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Five Favorite MMOs

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Tomorrow is going to end up being a super busy day for me, as I need to run a few errands for work… so I am doing this post a little differently. I don’t feel like I will have enough time tomorrow to bang out a post like normal, so I am working on this topic tonight. I thought it would be interesting to do a post about my top five favorite games and why I like them so much. I figured i would do this in count down style with fifth leading down to number one… of course you can just cut ahead but lets pretend it is a surprise!

#5- World of Warcraft

I went back and forth several times on what should be my 5th spot, but as I thought about it… for sheer longevity of me playing the game, I had to give a nod to World of Warcraft. I have essentially outgrown the game, but it does a lot of things well. I feel like WoW is the junkfood of MMOs… so long as you do not think about what you are doing… it is extremely enjoyable. I played WoW as my primary game for roughly 8 years, and during most of that was the leader of a large social guild. I have so many amazing memories and have met so many life long friends out of the game. All of these reasons are why it at least had to make my list.

Best Features

People – WoW is still the game that most of the people you know are playing.
Colorful and friendly graphics and a world that matches them.
Lots of systems that allow solo players to engage in group content.
Game overall is extremely polished, they provide a consistent experience.
Roughly a decade of content and a wide variety of activities to do.

#4 – Lord of the Rings Online

Lord of the Rings Online is one of those games that I really enjoy every time I get the bug to play it. It is extremely immersive and brings the player into the setting surrounding the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love the way that you are set up in the game as characters that just happen to be in the background of the activities of the fellowship. Each step of the way you are doing events that are helping out the world, but also keeping tabs on the activity as the fellowship moves through the novels. They do an amazing job of bringing the world to life and filling it with copious amounts of LOTR lore.

Best Features

One of the best communities – Landroval is amazing
Music system… you can play instruments in game, and players give performances regularly
Simple instanced neighborhood housing system
Hands down the best horses in any MMO… they move right
Breathtaking landscapes straight out of the novels
Intricate system within system… I admit it… I love deeds
Subscribing for one month permanently unlocks most features

#3 – The Secret World

The Secret World is such a unique experience that I feel like everyone needs to play it at least once. Not only it is a unique system, but it also has extremely different game play mechanics. I have always been a fan of the whole occult and Cthulhu mythos, and this entire game is essentially a love song to H.P. Lovecraft. It also has some of the best writing and storytelling, and additionally some of the most imaginative quests. The only negative to me, is that it lends itself to very periodic and episodic gameplay. Each time new content is released, I run in like a locust and gobble it up. I believe enough in this game however that before its release I became a lifetime subscriber.

Best Features

Unique setting and amazing storytelling
Unique classless game play
All players can learn all abilities in the game
Nightmare modes are some of the most challenging content I have experienced in an MMO
Does not hold your hand… almost to a cruel end. Very difficult quests.
No Subscription Fee – buy the box play forever
Single Server Infrastructure – play with anyone on any dimension freely

#2 – Rift

Rift is likely going to be one of those games I always cycle back to playing. Essentially it is WoW, but improved in every conceivable way. That is probably a massive disservice to the game to say that… but unfortunately that is usually what I think of in my mind. Since the release on a monthly basis they have improved the gameplay so that it includes some extremely innovative features. It has really engaging content that varies from epic quests to quick fast food push a button and get into the action features. Additionally it just went free to play, and it feels like one of the better implementations. The cash shop has a truly staggering number of things to purchase, but all of it is completely optional. You can pretty much experience every bit of the content apart from the Storm Legion expansion… completely free.

Best Features

Most customizable out of the box UI that I have seen
Awesome non-intrusive add-on support
Awesome passive grouping content like Rifts and Instant Adventures
Most detailed housing system – you can literally build anything
Extremely flexible class system with ability to have more than 6 different specs
Great Wardrobe system allowing for tons of custom outfits
Extremely interesting and challenging raid encounters
Really fun holidays and in game events

#1 – Everquest II

The world I will always be the most nostalgic about is Norrath. Everquest was my first real MMO experience, and it bit me hard with a vengeance. The big negative however is it was very unfriendly to players, and caused a massive commitment of time to get anywhere. However with the release of Everquest II, it took the world I loved and brought it into a much more player friendly frame of mind. This is one of those games that I have played off and on since release.. and no matter where I am mentally… this is the one game I can always play even when I don’t really feel like playing anything. I feel like EQ2 is the most underappreciated game on the market and has so much to offer players. It just doesn’t look as shiny as other games, and the engine definitely feels dated at times. The game takes of commitment to understand its systems, but you will not find a more intricate and rewarding game on the market (except maybe Wurm Online).

