Rift Archives - Page 41 of 43 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Breaching the Core

May 2, 2013May 2, 2013 by Belghast

One of the pains of living in Oklahoma is the shifting weather patterns. Last night when I went to bed it was roughly 80* and this morning as I am waking up it is 45*. At this point I wish it would just pick a season and go with it, because flipping back and forth between heat and air conditioning is a pain in the butt. Despite the weather annoyances, yesterday went pretty awesome for me. I had two fairly huge meetings, both of which went extremely well, and the roadmap I had slaved over was well accepted.

Hellbugs on my yard

Yesterday it was announced in the patch notes that a new kind of Fire Rift was opening up in Telara. These “Invasive Species” rifts have a chance of dropping either the hellbug mount pictured above, or a hellbug companion pet. Rift Scene has a good writeup by Cupcakes about the event, and last night I started to see players on these new mounts showing up in Tempest Bay. It was late in the night and I honestly forgot to take a screenshot, so I am doing something I dislike doing and linking to the Rift Scene image for reference… hopefully I have given sufficient credit.

I spent the better part of the evening roaming around trying to find one of these Hellbug rifts. After roaming around Morban, Kingsward, and eventually several old world areas I came up completely empty handed. Going to need to do some research to see where they are more likely to spawn. I really want either the purple one, or the super rare green one. While I played enough defiance to know it was not really a game for me, I am all about cross overs and new mounts.

A.R.A.M.

I popped onto mumble, and after a bit of chatting with my friends and listening to their banter about League of Legends, I allowed myself to get drawn in for a quick map. I was reintroduced to the concept of A.R.A.M. aka All Random All Murderbridge. We had done this the night before, but I didn’t realize it was an actual “thing”. Apparently the Howling Abyss really wants me to play Nunu, because once again I got him assigned to me as my random champion.

I promise Nunu is not like the only champion I have unlocked. The game should have been able to pick from Alistair, Annie, Ashe, Darius, Garen, Graves, Jayce, Kennen, Olaf, Shen, Tristana, Udyr or Wukong… but instead in both cases it picked Nunu which is part of the weeks free rotation. Apparently it thinks I need more Yeti in my life. Moaning aside, I have to say I am finally feeling like I am getting used to him.

Once again ARAM assigned us one champion that we were familiar with and one that we were not per team. So it essentially ended up with Tam playing Morgana vs Rae playing Nidalee… and then Drathis trying to play Alistair vs me trying to play Nunu. It was a really good match and we had a “no towers down” stalemate at midbridge for most of the map.

Tam and I actually managed to make a break, get a 15 minute into the game double kill, and drop two towers. Then all hell broke loose as my shitty DSL internet connection fell apart. My ping climbed up to 500, then 1500, then 3500 and disconnected me from the game. At which point we never really recovered. In true sportsmanlike tradition, Drathis and Rae asked if they should hang back until my connection stabilized but we urged them onwards… since a map against friends is a map against friends.

Breaching the Core

I wrote about this the other day, but over the weekend Plasmodia and I had talked about trying to pull together some groups on Wednesday nights. We had set a startup time of 9pm Central, and after my one ARAM map it was getting close to the meet up time. We managed to pull together a really solid core of a team, and they were totally willing to run non-elite dungeons so my nub arse could join in. We ended up with Plasmodia tanking, Marklaar running support, me dpsing, and Aleriase healing. This left us only needing a single dps, so the queue times were near instantaneous.

We got assigned Empyrean Core, which a few of us had never seen before. The zone itself was amazingly beautiful, full of super intricate widgets and bobbles. The thing that really surprised me however was just how challenging the dungeon still was. Previously the Elites were super hard, but the normal dungeons were a bit faceroll-y once you actually managed to hit cap. Last night I was the only under level player, and it each of the boss rights were still rather challenging.

We ended up doing two runs last night, and getting assigned Empyrean Core both times (apparently this is a problem in Rift). I had a complete and total blast, and hanging out with the Alea Iacta Est rift contingency was awesome. Aleriase mentioned that they had been trying to start doing group nights both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I am completely down with doing more of this in the future. I am not sure if we will regenerate the numbers needed to raid, but any kind of grouping with friends is always a positive.

