Farmer Belghast

Server Overload

One of the key parts of the preorder process for Wildstar is the ability to reserve a player name and a guild name.  Since I am still up in the air about this game I figured I would go ahead and do this.  The process theoretically opened yesterday morning and could be completed by going to the name reservation page and logging in.  The only problem here is that their servers crumpled under the crushing weight of folks hammering this single page.  I tried off and on throughout the day with no luck, and as I moved into the evening I still was not getting to a working screen.  Moments ago I finally connected in and completed the process reserving Belghast and House Stalwart just in case.  Far as I know you aren’t required to use the guild name, but I figure if nothing else I will create an alt guild or something so that the name lives.

Last night I decided to try something different and logged into the little Chua engineer I had created at some point during the beta.  I am not sure if it was the difference in starter zone or the difference in playing a ranged tank, but for whatever reason I found myself enjoying the game last night.  I embraced the cute and deadly aspect of the game and ran around blasting everything with my shotgun.  Considering I tend to shy away from playing ranged in any form, this was the first I had really played one in Wildstar.  I am wondering if this is the Guild Wars 2 effect, and that melee is just unsatisfying in this game.  Also with this character I opted to go with the Explorer path, which more than anything involves a lot of jumping puzzles.  Normally I cannot stand these, however they felt manageable with access to double jump.

The game still feels very much like a trip to Six Flags, but the Crimson Isle area feels far less busy.  Maybe I could enjoy the game more starting here rather than Leviathan Bay.  Now I feel like I owe the game a play through long enough to see if I like the third area better.  This has been the case with most games I have played, there are certain starter experiences that I simply do not like.  I am looking at you Night Elf areas, whereas I can seem to do Dun Morogh happily over and over.  There are things I like about playing the Warrior that I don’t get to do on the Engineer, however I just don’t really like Ellevar as far as zones go.  I was mostly okay with the Leviathan Bay route until I got there.  I am wondering if I can shift course and go to Deradune, without having to reroll.

Farmer Belghast

After getting to 6 in Wildstar I opted to log back into ArcheAge for a bit and see what trouble I could get into.  Last night I finally reached a point in the quest chain where I started getting quests asking me to craft certain items that required vegetables.  This meant that I needed to grow them, and also introduced me to the concept of a public farm.  During an earlier quest I was given a scarecrow that apparently allows me to claim a plot of land for my own, however the area surrounding where I was working seemed to be all claimed.  As a result I just opted to plant my veggies in the public plot and pray.  See interesting thing about this game is that pretty much every aspect of it… allows for other players to grief you.  Pretty much anyone can come along and harvest your crops from the public plot if you do not collect them within a certain period.  Farming is a real world time sink, in that I planted the crops and it took thirty minutes actual time for them to grow.  I of course went off throughout the world and completely forgot about them.  Thankfully upon logging back in this morning they were still there waiting for me.

What ended up distracting me, was a series of quests in the next zone over that involved slaughtering tons of critters to collect parts for a suit of armor.  It seems as though through this quest chain you will be able to collect a full set of blue quality gear for whatever armor class you choose.  I of course am going plate, because really… there is never an answer that doesn’t end up with plate armor.  In Elder Scrolls Online I’ve tried a few times to play something OTHER than a plate wearer, but always end up dropping it and dumping myself in full plate.  I also managed to pick up a really amazing green quality sword that is letting me cut through the mobs like butter.  I am still very much enjoying myself, but I am wishing I had a few more abilities.  Right now I have shield charge, shield bash, 3 hit combo swing, AOE root/damage, self heal, and channeled drain life.  It is a pretty robust kit, but I really want another attack to combo with the charge/bash/strike thing I have going on.

One of the things I really want to try and figure out is smithing.  Right now it all seems to be dependant upon me going into some cave somewhere and grinding mobs while waiting on Iron Ore pops.  In theory I am fine with this, but I keep thinking there has to be a more efficient way to get ore.  However almost every cave I have been in, has one or two higher level players lurking about, so I am beginning to wonder if that is in fact the only real way.  At some point I need to sort out why I could not stream the game and get that going again.  Dxtory boggles me because it seems like for some people it works great, however for me it never seems to produce the sort of results I actually want.  On a positive note it does seem to be a better generic screenshot program than Fraps, or at least cause far fewer issues.  If nothing else I am using the hell out of it for that purpose, but I want to solidify how to record games full screen with it and actually get OBS to stream them to twitch.

Faffing in Cyrodil

I am a horrible person because last night, yet again I did not participate in the google hang out pen and paper game.  Honestly I just wasn’t feeling up to dealing with people.  I need to get to the doctor soonish, because I fear something is wrong.  For about a month now, when I breath in deeply there is a sharp pain on the right side of my lung.  It started as a dull ache, so I thought maybe it was a muscle pain or something of the sort, however over the last few days it has become more sharp.  Last night when we did our walk, I struggled a bit to keep going and got pretty dizzy.  I hate going to the doctor, because I spent a good chunk of my childhood sick and in the doctors office.  It has made me try and avoid them like the plague as an adult, the only problem is… I have actual medical issues that I probably should be going for.  Last night I had just reached my fill of human contact so I did my own thing, because I really couldn’t handle needing any additional interaction.

I also knew I would need to be sociable today as we have a guild event scheduled in Elder Scrolls Online.  Right now we have a handful of people signed up for it, but I am hoping we will get a bunch more people who didn’t know about the Anook event.  I am not sure exactly how well this is going to work, as Delevax said most nights our PVP Campaign is locked by that time in the evening.  Worse case scenario we end up guesting on another campaign, since functionally there is really nothing we cannot do while guested.  The primary goal is to grab skyshards, the secondary goal is to get into trouble whenever we can.  If in the process we happen along some quest objectives, it would also be cool to complete those.  I know I have an objective out there from the last time I was running around with Zeli and Jabb, but it was not feasible for us to go get it.  I am sure it will be fairly rough, but I am hoping if we stick together as a group we will be able to compete with the various veteran rank players.