Best Features

25 unique classes
20 unique races
Massive scale zones, dungeons, and raids
More content than I have seen in any other game period
Massive epic quest lines… one I worked on off and on for 6 months
Extremely detailed housing system with the ability to have 10 per player
Extremely unique crafting system
Guild housing that actually supports guild activities
Antonia Bayle is one of the best RP communities – Tons of Live Events

The Runners Up

There were several games that almost made the list. I contemplated Star Wars: The Old Republic… because quite honestly it had some really engaging content. It however has probably the most egregious free to play conversion I have seen, so its exploitive nature knocked it off the list. I thought about Guild Wars 2, because there is something undeniably enjoying about the game. However there are an equal number of issues I just cannot get past to really find it something I want to play on a regular basis. Dragon’s Prophet is a game I am really enjoying these days, but I don’t feel like I have played it long enough to really give it a spot on the top five list. Additionally Vanguard is a pretty amazing game, but I just have not played it enough to really know its ins and outs.

Essentially I picked the five games that have shaped me the most as a player. I hope you enjoyed my little rundown and even more so I hope it inspires someone to give one of them a shot. Of my list only World of Warcraft lacks a free to play option. So I guess this is really telling about where we are currently in what is a viable payment model. I find myself cycling between the two four on a regular basis. Right now I am mostly in a Rift mode… but I am sure I will cycle back to the others before too much longer.

I hope you have a great day, and I hope you don’t mind the change in format. I wanted to create this post, and I knew I would not have enough time tomorrow morning to complete it all. Additionally I am busy tonight downloading things to load up my new laptop full of games. So essentially I had time to kill and devote to this. I hope I get all my errands in the morning done, and get to work on time.

Return of the Queen

June 19, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people… this is my first post without the aid of coffee. I am trying to taper back my caffeine intake because the whole heart fluttering/palpitations thing has been back with a vengeance over the last few days. I honestly figure it is mostly stress induced, but I am willing to cut back on a few things to help the process along. It is not exactly an enjoyable feeling, so if I can stop it from happening… I will be happier. As a result without aid of coffee, I may not be entirely cogent at 6 am.

Return of the Queen

So yesterday was my birthday, and I have to say I was overwhelmed by the birthday messages I go from all sources. Logging into twitter of G+ was like hitting a wall of happy birthday… it was pretty awesome. You guys made what would have been a pretty crappy day not one. Essentially my birthday was slotted to be pretty awesome. I had a replacement laptop arriving sometime midday, and my wife would be flying in at noonish and I would get the spend at least half the day chilling out with her.

I got up pretty early yesterday, and when I got upstairs to catch up with the world my wife had messaged me telling me that her flight had been cancelled. Apparently there was “weather” in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and they were re-routing all flights. So instead of her 7 am flight… she was being placed on a 3:30 flight… on standby. At this point she was not slotted to actually get back to Tulsa until 9:30 that evening. So that left her having to do the awkward chilling out at the airport thing, and me to be alone on my birthday.

I would have driven up to get her, since she was in Kansas City, and it is a roughly four hour drive from where we live to the airport… but with the laptop coming, neither of us wanted to leave that out on the porch. We have a little pack of hoodlums in the neighborhood, that have been suspected for the flurry of car break-ins that I wrote about awhile back. Mostly they are bored teenagers with no real parental guidance to give them a moral compass, but they have been known to have sticky fingers.

So it became a waiting game… if the package arrived quickly enough it would be possible to run up and back and get home before the flights would have. However since my laptop arrived at 1 pm, that slotted her still getting home around 9 after you factored in both directions of the drive… and a lot of unnecessary stress in the process. Somehow along the process she managed to get juggled to an earlier flight, and in the grand scheme of things landed last night in Tulsa around 8 pm. It is really awesome to have my wife back, but honestly the impact has not quite hit me yet. We got home in time for her to unpack and pretty much go to sleep, since she had been up since the crack of dawn.

Laptop Resolution

Yesterday I had regaled you with the tale of the guy flaking out on me yet again, and me giving up and just ordering online. As I said above, yesterday around 1 pm I had a doorbell ring and my laptop was there on the threshold. Since it was too late to try and drive to pick up my wife, I decided to unbox it and play with my new toy. First off, for having dual SLI cards the laptop is remarkably quiet and cool. There is heat emanating from the heat sinks on either side but it is no way as hot as previous laptops have been. I am guessing this is the massive air intake on the bottom of the laptop causing the thing to stay cool.