Dungeoneering Challenge

I had almost forgotten just how much I have missed running challenging content with friends. I have been in a real lull of good group content of late. The last time I feel like I was truly challenged in a dungeon was back in The Secret World, running the Nightmare mode content with the friends I have been playing League with. The content was brutal, we had to constantly think on our feet, but the adjustment process was a blast.

I had hoped that with Pandaria we would at least have a period of time when heroic content was an actual challenge. But from the first night, we essentially steamrolled the dungeons we ran in greens and a smattering of quested blues. I think in part that is a good reason why I got bored of WoW so quickly this time around. WoW for whatever reason has forgotten how to be challenging, without resorting to random or downright “Cheap Shot” tactics. Random chance that a mob kills you outright, or does something so horrible you just can’t recover is not challenging, it is just annoying.

If I can actually muster a regular group in Rift, I can see myself sticking around for awhile. In these games I am happiest when the groups come easily, and we can go off and smash baddies together each night. I get bored and slog down when the grouping stops, and my only option becomes pugging. So much of the grouping experience… are the people you experience it with. In most cases, I would rather not play a game at all than to deal with pugs.

Tiny Two-hander

Last night gathered up some much needed gear for 60 through the various dungeon runs. One of the few pieces that I could actually equip now, is a Protector’s Sword of Slaying pictured above. This was a pretty massive upgrade over the two level 58 green one-handers I was using, but as you can see above, the scale feels a wee bit small for a Bahmi. Maybe I am just used to the final fantasy-esc big dude with an even bigger sword trope that wow ran with, but it is just too “normal” for me to feel epic about it.

I will say though it has been fun trying to two-hander. I’ve always gravitated towards dual wield, and in the original rift game what kind of weapons you wielded really mattered for your soul. As such I always gravitated towards paragon heavy souls, which were the dual wield tree. I had not however played around with a two-hander since they made it no longer matter what weapon you were wielding with which soul. That alone has been fun and well worth any wipes that happened in the core.

I am really hoping that over the next few days, I can use this sword as a dowsing rod to help me find some of those hellbug rifts. I would really love to have one of those mounts, and I have missed out on so many other cool mounts thanks to my bad luck and my wanderlust. I am super grateful to my guildies for pulling together the groups last night. I had a blast and look forward to doing it again.

I see my time is running short, and my coffee has run out. If you’ve made it down this far in the post… I wish you the best of days. I will have to pull my coat back out of the closet as I go off to work, but I am hoping that by the weekend it will be warm again. Hopefully it is pleasant wherever you are.

Awesome Trailers Revisted

April 30, 2013 by Belghast

Today my friend Liore posted a great run down of some of her favorite trailers of recent memory. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… so hopefully she will understand that I am completely latching onto the idea. Honestly watching the trailers she singled out, made me start thinking about some of my favorite trailers, and once the idea set root in my brain it was going to happen.

What makes an awesome trailer?

There are so many ways to make a trailer stand out, it could have an amazing soundtrack and visual or just be extremely well directed and emotionally engaging. There are trailers I love that pretty much fall into all categories. A lot of the ones Liore singled out in her post, are ones I love too for various reasons, but I noticed my favorite kind of trailer was mostly absent in the list.

I love a trailer that sets up the world of the game, the eternal conflict, and just pumps me up to play the game. I love when I watch a trailer and walk away feeling “hell yes, I want to play this now”. It could be the soundtrack of the visuals, but if it can somehow tap into my inborn sense of bloodlust… it is a win in my book. I especially love the trailers that set up the lore of the world, and give us a window into the game that we normally would not see otherwise.

DC Universe Online

This trailer will likely go down in history as one of my all time favorites. When someone mentions a kick ass trailer, this one is always the first one I think of. For starters, everything Blur Studios touches is amazing, but more importantly it sets up the storyline of the game in a brilliant way. I have always loved the DC setting where the traditional heroes are thugs, and Luthor is the hero… and to set that up as the basis of the MMO made me only want to play it more.

