared. Think about that for a minute. Fighting a dragon at level 4 within 30 minutes of making your character. My how things have changed over the years. Remember how hard you used to have to work in EQ before you could even see much less kill a dragon? It was fun but a bit much that early in the game.

We were able to kill the dragon and after running the public quest two or three times I was able to get full reputation and move on to the next area with some nice gear upgrades. I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to devote to this game (since I’m playing so many others currently) but what I experienced in the newbie area was lots of fun. There were a fair number of players running around – the server even had a queue to log on for the night. I like the hybrid healer / melee mix with the DOK so I may start spending more time in game. Every now and then I get that PVP itch and both AOC and Warhammer deliver on that craving.

My Warhammer toon is on the Dark Crag server. Check out the names of the guys I was grouping with last night. See any contrast with say the Vanguard community? Good times.