I have not honestly had much time to really game on the laptop, I spent most of yesterday downloading stuff. I got in and played a little Dragon’s Prophet and it looked gorgeous. My previous laptop did not like that game at all, and this one funs it pretty much on high settings fluidly. Additionally I played a little Rift as it was patching and it also looked gorgeous and ran well on ultra settings. The sad thing about the digital age however is it still takes a long while to download multiple 16 gig game installations. For whatever reason League of Legends was taking the longest… which seems insane considering how simple a game it is… and how low tech the graphics are.

The keyboard is going to take some getting used to, but so far I really like it. Keyboards are a huge thing for me… and this is as best as I can describe it a mechanical chicklet keypad. It has the low key height of a chicklet style laptop keyboard, but you have the satisfying mechanical feedback of an old school keyboard. It reminds me a lot of a half height version of my Microsoft sidewinder keyboard that I use on my desktop. The important thing is it feels extremely responsive but like I said it will take some getting used to.

The biggest feature that is going to take awhile for me to adapt to is the fact that this laptop is Windows 8. I have to say, I still have no idea what Microsoft was thinking by defaulting a desktop operating system to the Metro interface. I realize that I likely use my computer differently than most people… I tend to do everything through the run prompt… but even for day to day use… the Metro interface seems worse than useless. The very first thing I did was download Stardock’s Start8 giving me back my start menu and run prompt. After that it feels much like using Windows 7 with a strange skin on it.

I will slowly get used to the forced minimalist interface elements… but I find the whole “we only use solid colors” movement of recent years a bit chafing. Our graphical designer at work seems to have been bitten by the same bug… and white frankly this whole only using bright solid colors thing looks a little “Fisher price” to me at times. All in all I am very happy however, I like the feel and form factor of the laptop, and what I have seen of its graphical powers are excellent as well.

Downtime Fiesta

While I was installing software yesterday, I had my PSP going and was playing through Final Fantasy 5. So far my biggest problem with this game is that it does a fairly poor job messaging what you are supposed to do next. There is always a certain element of roam around until you figure it out to every mission. Now that I am well past the point at which I had played previously… I am in virgin territory and often times struggle to follow the logic behind the game. Luckily I have veteran resources to rely upon if I get stuck, but for the most part I have figured out things.

I believe previously I had been just about to enter the moogle village after arriving at the second world. Yesterday I managed to play through Castle Bal, Quelb, Drakenvale, Ghido’s Island, Surgate Castle, Xezat’s Ship, the Barrier Tower thing, Forest of Moore, and am now just about to storm Exdeath’s castle. There were numerous difficult encounters along the way, but I managed through them and did not hit any major roadblocks like Soul Cannon was. Atomos was definitely a pain in the arse with his huge hitpoint pool, but I managed through it.

I feel like I have a super low maintenance party with Black Mage, Red Mage, Ranger and Samurai. My good friend Ash that talked me into this madness has a Blue Mage… so it seems like his entire play through is dictated by trying to get the right abilities off the right mobs. There was some madness last night about needing to have a level divisible by 3 to get some ability off some boss encounter. Right now the biggest thing I need to worry about is keeping my characters in the best gear (which I would have done already) and grinding mobs to get job levels ((which I would have done already). After making the swaps this party feels like my kind of party… simple and effective.

Wrapping Up

Well it is that time again, I need to wrap this up so I can finish getting ready and head on in to work. Going to pack up the laptop this morning and bring it for our noontime gaming excursions. It should be considerably lighter since it only weights 6 lbs. I hope you all have a great day, and I want to say again how much I appreciated getting all those birthday wishes yesterday. Now time to return to the real world and try and finish out this week.

Stressed

June 18, 2013 by Belghast

So I am getting a super late start this morning, as it is my birthday and I milled around the house rather than get ready and do my normal routine. I took the day off from work because the intent was to pick my wife up from the airport as she was flying in at noon. Unfortunately however that flight was cancelled due to weather… and she is not slotted to get into Tulsa until 9pm. This kind of puts a huge dent in the enjoyment of my birthday as I was expecting to get to spend at least half of it with her. However I got pinged over IM from a friend with this message… you think you get to take the day off from blogging just because its your birthday? So I guess I need to hustle along with my morning post.