Sadly for whatever reason the game itself never met the epic quality of the trailer. It tried extremely hard, and in some aspects succeeded. The little references, like Booster Gold commercializing everything really made it feel deeply rooted in the DC universe. I will have to say that no matter what, this trailer got me to buy the game and play it. I still boot it up from time to time when the mood hits me.

Hellgate: London

FOR THE LIVING!!!! God there is so much that is amazing about this trailer. Also there is so much frustration that I have that this game did not succeed. It had some amazing story behind it, and this trailer sets up everything you need to know about it. This has it all, awesome heroes of both genders and all of them making extreme sacrifices to save the next generation. Considering my last name is Temple… I may or may not also have an extreme thing for the Templars. So much was right about this game, but it also had so many failings… namely its horrible network code. There have been many times I have considered playing the Asian free to play version, but it would just feel odd.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

I feel kinda bad about this next pick. I truly love the feel of this trailer, and the epic qualities especially when my personal favorite… Grimlock makes his appearance. Why I feel bad is that I have never actually played this game, regardless of how amazing the trailer is. Every time I watch this trailer, I keep thinking… why god can we not get a full length Transformers movie that looks like this… instead of the odd biomechanical Transfomers from the Michael Bay movies. Everything about this trailer screams Transformers to me, and takes me back to a chunk of my childhood.

Mass Effect 2

While I love Mass Effect 3, and the trailer Liore posted made me want to go back and play the series from 1-3 all over again… my favorite game in the series will always be 2. This trailer makes me relive all the badassery that is ME2, and its great swat team like side missions. This makes me want to load it up and slaughter legions of collectors. Doesn’t hurt that I am a huge fan of Thane, and he is completely badass in the trailer.

Bioshock 2

I will always love the Bioshock franchise no matter what. The first one still stands out as one of the most transformative gaming experiences I had up to that point. As trailers go however, the launch trailer for Bioshock 2 is great. I love the relationship between the Big Daddy and the Little Sisters, as someone who has always chosen to play a tank… and protect the squishy players of the world… I can totally relate to the dynamic of the eternal protector. Watching the video fires me up to play the game and wreak havoc on some splicers.

Fallout New Vegas

This trailer falls in the category of letting you in on something, that you normally would not be let in on just by playing the game. While this scene is alluded to in the gameplay, you only know it exists by watching the teaser trailer. Fallout has been and will likely always be one of my favorite series. It means two things to me, huge wastelands to explore, and badass guys in armor. This trailer teases the NCR Ranger in such a tantalizing way, that immediately I thought… man I have to get that armor in game. I went from lusting after the Brotherhood Armor in the previous games, to making my goal in game to acquire the Ranger armor with those cool goggles. War… War Never Changes.

Borderlands

As far as Borderlands goes, I will always prefer the original trailer. I love the way it introduces each character and gives them a comic book style introduction frame. The soundtrack to me has become so connected to this trailer, that when I hear the song on the radio all I can think of is playing Roland. As badass as this trailer is however… it fails miserably at one thing… getting me to by the game. When you watch the trailer, it just looks like another shooter, albeit an edgy and graphically interesting one. All someone had to do was tell me the phrase “Diablo With Guns”… and I shifted into “take my money now” mode. Problem is this was about 6 months after the initial release.

Warhammer Online

This is yet another jaw droppingly epic trailer from Blur Studio, and sadly also another trailer that is leaps and bounds better than the game itself deserves. As a longtime fan of Warhammer, there were so many little geek out moments. From the Squid Herder, to the Bright Wizard, to the Chaos Maurader… the video just oozes lore. The moment that just takes the cake however is when the Tzeentch Bringer of Change steps through the wall. Yes… I am definitely a Warhammer geek. Like I said, I just wish the game was as good as this trailer.

Rift

I have gone back and forth on this trailer over the years. At first I was not sure about it, but the longer it exists… and the longer I have played Rift.. the more I appreciate it. There are so many little things about this video that make the Rift player in me geek out. The number one subtle element is the way the crow flies into the scene, then becomes life touched at one point, and finally at the end a flame touched phoenix. On top of this, I recognize the abilities they are using and could in theory guess the specs of the supposed characters that are shown. My favorite moment however, is when the warrior visibly switches souls… something that really slickly explains what to expect about the game itself. It does what I think it set out to do, introduce players to the setting… and as icing on the cake it uses a setting that actually exists in Stonefield. So often in these videos, they are in completely made up settings… grounding the video in the actual game is just kick ass.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Once again Blur Studios makes it into my list, this time with a series of three trailers that were released leading up to the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Return, Hope and Decieved each set up a segment of the storyline leading up to the game timeline itself. In addition, each sets up the archetypal character for each class in the game, and fleshes out some back story. Combined they make an epic story arc that I can watch over and over.

I loved Star Wars: The Old Republic… until I ran out of content, but every time I watch this sequence I get nostalgic about what might have been. The game is still pretty solid, but sadly it is wrapped into one of the most egregious free to play models I have ever experienced. I realize that Bioware in essence had to sell its soul to stay afloat and keep the game running, but I will always be wistful about the game that could have been.

Rage

This trailer does an amazing job of setting up the universe that Rage takes place in, and explaining how the world got to the point where it is today. Everything about the trailer makes me want to play the game. I have a certain measure of regret over this title. It is one of the best single player experiences I have had in recent years, but also one of the absolute shortest. If the game had roughly twice the content, it would have been a truly phenomenal game. What is left is a great experience, and the trailer tells you everything you need to know to enjoy it.

Diablo 3

Like Liore said in her post, it would be inappropriate to have a list of trailers that did not include something from Blizzard. While I probably would have also picked the Wrath of the Lich King trailer, I didn’t want to copy her pick. Probably my favorite series from Blizzard as far as trailers go, is Diablo. Each trailer is always so rich in storytelling, and the Diablo 3 one is no exception. Sadly for me, this is another case of the trailer being better than the game.

Actually I have to take a step back from that, and say that the actual game itself was really enjoyable and I liked the story quite a bit. It just was over way too damned fast. I essentially played the game until I had completed the content, and then have not really touched it since. All of this does not change the fact that the game trailer is pretty amazing.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I am a HUGE fan of all things Elder Scrolls, but this trailer just set the game up perfectly. Patrick Stewart as Uriel Septim was such an amazing casting, and this trailer which also serves as the intro video to the game pumps me up every time I watch it. All I want to do when I see this is get into the game and explore, and become the epic and heroic warrior I know I can become in an Elder Scrolls game. It does what I am looking for in a trailer, introduces the setting and provides the urge to play.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Live Action)

I can remember the first time I saw this trailer, I was just amazed that they went to the amount of effort to create a big budget live action trailer. This feels exactly like Skyrim, where the peasants run away the Dragonborn runs into the action, and draws down on the drake. This trailer and later commercial is just such a perfect representation of how epic the game feels. It really makes me wish there was an Elder Scrolls television show.

Elder Scrolls Online

This is the trailer that I am most pumped about right now, so I saved it for last. This trailer was released to announce the opening of beta signups for Elder Scrolls Online. There is just so much about this game that excites me, and I love the way little callouts are made to the various factions. I have always identified with the Nords, and when they crawl out of the bowels of the fortress after slaying a bunch of undead werewolves… just makes shivers of happy run up and down my spine. Don’t get me started on how awesome it is that the werewolves were undead in the first place…

I’ve heard plenty of snide comments saying that the trailer is all about the guy from Assassins Creed, but all I can see is a Breton Rogue. I am a notorious carebear, but for whatever reason I am really looking forward to the RVR in this game. The frontier in Dark Age of Camelot was just a cool place to be, there were so many things that were NOT keep raids that you could do. It was just cool to go out there and feel confident enough to be able to hunt the really hard mobs that were out there.

The fact that Cyrodil sounds like essentially the Dark Age of Camelot frontiers, just sounds so amazing. I mean this is Cyrodil, the setting that the ENTIRE 4th game was set in. That is so much space, and I am really hoping there are so many amazing non pvp targets out there as well. It will be so much fun going out there with a group of friends and seeing what all we can do. This video just pumps me up for doing some RVR and exploring Cyrodil.