Laptop Strikes Back

So when I last spoke about this yesterday, I was a bit chipper as the laptop guy had gotten back ahold of me and apologized for not responding. He said he had been selling his car and busy dealing with that, but would be able to meet up Monday after he got off work at 12:30. So we arranged a meeting and I took a late lunch to go meet him at 1:30. I was feeling kind of crappy yesterday… extremely dizzy but I drove out to meet him and upon pulling into the parking lot I feel my pocket buzz. When I pull out my phone I had received a message from him.

Hey man. I can’t sell the laptop anymore. Sorry for wasting your time.

So after all that hassle… the little fucker flakes out on me again. If you have been following me for a long time… or read the link I posted to an old blog post… I went through this exact same shit last time I tried to buy a laptop for myself on craigslist. However we can seem to buy stuff for my wife anytime we want without major issues. I feel like I am just cursed, and I have simply learned my lesson faster this time. I flipped a big finger to the process of buying a laptop for myself through craigslist and went searching online.

To be truthful I had done a bit of this already when I thought the guy had flaked out… and found a slightly better version of the Lenovo y500 for a bit more and yesterday after talking to my wife I went ahead and placed and order. The funny thing is… when you are spending $1000 on something… that $25 for over night shipping seems like a pittance. Based on UPS tracking it shows that my new laptop is out for delivery, which usually means it will show up on my doorstep around noonish.

Everything about the laptop looks to be something that will hold me for another 2-3 years. Honestly my Asus would have been just fine if it did not start having unexplained power issues. It looked like it was going to cost around $300 as it was going to be the motherboard, and it just seemed silly to throw that kind of money at a machine that was already 3 years old. Quite honestly the concept of SLI in a laptop blows my mind… I am so interested to crack it open and see what it can do. Having had SLI before, I know it is not always the best choice and some games perform better using only a single card… but the 650 is still an upgrade over any video card I currently have.

Stressed

I have been super stressed this past week for so many reasons. Work has been extremely wishy washy and uncertain, with our deadlines and goals changing on an almost hourly basis. Put on top of that all the technical issues I have had with computers malfunctioning, and the fact that the acquisition of a new laptop had been a drama filled mess. Compound all of that by the fact that I don’t really handle change well, and the absence of my wife has been probably the largest stress inducer, and I think my body is rebelling against me.

Yesterday I felt extremely horrible. I took my blood pressure at one point and it was extremely high, I was super dizzy… realized I had only had about 500 calories for the day… and also realized I had not actually had anything to drink since my early morning coffee. Instead of coming back to work after my late lunch meet up I drove to the house and remote in, so I could sit in my quiet serene office in the dark and try and calm the hell down. Additionally I drank about 32 oz of water and ate something for lunch.

So right now my goal for my birthday day… is to try and think as many calm thoughts as possible. This may or may not happen since my wife is essentially stranded at an airport right now. I am really hoping she ends up with an option to get home before 9pm. Honestly we don’t really know WHEN she will be home… since the 3:30 connecting fight is on “Stand by”. Again… I need to think happy non-rage-inducing thoughts. So the question is… what can I do that is super relaxing.

Leveling Crafting

So far my plan is to farm materials and finish leveling Foraging and Weapon Smithing in Rift. For whatever reason I find this activity calming. I have always liked riding around picking herbs, harvesting nodes and skinning bodies. There is just something serene about moving around a pretty landscape with a nice orchestral soundtrack.. and those little nodes on the map give you just enough of a reason to be there to keep it interesting. At this point I am in the level 50 zones working on Carmintium and the assorted herbs.

My problem is that I don’t quite remember what the sweet spot for ore and herbs was. I roamed around Iron Pine Peaks and it didn’t seem all that great, so I am thinking today I might go out to Ember Isle. At least there I have a shot at the various rare mobs that drop pets and such. Hopefully the activity will be just as calming as I seem to need it to be, and hopefully before long there will be a knock on my door with a new toy to set up.

I hope you all have a great day, and I want to thank everyone for the warm birthday wishes I have received over twitter and G+. I play a little game each birthday, to see who is the first automated bot to wish me a happy birthday. This year it was the WoWAce forum, which now that I think of it… might have been the winner last year as well. It is just interesting to log into email and see a flood of automated happy birthday messages. I have to say the experience of G+ and their birthday messages is a bit odd as well.. when you click the message saying you have birthday greetings it gives you a huge page of ALL the greetings. Surprise ninja greetings!! Anyways… maybe now Chuck will be satiated… I have blogged on my birthday.