I Blame Liore

This post went on so much longer than I had intended it to, but there are just so many amazing trailers that I love. Right now I want to play every single one of these games, but I think I will ultimately log into Rift and cause as much havoc as I can. If you’ve made it this far, I really hope you have a great night and can get something knocked off your gaming bucket list.

With More Spikey Bits

April 30, 2013 by Belghast

Having one of those mornings where I am just struggling to get going. Here is hoping that the blessing of caffeine will kick me out of my slumber. This is now day five of the experiment, and today is the first day I considered blowing off the post. It is not that I have nothing to say, but more than right now I am exhausted and my brain seems to be misbehaving. I had another one of my bouts of insomnia, coupled with the fact that it was a bit warm last night.

The Desert of Flames

Yesterday at lunch, Lethbridge and I had another one of our gamer lunches, where we take our laptops to an empty conference room and chill out playing games for a bit. Since I normally need to relax during the time, I tend to pick a game that calms me. Yesterday like most days, I chose to play Everquest 2. It did not hurt that this is also what Leth was playing as well. EQ2 is one of those games that I will likely always play, if not for the massive amount of content… but at least for the fact that Norrath is a world I am deeply connected to.

There are essentially three settings that I have massive amounts of nostalgia towards. Norrath is probably the first and foremost, because of my time spent playing and idolizing Everquest. Tamriel is probably in the number two slot, because I have rabidly consumed and spent thousands of hours at this point playing the various Elder Scrolls Titles. Lastly, as much as I may or not want it… I have a ton of nostalgia for Azeroth. You can’t essentially live in a game world for the better part of a decade without missing it pretty often.

Tiny Elvis

You have likely noticed that I tend to gravitate heavily towards “core” grouping classes, especially of the tank spectrum. This is the time of character I feel most natural playing, but it is also the type of character that has the most responsibilities to a given guild or group. With currently nomadic game existence, I wouldn’t want anyone to try and count on me as the cornerstone of any group. As a result I decided to try and roll a pure dps over in Everquest 2.

I spent yesterdays lunch working on Belgrifter, my little Ratonga Swashbuckler. While definitely in the pure dps camp, the Swashbuckler has some of the survival that I crave in any character. I’ve been progressing quickly through the content, and currently am working through the Sinking Sands area. I am extremely nostalgic about the Desert of Flames content, mostly because I spent so much time in both South Ro and Oasis of Marr on Exeteroth my EQ1 cleric. So many hours were spent killing crocs… and later spent killing sand giants as revenge for all the times they killed me.

For a trip down memory lane, above is a shot of my dwarf cleric, in Oasis of Marr… the area now contained within Sinking Sands taking down I believe my first sand giant. My Rygorr armor was pretty spiffy, my guild jokingly called me “Tiny Elvis” because of the bedazzled nature of the gear. I sadly do not remember the shield or mace at this point… but I had not started raiding hate yet, because I was not a giant purple blob swinging a Dark Ember. Anyways… needless to say I have a lot of memories of that region… and still cannot help taking down the giants in zone.

The Great Escape

It took me a bit to get settled down last night and capable of gaming. We have this amazingly smart ferret, that has turned into a ninja like escape artist. She keeps finding ways of scaling the walls of the two linked playpens and hopping out. We have tried every solution we have seen online, and a few we came up with ourselves. We had tried splitting black drainage pipe and putting it over the top so she could not get to the top of the cage and pull herself over. Turns out after a little bit, she figured out to crawl up into the pipe itself and then get over to the top.

Last night involved creating a shelf of sorts to cover the corner she normally gets out on. After an our of bending metal flashing, carefully crimping and coating all edges in duct tape, and finally plugging all the wholes from which I was bleeding things to “Metal cuts” (papercuts you are nothing to me now)… I finally had this spiffy little shelf that fit down nicely onto the corner of the cage. I secured in in place to the wire with binder clips, and proceeded into the kitchen to make myself some dinner.

By the time I had assembled a plate, and walked back into the room… maybe 5 minutes tops… she had already figured out how to get on top of the shelf. Smartest ferret ever… also potentially the most frustrating. I hate that we essentially have to leave her in the cage all the time right now, until we figure out a way to keep her from escaping. Tonight we will be attempting to deploy a new ruse… coating the corner of the cage she uses to get out in plexiglass… so she cannot climb there.

Spikey Bits on his Spikey Bits

After this little back and forth with the ferret mastermind… I needed to kill lots of things to vent my frustrations. Roaming around in an MMO laying waste to entire segments of a continent… is a thing I do. I had also logged out at roughly 60% through my level, and really wanted to push further towards 59. While roaming around doing my thing I stumbled across the guy above. This little beauty goes by lXxalgol the Lurking Horror, and while the lurking part is a little ambiguous… they definitely got the horror bit down pat. I thought for a second I was playing Warhammer again, and had just stumbled onto a Chaos War Machine.

I posted on G+ last night about this guy, saying I lacked the crazy to attack me. I was wrong. Seriously… I cannot find a mob like this and NOT try him at least. I figured it would end in tears, but before giving it any further thought I hit my charge key and gave it a shot. Surprising enough, he was not nearly as bad as I expected… granted I had remembered to put my buffs on at this point. Overall however he was quite manageable, and I killed him before I had dropped below half health… which for a 59 elite at 58 player level… seemed good.

The funny thing is, he dropped nothing but coin. This combined with the fact that his respawn is insanely fast, as over the course of the evening I killed him five times… leads me to believe that he is somehow tied to a quest or other objective. I was able to turn up no details on either Rifthead, or the various wikis, apart from a stubbed out entry for the guy. If anyone out there knows what he is for, and how I can start this magical mission… please let me know! I feel like I need to kill him with a purpose!

Rift World Problems

I have come to the realization that I have a problem with Carnage Quests. No, this is going to go in the opposite direction you are probably thinking. It has been well established that I like killing things in video games… and am extremely prone of fits of mindless bloodlust as I ping pong across the map. Carnage Quests are like crack for me… they give my bloodlust a purpose. I take forever to move out of a zone, because I keep finding new mobs that have new carnage quests… and then find myself not being able to leave an area until I have killed 16 Rabid Wombats.

This has lead to an additional problem. I have entirely too much leather… far more than I could ever use, and far more than I could likely ever need. I literally have hundreds and hundreds of Storm Legion era leather… and the problem is… I cannot stop myself from skinning the corpses. Too many years of playing a leatherworker in wow, have ingrained me that leaving an un-skinned corpse is a cardinal sin. I even find myself going around and cleaning up the handiwork of others. I hate using the auction house, but if you are over on Deepwood and find yourself in need of leather… look me up.

Coffee and Rambling

Well it looks like I have squandered yet another morning drinking my coffee and rambling about the games I play. This is now day five of my little experiment, and so far has been the day I least wanted to blog. I managed to find focus and keep pushing forward, in spite of the fact my head is pounding and I just want to go back to sleep. Since comments are kinda a thing of the past, and all my readers are picking up my posts via RSS… I feel like I am rambling into the void most of the time. That is perfectly fine, since right now I am mostly doing this for myself. If you’ve managed to make it this far in the post, I wish you the best of days… hopefully mine will suck slightly less than yesterday.

Oh… as a footnote… I managed to ding 59 in Rift. So one more level to go, and then I can stop feeling like a such a failure!

That Rift Moment

April 29, 2013 by Belghast

Yesterday was a fairly stark contrast to Saturday, but a pretty welcome one. After milling around the house and blogging, and my wife doing the same we decided to embark upon a journey to Joplin. We didn’t really make it out of the house until around noon, but by then the 50* temperature had warmed into the high 60s making my choice to wear shorts more justified.

Cameras at the ready

We brought with us our cameras, but they did not leave the car for the most part. We roamed around for a few hours but didn’t really find much of anything up there that “inspired” us. It had been a few months since our last trip to Joplin, so we had plenty of things to do as we ran around town. But for whatever reason, each time we talked about stopping and roaming around, we were both decidedly meh on the topic.