First Retraction

June 16, 2013 by Belghast

This morning I am really struggling at the whole getting my act together thing. I slept well enough and had a warm purring cat snuggled up against me all night. Since my wife is out of town she has taken to sleeping on her pillow and curling up against me. I really appreciate the company, because for whatever reason this summer convention season has been the roughest for me. I think it is because I no longer have the busywork that came with leading a large guild to keep me occupied. Whatever the reason I am having a lot of “low mental health” days, and am having to fight pulling the covers over my head and forgetting the world exists.

First Retraction

So I have to warn you… sometimes when I say things I am just talking out of my ass. I should have done a bit more research on the Ice Strider mount. It showed up in my mailbox on the day after the queues got completely maddening. Upon opening my mailbox I saw everyone and their brother riding the thing in Meridian and just assumed it was a peace offering from Trion because of the patron queues. Apparently that is not entirely the case, but it was a peace offering of sorts.

Basically from what I have been able to glean… the Ice Strider mount is a freebie for anyone who purchased the “Storm Chaser Edition” of Storm Legion… aka the whole pay for a year of Rift get the expansion and some other goodies for free. Since all of us that did that still have several months of sub left before that deal runs out… they gave us a unique version of the 1350 gem mount for free and an additional $50 in gems as a “we’re sorry we went f2p but we aren’t giving you back your money”.

I am completely fine with this, I just wish they WOULD give players a pet or something for the insane patron queues. Much the same as when The Secret World went f2p, I felt like the rewards they give lifetime subscribers were more than enough to make up for the initial cash outlay… I also feel like the perks that Rift gives patrons are more than enough to make up for the cash outlay.

The only thing I would still like is I feel that patrons should get some kind of a monthly gem stipend. Every MMO F2p/Hybrid model has this BUT Rift. My station cash accrues station cash at 500 per month if I am just sitting there doing nothing with it. I feel that as a patron I should be getting some sort of similar perk here. It is not enough to riot and burn down the city over… but it would be nice.

More Laptop Woes

Well the guy I was trying to buy the laptop from has gone completely unresponsive. Making it worse he has reposted the laptop this morning on Craigslist. I have no clue why he decided he did not want to sell it… I am guessing he was holding out for the original price listed… since I did talk him down a little bit. Would have been nice for him to just say “look I really need the X dollars” and see if I was willing to counter. I get the impression I have been dealing with a teenager, just based on sentence structure. At this point I am looking at options through traditional retail venues for the same laptop. This whole process is maddening.

Four Job Fiesta Begins

Last night the FF5 Four Job Fiesta event kicked off, or at least Gilgabot started responding to assignment requests… and as a result everyone was off to the races. It has been literally years since I have played this game… I originally played it when the English translation hack first became available for the SNES rom version. This was back my junior year of college in 1996-1997 ish. So I remember almost nothing about the game, but I remember I never actually beat it. One of my best friends has been pestering me for years to join in the bandwagon… so I have.

You can follow my progress and assignments on my player page on the website: Belghast. If you are interested in participating yourself… I think you can still sign up. Check out the rather arcane twitter based sign-up process here. So far I have been assigned the Wind Crystal job and the Water Crystal job. My first job was the Black Mage, that I was fairly happy about… since the black magic tends to be the workhorse of ANY Final Fantasy game. My second pick… not so much… Red Mage is probably in my bottom 5 of all jobs available… probably absolute zero is the Bard… but Red Mage is close. I have no clue why… but I have disliked Red Mages since Final Fantasy 1. They always seemed to be not quite good enough at anything… to make them a pick worth having.

I will continue playing later, but I am doing the play through on my PSP using the Gameboy Advance version. So far I am really impressed with the way the GBA ports work. If I ever find my GBA… I will totally pick up official copies of these games. I do however own the ps1 ports of all the early final fantasy games… so I feel far less dirty about emulating them. I have to say… given my spastic play style… the emulators are the way to go. Save states are a godsend for when you need to set down the game and go do something. Sadly this is only something that really works well in emulators… quick saves are nice but still take several screens before you can walk away.

I hope to make some serious progress today, because happy Final Fantasy music does a decent job of making me forget just how depressed I am. I mean seriously… who cannot be happy while listening to the Chocobo theme? I get bummed about the current state of JRPGs… but this golden age will always make me happy. There will likely never be a time when I don’t have one of these on my phone or somehow accessible easily.

Wrapping Up

Well today is Fathers Day, so hopefully you all have a great one. I know I am slotted to have a late lunch/early dinner with mine as a combo move to celebrate Fathers day and preemptively celebrate my Birthday which is this coming Wednesday. I will still pick up the check… because that feels like the proper sonly thing to do. I am not sure why… but I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I pick up the check. I like taking care of people… and I think that feeds into that protective instinct.