I feel like at some point we need to take a trip to a nature preserve or something of the sort. That seems to be what both of us are leaning heavily towards wanting to shoot now. The recent round of thunderstorms has finally caused Oklahoma to green up, and I think both of us want to take pictures of that before summer starts to brown it again. We have a list of places that we have talked about, but honestly we need to just do it. Our problem yesterday was that our default weekend shoes are sandals, which are not exactly conducive to stomping through the weeds.

Return to Moriban

When we finally made it home for the evening I contemplated jumping back into the Neverwinter, but all day I had thought about how much fun I was having with the new build in Rift. I am super glad that I did, because a short while after logging in one of my favorite people showed up. Plasmodia is like this friendly mad scientist, and one of my highlights of playing Rift with Machiavelli’s Cats. Her and her husband Marklaar were both super awesome people to hang out with, and apparently had missed me.

So over the course of last night I hung out and chatted, and generally did not pay much attention to what I was doing. This is a good thing when a game supports this. I happily ground my way through packs of mobs, loosely following whatever objective was highlighted on my minimap. I generally tend to play really poorly when I am chatting with someone, as a result I used to run laps in Dalaran while I had to talk to someone for any length of time.

That “Rift” Moment

I am no stranger to doing stupid things, but at one point last night it was getting a bit excessive. I was absolutely getting my ass handed to me, enough that I was starting to question this new miracle spec I had stumbled into. It was round about this point that I remembered… I have experienced this before. Sure enough I looked up at my buff bar and noticed that not single one of my 9 buffs was currently active. Upon cycling through the buffs it was like I was a whole new person once more.

I would love to say, that this was the first time I had encountered this problem. However anytime I go back to Rift for awhile, I ultimately end up running around like a buffless noob. I’ve heard that there are mods that will remind you that you are “naked”, so I guess it might be time for me to investigate one of those. Overall though I had a blast just hanging out and chatting, and while I was on guild chat seemed to liven up.

Small Group of Friends

I had noticed that Alea Iacta Est Rift was certainly more quiet than I remember, and last night talking to Plas I found out the reasons. Turns out that a good chunk of the AIE/Cats folks wandered off into Defiance and are happily shooting mutants there. Luckily I was able to play enough of it during Alpha and Beta to realize that it really was not the game for me. As much as I love the concept of a Science Fiction MMO, the result never ends up being something I really enjoy… at least for any length of time.

Another issue that is going on right now is that it seems the officery types are AWOL as well. I have a feeling that some of the Defiance folks will be burning out on the game, as a good number of individuals on my twitter and google plus feed already have. My hope is that some activity in Rift will draw them back. Plas and I plotted to start doing Wednesday night dungeon groups, and I believe we will be having the first of these this week. Right now that is likely going to be me, Plas and her hubby Mark and then anyone else we can tempt from the guild. If you play on Deepwood and are super good natured, and friendly to absolute nubitude… look me up.

Beauty of Dawn

Beauty of Dawn – Malukah – Elder Scrolls Online

So in a completely different direction, I had to post this. I seriously cannot go a single day without listening to it. This is Beauty of Dawn, a song by the already famous Malukah that apparently she teamed up with Zenimax Online Studios to create. From my understanding, she wrote this song after an extended play test of Elder Scrolls Online. Whatever the inspiration, it is completely amazing and so rich and evocative. The song just feels laced with lore, and hopefully when the game releases we will understand all the things she is talking about.

If you could not tell, I am kinda a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls Setting. I first got into them with Daggerfall, and have been a rabid consumer of all things Tamriel ever since. There have been so many times while playing Oblivion and Skyrim, that I thought to myself… man this would be really amazing if I could just play this with my friends. My hope is that Elder Scrolls Online ends up being just that… Skyrim with friends. I realize there are certain MMO trappings that you have to have to make the genre survive, but so long as the core gameplay translates I will be happy.

This is day four of my experiment, and if you have made it this far I want to thank you for reading. The daily posting thing is still not extremely comfortable, but I look forward to doing it each morning. I find sitting down and rattling out my thoughts relaxing. Hopefully over time, it will even be useful to the community… though I sincerely doubt that. This is going to be an insanely busy week at work, so I think I will need this little morning sanctuary to keep me sane. Hope you guys have an awesome day, and awesome week if you don’t check back in before then.